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.' MAY"", ?OJ United States Department of the Interior BL'RL\L' OF RECL\.\L\TI<.Y\ l"rP"" Cuio,~dQ:i.<1l:lon'j C,fl<c .:~ Su..," ~,,,tr :>a<<'- Il...,m "t"I~ )Ut l4J<.Gl'\ L,UI ~..! \,.110: '.'lL"l' ~EFHTr o .... W .::.. UC-240 RES-9:00 MAY 03 2001 Mr. Larry R. Dozier. Chainnan Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Advisory Council PO Box 43020 Phoenix. AZ 85080-3020 L/1,R.e,/ Dear r-.~er: On behalf of the Secretary of the Interior. thank you for your letter dated \larch 5. ::!OOI. conveying the 2000 Annual Repon of the Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Advisory Council. The Council asked that Reclamation respond 10 their recommendations by ~Iay 11. 2001. Reclamation shares the Councirs concern that funding oflhe USDA program has been inadequate to keep pace with Reclamation' s aggressive funding of combined USDA/BOR sprinkler projects in Utah. This has been a major bottleneck to our mutual desire to increase the rate of implementation of the salinity program. To address this issue. the participating states and federal agencies ha\'e been working together to reallocate funds toward these very cost-effective projects. Last year we \I.-ere successful at reallocating Basin States cost shanng funds to accelerate the construction of these facilities. In FY-Ol. the USDA has mo\-ed additional priority funds to Utah to help with this problem. We will continue to work with the other federal agencies and Basin States to address this challenge. Regarding our salinity modeling etforts. Reclamation is now in the process of updating its:!O year old model of the Colorado River in cooperation with the Basin States through our technical modeling subcommittee. Two decades of experience and data collection \,,'ill allow us to make some maj(\f relinements to our salinity model. We now have sufficient data to recalibrate the model to match more recent (post-impoundment) salinity conditions. With the assistance of Ms. Brenda Kinkel in our Denver office. we havc completed the conswnptivc uses and losses study through 1995. We are now inpuning this data into the model so that we may then back calculate the natural now database. Once the water side of the model has been updated. we \I.'ill then calIbrate the salinity side of the model to current salinity conditions ~taking into account all the many small unmeasured changes that may impact salt loading). These improvements are being implemented by ~1r. Terry Fulp (LC employee) and ~1r. Jim Prairie lUC employee).