BOARD01267

• Board Meeting Date: 11/16/2004
• Description: CWCB Director's Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

. Water resources data gathering and management; ..
. water conservation; and, ..
. water supply augmentation.

The next regular meeting of the Council will be held on April 20-22, in Boise, Idaho.

Congressional Legislative Update: Congress will soon reconvene after the November elections. It
will return to a list of water resources related bills.

One of those bills, HR 4893, would amend the Reclamation Safety of Dams Act of 1978 to increase
funding levels tor projects to preserve the structural integrity Reclamation dams and related facilities.
The Senate version of the bill, S. 1727, raises the dam safety spending ceiling, which has been nearly
exhausted, from $75 million to $1.25 billion.

The Congress did pass agricultural drought disaster assistance, which was attached to the conference
report on FY2005's Military Construction and Homeland Security appropriations package. It includes
$2.9 billion for fanners that lost crops in last year's drought, but this spending must be offset by
reductions in funding for the Conservation Security Program (CSP) authorized by the 2002 Farm Bill.

It also appears unlikely Congress will complete action on the omnibus Army Corps of Engineers'
project and program authorization bill, S. 2773, because a number of Senators have placed "holds" on
the bill.

Reclamation Provides $1.6 Million for Desalination Research: Reclamation Commissioner John
Keys announced on Oct. 29 that Reclamation has provided $1.6 million for 15 desalination cooperative
research agreements. The agreements have been awarded to local water utilities, universities, and ..
private research companies across the country and represent a broad range of needed research in .
desalination and water re-use. There were nine research studies, four new research pilots, and two
pilots renewed for more study. The following is a list of the 15 projects:

. Colorado School of Mines (Colo.) will study treatment of produced waters, comparing membrane
processes and capacitative deionization. The Reclamation share is $87,885, with a cost-share of$t5,002.
. EI Paso Water Utilities (Texas) will study treatment processes that will increase water recovery from
waters containing high concentrations of silica. The Reclamation share is $96,918, with a cost-share of
$392,026.
. Georgia Institnte of Tecbnology (Ga.) will do a fairly wide-ranging study of boron (a contaminant)
occurrence and removal by reverse osmosis membranes. Little is currently known about boron's removal by
reverse osmosis. The Reclamation share of this research is $94,387, with a cost-share of $37,000.
. Veau LLC in the second year of a pilot project that is studying DewVaporation. This is a unique thermal
evaporation process that uses waste heat and inexpensive thin plastic materials to vaporize salt water. The
cooling effect of vaporization is used to condense the vapor, while salt falls out the bottom ofthe chamber.
The efficiency of the process is said to be such that seawater can be vaporized for the same energy cost as
brackish well water, which makes this an attractive process for treating concentrate. The Reclamation share
is $120,000, with a matching cost-share of$120,000.
. New Jersey Institute of Technology (N.J.) proposed a pilot-scale test of Direct Contact Membrane
Distillation. This is an extension of previous research sponsored by Reclamation. The Reclamation share of
this research is $150,000, with a cost-share of $39,996.
. Novaflux Technologies is in the second year of a pilot project that includes the design, fabrication and
testing ofa reverse osmosis system with a novel c]ean-in-place unit. This cleaning technology will be
compared to traditional cleaning methods of membranes processing impaired waters. If successful, the new .a
system will significantly extend membrane life and reduce replacement costs in reverse osmosis desalination .
plants. The Reclamation share is $118,813, with a cost-share of$I 19,413.
. Moch & Associates, Inc. will update the existing WTCost, a cost-modeling program that is used by anyone

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