WSP04563

• File Number: 8270.100
• Description: Colorado River Basin Water Quality/Salinity -- Misc Water Quality
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Water Division: 5
• Date: 1/1/1979
• Author: USDOI
• Title: Quality of Water - Colorado River Basin - Progress Report No. 9 - January 1979 -- Part 1 of 2 -- Title Page through end of part VIII - page 99
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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PART 1. INTRODUCTION

A. Authorization for Report

This is the ninth progress report on Quality of Water in the Colo-
rado River Rasin. The directive for preparing this and the eight previ-
ous reports is contained in four separate public laws. Section 15 of
the authorizing legislation for the Colorado River Storage Project and
participating projects, Public Law 485, 84th Congress, Second Session,
April 11, 1956, states, "The Secretary of the Interior is directed to
continue studies and make a report to the Congress and to the States of
the Colorado River Basin on the quality of water of the Colorado River."

A progress report to comply with Public Law 84-485 was in prepara-
tion when the authorizing legislation for the San Juan-Chama Project and
the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, Public Law 87-483 became effective
on June 13, 1962. Section 15 of this act states, "The Secretary of the
Interior is directed to continue his studies of the quality of water of
the Colorado River system, to appraise its suitability for municipal,
domestic, and industrial use and for irrigation in the various areas in
the United States in which it is used or proposed to be used, to esti-
mate the effect of additional developments involving its storage and use
(whether heretofore authorized or contemplated for authorization) on the
remaining water available for use in the United States, to study all
possible means of improving the quality of such water and of alleviating
the ill effects of water of poor quality, and to report the results of
his studies and estimates to the Eighty-Seventh Congress and every 2
years thereafter."

A few weeks later Public Law 87-590, which authorized the
Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, was passed with a similar section pertaining
to quality of water reports. This public law, however, stipulated that
January 3, 1963, would be the submission date for the initial report and
that the reports should be submitted every 2 years thereafter.

Section 206 of Title II, Public Law 93-320, Colorado River Basin
Salinity Control Act directs the Secretary of the Interior to submit
every 2 years to the President, the Congress, and the Advisory CounCil,
a progress report on the Colorado River salinity control program and
specifies that it may be included in the Quality of Water, Colorado
River Basin Biennial Report.

Nothing in this report is intended to interpret the prOVISIons of
the Colorado River Compact (45 Stat. 1057) the Upper Colorado River
Basin Compact (63 Stat. 31), the Water Treaty of 1944 with the United
Mexican States (Treaty Series 994; 59 Stat. 1219), the decree entered by
the Supreme Court of the United States in Arizona vs. California, et al.

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