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- - , I " e:: .;, /;..J. ')u to.... f_ ....... presumably they would have agreed to the use of substitution water from a source within the Basin for a limited period.10 Minute No. 241, the interim Minute required by the joint communique, was signed on July 14. It reflected the approach described above: the U.S agreed to bypass 118,000 acre-feet of Wellton-Mohawk drainage per year, replacing it with additional water released from Imperial Dam. This action would have reduced the salinity level at Morelos Dam from 1,240 ppm (under Minute No. 218, the interim 1965 agreement) to 1,140 ppm-the salt balance level, though the term was not mentioned. Mexico, however, asked the U.S. to bypass the remaining 100,000 acre-feet of drainage without substitution, which resulted in a salinity level of about 950 to 1000 ppm. "'-' . Here the diplomatic situation became murky.. Why ,did Mexico agree to let the U.S. limit its efforts, even in the interim, to guaranteeing a level of salinity corresponding to that resulting from salt balance? Why did its government then ask that remaining drainage flows be bypassed without compensation? Former U.S. Commissioner of the mwc Joseph Friedkin recalls: "By the time the Presidents met in June, 1972, it was clear that there was no longer an opportunity to reach an agreement with Mexico on the salt balance principle. Mexico was unwilling to accept any Wellton-Mohawk drainage waters as treaty deliveries."u From this perspective, Mexico's wasting of the balance of the Wellton-Mohawk ;: drainage must be seen as an effort to preserve its claim to water of Imperial Dam ~quality. . 1\>. But Bureau of Reclamation employees in the Lower Colorado Region remember hearing another message via mwc that summer; Mexican Commissioner David Herrara Jordan indicated that the approach used in Minute No. 241 would be acceptable to his government as the basis of a permanent solutionY Was Mexico, then, bypassing drain waters for internal political reasons, to prove its toughness to Mexicali Valley interests? Were Echeverria and his advisors really amenable to more moderate terms? These questions were never to be answered conclusively. The events of that summer-the Echeverria visit, the joint communique, the prospect of a Presidential initiative-served to focus the attention of powerful individuals and interests on the salinity problem. In the process, both the international issues and the nature of an acceptable solution were redefined. The joint communique introduced the terms "permanent" and "definitive." As the President's Special Representative, Herbert G. Brownell, Jr., and his Task Force deliberated, these terms came to be applied to the actual measures used to reduce salinity, rather than to a legal or diplomatic settlement. And the narrow construction placed on them-that of the ultimate technical fix-left, in the end, only one politically feasible solution. brownell,rpt 5 September 1991