For the first time in years - maybe decades - the Central Utah Project made an annual request to Congress on Tuesday that was simply routine.
"I like nice boring routine requests," said Marcus Faust, a lobbyist for the project.Utah politicians asked Senate and House appropriations committees for exactly the same $40.2 million that President Clinton put in his annual budget to help build the project, which brings water from eastern Utah to the Wasatch Front.
For years, Utah officials waged tough battles for much more than was in presidential budgets or fought related battles to raise the federal debt ceiling on the project to allow its completion - which cost many times more than originally expected.
Most of those problems were solved two years ago when the Central Utah Project Completion Act was finally passed. One benefit is it allows CUP officials to now conduct budget negotiations directly with the administration instead of working through the Bureau of Reclamation as a middleman.
Central Utah Water Conservancy District Chairman Gary Palmer said CUP officials had submitted a budget bigger than that approved by the administration but agreed with the final $40.2 million figure that all sides agreed "is free of any fat."
He added, "The budget request may be lean, but it will be adequate to keep us on track in every area of project planning and con-struc-tion."
"It is virtually noncontroversial," added Rep. Bill Orton, D-Utah. Still, Rep. Karen Shepherd, D-Utah, reminded appropriators, "This is literally the lifeblood of Utah. It is very, very important to us."
The only non-routine part of the request was a reminder to appropriators that the Western Area Power Administration had promised to fix a problem with its budget request that otherwise would hurt the CUP.
That agency by law is supposed to contribute $5 million a year to a CUP environmental mitigation fund. It forgot to request that money. When Utah politicians protested, it wrote letters saying it would ask appropriators to cut other line items in its budget to provide the money.