4000

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 4000
• Author: U.S. Department of the Interior.
• Title: Report on Water For Energy in the Upper Colorado River Basin.
• USFW Year: 1974.
• USFW - Doc Type: \
• Copyright Material: NO

Although salinity is considered the most serious water quality problem,
energy development poses potential problems of added municipal wastes,
industrial wastes, dissolved oxygen content, temperature, heavy metals,
toxic materials and bacteria. Localized quality problems can occur on
minor tributaries in the Upper Basin, unless the Water Pollution Control
Act, Amendments of 1972 are strictly enforced. Sediment production could
be a very significant problem in the oil shale industry. Whereas water
qualities are not critical in the Upper Basin, as progressively downstream
reuse occurs additional salts are added and concentrated to the degree
that a serious degradation occurs for the final users in the Lower Basin
and in Mexico.

The most recent studies by the Bureau of Reclamation have shown annual
economic losses of $230,000 per mg/l increase in salinity at Imperial Dam.

Ground Water - Ground water offers a potential short-term and supplemental
source of water required for energy development in the Upper Colorado
River Basin. Estimates of the minimum amount of ground water in storage
in the upper 100 feet of the saturated geohydrologic units, based on
available specific yield data, range from 50 million to 115 million acre-
feet. Specific yield is the ratio of the volume of water that rock '
material, after being saturated, will yield by gravity to the volume of
the rock material. The total amount in storage below this zone is many
times this amount; however, data are not available on which to base
reliable estimates. Although, in many parts of the basin, productive
aquifers are several thousand feet below the surface, this fact alone
do~s not appear to be a severe constraint on development of ground water
for energy-related uses.

The average annual replenishable ground water supply in the basin is
about 4 million acre-feet, which is the quantity represented by
the total of: (1) base flow of streams, (2) evapotransp~ration,
(3) pumpage from wells, and (4) subsurface movement out of the

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