WSP11122

• File Number: 8271.300
• Description: Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Program - General Information and Publications-Reports
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Water Division: 5
• Date: 1/1/3000
• Title: OPINION - Colorado River Salinity Problem - Submitted to His Excellency - Honorable Antonio Carillo Flores - Ambassador of Mexico
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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Subsequent correspondence in 1942 indicated that the
Mexican request for 2,000,000 acre-feet annually was con-
sidered by Mexico to be "the minimum to satisfy the fore-
seeable needs to a very near future."" Concerning this
quantity, thc :Mcxican l\femorandum of March 19, 1942,
stated:

The aforesaid vohimc of 2,000,000 acre-feet annually
is the absolutely necessary volume for the irrigation
of 200,000 net hectares, which may be cultivable, of
the 300,000 good-class, gross hectares, subject to
gravity control in the jl,lexican section of the delta of
the Colorado River. '1'he volnme of 1,150,000 offered
in the memorandum of February 11. would be insuf-
ficient for thc irrigation of a great area of cultivable
lands in the Colorado delta, lands which constitute
the only important agricultural zone in Lower
California. . . .

The offered volume of 1,150,000 acre-feet would not,
I repeat, suffice to meet minimum needs. Acceptance
of that volume would create in Lower California a
situation similar to that existing in the Juarez Valley
in which, as is well-known, the area of cultivable lands
amounts to 17,000 hectares, of which only half arc
inigated. '1'he Government of Mexico cannot agree
that the permanently bad situation and continual inter-
national difficulties prevailing in the J uarez Valley
should be reproduced, with greater seriousness, in the
Colorado zone, where the area of lands to be irrigated
is ten times greater than in that Valley and the agri-
cultural significance is of capital importance for' all
Lower California."

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IDxchanges of correspondence which we have examined
and thc excerpts which are set out above indicate that the
quantity of waters to be delivered was foremost in the
minds of the two governments. The matter of quality
seems only to have been referrcd to indirectly in the State
Department memorandum indicating that the quantity of

82 Id. ,at 549.
83 Ibid.