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Ou-u.st-- Salinity of the Lower Colorado River/45 are either under construction or in operaqon, and several other units are in the investigation and planning stages. Each of the units is designed to eliminate or minimize natural and other point sources of highly saline inflows to the Colorado River. IN RETROSPECT My reflections fourteen years later on the agreement reached with Mexico, and on the attendant Implementation measures, the high costs to the United States, and on the other options that existed, may provide some lessons for the future. The cost of the solution to the United States is huge - Over $400 mUlion initially and nearly $30 million annually for opera- tion and maintenance.23 The annual cost of desalted and blended drainage waters from the Wellton-Mohawk District to be delivered to Mexico for irrigation use is expected to be about $500 per acre-foot. Obviously sueh costs could not be economi- cally justified by irrigation alone. One may, indeed, question whether a more economical solution was available. As deseribed above, the salinity problem was an urgent is- sue between Mexico and the United States in 1972. Mexico was not satisfied with the modest results of salinity control mea- sures by the United States under the five year agreement in Minute No. 218. In an attempt to reduce salinity further, Mex- ico was bypassing part of its treaty allotment of Colorado River waters because of their high salinity. It attributed poor crop yields in the Mexicali Valley to the salinity of Colorado River water. Yields were also low in the same years in the United States' Yuma and Imperial valleys, as weather, insects and plant diseases were taking a toll on crops. But Mexico was moved politically to blame its problems on saline water deliv- eries and to seek redress from the United States. In my initial meetings with the Committee of Fourteen and with Bureau of Reclamation authorities in the years 1962- 1965, there was strong opposition by many to any measures which would Improve the quality of water delivered to Mexico. They cited the 1!:!44 treaty language and the S~nate ratification hearings as giving the United States the right to deliver .to Mexico waters of the river "from any and all sources" and "whatever their origin," notwithstanding that the purpose ,of the treaty, stated in the preamble, was to fix and delimit the rights of the two countries with respect to the waters of the Col- orado and TIjuana Rivers and the Rio Grande "in order to ob- tain the most complete and satisfactory utilization there- of. . . ."24 Thus, there was little Improvement in the salinity of the waters delivered to Mexico in the early years.