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o " ~.... 00 N N THE PROBLEM OF SALINITY IN THE COLORADO RIVER a By L. Rus sell Freeman 1 Passage of 1972 Amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (PL 92-500) (FWPCA) ushered in a new era in water quality management. The effects of this Act on the salinity is sue in the Coiorado River are discussed in this paper. It should be cautioned that this disoussion describes expected effects, rather than presenting official interpretations of the Act. The first question is whether the Act pertains to salinity. The Act estab- Ii shes the objective of restoring and maintaining the chemical, as well as the physical and biological integrity of the Nation's waters (Sec. 101). Total Dis- solved Solids (TDS) is the measure of water quality most commonly referred to as "salinity." One standard method of determining TDS is to sum the amount of various chemical constituents contained in the water. Salinity and many of its constituents or combination of constituents have known physiological, asthetic and economic effects, and they are presently in- corporated in standqrds for protection of domestic water supplies and guidelines for protection of agricultural and industrial water uses. It seems inconceivable that such constituents would not be drawn under the mandates of the act. Having drawn the conclusion that the salinity probiem follows under the mandate of the law, let us turn our attention to the implications of such a con- clusion. The FWPCA is one of the most comprehensive environmental laws ever enacfed. As previously indicated, it establishes a national objective to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the Nation's waters. To achieve this objective, it mandates, among other things, the setting of water quality standards, and in certain instances, the allocation of permis sible pollutant loadings. The act also calls for the setting of maximum permissible waste dis- charge requirements. These approaches do not lead to identical results, so that one is confronted with determining and applying the more restrictive set of con- ditions for any particular case. In order to determine which requirements are controlling for salinity levels in the Lower Colorado, it is thus necessary to consider which are more restrictive. Provisions of the effluent limitations sections are explicit: a Presented at ASCE meeting - Ontario, California; January 24,1974 1 Deputy Regional Administrator, Region IX, the Environmental Protection Agency, San Francisco, California.