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~ - .' "~o~l ~.: '" I.>, .) I) L. .' A'~ ... The Brownell Task Force and the Mexican Salinity Problem: A Narrative Chronology of Events Introduction Seventeen years ago this summer, in June 1974, President Nixon signed into law P.L. 93-320, the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act. Title I of the Act authorized the Federal government to take measures to eliminate the effects of brackish return flows (or drainage) from the Wellton-Mohawk irrigation project on water delivered to Mexico under a 1944 treaty allocating the waters of the Rio Grande, Tijuana, and Colorado Rivers between the U.S. and its southern neighbor. At the heart of the Title I program was a 100 million Ilallon-per-dat (m~c:l) desalting plant to be built at a site near Yuma, Arizona. The desalting p ant was to be the solution to a water quality dispute that had periodically troubled U.S.-Mexican relations since 1961. The Yuma Desalting Plant was to remove 90 percent of the dissolved salts from the return flows, by a process called reverse osmosis. This desalted water was then to be blended with the remaining drainage to yield water of the quality guaranteed Mexico under a 1973 Minute to the original treaty, Minute No. 242. The - estimated capital cost of the plant, along with other measures called for in Title I, was estimated at slightly under $100 million at the time of authorization. Completion of the plant is now thirteen years behind the original schedule. Its capital cost has risen to more than $400 million, and projected yearly operation and maintenance costs from $10 to $33 million. The blended waters to be delivered to Mexico may cost as much as $500 per acre-foot to produce.! Why did the Federal government choose such a costly-and risky-means to implement an international agreement? To answer that question, we must look at the history of that decision-the people involved, their perspectives and limitations, the courses of action they believed were available, and the constraints under which they worked. But first, what was the problem they were solving-or thought they were solving? Emergence of the Salinity Issue . ~~ The treaty that guaranteed Mexico 1.5 million acre-feet of Colorado River water annually "from any and all sources" did not specify its salinity. The salinity of water used for irrigation water is often critical to agricultural productivity, as high concentrations of salt reduce crop yields and may preclude the growing of salt- sensitive crops such as tomatoes and lettuce. Because Mexico used-and still brownell,rpt 1 Seplem~r !99!