OCR Text |
Show Westferra Resources v.v.vv.v.v.v.-.-.v.v, .', . .v. v.-. . . .: .... , Lower Basin Colorado River salinity By HeW'iieO. Moiitr 'tohuigton-lntonor Secretary Cecil Vndrus. with the concurrence of the "ce of Management and Budget, will he to make two major decisions soon Acting salinity control in the Lower 1 Srsdo River Bnsiri ' 'V will have to determine w hether water being released by the U.S. Ony Corps of Engineers from Painted tWik reservoir on the Gila River in ufcjiwestern Arizona should be counted SiMrainage water to be desalted in the ti desalting plant to be built by the tisrior Department near Yuma, Ariz, nccrior's Water and Power Resources Pavice-W&PRS- (old Bureau of bjamation) believes that Interior tos not have the authority under the ajl Colorado River Basin Salinity Act treat the releases from Painted ,Ck. But Arizona State Engineer jiley E. Steiner and some of the other jj.er Basin Water Specialists bejieve rior does have such authority. & ordinary times this would not be an riciie, for the Gila River is usually bone-:tu bone-:tu at the Painted Rock reservoir, iljted in the heart of the Sonoran tfert in Southwestern Arizona. But e has been a lot of flooding of the i in recent years, and the Corps has to release water out of Painted J? In on a regular basis to . provide be for incoming flood waters at the "Vvoir. This, in turn, has brought mie water into the Wellton-Mohawk ect near Yuma and raised its water !'e. The best reading available to 'ern Resources Wrap-up (WRW) is T" Andrus probably will riot immend that any of the releases -3 Painted Rock be desalted in the aa desalting plant. d Andrus will have to determine ors size of the Yuma desalting plant. It atr")w projected to be a plant with the '"acity to desalt up to 96 million Fons of . drainage water from the Iton-Mohawk irrigation project nPiy. Because the operation and 'ntenance of the plant is expected to Very high-up to $14 million a year, Carding to W&PRS-it is likely that plant will be cut back from the needed 96 million-gallons-a-day hi jcity to somewhere between 70 Vision, and 75 million gallons-a-day tcity, WRW has been informed. ear .nssv eft! is ""Tim hjov qu erfcrr e f" REPORT, m', RECOMMENDATIONS ' FOT. I nW INO MRFTTXT. ofidrus is expected to make his " sion on both key issues concerning Colorado River after W&PRS imissioner R. Keith Higginson J :es his recommendations to the I rior Secretary on both. Higginson's sals, in turn, will be based on the mmendations of the advisory mittee on irrigation efficiency at ' Iton-Mohawk. This committee will t later this month to make its immendations and to put the final lies on a draft report completed , week, er, )Dae Committee's report will nately be sent to Andrus and to gress, according to Higginson, who lairman of the advisory committee. ers who serve on the panel include ninistrator Norman A. Berg of the ' Conservation Service (SCS) of cal U.S. Department of Agriculture : of Associate Adminstrator Alice B. vtf'kin of the Environmental get 'tec Bon Agency (EPA). Thomas rbunt of the Office of Mangement Ml Budget (OMB) serves as an ob- ver on the committee. f j he report is expected to recommend intensification of the ongoing igation efficiency improvement w gram at Wellton-Mohawk now being Tied out by SCS as a contractor for -erior's W&PRS. This recom-irjndation recom-irjndation was not easily come by. bjere has been a continuing con-versy con-versy between SCS and W&PRS as what efficiencies has already been -lieved and will be achieved at llton-Mohawk by experts from SCS king directly with Wellton-Mohawk mers. Vhen SCS started the program in the 1 1970's, it was aiming for irrigation -ciencies in the use of Colorado w(rer water of 72 percent. SCS experts 'm the on-farm efficiencies at . Mton-Mohawk now total 82 percent iject-wide. In the future, according ml SCS projections, the efficiencies idiject-wide will total 85 percent. Dii ese are merely ball-park figures. llton-Mohawk was rated 57 percent icient at the beginning of the SCS gram in 1974. myV&PRS experts thought SCS's jy ijections were too high. They said it geared to them that SCS was double-minting double-minting some of the efficiencies. And fy questioned whether a land-owner ' 0 Put in new water conservation rks could maintain them at top ef-tW.enty ef-tW.enty year after year. After the Ospute had dragged on for several iiifnths, Higginson cracked' the whip as" 0urman of the advisory committee. ,ei ordered the technical experts in erior's W&PRS to accept the SCS u Jres. As he is their boss, they publicly eed to the SCS position, while vately continuing to question it. here is no question about SCS markedly improving irrigation ef-f ef-f icient y at Wellton-Mohawk; oil, including in-cluding this WRW correspondent, who have soon the results of their experts' work with farmers on Wellton-Mohawk can ste the success of the SCS program. It's merely a matter of degree. The work includes "soil-swapping," land-leveling, land-leveling, a computer-based method to determine when to schedule irrigation, use of neutron probes to produce better crops with less water. The federal government and the fanners share the cost, with Uncle Sam putting up 75 percent and each farmer 25 percent. QUESTION NEED FOR DESALTING PLANT A lot of the controversy over the irrigation efficiency at Wellton-Mohawk Wellton-Mohawk is really a part of the larger battle over the feasibility of building the worlds largest desalting plant in the U.S. near Yuma. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., a member of the House Interior In-terior Committee, began in 1978 to question the need to build the plant at all. Largely as a result of Brown's and other skeptics' concern about the need to construct a desalting plant to desalt 123,600 acre-feet (out of 200,000 acre feet) of highly saline drainage return flows from the Wellton-Mohawk project to the Colorado River annually, the technical field committee to the advisory ad-visory committee on Jan. 23, 1979 suggested that several alternatives be further considered. (The plant is proposed to end a long controversy with Mexico over quality of Colorado River water delivered to Mexico.) All have been rejected except for the intensification of the SCS efficiency improvement program designed to reduce the return flows that have to be desalted before the River crosses the International boundary into Mexico. One proposed reuse of drainage water for new irrigation in the Lower Basin and even in Mexico. This was not acceptable, according to the advisory committee, because it would require the Lower Basin states-Arizona, Nevada and Californiato accept drainage water instead of better-quality better-quality Colorado River Water. It was not acceptable to Mexico, which was guaranteed a..saliDity,.maximum. not more than 115 parts of salt per million parts of water in the Colorado River above the salinity in the River at Imperial Im-perial Dam, the last U.S. gauging station on the River under the 1974 Act. One proposed reuse of drainage water on presently-irrigated Wellton-Mohawk Wellton-Mohawk lands. This was not acceptable to the state of Arizona. One proposed that the Wellton-Mohawk Wellton-Mohawk drainage water be returned to the River above Imperial Dam. Joseph Friedkin, U.S. Commissioner on the International Boundary and Water Commission, said this would not be acceptable either to Mexico or to the U.S. State Department because it would increase the salinity of Colorado River water delivered to Mexico above that promised in the 1974 act. Two proposals from the House Water and Power Resources Subcommittee were also considered and rejected. One proposed that the government buy out Wx'llton-Molmwk farmers totally, with the land leased back to the farmers under stipulation that they could only grow such crops as recommended by the government. The other provided for buying the water development rights to Wellton-Mohawk and then telling the farmers how they could use the water. These proposals were similar to the entire Wellton-Mohawk buy-out proposal that U.S. Negotiator Herbert lirownell, Jr., and the Committee of 14, made up of two representatives of each of the seven Colorado River Basin states, had considered and rejected in 1973. They were unacceptable politically to the entire Colorado River buaiu unu were a political anathema to the state of Arizona. Legislation is now before the House Rules Committee which has already passed the Senate to increase the cost of constructing the desalting plant and other Lower Basin work designed to decrease the salinity in the Colorado River. The authorization was $155.5 million in 1974; it is $333,382,000 under the bill (HR 2609) reported out by the House Interior Committee on May 15. Although the bill is of vital importance im-portance to the home state of Chairman Morris K. Udall, D-Ariz., of the House Interior Committee, it has not moved out of the House Rules Committee because Brown has promised a floor fight on it. He and four other members of the Committee including Rep. Phillip Burton, D-Calif., propose to shelve both the Yuma desalting plant and four upstream salinity control projects until more thorough studies are completed on all five projects. |