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Title I Program Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act Mexico continued to press its case, and in June 1972, Mexico's President Echeverria and President Nixon met to discuss a solution to the salinity problem. The initial result was Minute No. 241 ofthe International Boundary and Water Commission, which allowed 118,000 acre- feet ofWMIDD irrigation drainage to be bypassed without charge to treaty deliveries. These bypassed waters were substituted with waters from upstream storage and from wells on the Yuma Mesa in southwestern Arizona, Then, in August 1972, President Nixon assigned former Attorney General Herbert Brownell to find a "permanent, definitive, andjust" solution to the salinity problem, Brownell, assisted by a Federal interagency task force, studied the problem. Negotiations with Mexico proceeded with the concurrent consultation of the seven Basin States, acting through the Committee of Fourteen (an advisory group consisting of two representatives from each State), After studying several solutions to the problem (appendix C), Brownell issued a report in December 1972 that, among other things, recommended (1) constructing a desalting plant to treat WMIDD irrigation drainage and (2) allowing for a specified differential between the salinity of the waters aniving at Imperial Dam and the salinity of the waters delivered to Mexico upstream from Morelos Dam, The President approved the recommendations, and the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) was directed to prepare legislation seeking authorization for the design and construction of a desalting plant, However, before lending support to any agreement with Mexico, the Basin States required assurances that the United States would: 4 . Ensure that water users, landowners, and governments in the Basin States would not bear the economic and water costs of fulfilling such an agreement. . Take some action to protect ground-water resources along the Southerly International Land Boundary with Mexico, , . Assume responsibility for replacing water bypassed as desalting plant reject stream. . Develop a complementary program to reduce the overall salinity ofthe Colorado River, . Acknowledge its responsibility to proceed with augmenting supplies of the Colorado River Basin, as directed by Congress in the Colorado River Basin Project Act. Appendix D contains the Basin States July 20, 1973, letter to the President outlining their concerns. The United States commitments to satisfy these concerns are reflected in Minute No, 242 and in Public Law 93-320, Minute No, 242's implementing legislation, On August 3D, 1973, Presidents Nixon and Echeverria approved Brownell's recom- mended solution to the salinity problem in the form of Minute No, 242. The minute contains the following major provisions: . The average annual salinity of Colorado River water delivered upstream from Morelos Dam (approximately 1,360,000 acre-feet) would not exceed the average annual salinity of water arriving at Imperial Dam by more than 115 ppm plus or minus 30 ppm (United States count). This value is known as the salinity differential, . In partial satisfaction of Mexico's l.5-million-acre-foot entitlement, the United States would continue to deliver about 140,000 acre-feet of water annually to Mexico across the Southerly International Land Boundary near