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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Wesley Steiner
Arizona

The Committee of Fourteen was established before the 1944 Treaty, then disbanded. Soon after
1961, when the salinity problem with Mexico began, the State Department wrote to the
governors of the Basin states to ask that it be reactivated to advise the IBWC. I was appointed
one of Arizona's representatives in 1969, when I became State Water Engineer and Executive
Director of the Arizona Water Commission, but I came from the California Department of Water
Resources and had previously represented that state on the Committee. I guess I was elected
Chairman because it was drainage from an Arizona project that precipitated the problem.

Initially, in the 196Os, the Committee of Fourteen stonewalled the Federal government on
concessions to Mexico. The Treaty was clear. We finally recommended offering "equivalent
salt balance," a concept I think was suggested by Steve Reynolds.

It was Nixon and Kissinger who came in and upset our position. We believed that anything the
U.S. offered Mexico beyond equivalent salt balance had to be a Federal responsibility. The
Committee stayed united, though. We had just come through the CAP Act and Ariwna v.
California period, and the last thing we wanted was another scrap over who would bear water
costs.

Brownell had enormous respect for the Committee of Fourteen, and we had an excellent
relationship with him. My contacts with him were mostly in formal meetings. I once met
privately with him and Sam Eaton for dinner, late in the process. He wanted to check his
recommendations with me before presenting them to the Committee. 1 don't recall touring the
Yuma area with him, though-I really don't think the Committee was along on that one.

We did know that Kissinger was involved in the process of finding a solution to the salinity
problem. That fact came out when Brownell reported to the Committee that equivalent salt
balance was being scrapped-I think it was early in his tenure.

I'm very uneasy about the desalter. It had to be there, given Nixon's promises, but I was very
uneasy at the time-and still am-about its being a permanent solution. The brine loss
replacement issue has still not been resolved. I also had grave concerns about what Ag. [USDA]
was pushing-agricultural efficiencies that perhaps could not be reached and sustained. The idea
of using upstream storage water for dilution-no, no, a thousand times, no. That would have
put us right back where we were before the Colorado River Basin Project Act-and Wyoming
never supported that!

Buying out Wellton-Mohawk was never viable. I don't recall other states suggesting it, because
of the precedent it would set. The Upper Basin states in particular did not want the precedent,
and Arizona could not afford an intrastate fight-the CAP appropriations still lay ahead. It was
probably unfortunate that the Wellton-Mohawk project was ever built, but the Yuma people had
their friends in Congress, especially Senator Hayden. Of course, Arizona is much more urban

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