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<br />{1 ^ - ,- 6 <br />~L,:!~~ <br /> <br />Deliberations of the Brownell Task Force <br /> <br />Brownell, a lawyer who had served as Attorney General under President <br />Eisenhower, was appointed on August 16, 1972 and sworn in on September 7. <br />After a brief disagreement between OMB-which wanted him to be headquartered <br />in the Executive Office of the President~and the State Department, Brownell and <br />his staff were settled in offices in the Mexican Affairs section of State. The <br />President also appointed an interagency Task Force to assist Brownell, composed <br />of representatives of eight agencies: the Department of State (including the U.S. <br />Section of the mwC), the Department of the Interior, the Department of the <br />Army (Civil Works), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and four <br />entities in the Executive Office of the President~the Domestic Council, OMB, the <br />Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), and the Office of Science and <br />Technology (OST). (A list of Task Force members i.s included in Appendix A) <br /> <br />The Task Force, in turn, created a staff-level Working Group, chaired by Samuel <br />D. Eaton, Brownell's Executive Assistant. The Working Group included <br />representatives from the Task Force agencies and departments, and two agencies <br />of the Department of Agriculture: the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and <br />Soil Conservation Service (SCS). (A list of Working Group members is also <br />included in Appendix A) <br /> <br />The Task Force and the Working Group began work immediately after Brownell <br />was sworn in. Two sets of questions faced them. One concerned the international <br />legal aspects of water quality differences, and included such questions as- ~ <br /> <br />. Is Mexico legally obligated to accept Wellton-Mohawk drainage as part <br />of its treaty allotment? <br /> <br />. Is the U.S. legally justified in limiting the improvement in water quality <br />to salt balance equivalence? <br /> <br />. Do Mexican water users have a right to receive water of the same quality <br />as American water users who are served by Imperial Dam?13 <br /> <br />The other set dealt with the means of guaranteeing the quality of water delivered <br />to Mexico, whatever the eventual salinity level-the "technical" solutions. The <br />short- and long-term measures to be considered were much the same as those that <br />had been presented to President Nixon earlier in that year. <br /> <br />For three weeks in September, the Working Group heard presentations on the <br />international legal issues and debated the merits of various positions. Then, as <br />Brownell and Eaton noted in a 1975 article, these questions were set aside.14 <br />Certainly the State Department's desire for a negotiated settlement that would <br />avoid the possibility of litigation in an international court played a part in this <br />decision, but the orders came from the head of the National Security <br />Council-Henry Kissinger. <br /> <br />brownell,rpt <br /> <br />6 <br /> <br />September 1991 <br />