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of the project, In response, supporters of the project. led bv former GOY, Scott Matheson, forged a coalition which included such unlikely bedfellows as Democrat Ted Wilson and RepublicanSen, Orrin Hatch, Rival football coaches Ul VeIl Edwards of BYU and Jim Fassel of the University of Utah-whose expertise on the subject possibly stemmed from the fact thatthey both used water boy~ven co-<;tarred in a television spot Once again Uintah County roared its opposition, with 70 percen' voting against the contract, This time; percent of Wasatch County voters jomed them, concerned about the salet" of the Jordanelle Dam and the furore of their irrigation supply. Nevertheless, in thedistrictasa whole, 73 percent 01 the voters agreed to repay an additional $368.5 million to the federal government However, in spite of the public man- By this time, environmental groups such as the NWF had realized that legiS- latotS who had little sympathy lor the plight of /ish species like the June SLoker would listen to arguments phrased In dollatS and cents, "Environmentalists have become inM creasinglv sophisticated to the point that they are the strongest advocates of ec0- nomic analysis of federal water resource projects," Osann said, That proficiency, plus a growing na- tional awareness of environmental is- sues, have given groups like the NWF considerable clout in Congress, '1fs the smart membetS of Congress who learn to work with them," said Tom Melling, leg- islative assistant to Wayne Owens, "II you try to roll over them, you lose," That lact became quite apparent early in 1988 when Garn and Owens submitted a bill to increase the federal budget ceiling on the Colorado River Storage Project. of which the CUP was the largest leature date, there were signs that the CUP was losing its grip. For a start, Utah's repre- sentatives in Washington lelt increas- ingly frustrated with the Bureau's han- dling of the proJect According to a 1986 Deseret News stoty, 18 percent 01 the total congressional appropriation for the CUP over the previous six yeatS had been channeled into other projects, and that as much as 40 percent 01 the remainder had paid administrative overhead. Garn introduced legislation to limit the Bureau's overhead to 20 percent "They lound ways to get around that," he said, "so I put in dollar amounts instead," At the same time, scrutiny of all led- eral water reclamation programs was in- creasing in Washington. Why was one federal agency building new irrigation projects, people asked, while another agenCY was paying iarmers to take crops out 01 production' "It became increasingly clear that the reclamation program was out 01 step with overall iarm policy;" said Ed Osann, director of the water resources program lor the National Wildlile Federation (NWF), still under construction, '1t was a simple, one-paragraph bill asking for $750 million to complete' the project," Owens recalled, "Butthe leader- sinp of the House Interior Committee (in- cluding Rep, Morris Udall, D-Arlz.. and Rep, George Miller, D-CalifJ said it wouldn't /lv, Thev said, 'There's no wav under heaven v~u're gomg to get this through without getting the environ- mentalists aboard:" So Owens started in Utah by announc- ing a public meeting and inviting everY conceivable group with an interest in the environmental relorm of the CUP, Out of that gathering emerged the Utah Round- table of Sportsmen and Conservationists, a loose-knit group that claimed to'repre- sent more than 50,000 Utahns, Its first chairman was environmental lawyer Kenley Brunsdale, who would later be- come Owens'administrative assistant and, in 1990, would challenge Republi- can Jim Hansen in the First Congressional District. Among the campaign memora- bilia in Bnmsdale's 13th-floor Salt Ulke Citv office is an award irom the Utah Wildlife Federation naming hun Utah Conservationist of 1987. "We made this a grass-roots reform ehort because we knew we would need it to overcome the water.buffalo status quo:' said Brunsdale, using his pet nick- name for federal water reclamatlon inter- ests, The members of the Utah Roundtable took aIm at the Bureau and its 1964 plan tor the Bonneville Unit, a plan whose primary purpose was to deliver irriga- tion water to farms in the central part of the state, "That old plan was a fiscal disaster,' Brunsdale charged, "It was spending thousands af dollars per acre to deliver water to land that was worth a iraction of that. When the project was onginally con- ceived, the demand from the urban areas wasn't there" ,and it was developed at a time when we thought our environmen- tal resources were limitless," By 1988, although about $1.2 billion had been spent on the CRSP. only about $10 million had been spent to lessen en- vironmental damage caused bv the proj- ect, A GIANT RECIRCUl.AnNG FOUNTAIN To many envirorunentahsts, nothing illustrated the Bureau's msensitivitv to environmental issues better than th~ so- called pumpback recirculation plan, Ac- cording to a 1980 agreement, the CUP was required to leave enough water in the streams ahected bv the collection svstem to supplv at least 50 percent of histonc trout habitat. Onewav to help do that. the Bureau suggested, would be to diver: water from wo tributanes-the ~orth Fork of the Duchesne River and Deep Creek. a tributarY of Currant Creek-and pump it back upstream, In other words, the /lows would be maintained bv turn- ing the two streams into giant recirculat- ing faun tains. A Bureau spokesman .recentlv dis- missed the much-maligned plan as a "straw man," to be pursued only as a last resort.-However, the Bureau's straw man became the environmentalists'pinata, 'This was Rube Goldberg's wildest extravagance," Brunsdale said, "(This il- lustrates) the extent to which they were going to avoid the real issue. that thev were using too much water." One long-time critic of the CUP who participated in the Roundtable discus- SIOns was Fred Reimherr 01 the Stone/ly Society, a Utah group representing two national organizations, Trout Unlimited and the Federation of Flv Fishers, Reimherr charged that the Uinta Basin