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. . w OJ c.,J o Limitations of scope. Although planned reuse of water may be made for a broad range of municipal, industrial, or agricultural pur- poses, the object of this study is planned reuse specifically by the electrical generating industry. The specific focus of the research has been determined by DRI with the assistance of the project Advisory Board in consultation with OWRT and the Water and Power Resou~ces Service (WPRS) , It is the study's purpose to provide supplemental data to the WPRS' current appraisal study of a saline collector system. Government- al regulations and policies which require or encourage reuse of water, including saline water, exist and are documented in Chapter II of this report, but no program of financial incentives has yet been designed to encourage voluntary reuse programs. This study will provide basic anal- ysis of incentives with specific applicability to the electric power generating industry. Summary of Findings The structure of this report progresses from problem identifi- cation, to potential solution, to application of the solution. We find that salinity in the Colorado River is a real economic, political and water management problem which the Congress of the United States has addressed in public law and in international agreement. Primary feder- al responsibility has been given to the Water and Power Resources Service, while the seven states generally act through the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Forum. Through the Forum the states have endorsed the preliminary work being done by WPRS in the saline collector study (see pp. 11-8 to 11-9 of this report) to explore beneficial consumptive uses of saline water as an alternative to salinity control projects which consume water with- out beneficial use, This report addresses one aspect of beneficial consumptive use--reuse of saline water for electric power plant cool- ing--and how it might be achieved. (Electric power generation plants appear to be the most likely users of saline water, although other energy uses, such as oil shale processing, coal mining, and synthetic fuel production also may make beneficial consumptive use of saline water. ) The most recent WPRS estimates of the economic costs imposed by Colorado River salinity on downstream water users in the U.S., set the damages at $450,000 per mg/l. In purely economic terms any activity which costs less than $450,000 to remove one mg/l of salinity from the Colorado River at Imperial Dam is cost effective. When non- quantifiable benefits such as health impacts, beneficial use of water, or public interest are added to known economic benefits the cost effectiveness of salinity control can be more closely defined and it 8 " ",.4