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~pend. ing within the state. I ' .t;J~LV<>-r PDSJ- 9 7/73 Pj I A Glenwood salt removal considered Wis. firm wants to build plant on Colorado River By Ellen Miller _ Special to The Denver Post GLENWOOD SPRINGS - A Wisconsin company wants to build a plant that would remove 200 tons of salt a day from the Colorado River just west of Glenwood Springs where high saline concentrations have fo~led water quality for decades. Aqua-Chem Inc. of Milwaukee wants to build its $45 million plant in South Canyon, 4 miles west of Glenwood Springs, and pipe salty water down to the plant from the outlet of the famous Glenwood Hot Springs Pool. The company seeks a feder- al contract, worth up to $6.5 million a year, for salt removal. The Glenwood Springs City Council re- cently gave tentative backing t? Aqua- Chem's studies. Tbe only dlssentmg vote came from Councilman Jon Tripp, who called it a pork-barrel project with no lo- cal benefits. ;tomerl) . were delighteu.." ''''Q..rv~,"'-~ h ,i"," SITE OF WATER TREATMENT PLANT But the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, charged with reducing salinity in the riv- er, is interested. "We're encouraged by the local support, but it has a long, long way to go," said Dave Trueman, regional salinity control coordinator for the bureau. "The environmental studies haven't been done yet, and the project needs. con- gressional authorization, a .congresslOnal appropriation and the backmg of the ad- ministration. .. Trueman said the hot-springs pool is "essentially passing that water through" and doesn't cause the high salinity, which comes from springs in and around the riv- er from Dotsero to Glenwood Springs. The problem has been worsened by de- cades of transmountain water diversions to Denver and its suburbs because the wa- ter is taken from high-elevation headwa- ters. That's where the water is pristine, so the diversions mean less-clean water run- Please see PLANT on 2B -, 1"11850 nun:;: away. $45 million unit would net 200 tons of salt a day PLANT from Page 1 B ning down the river to dilute the salt that occurs naturally downstream. Irrigation also contributes to salinity, and the bureau spends millions of dollars a year throughout the river basin to line irrigation canals and build pipelines to get water to farms and ranches. The Aqua-Chern plant would clean 3 million gallons of wa- ter a day, employ 15 to 20 peo- ple and extract 70,000 tons of salt from the river each year. Aqua-Chern is working to put a lot of distance between itself and Mission Energy, which made a previous effort to build a desalinization plant in Glenwood Springs. Mission wanted to build a co-generation power plant that also would remove the salt. But the prospect of a federally subsidized power plant with high stacks in a tourist resort town prompted public outrage and failed two years ago. The Aqua-Chern project has no power-production compo- nent and no plans for any, said Gay Hammer, a Grand Junc- tion political consultant the company hire4 to build project support. So far, several opponents of the Mission project have ex- pressed support for Aqua- Chern, including Pitkin Iron Corp., the successor to the company that bankrupted the Redstone mine. "With proper planning, we believe the geothermal aquifer is adequate to supply your plant as well as present and prospective uses without mate- rial detriment," Pitkin Iron Vice President Robert Delaney told Aqua-Chern. The Clifton Water District, just east of Grand Junction and fighting its own salinity, enthusiastically endorses Aqua-Chern, as does the Colo- rado River Water Conserva- tion District. The Bureau of Reclamation has come under fire from con- gressional critics and environ- mentalists, who claim too much money is spent ineffec- tively to eradicate salinity, which has ramifications throughout the seven basin states and Mexico. Trueman said the Aqua- Chern proposal probably would cost close to $100 per ton, "comparable to some of the Grand Valley unLs but less than others." .!. l. ~ l 0\' 16l .~ .