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I I Mr. Wiscombe: Mr. Chairman and members, of the board, I appreciate this opportunity to appear here. ' Although Robie has been here many times, I am relatively new to your'area. I understand Mr. Maletic presented information here recently on the salinity control projects that are going on in the Upper Colorado. We have two in the Durango Projects Office area. I think that they have a bearing on the total water development in the Upper Basin. So Robie, start with our Mc Elmo Canyon area, Colorado River water quality improvement project. (Slide) The project is below cortez in the southwestern Colorado area. Primarily, we have return flow coming from the presently irrigated areas in the Montezuma Valley being collected in Mc Elmo Creek and coming on down through and finding its way into the Colorado River. It is a relatively new study primarily consisting today of gaging stations and measuring the salinity. What we have as far as the quantity of salt being contributed is about 115,000 tons per year that is coming from the drainage basin in the Cortez area. In general, the conditions we find here are shown in the, flow of Mc Elmo Creek. In high flow periods. we find the lowest salinity, ranging from 1,500 parts per million to 4,000 parts per million. The Mc Elmo Creek gaging station is near the state line. Very briefly, the timetable of investigations starts this fiscal year and continues through the conclusion in 1978. Next project (Slide) is Paradox Valley. Paradox Valley shows several major salt areas. There are fractures in the sandstone and shale which have caused the salt to be pushed into a confined layer in the Paradox Valley. It comes fairly close to the surface. We know it is at least 14,000 feet thick and could be thicker. The river flows across the top of these salt deposits. One solution would be to dam up the river at this point creating a reservoir for flood control and moving the good water around the salt pickup, the salt pickup being in the valley floor itself. A second reservoir could be constructed below, either pumping the water out some place to evaporate or evaporate in its own area. Salt wells in the area are known to produce high concentrations and are known to be pumping from very shallow depths, maybe 120 to~140 feet. Sitting right next to them are irrigation wells pumping from the very shallow alluvial fill of maybe 60, 70, and 80 feet. Inves- tigations today constitute drilling this area to see from a hydrologic -14-