OCR Text |
Show A SHEEP sheared by dogs Thursday night huddles hud-dles in a corral the next morning. Four of Bulia Halt salinity or halt growth in Colorado River basin (Special to the Vernal Express) By Helene C. Monberg Express Washington Correspondent Washington Sen. William L. Armstrong. Arm-strong. R-Colo., plans to introduce his salinity control bill for the Colorado River Basin next w eek with a w arning: halt more salinity in the Colorado River now or halt grow th in the Basin later. In a letter to the 13 other Senators from the seven Colorado River Basin states. Armstrong noted that back in 1972 the nondegradation standard for the River had been set at 870 miligrams per litre of water in the Colorado River Basin and that the 500 level had not been set as the federal drinking water standards. "At 823 miligrams per litre of water, we are already very near that standardand stan-dardand well above the 500 level set" for drinking water standards. "Unless decisive action is taken swiftly, this double-vaulted ceiling will put an abrupt halt to growth in a seven-state area that comprises 26 percent of the land mass of the 48 contiguous states." .Armstrong stated. "Plainly, something has to be done and it has to be done now," he said in a "dear colleague" letter that he sent to the Basin state Senators on Feb. 15. The Colorado River Basin states are Arizona. California. Colorado. Nevada. New-Mexico. New-Mexico. Utah and Wyoming. Armstrong made such a hard pitch for co-sponsorship from the Senators from the Southwest and Upper Basin tho they are largely conservative as Armstrong is because the cost of the .Armstrong new salinity control bill is expensive. His office staff estimates that it will cost $200 million over an eight year period, and others estimate the cost to be even higher. This is in addition to the salinity control program that is already underway at the Bureau of Reclamation, for which the Administration Ad-ministration sought $61 million in fiscal 19S3. Armstrong said there w ere four main features of his new salinity baill. which put together by the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Forum headquartered in Salt Lake City with the Upper Colorado River Commission. Pummel's sheep were killed in two separate incidents in-cidents last week. They are: 1. Authorizing six new salinity control projects, including Lower Gunnison near Montrose, McElmo Creek in Montezuma County and Sinbad Valley in Mesa County, all in Colorado; Uintah Basin in Utah and Palo Verde in California. "One of these unites is a salinity control project that involves, for the first time. Bureau of Land Management (in Sinbad Valley.) .Another is a broadly defined project that gives the Department of Interior flexible authority to demonstrate new-technologies new-technologies for disposing beneficially of waste saline water" by using it in a slurry pipeline to move coal for export from Colorado to California, he said. 2. Improving a large network of canal and lateral systems, with the work to be paid largely by the water users who benefit. 3. Replacing incidental wildlife and other environmental values that may be impaired due to construction of salinity control projects. 4 Implementing a more streamlined and effective on-farm control program thru the Department of Agriculture "This program will be entirely voluntary in nature and pursued cooperatively with private landowners It is designed to improve water management and conservation, while reducing watershed erosion," Ann-strong Ann-strong wrote his Colorado River Basin colleagues in the Senate. "I hope you'll be able to join with n in this critically important, environmentally en-vironmentally sound and demonstrablj cost-effective effort to clean up aat rehabilitate one of America's mos relied-upon and spectacular rivers.'. Armstrong's letter to fellow Senaton-concluded. Senaton-concluded. His bill is backed by the governors all of the seven Colorado River Bisi states and has been "tentatively aj proved" by the Reagan Ad ministration, he said. |