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N ...... 0') OJ T .. Arizona's Growth - Eldridge p.4 The illustration,shows that natural salt loading falls well within tolerances for drinking water for human beings and irrigation water for plants. The river in fact acts as a "sink" for over 60% of man-made salt loading before damage begins to crops. Thus, whenever we hear nature held responsible for salt loading, we must remind ourselves that nature is also responsible for absorb- i ng over 60% of man-made sa 1 t 1 oadi ng. Our problem is that our i ntens i ve use of the waters of the Colorado exceed even nature's capacity to restore balance. Why do we hear nature blamed for the problem? One explanation might be the desire to capitalize on the popular belief that the federal government is re- sponsible for damages done by nature., A big enough storm, for example, becomes a "natural disaster area" qualifying for federal relief funds if a governor flies around the damage in a helicopter. So long as natural forces can be blaimed, federal relief money can be claimed. But scientifically speaking, natural salt loading is not responsible for any losses to water users. In this era of requestioning the federal government's role in local affairs, it seems evident to me that sooner or later the salinity control program for the Colorado River Basin is going to face a reduced federal financial role in its affairs. What, after all, is the national public interest in the use of federal tax dollars to clean up after individual, private water developments in our river basin? Public spending to take salt out of the river gives amnesty to earlier private developers of water, so that they don't have to pay for down stream damages for which their projects are responsible, and from which they make money. Over the long range, federal desalinization subsidies create a free ticket for futur.e water developers who can add to the top of the salt load to the degree federal projects have subtracted from the bottom, thus staying below the threshhold of plant damage. Federal subsidies of all kinds are progressively harder to pry out of Washington, whichever party is in power, and many of our Western politicians support the new federalism, with its hostility to federal subsidies. I don't know where all this is taking us with respect to river basin management. We do know that the river basin commissions we used to have are gone now, unless the states involved start paying the whole bill. But will they? There is even more that we don't know on these questions. If the basin states do have to begin shouldering the costs of salinity control projects, how much should each state pay? What formula would be acceptable for distributing the costs, and through what mechanism will it be negotiated? We may see yet another ~,~, ~:'"".~Ji: ;,~;;;!