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<br />. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />~... <br />.....~ <br />c.-.1 <br />~ <br />(_."; <br />{--;; <br /> <br />Aquatrain, take. xxx for the project." <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />Reclamation and Grace will contact utilities, transportation companies and <br />other coal development interests to develop a broader joint venture. <br /> <br />"That initial phase will include development of a plan of study and federal/ <br />non federal financial arrangements for feasibility and environmental analyses of <br />the proposal," Hodel said. <br /> <br />He said the Department of the Interior now has authority to prepare for <br />feasibility studies and that pending legislation (S. 2202) would enable the <br />agency to participate in the study. <br /> <br />In the project, W. R. GI'ace & Company will assume the lead role for <br />developing the innovative coal transport technology and formation of a <br />consortium of private interests for financing the nonfederal share, Hodel <br />said. The Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Forum, composed of <br />representati ves appoi nted by the, governors of the seven Bas inStates (Ari zona, <br />California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming), will address <br />"water rights issues and other related concepts that are a matter of state <br />rather than federal jurisdiction," Hodel said. <br /> <br />The Grace proposal was presented to Hodel, Reclamation, and other Interior <br />representatives during a meeting in Washington, D.C., on March 26. As proposed <br />by Grace, the aquatrain would consist of a 36-inch pipeline stretching from <br />near Axial, Colorado, to the California Pacific Coast, about 1,200 miles in <br />distance. The burnable, plastic capsules 30 inches by 15 feet in size would <br />carry between 3 and 4 tons of coal each. Up to 15 million tons of coal <br />mined and cleaned in Colorado and Utah would feed the pipeline annually. <br /> <br />About 12,000 acre-feet of fresh water, owned by W.R. Grace & Company, <br />would be used to transport the coal from Axial to near Rifle, Colorado. <br />There, the fresh water would be replaced by salt-laden water -- about half <br />the salinity of sea water -- taken from Colorado's Glenwood and Dotsero Springs <br />for the rest of the journey. The Glenwood and Dotsero Springs are major <br />sources of saline water which feed into the Colorado River. <br /> <br />Grace said it believes the project would remove an estimated 250,000 <br />tons of salt per year from the Colorado River and would help control a major <br />source of salt pollution. <br /> <br /># <br /> <br />\ <br />