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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12. Interview with Michael 1. Clinton, fonner Chief, Colorado River Water Quality Office,
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, in Washington, D.C., May 2, 1989.

13. Herbert Brownell and Samuel D. Eaton, "The Colorado River Salinity Problem with
Mexico," American Journal of Intel7/t1lional Law, 69 (April 1975), p. 260.

14. Ibid.

15. Interview with Michael J. Clinton, op. dt.

16. Interview with Wesley Steiner, fonner Director, Arizona Department of Water Resources
and fonner Chairman, Committee of Fourteen, July 12, 1991.

17. Burt Schorr, "Interior Agency Pushes Desalting to Smooth Troubled U.S.-Mexican
Waters," The Wall Street Journal, June 22, 1972, p. 15.

18. Interview with Michael J. Clinton, op. dt.

19. "Mexico's President-An Outspoken Visitor," u.S. News and World Repon, LXXII
(June 26, 1972), p. 82.

20. The plan to achieve 80 percent on-farm irrigation efficiency called for the use of
advanced irrigation systems-sprinkler, drip, and bubbler-that had not been widely
field-tested in 1972. The Subgroup stressed that the 80 percent figure was a goal, subject
to revision upon further systems testing. But the optimism of the scientists in the group
proved justified: the project efficiency of Wellton-Mohawk peaked at 77 percent in
1985, and the volume of return flows dropped to 118,500 acre-feet (54 percent of the
volume in late 1972).

Unfortunately, there is currently no active program to promote irrigation efficiency in
the District; funding for the Bureau of Reclamation's Irrigation Management Services
Program ceased in 1987, when the on-farm management programs were scheduled to be
turned over to the Wellton-Mohawk District. According to Interior's draft report, Title
I Program. Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act, released in May 1991, irrigation
efficiency has declined to about 60 percent and continues to decrease. Return flow
volumes have risen to 140,000 acre-feet. As of this writing, Reclamation is assessing
the causes of this deterioration-which bears on the size of the desalting plant-and
possible solutions.

21. The report of Herbert Brownell to the President is reprinted in Hearings on Salinity
Control Measures on the Colorado River (S. 2940 and relaJed bills), before the
Subcommittee on Water and Power, Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, U.S. Senate,
93rd Cong., 2nd sess., 1974.

22. One of the lighter moments of the Watergate era occurred the day a distracted staff
member in the White House Correspondence Office routed Kissinger's memo to the