Congress is about to fund the start-up of a defunct desalting plant on the Colorado River near Yuma, Arizona, dooming critical habitat in the delta region. The Bureau of Reclamation (BuRec), which has recommended that Congress authorize the desalter's repair, is downplaying the results of its own analysis, which reveals far less costly and less environmentally damaging measures to meet US treaty obligations for water delivery to Mexico.
"This is reminiscent of BuRec of the past," says Lisa Force, Living Rivers program director. "At a time when federal deficits are the largest in U.S. history, it's unbelievable that Congress would consider throwing away taxpayers' dollars to prop up this boondoggle." "There are cheaper and less destructive ways to save Colorado River water than running the Yuma Desalting Plant," added Myra Wilensky, regional organizer at the National Wildlife Federation.
BuRec's objective is to produce about 108,000 acre-feet of water from the plant of sufficient quality to help meet its 1.5 million acre-feet annual obligation to Mexico. Taxpayers will be required to pay $26 million to replace obsolete technology-plus a minimum of $36 million in annual operating costs for the plant.
Completed in 1992 at a cost of $256 million (a five-fold increase in projected construction costs) to clean up brackish wastewater from farms in southern Arizona, the plant was shut down several months later due to extremely high operating costs.
Another option ignored by BuRec for the 108,000 acre-feet involves paying willing sellers to lease water they presently do not need, at just 15 percent the cost of starting the Yuma plant. "The Department of the Interior has already proposed an alternative that could save $30 million every year. Not only does Interior's alternative have great economic advantages, it will also save enough electricity to supply 25,000 people," says Jennifer Pitt of Environmental Defense.
International water expert and director of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, Dr. Peter Gleick, said "Despite the Department of Interior's much ballyhooed 'Water 2025 Plan' claiming a new era in western water management, the decision to reopen the expensive and environmentally damaging Yuma desalter shows that federal water policy is really business as usual - spending taxpayer money for unsustainable water projects."
The agricultural wastewater that the plant would process now flows into the Cienega de Santa Clara, a 40,000-acre open water ecosystem in the Colorado River delta region. The desalting plant would remove this flow from the Cienega and return only highly saline brine to the wetlands.
"This provision would destroy an extremely important wetland in Mexico that contains the largest remaining breeding population of Yuma Clapper Rail in the world," says Bill Snape, Chief Counsel for Defenders of Wildlife.
"It will be impossible to replace the value of the Cienega de Santa Clara to the Colorado River ecosystem."
The Cienega is the largest remaining wetland in the Southwest and is home to 56 threatened, endangered and declining species. Several scientific studies funded by the Department of Interior confirm that the wetland would be completely destroyed by desalter operations.
