WSPC02678 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

OD2163 policy, was based on technology unproven on a large scale, and had unknown environmental effects. The environmental concerns were shared by EPA, CEQ and the Corps of Engineers; OST was also troubled by the technical feasibility of such a large plant. Then Agriculture's representatives suggested that the Department's experimental on-farm irrigation management programs, which it ran in cooperation with Reclamation, might be used on Wellton-Mohawk farms to reduce the volume of return flows. Less drainage would mean a smaller, less costly desalting plant. As a result of these discussions in early October, OMB was asked to chair a Subgroup on Irrigation Efficiency, to report on the feasibility of reducing salt loading and return flow volume through improved on-farm water management. With the assistance of scientists. from ARS's National Salinity 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 about 95,000 acre-feet. ., Combined with interim substitution for bypassed return flows, the irrigation efficiency program could allow the U.S. to defer investing in a desalting plant or other supplemental measures until at least 1983. By this 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 12