U.S. News and World Report called the Animas La Plata (ALP) water project “the last surviving dinosaur from the age of behemoth water schemes.” Now it's headed for extinction.

ALP is a favorite on government waste hit lists, including both Rep. John Kasich's Dirty Dozen list and the Green Scissors '97 report. In 1996, the House voted to kill the project before it began, but the Senate kept it alive. In February 1997, Reps. Petri (R-WI) and DeFazio (D-OR), who led the House fight in 1996, have with 14 cosponsors introduced H.R. 745. This is bipartisan legislation that seeks to deauthorize the project and urge negotiations with the Native American Tribes on reasonable alternatives.

ALP's price tag to federal taxpayers of $450 million hardly a good investment. The Bureau of Reclamation released an economic and financial analysis of ALP in July 1995 concluding that the project will return only 36 cents for every taxpayer dollar invested. The Department of Interior's Inspector General cited ALP as neither economically justifiable nor financially feasible.

More than a dozen national environmental groups oppose the project saying it is a disaster.

ALP is supposed to satisfy Native American water rights interests near the borders of Colorado and New Mexico. But the project would stop more than 10 miles from the closest Native American land and two-thirds of the project's benefits would go to non-Indian interests. “Phase II” of ALP would provide delivery systems for Indians, but is not federally funded and will likely never be built.