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Show 1445 N. 10 St. Manitowoc, Wis. 54220 November 2, 1978 Guy Martin, Assistant Secretary Land and Water Resources Department of Interior Interior Bldg. C Street, between ]8th and ]9th , N.W. Washington, D.C. Attention Mr. William Eichenberry: Dear Mr. Eichenberry: I am enclosing a copy of a cost questionnaire on the Bonneville Unit of the Central Utah Project which we sent to Secretary Andrus in early September for analysis. We are trying to determine the real costs of this CUP Unit and question the calculations used by the Bureau of Reclamation. We would appreciate your help in obtaining the necessary information. This letter is a follow-up to a telephone conversation about this issue. I am also including my comment on the Uintah Unit Draft EIS in which I requested cost information for construction and developed water for that Unit. These figures were not made available in the Draft statement. We got quite a run-around from the former Acting Director of the Bureau, Harl Noble, in Salt Lake City, in trying to obtain a copy of the cost analysis of this Unit before the hearing. Even though a colleague had seen such a copy in the Bureau office in Provo the day before, Mr. Noble denied that such a copy existed, then stated that it was for in-house use only. We finally submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for it, but too late to utilize for our comments at the hearing the following day. The colleague was later "chastized" for looking around at certain material in the Provo office and was instructed to request any material she needed from the Office Director in the future. The hearing was held at Bottle Hollow, on the Indian Reservation, at Ft. Duchesne, since the Uintah Unit is an Indian feature, in purpose. Yet there was only one Indian present, with the Ute tribe Salt Lake City attorney. Once his statement was made (the attorney's) the two left. I would wonder, since this is supposed to be a democratic process, why no other Indians were present, particularly since there is disagreement within the Tribe about both the CUP and the Deferral Agreement. At the hearing, the supervising Solicitor stated that comments could not exceed ten minutes, which is insufficient time to present serious comments, and that they would be accepted only as related to the Uintah Unit. Inasmuch as the Bureau itself includes the Uintah Unit in the CUP planning and development, as a necessary part of it, I had planned to comment on this fact and relationship. It was necessary for me to insist on this privilege, prior to the hearings. |
