WSPC00147 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

(',:-!r;~ ......_ .II. '."1.. Laboratory in Riverside; Reclamation's Engineering and Research Center in Denver, EPA, and OST, the Subgroup put together a three-stage program. Its goal was to raise on-farm irrigation efficiency-the ratio of the volume of water consumptively used on a farm to that applied to the land-from about 54 percent to 80 percent in ten years. At 80 percent efficiency, the volume of return flows from the project would be reduced from 220,000 acre-feet to an estimated 95,000 acre-feet. Combined with interim substitution for bypassed return flows, the irrigation efficiency program would have allowed the U.S. to defer investing in a desalting plant or other supplemental measures until at least 1983. By that time, the Subgroup noted, desalting technology would be further refined, and weather modification or other means of augmenting the Basin's water supplies might be available. The size of a desalting plant or augmentation project would be less than half that necessary in 1972. .... The Subgroup presented its report to Brownell and the Task Force in mid-November. Its ten-year goal of 80 percent efficiency was pronounced impossible by skeptical Interior Department members and representatives of the Wellton-Mohawk District.20 Brownell was nonetheless impressed by its promise-and its low cost. When he issued his tentative recommendations at the end of November, he included Stage I of the program-improvement in overall project effici~ncy to 63 percent, using existing irrigation technology. The Iiii,Subgroup's full program-reliance on improving irrigation efficiency until the fimid-1980s, at which time another decision on technical means would be requiied-did not strike him as meeting the definition of a "permanent" solution. His central recommendation was that the U.S. commit immediately to building a desalting plant. , The Special Rypresentative presented his recommendations to the Task Force and the Committee of Fourteen on November 28, and asked for agency views from Task Force members. Although Brownell's proposed program included lining a portion of the Coachella Canal to salvage water to replace bypassed drainage from Wellton-Mohawk until the desalting plant began operating, the states were not satisfied. The. Committee of Fourteen objected to his plan because it did not specify a permanent brine replacement source. The Executive Office agencies once again proposed the full irrigation efficiency program as an alternative, and it was once again rejected on the grounds of impermanence. Brownell's final report, which became the basis for Title I of the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act of 1974, was delivered to President Nixon on December 28.21 The Negotiation of Minute No. 242 During early 1973, Brownell's recommendations were under review in the National Security Council and the Domestic Council. The State Department, meanwhile, convened a small interagency group, consisting of OMB, Interior, IBWC, and the brownell,rpl 9 September 1991