BOARD00481

• Board Meeting Date: 5/11/1998
• Description: WSP Section - Colorado River Basin Issues - Salinity Control Program
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

May 11-12, 1998
Agenda Item 26h
Page 2 of 3

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The CRBSCP Forum at its October 1997 meeting determined, at the request of California, to have
USBR provide the entire $17.5 million needed for forecasted needs and use the $5-6 million Basin
fund cost-share dollars to accelerate program delivery beyond that needed to merely assure
compliance with water quality standards. Colorado questioned whether this was in the long-term
best interests of the CRBSCP, but did not object to the Forum taking this position. However, based
on the belief that USBR Can only obtain additional funds for salinity control at the expense of some
other line item in its budget, we have not provided state testimony supporting the Forum's position,
nor have we asked our Congressional delegation to fund the USBR CRBSCP at levels greater than
that requested by the President. We do not believe the amount of funds available to USBR in FY99-
00 will affect the ability of any Colorado water users to successfully compete for entry into the new
USBR program and all Colorado USBR salinity control projects under the old non-competitive
program will have been completed by the end ofthis fiscal year.

USDA Funding

With passage of the 1996 Farm Bill the authority for USDA's participation in the CRBSCP was
transferred from the 1974 Act to the newly established EQIP and funding issues have become more
complex. EQIP is funded through a borrowing process with the CCC which Congress authorized .
at a minimum level of $200 million per year through the year 2001. This $200 million is then
allocated between the 50 state offices of the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service
[''NRCS''] which then allocate dollars to specific projects on a competitive and locally guided basis,
arguably with the goal of providing the greatest environmental.benefit per dollar expended. In
actuality the process has been highly political and contentious. As currently setup there is no way
to advocate or assure a particular level of funding for USDA to use on salinity control. We must
wait on the results of the national allocation to 50 state offices and the internal process that then
decides which projects get funded in each state. For the first two years ofEQIP this has resulted in
a serious erosion of dollars to the CRBSCP as a whole, and to Colorado participants in particular.
Further, since potential EQIP participants for salinity control in Colorado must compete against other
Colorado farmers who have their own conservation needs, the CWCB staffhas felt constrained to
advocate for any particular mix of EQIP projects in Colorado (i.e., staff believes it would be
inappropriate to favor participants on the West Slope at the expense of producers in other areas of
the state who are trying to obtain EQIP funding).

Since passage of the 1996 Farm Bill the CRBSCP Forum has been attempting to solve the EQIP
funding problem through a provision of the Farm Bill that allows the NRCS to designate National
Priority Areas and earmark sufficient funds to those needs outside of state and local funding
decisions. To date the NRCS has rebuffed those efforts, claiming that they first need to establish the
state by state program and that there isn't enough money to meet both local and national priorities.
The CRBSCP Forum believes that this position is contrary to the intent of Congress and the goals .
of EQIP, and that the CRBSCP is an ideal candidate for a national priority. Recent efforts by the