Bureaucratic Politics, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Animas-La Plata Project

At the end of the 1990s the Bureau of Reclamation's Animas-La Plata Project in southwestern Colorado—after 30 years of planning—stood on the edge of oblivion. Though the Bureau had successfully negotiated a series of complex environmental impact negotiations, its construction of a reasonable and prudent alternative—designed to protect the endangered Colorado pikeminnow— was a patchwork of arrangements that violated the spirit of the Endangered Species Act, several of the Bureau's longstanding policies regarding water rights, and congressional authorization of the project. Since then the Bureau has addressed each of the fundamental flaws of the reasonable and prudent alternative, even securing a reauthorization for the project, and the construction of the Animas-La Plata Project is nearly complete. The purpose of this article is to reflect on the conduct of distributive politics and explore how the Bureau used its prowess in administrative process to save the project.