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.. 0[2255 48/Friedkin mental Policy Act26 had been in place In the early 1950s, the State Department would have been consulted and the salinity problem may have been averted. A second opportunity to mitigate the salinity problem ap- pears to have existed before 1970. At that time, an agreement with Mexico might have been reaehed based on the equivalent salt balance approach that would have restricted the total amount of salt In the volume of Wellton-Mohawk drainage wa- ters delivered to Mexico to the total amount of salt in the vol- ume of irrigation water diverted to the District. Such opera- tions were then considered by Mexican and United States engi- neers as normal and essential to successful agricultural pro- duction In an irrigation project. After the drainage wells began operating, however. Wellton-lYIohawk drainage waters eon- talned three to four times the amount of salt in the volume of water diverted to the District. Accordingly, Mexican protests in the early 1960s were directed at the excessive quantity of salts in the District's drainage waters because they exceeded quanti- ties In normal irrigation project return flows. The 1962 report of the United States scientific panel rec- ommended that the United States use every practical measure to reduce the amount of salt In the Wellton-Mohawk drainage waters to the amount that would exist if the Wellton-Mohawk District were in 'salt balance. The Committee ,of Fourteen then resisted releases of water for salinity control of more than about 50.000 aq-e-feet per year. A salt balance operation would have required annual releases from storage of an estimated 150,000 acre-feet. Because operations under Minute No. 218 would take only about 50.000 acre-feet a year of storage water, and because Mexico agreed In 1965 to the proposed Minute No. 218 approach. proposals based upon salt balance were not pressed at the time. In 1971, before the expiration of the one- year extension to the 1965 five-year agreement In Minute No. 218, the United States proposed a new agreement to the Eeheverria administration based upon the equivalent salt bal- ance approach, but In early 1972 Mexico rejected the proposal. 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 deliver- ies. ' Looking back, it appeaIts that prior .to 1970, before Mexico's position began to harden, an agreement might have been reached on the basis df equivalent salt balance at much less cost than tpe desalting solution. Perhaps a salt balance proposal would have been made if those of us representing the federal government had better foreseen the developing issue