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LANDT"ETTER: The Natural Resources Weekly Report of ., e , Page 1 of2 oOn5J7 Thursday, May 05, 2005 2. COLORADO RIVER Enviros, water officials offer plan for reopening Yuma Desalting Plant April Reese, Land Letter Southwest reporter After nine months of negotiations, environmentalists and water managers have come up with a plan to restart a controversial desalting plant in Arizona without harming a nearby wetland that has become a haven for myriad species, including an endangered bird. For years, environmentalists and water managers in the southern Colorado River Basin have tussled over the reopening of the Yuma Desalting Plant in southwestern Arizona. The $211 million facility has been shuttered since flooding on the Gila River damaged the facility and forced the Bureau of Reclamation, which runs the plant, to shut it down in 1993 (La.!!4J..etter.., August 21,2003). The closure of the plant resulted in an incidental ecological benefit: Highly saline agricultural water that would have been diverted for treatment to the plant has been rerouted into the Colorado River Delta, bypassing the Lower Colorado River and expanding the Cienega de Santa Clara wetland to 40,000 acres. The wetland has become an important stop for migratory birds and provides crucial habitat for 95 species, including the endangered Yuma clapper rail. The recent drought in the Southwest -- five years and .counting -- as well as increased demand has led to a call among many water users to bring the plant back online. Treating salty irrigation water and returning it to the Colorado River would allow the United States to meet its treaty obligations to Mexico while keeping more water in U.S. reservoirs upstream. "You could argue they're releasing 100,000 acre-feet of water out of Lake Mead each year that they don't have to to meet treaty obligations," said Robert Barrett, a spokesman for the Central Arizona Project, which distributes Colorado River water to cities and farmers. "So that's 100,000 acre-feet a year that we could still have in storage if the plant was still in operation." The Yuma Desalting Plant is located on a 60-acre tract of land about 5 miles west of Yuma, Ariz. Photo courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation. But environmental groups have fought the reopening of the plant, which they fear would dry up the 40,OOO-acre wetland that is sustained by the salty water the plant was built to treat. Instead of the irrigation runoff it receives now, the wetland would receive only a stream of brine waste from the desalting plant. "Our concern is that if that happened, the Cienega would be lost," said Patrick Graham of the Nature Conservancy. "We felt it was critical to preserve that precious habitat." But earlier this week, environmentalists and water managers unveiled a plan for restarting the plant -- the second- largest reverse osmosis desaltirig plant in the world -- while keeping the wetland wet. The recommendations, drafted by a working group consisting of four environmental groups and officials from the Central Arizona Project, Arizona Department of Water Resources, city of Yuma and Bureau of Reclamation, include paying farmers to fallow their fields and pumping waterlogged areas near Yuma, which are too soggy to farm or develop, to provide an alternate source of water for the wetland. The plan also calls for improving water http://www.eenews.net/Landletter/inc1ude/print. php ?single=0505 05 02 5/5/2005