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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salinity level the Mexicans were experiencing at the time.) It cut off legal arguments over parity
and salt balance, and it greatly narrowed the range of options available to improve water quality.

Buying out and shutting down irrigation operations at Wellton-Mohawk, wholly or in part, was
thought to be politically unacceptable to the Colorado Basin states, as well as very costly. It had
been included on the Task Force's list of solutions for completeness. With the Kissinger
decision, a permanent solution based on bypassing drainage and substituting higher-quality water
from other sources became impractical or politically unattractive. The volume of water needed
would be double that initially required to achieve salt balance equivalence, and it would be
needed in perpetuity.

In his meetings with the Committee of Fourteen, Brownell had already assured the Colorado
Basin states that the solution to the Mexican problem would cost them neither water nor money,
and would not adversely affect further water resource development in the Basin. Augmentation
of the limited and over-appropriated waters of the Colorado was many years away. The states
would be unlikely to accept any solution requiring indefinite use of waters in the Basin for
substitution. This left two categories of solutions: desalting of return flows and reducing salt
loading through improved irrigation management.

Within the Department of the Interior, two groups contended for the Secretary's ear. The
Bureau of Reclamation, which had built most of the Federal water resource development projects
along the Colorado River, had close ties to water users. Its leadership had favored a solution
based on salt balance. The Office of Saline Water (OSW) argued strongly for a mammoth
desalting plant-the largest in the world. Its leadership saw the Mexican problem as an
opportunity to demonstrate the technology whose development it had fostered over twenty years,
and to rebuild support for its program.

At the time of Echeverria's visit, OSW had even lobbied the White House for a $140 million,
200 mgd plant near Yuma, Arizona-and allowed word of it to reach The Wall Street JournalY
Kissinger reportedly was intrigued by the possibilities of this new technology.18 Even Echeverria
seemed to have caught some of the spirit. In his speech to Congress, he said: "It is impossible
to understand why the United States does not use the same boldness and imagination that it
applies to complex problems with its enemies to the solution of simple problems with its
friends. "19

When Kissinger's message reached Interior, the advocates of desalting pressed their case. While
Reclamation's top managers were out of the country, Assistant Secretary Smith decided that
Reclamation should be represented on the Working Group by the Planning staff (which had
responsibility for new technologies) rather than by the Water Operations staff. (Water
Operations was responsible for overseeing operation and maintenance of completed projects such
as Wellton-Mohawk, and administering the water users' service contracts for water from these
projects. Its managers had supported a salt balance approach.) And OSW would be represented
by its own staff, not Reclamation's.

During the first week in October of 1972, Brownell and his staff visited Wellton-Mohawk,
toured the border area, and were given an introduction to desalting technology. State and

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