The Arizona official nominated to anchor a rocky Colorado River negotiation process with an impending deadline claims he was iced out by Upper Basin officials who thought he would be biased against them.

Ted Cooke, who said he came out of retirement to try and help the two divided groups of states come to a consensus, alleged in an interview Thursday that Upper Basin state officials from Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico urged members of Congress to oppose his nomination for Bureau of Reclamation commissioner.

“I’ve never seen this kind of vitriol and opposition based on presumed bias,” Cooke told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Are these basin states thinking that they’re going to be better off? Even if I was biased, or somebody else was biased, to have no commissioner rather than o

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