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<br />~(\"j1""'3 <br />UUl.Oi <br /> <br />2002] <br /> <br />THE LAST GREEN lAGOON <br /> <br />969 <br /> <br />and eliminating saline inflows. from. the Yuma drain. water,396 it <br />would nevertheless require a reduction in U.S. uses to <br />compensate for the increased Mexican deliveries.397 Since the <br />publication of the report, the MCE/Sonoran Institute effort <br />(MCE/SI) has assembled an advisory group to oversee efforts to <br />implement either or both of the altematives. MCE/SI is currently <br />laying the groundwork for the purchase or lease of Mexican <br />water rights for instream use in the Delta.398 <br />Of MCE's two proposed options, we believe that purchasing <br />land and water rights in Mexico as proposed in the first <br />alternative is the most likely to succeed in getting water to the <br />Delta, at least in the immediate term. The second altematlve <br />may well fan victim to the political catch-22 that plagues the <br />intemational debate over the waters of the LOwer Colorado: the <br />changes to the proposal in favor of Mexico have rendered it <br />unfavorable to users in the U.S. <br />As originally proposed, the second MCE proposal essentially <br />ignored the historical context associated with salinity issues on <br />the LOwer Colorado. Traditionally, the U.S. has claimed that the <br />Mexico~U.S. Water Treaty makes no eJq>ress guarantees as to the <br />quality of water delivered at the border and that the burden of <br />salinity control should fall on Mexico.3!!9 <br />The salinity issue came to a head in the 1960s when the <br />Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District began to pump <br />high salinity drainage water into the Colorado River and excess <br />flows to Mexico ended as the U.S. began to fill the reservoir <br />behind Glen Canyon Dam.400 The average annual salinity of the <br />water received by Mexico surged from 800 ppm to 1,500 ppm, <br />causing enormous damage to Mexican farms.. in the Mexicali <br />Valley.401 Ten years of sometimes bitter negotiations led to the <br />1973 IBWC Minute No. 242, which obligates the U.S. to deliver <br />water to Mexico that has "ah annual average salinity of no more <br />than 115 p.p.m. :t: 30 p.p.m. . . . over the annual average salinity <br />of Colorado River waters which arrive at Imperial Dam . . . . "402 <br /> <br />396. Id. at 28. 35-36. <br />397. See id. at 25. <br />398. Cornelius & Propst, supra note 363. <br />399. See FRADKIN, supra note 9, at 301-03. <br />400. See Herbert Brownell & Samuel D. Eaton, The Colorado River Salinity Problem <br />with Mexico, 69 AM. J. INT'L L. 255, 256 (1975); TAYLOR O. MILLER ET AL.. THE SAL1Y <br />COLORADO (1986); David A. Gantz, United States Approaches to the Salinity Problem on <br />the Colorado River, 12 NAT. REsOURcESJ. 496 (1972). <br />401. See Brownell & Eaton, supra note 400, at 256. <br />402. United States-Mexico Agreement on Colorado River Salinity, Minute No. 242 <br />of the IBWC: Permanent and Definitive Solution to the International Problem of the <br />