WSP06020

• File Number: 8271.300
• Description: Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Program - General Information and Publications-Reports
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Water Division: 5
• Date: 1/1/3000
• Author: Sidney McFarland
• Title: Water Quality and the Law of the River
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

~ Colorado river water is used and reusqd many times during
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Q lits journey through the basin, reducing the available supply
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hnd increasing salinity along the way. In overall terms, the
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high salinity levels in the lower river affect almost 10,000,000
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people and about one million acres of fertile irrigated land.
palinity levels in the Colorado River nOH,range from less
than 50 ppm at the headwaters to average concentrations of about
850 ppm at Imperial Dam. Projected concentrations of total dis-
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solved solids at Imperial Dam for the year 2000 range from 1,160
ppm to about 1,300 ppm if no salinity control measures are under-
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,taken.

Reference is made several times earlier in this report to

.the
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salinity studies required of the Secretary of the Interior.

Beginning in 1962, the Congress mandated the Secretary of
:the ~nterior to monitor and report on the salinity of the Colorado
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R~ver system. Biannual reports have thereafter been submitted
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by that, Department. These reports show that the quality of the
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Mater available for use in the lower basin has steadily deter-
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~orate .

In the last 12 years the U. S. Gover.nment has accumulated a

great deal of information on the causes of salinity, the sources

contributing to it, the actual salinity levels of the river flows

at many locations, and the cost of means and measures to limit

and control these levels.

As discussed hereinbefore, in 1972, the Environmental Pro~

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tection Agency convened an Enforcement Conference on the Pollution

of Interstate Waters of the Colorado RiverHat which the conferees

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