Some Highlights of 1965: Water

PLANNING AND PROGRAMMING. The Water Resources Planning Act of 1965 is the latest move in a half a century of effort to coordinate the policies and programs of the various agencies of the three levels of government in the water resources field. In the 1940's the Federal Inter-Agency River Basin Committee, consisting of representatives of the major federal agencies concerned with water resources activities, was established to provide more coordination at the federal level. A decade later it was superseded by the Inter-Agency Committee on Water Resources, of somewhat similar composition and responsibility. At field level, federal-state interagency committees were established in the late 1940's to coordinate federal and state water resources activities in a number of the major river basins. More recently two federal-state interagency commissions—for Texas and the Southeast—were set up under federal law to develop long-range river basin programs.

The 1965 Planning Act has three basic objectives:

• To facilitate coordination of federal policy at the Washington level.
• To foster coordination of governmental activities bearing upon water resources management within individual river basins.
• To strengthen the planning activities at the state level of government.

The Act establishes a Water Resources Council, composed of the Secretaries of the Interior; Agriculture; the Army; Health, Education, and Welfare; and the Chairman of the Federal Power Commission. The specific functions of the Council include the following:

1. To assess the adequacy of water supplies in the various regions to meet anticipated water requirements.
2. To study the adequacy of "administrative and statutory means for the coordination of the water and related land resources policies and programs" of the several federal agencies.
3. To establish principles, stand-ards, and procedures for the evaluation of federal water and related land resources projects.
4. To review and make recommendations regarding plans prepared by the river basin commissions.

The President is authorized to establish a river basin commission upon the request of the Water Resources Council or one or more states concerned with a particular basin. The commission would consist of a chairman appointed by the President, representatives of the interested federal agencies, representatives of the interested states, a representative of any interstate agency concerned with water resources, and the representative of any international commission concerned with water resources in the basin. The major function of the river basin commission is to prepare a "comprehensive coordinated joint plan" for the development and use of the water and related land resources in the area over which the commission has jurisdiction. Responsibilities of the commission do not extend beyond investigation and planning.

Title III of the Act authorizes the appropriation of $5 million in each year for a ten-year period for grants to states to assist commissions "in developing and participating in the development of comprehensive water and related land resources plans."

Since the passage of the Act the President has established a River Basin Planning Commission for the New England region. The Water Resources Council also gave considerable attention to the drought problems in the Northeast this past summer and advised the President thereon. Funds have been appropriated to provide for a staff for the Water Resources Council and Henry Caulfield, Jr., has been appointed executive director.

Views vary as to the probable results of the legislation. As reflected in the overwhelming support for the legislation in the Congress, a large body of opinion regards the legislation as a major step forward. On the other hand, some feel that this legislation will tend to inhibit the adoption of more fundamental changes which they believe will eventually be needed, such as the combining of the federal water resources agencies into a single department.

DESALINATION. The prolonged drought in the northeastern United States that in 1965 interfered with everyday activities up and down the Atlantic Coast, stimulated interest in pipe and faucet leaks, water pricing and other economic aspects of water demand and, above all, in the possibilities of new sources of supply. Overseas, burgeoning population and wide-spread droughts of crisis proportion, in Australia and in southern and eastern Africa, pointed in the same direction. The First International Symposium on Water Desalination, sponsored by the US Department of the Interior in cooperation with the US Department of State last October, brought together representatives of many nations, both from government and industry, to exchange technological information and economic evaluations of desalting as a means of augmenting supplies.

In a few areas of the world desalination is already economic. Arid coastal regions of the Near and Middle East, Africa, and islands of the Caribbean and eastern Mediterranean are today using water produced by several desalting process. Desalting has been practiced for in the some time at several points United States, particularly for the purification of brackish waters of 2,500 to 8,000 parts per million salt content (as compared with 32,000 to 36,000 ppm for ocean water); except for a few places, however, alternative sources of fresh have been cheaper. Something of a crisis atmosphere developed in the United States during 1965. It is reflected in the federal government's crash development program in desalination. The opinion is frequently heard in government circles that large-scale desalination plants—preferably in connection with nuclear reactors—will soon be established.

The intensity of this interest in implementing large-scale projects seems out of keeping with an objective assessment of the water situation in this country. Several desalination processes are currently available, but costs remain somewhat uncertain, partly because many plants currently in operation have been subsidized in unknown amounts and operated experimentally. The following figures represent approximate costs per thousand gallons at actual operating facilities or reasonable extrapolations as reported during the Washington Symposium (size of plant in gallons per day, or gpd). Unless otherwise stated, the processes start from sea water.

Clearly, currently available desalted water is high in cost and could be justified only for high-value uses where cheaper alternatives are not available. By way of comparison, irrigation water in the western United States currently sells at prices ranging from 0.9 cent to 4.6 cents per thousand gallons. Municipal and industrial water is considered expensive at 25 cents prior to distribution. Looking to the future, there are hopes for substantial improvements in reverse osmosis as a large-scale process. The basic scientific breakthrough needed to improve other processes is that of more efficient heat transfer. Most papers given at the Symposium, however, discussed marginal improvements of existing techniques and appeared to give little weight to the possibility of the big break-through.

One exception to this outlook is the hope for plants capable of producing 100 to 150 million gpd (enough for a city of a million), in combination with electrical, and more specifically nuclear-powered, generation of up to 750 or 1,500 Megawatts of salable output, able to produce 20- to 30-cent water if targets for the power output can be found in the 2.6 to 4.0 mill/kwh range. The reactor is especially attractive as a source of heat in the large desalting installation because economies of scale are more significant in nuclear generating plants than in those fired by fossil fuels.

While such plants have been the object of intense study by both the United States government and the United Nations, it must be remembered that world experience has been almost entirely with plants in the range of 28,000 to 1.5 million gpd (Kuwait now has a 6-million gpd plant) and that the larger of these existing plants have represented replications of smaller units. There are many scientific and engineering uncertainties in a jump to 100 million gpd or more.

Second, size creates marketing problems. There are relatively few places in the world lacking alternative sources of water at lower cost, where the scale of water and power consumption is, or will soon be, large enough to absorb remuneratively the electricity and water output that would be associated with a 100-200-million-gpd plant. There are also problems of marketing the by-products. A 150-million-gpd sea water plant could produce approximately 20,000 tons of solid salts per day. While future market conditions might make it worthwhile to recover part of these salts (in Japan, water is considered a by-product of salt recovery), this is not the case today.

Two locations for such large desalting units that have been prominently mentioned are Southern California and Israel. In Southern California, an engineering and economic feasibility study, completed in 1965, has concluded that a combination nuclear-powered plant, costing 1/2 billion dollars, could produce 150 million gdp of freshwater and 1,500 mw. of net electric power at unit costs below those in a similar-sized fossil fuel plant, and also cheaper than any foreseeable alternative. The water costs would be approximately 22 cents per thousand gallons, plus 5 cents for water conveyance to the point of distribution, and power costs in the range of 4 mills (for firm power) and less for interruptible power.

In Israel, a joint United States-Israel study group has proposed a plant producing 100 million gpd and 200 mw. of net power, that would cost upwards of $200 million and yield water at 26 cents per thousand gallons (reported to be the upper limit of water costs in Israel at present), or 40 cents, depending on whether fixed charges are set at 5 or 7 percent. In either case, power would be sold at 5.3 mills/kwh. The projected date of completion and initial operation is 1971 for both plants, which leaves about two years before the start of construction to solve numerous technical problems and to investigate the financial implications.

The question of fixed charges is crucial. In the Israel project it is explicit in the two prices. And in the United States example the low cost of 22 cents rests upon fixed charges of 5.44 percent, which are believed possible only because the operator, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District, happens to be in a favorable position regarding interest and taxes. Thus, one must be exceedingly careful in generalizing from these low fixed charges cases. Such cost calculations may disguise a large public subsidy.

The building of large-scale plants, particularly in New York and Southern California areas, is frequently justified as "drought" or "emergency" insurance even if unit costs are high. A plant built to service only infrequent drought demands would stand idle a large part of the time and would indeed provide high-cost protection. Practically nothing is known of the costs incurred by having to reduce water use sharply during emergencies, so that it is impossible to assess the worth of emergency supplies; the possibility remains that "belt-tightening" may be the most rational action for adapting to infrequent extreme droughts. And there are alternatives to desalination, one of which—interbasin diversion—is considered below.

INTERBASIN DIVERSION. Large-scale interbasin diversions are receiving much attention. Recently both the popular press and professional journals have described proposals for diverting the "surplus" waters of major river basins many hundreds of miles to areas of "need." The largest of the projects is known as the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) which would divert the waters of the Yukon basin of Alaska and the Yukon Territory southward and eastward to augment supplies to the Great Lakes, the Southwest, and Mexico. The possibility of diverting Columbia River waters into the Colorado system is also under active consideration. The northwestern states are currently engaged in inventorying their "surplus" waters, making it appear that they are willing at least to discuss possible Columbia River diversions. The Bureau of Reclamation has completed plans for a large diversion of East Texas waters to the south Gulf Coast and lower Rio Grande Valley.

Such projects, as well as lesser ones, should be evaluated through careful analyses not only of the direct project costs and benefits but of alternative courses of action. NAWAPA and others have not been engineered, making even the costs a matter of extreme speculation. The costs are certain to be sufficiently high, however, that analyses must be made of the economic demands for this water and of alternative ways of meeting these demands where they prove to be in excess of existing supplies.

Costs aside, several other factors need to be considered. The first arises from sheer size. These projects are sufficiently large and in-divisible that their outputs will represent large increases of supply relative to the size of the market. To provide increments of capacity in keeping with the growth of demand will be difficult. The second factor is the unknown extent of future progress along other lines, not just in desalination but in the whole technology of water use. Improvements in water-consuming characteristics of agricultural crops and in municipal and industrial water treatment, combined with a more ra-tional geographic distribution of agricultural and industrial activity may substantially reduce the "requirements" these projects are called upon to satisfy. A third factor which is potentially of great importance is the irreversible nature of the changes wrought by these projects. Vast wilderness areas will be in-undated, the ground-water regimen will be changed in unknown ways, and animal and fish life will be affected. Until thoroughly studied for their effect, such changes add to the uncertainty of the ultimate impact of large-scale diversions.

If major diversions should appear to be desirable, the terms of inter-basin transfers of water would require careful consideration. Projecting the future productivity of water in the importing and exporting regions involves great uncertainty; therefore, both areas should remain free to compete for these waters on a price basis. The "basins of origin" protective acts which have accompanied existing diversions may seriously impair efficient future divisions of the water supply. These acts guarantee the exporting region water when needed, up to the amount available before export, and at a cost no greater than the cost of developing local supply for local use.