WSP10281

• File Number: 8278.300
• Description: Title I - Mexican Treaty
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 9/1/1991
• Author: Anne DeMarsay CRBSCF
• Title: The Brownell Task Force and the Mexican Salinity Problem - A Narrative Chronology of Events
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Soil Conservation Service (SCS). (A list of Working
Group members is also included in Appendix A.)

The Task Force and the Working Group began work immediately after Brownell was sworn in.
Two sets of questions faced them. One concerned the international legal aspects of water quality
differences, and included such questions as-

. Is Mexico legally obligated to accept Wellton-Mohawk drainage as part of its
treaty allotment?

. Is the U.S. legally justified in limiting the improvement in water quality to salt
balance equivalence?

. Do Mexican water users have a right to receive water of the same quality as
American water users who are served by Imperial Dam?1l

The other set dealt with the means of guaranteeing the quality of water delivered to Mexico,
whatever the eventual salinity level-the "technical" solutions. The short- and long-term
measures to be considered were much the same as those that had been presented to President
Nixon earlier that year.

For three weeks in September of 1972, the Working Group heard presentations on the
international legal issues and debated the merits of various positions. Then, as Brownell and
Eaton noted in a 1975 article, these questions were set aside.14 Certainly the State Department's
desire for a negotiated settlement that would avoid the possibility of litigation in an international
court played a part in this decision, but the orders came from the head of the National Security
Council-Henry Kissinger.

The National Security Council was the only concerned agency in the Executive Office of the
President that was not represented on the Task Force or Working Group, despite Kissinger's
well-known interest in U.S.-Mexican relations. As National Security Advisor, he must have
been involved in briefing Nixon for the Echeverria visit and in preparation of the joint
communique of June. But his position on the issues and his role were unknown to others in the
Executive Office.

On September 26, the office of Assistant Secretary of the Interior James Smith received a
message from the NSC: the salt balance approach of Minute No. 241 was to be an interim
solution only. The final solution would require elimination of the effects of Well ton-Mohawk
on salinity levels.15 Wesley Steiner of Arizona, then Chairman of the Committee of Fourteen,
remembers hearing the same message from Brownell and Eaton in one of their early meetings
with the Committee, during which the word of Kissinger's involvement came OUt.16 But most
members of the Working Group and Task Force remained unaware of the change in policy.

Kissinger's directive-to eliminate the effects of Well ton-Mohawk on water deliveries to
Mexico-reduced the allowable salinity differential at Morelos Dam to about 100 ppm. (Because
all return flows from the project were being bypassed under Minute No. 241, this was the