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;~ i(~ '.~l Interior Task For~ and Working Group members accompanied them on the trip, as did sOIll~ Committee of FoUrteen members. Upon his return, Working Group Chairman Sam Eaton ~J ~ announced that h~ and the Special Representative had been very impressed by the promise of "'" {\;; desalting. <:4 ';1 OMB representatiyes on the Working Group, unaware of Kissinger's order but alarmed at the ;,4 growing support for' a desalting plant, contended that the plant was an unnecessarily costly solution that conflj.cted with the President's water pollution control policy, that it was based on ~;g technology unprov,en ona large scale, and that it would have unknown environmental effects. ."., The environmental concerns were shared by EP A, CEQ and the Corps of Engineers. OST was also troubled by: the technical feasibility of such a large plant. Then Agriculture's ~J representatives suggested that the Dc!partment's experimental on-farm irrigation management ~,.i programs, which it ran in cooperation with Reclamation, might be used on Wellton~Mohawk farms to improve; irrigation efficiency and thus reduce the volume of return flows. Less. ,g~ drainage would mean a smaller, less costly desalting plant. ~:,~ ~".'~ i:;:~ :;;'-'fj ~;~ ~~::~ ~.1 r:;z ~<:~, ":,,, ~:::~ f.~ :::'::0; fJ , ~.~'.-j! ;'!.:;:i .":' .,...' :';..~; ~:::t '>--'.'J i~ " As a result of thesC! discussions in early October, OMB was asked to chair the Working Group's Subgroup on Irriga,tlon Efficiency, to report on the feasibility of reducing salt loading and return flow volume through improved on-farm water management. With the assistance of scientists from ARS's NatiOljal Salinity Laboratory in Riverside; Reclamation's Engineering and Research. Center in Denver, 'EPA, and OST, the Subgroup put together a three-stage program. Its goal was to raise on-farin irrigation efficiency (the ratio of the volume of water consumptively used on a farm to that al>vlied to the land) from about 54 percent to 80 percent in ten years. At'80, percent efficiency ,the volume of return flows from the project would be reduced from 220,000 acre-feet to an estimated 95,000 acre-feet. . Combined with int4rim substitution for bypassed return flows, the irrigation efficiency program would have allowlld the U.S. to defer investing in a desalting plant or other supplemental- measures, until at l~st 1983. By that time, the Subgroup noted, desalting technology would be ' further refined, and weather'modificatioil; or other means of augmenting the Basin's water supplies, might be livailable, The siZe of it desalting plant or augmentation project would be less. than half that neceSsary in 1972. The Subgroup presented its report to Brownell and the Task Force in mid-November. Its ten-year goal of $0 percent efficiency was pronounced impossible by skeptical Interior Department memb4rs and representatives of the Wellton-Mohawk District.2o Brownell was nonetheless impressed by its promise-and its low cost. When he issued his tentative recommendations al the end of November, he included Stage I of the program-improvement in overall project effici~ncy to 63 percent, using existing irrigation technology. The Subgroup's full program-relialtce on improving irrigation efficiency until themid-1980s, at which time another decision orl technical means would be required-did not strike him as meeting the definition of a "perlnanent" solution. His central recommendation was that the U.S. commit immediately to buil~ing a desalting plant. The SpecialRepres~. tative presented his recommendations to the Task Force and the Committee of Fourteen on November 28, 1972, and asked for agency views from Task Force members. -,~ 8 ~1 . .~ _" i. _'u..i:'..:L_,L", ,1;