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~.,. '<7' (..~ ,....J The AQUATRAIN Project takes its objective of controlling salinity from the 1974 Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act (Public Law 93-320). r '-. (~: Title II of that Act directed the Secretary of the Interior to contruct four salinity control units and to expedite completion of planning on Colorado River Water Quality Improvement Program salinity control units to maintain and protect water quality from further degradation in the U.S. and Mexico. Salinity Control Alternatives In many years of unusually heavy spring runoff and rainfall, such as 1983, pollution caused by salinity is reduced naturally by dilution. But high water years are the exception rather than the norm in the arid West and cannot be relied on to solve long-term salinity problems. The Bureau of Reclamation is studying a number of alternatives for salinity control, such as cloud seeding which would dilute salinity by adding more rainfall and snowmelt to the Colorado River. Other alternatives would intercept saline water from sources before it enters the river. Many alternatives can be used in concert to achieve salinity control goals and improve water quality in the Colorado River. Reclamation's Colorado River Water Quality Improvement Program focuses on reducing salt load by controlling agricultural, point, and diffuse salinity sources. Agricultural source control is being done in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Work includes efforts to control water leakage from canals and to limit water percolation through saline soils caused by farm operations (percolation causes the water to leach sa lt as it moves over and through the soil). Point source control involves collection and treatment or disposal of flows from localized areas such as mineral springs, geysers, and abandoned oil wells. Diffuse source control includes watershed management, land treatment, and collection and disposal of irrigation return flows. Several alternatives to dispose of saline water are being explored, including injecting the saline water into deep wells, evaporating it from lined ponds, improving farm operating procedures, lining canals, and processing in desalination plants. All agricultural source units planned, plus those under construction, would extract about one-half (1.2 million tons) of the 2.1 to 2.8 million tons of salt required for annual removal by the year 2010. The remainder of the salt removal objective must be attained by using or disposing of about one-half of the 600,000 acre-feet of saline water that enters the river each year. If all potential opportunities are implemented, the proposed AQUATRAIN collection and transport system would intercept a significant portion of that amount--nearly 200,000 acre-feet of saline water. AQUATRAIN could extract as much 40