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I I this United States is a ma-tter that the EPA shrugs aside. One of the main problems other than money is that desalination plants will require tremendous amounts of energy. I do not think that a zero discharge of water into our streams can be accomplished by 1985 or even by the year 2050. It simply cannot be done. However, that is not the EPA's fault particularly. It was Congress which enacted the law which says that by 1985 a zero discharge will be in effect in the United States. It will be interesting to see how we meet that zero discharge standard. There is no way that anyone can use water without adding something to it. The only thing that we can suggest at this time is that we work with the Water Quality Control Commission here in the state of Colorado to first arrive at some tentative salinity standards for the various tributaries of the Colorado River. We then should attempt to for- mulate those into specific standards by 1975 on the basis that we will have until 1983 to actually enforce those standards. There is now pending in the United States Congress a bill known as H. R. 774, which we sent to the board a month or so ago, which would authorize the Secretary of the Interior to execute a program of salinity control for the Colorado River. The passage of this bill appears to be our only possible hope of meeting the proposed salinity standards. It would authorize the Secretary to construct immediately certain salinity control projects and to prepare feasibility reports on others. The cost will be enormous, but the bill provides that the United States will pay 75 percent of the cost and that the affected states will provide the remaining 25 percent. All of the projected projects in this bill will probably cost in excess of a billion dollars. The annual operation and maintenance would probably run in the magnitude of somewhere around twenty-five million dollars. The states have met several times recently, through the Colorado River Salinity Forum. The states have agreed to make an intensive effort to get this bill passed during the coming session of Congress. that is, during 1974. We need to determine whether or not it will be economically feasible to meet the salinity standards proposed by the EPA. Actually, no large-scale salinity plants of the magnitude contemplated by the Mexican agreement or by this bill have yet been constructed. It remains to be demonstrated as yet whether or not the various desalination techniques now known can be successful on a large scale within reasonable costs. If we are to proceed on this basis, this means a concerted and major effort by the seven basin states in the Congress next year to insure -5-