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Appendix IV Development of a Reasonable and Prudent Alternative In 1979, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation published a plan for the Animas-La Plata project. At that time, Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service consulted with the Bureau concerning the potential effects of the project on the endangered Colorado squawfish. On December 28, 1979, on the basis of the capture of a single juvenile squawfish in the San Juan River, the Service issued a biological opinion that the project was unlikely to jeopardize the continued existence of the Colorado squawfish. Surveys of fisheries conducted by federal and state researchers from 1987 though 1989 documented a reproducing population of adult squawfish in the San Juan River. lis a result of this new infonnation, in February 1990 the Bureau resumed consulting with the Service on the Animas-La Plata project. In May 1990, the Service issued a draft "jeopardy" biological opinion, asserting that the project would likely jeopardize the continued existence of the endangered Colorado squawfish and concluding that no "reasonable and prudent alternative" to the project (referred to hereinafter as the "alternative") existed. In its 1990 draft biological opinion, the Service concluded that because major water projects on the San Juan River and its tributaries had already reduced stream flows to a critical level for the fish, depleting any water from the Animas River would pose an unacceptable risk to the squawfish's survival in the San Juan River. The Service's draft biological opinion contained the following statement: "Since the Service believes that in most years the river is already at or below the threshold for minimum flows whereby the fish could survive in the river, any further depletions to the river system could render the San Juan River unuseable by the Colorado squawflsh." For this reason, the Service, in developing its draft opinion, had considered but rejected each of three proposed alternatives to the project as not biologically defensible. These alternatives were (1) changing the design of the Animas-La Plata project to allow stored water to be released for the benefit of the Colorado squawfish; (2) initially limiting and then increasing the amount of water depleted from the Animas River for the project over time to coincide with the construction schedule, and perfonning scientific studies concurrently with the project's construction; or (3) offsetting the anticipated depletions of water from the Animas River Page 18 GAOIRCED-96-1 _La Plata Project