Mr. O'MEARA. Yes, sir. They operate at the discretion of the King. He had established a date and invited participation, and then he changed his mind because he had other activities in which he wished to participate. They still indicate that they may have a dedication. ceremony for that plant, but we have not been issued any invitations up to this time.

Mr. SAYLOR. Off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. JOHNSON. Back on the record.

As far as the Jidda plant is concerned we have fulfilled our obligations there?

Mr. O'MEARA. Yes, sir. The project is completed, however, the negotiations on the claims have not yet been finished. A final offer has been made and is being studied now, and we expect this to be rapidly concluded. Our technical input to the plant, the Office of Saline Water's requirements are essentially terminated.

Mr. JOHNSON. In regards to the capabilities of the Japanese in the field of the desalinization of sea water, brackish water and other types of water, when your people were over there did you look at the most recent installation that was made there by one of the American companies?

Mr. O'MEARA. May I refer the question to Dr. Gillam who is a member of our team.

Dr. GILLAM. I think you have reference to the reverse osmosis plant?

Mr. JOHNSON. No; a plant that was built there by-I guess it was built after you were there.

Dr. GILLAM. We did not see either one. There are two theredistillation and RO.

Mr. JOHNSON. Now, the saline water conversion plants that are in operation other than in the United States, and there are lots of them, do you have some sort of a figure as to costs?

Mr. O'MEARA. The costs vary widely, Mr. Chairman, depending on size of the plant and the cost of fuel at any given location. The lowest cost reported, other than the 15 cent figure from Saudi Arabia, is the figure from Tijuana at 65 cents.

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, I've been to Tijuana twice and the place has never been operating while we are there. but we've heard a lot about it. From what I can see about the lack of maintenance around there, I doubt if their cost figures are very accurate.

Now I don't know as far as cost figures are concerned whether their data are good, bad, or indifferent. They get their energy there from the large power facility that is operating across the way. But the two times we were there to inspect the facilities on two occasions, and the difference in the facilities between the first time we were there and the second was obvious. They were shut down for one reason or another, but it looked as if the plant had deteriorated.

I don't know what their cost of operations would be but if that figure on an international setup is available I think we should have it in the record.

Now, we receive bulletins from time to time about all of the capacity that is installed in other countries, but we have never known very

much about the price of what they are producing water for, or how successful their operations are. The cost of producing water would give us a good idea on the success of these operations. Because in order to get your low cost you have to stay on line.

Mr. O'MEARA. Yes, sir; that is true.

Mr. JOHNSON. The minute you are off you're not running the plant to its capacity.

Coming back to the United States now, there are lots of plants that have been built in the United States and our territories. Do you have a figure for the cost of water in those plants, other than your own test facilities. I mean these that have been supplied by industry?

Mr. O'MEARA. We are working now to verify some of these cost numbers. It is one thing to build a plant such as the Virgin Islands plant and announce, based on the construction costs and the costs of fuel, that the cost of water from that plant is 85 cents a thousand gallons. However, as you have indicated, the on-stream time of that plant has a very important impact on the total cost of water. In the case of the Tijuana plant-the Mexicans have announced that the water cost is 65 cents a thousand gallons-we did not think it was our purview to go down to Mexico and say, well, you didn't figure your cost of water by our formula. I believe we can obtain the data from them. For example, if we can find out what they are charging for steam from the powerplant it would help to verify our own information as to what the true cost of that water is.

I know that while they reported 65 cents, they haven't achieved 65 cents, because they haven't had the full on-stream time on which that kind of a calculation would be based.

Can you report some costs from operating plants?

Mr. STROBEL. We now have a study underway to obtain actual operating data from several of the U.S. plants. We don't have that completed yet but we expect to have it completed in several months. (The following information was subsequently furnished :)

Hon. HAROLD T. JOHNSON,

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

OFFICE OF SALINE WATER, Washington, D.C., March 23, 1972.

Chairman, Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. JOHNSON: At the recent OSW authorization hearings, you requested some information on desalted water costs from operating plants. We now have information based on 1970 records for 3 sea water distillation plants located respectively at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Key West, Florida; and St. Croix, Virgin Islands.

Based upon actual operations and the amount of water produced during that year, the costs ranged from $1.28 to $1.58 per thousand gallons of fresh water. The plants were operated between about 61 per cent and 87 per cent of plant capacities. A tabulation of the cost breakdown for each of the plants is enclosed. Sincerely yours,

JOHN W. HEINZ, (for J. W. O'MEARA, Director).

Enclosure.

Mr. JOHNSON. I think it would mean a lot to the committee here if we could get figures, both from the international plants as well as our own country.

Mr. O'MEARA. We are proceeding to develop that kind of information. Another part of the cost of water that we didn't mention is the cost of maintenance of that plant.

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, that is a very big cost to me, from what I have seen of the plants.

Mr. O'MEARA. You can assume a certain maintenance charge, but are they able to maintain them with the amount of money that they assumed would be necessary?

Mr. JOHNSON. And are the plants going through the life cycle that was predicted and will they last 3 years, 5 years, whatever.

Mr. O'MEARA. If you are amortizing a plant and your initial calculation said it's going to last 25 years, and now the indications are it will only last 10 years, the cost of water will have changed substantially.

Mr. JOHNSON. That is the way the plants appear to me. If you're going to make them run and keep them on line there's a tremendous amount of maintenance to be done and a lot of expertise that has to be applied. Every plant I have looked at, appears to have a much shorter life than was proposed.

Mr. O'MEARA. Coming back to the point that Mr. Saylor made about operator problems, is one of the reasons that we are trying to automate these plants as much as possible, so that we eliminate as much as we can of the opportunity for operator error. It doesn't do any good to develop the finest technology in the world and then turn it over to an incompetent operator. It is just not going to produce the way it was designed under those conditions, a fact you pointed out very clearly. Mr. JOHNSON. In your California operation you say you have enough money. You are running a pilot plant in Wrightsville Beach which you're going to move over to the Imperial Valley whenever the Bureau of Reclamation actually drills the geothermal wells.

Mr. O'MEARA. Yes, sir.

Mr. JOHNSON. There, again, there are many, many problems that confront you when they drill a well. I guess that will give us a real start on whatever type of water we get from the well. In any event you will be there and ready for operation.

At the present time there are a lot of if's in the whole operation. Marketing the amounts of power and the amounts of water they talk about; what we have to do to meet environmental criteria in this country; and then in Mexico they are troubled with subsidance. I imagine in the Imperial Valley we have had trouble from subsidance just from the underground pumping in connection with the canal systems that the Bureau has there. We have the same thing in the San Joaquin Valley.

Judging from the Mexican situation in the Mexicali Valley it looks to me like we have a potential across the border. In the Mexicali Valley the Mexicans are hooking up their first 15 wells to their new plant and it is about ready to go. They are taking another look at water from the standpoint of taking that brackish water and doing something with it.

Have you ever had any offers from the Mexican Government there in taking a look-see at the water that is coming up?

Mr. O'MEARA. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask Mr. Lopez to address himself to that question. He is working with this in cooperation with the Bureau of Reclamation.

Mr. LOPEZ. Mr. Chairman, we have underway a bilateral agreement to exchange information with Mexico on both desalting and the development of the geothermal resources. We haven't been entirely dependent on that; we have had many private conversations with the Mexican engineers who are working down there, and they have been very, very helpful. We are considering that as soon as this arrangement is completed and signed, we would like to use some of their people to help us when we start drilling the well for OSW because, as you aready pointed out, they have driven over 20 wells successfully. Mr. JOHNSON. You have not looked into the quality of water that is coming up there?

Mr. LOPEZ. Yes, sir; we have.

Mr. JOHNSON. You have?

Mr. LOPEZ. Yes, sir; it runs at between 1,500 parts per million and 22,000 parts per million out of the existing wells that they now have. Both are well within the range of desalting expertise as we now have it, with one exception, and that is that it is very high temperature, somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 degrees fahrenheit. One other thing that it contains is silica, which sea water does not have to the same degree. So these are two of the problems that we see. Mr. SAYLOR. Would the chairman yield?

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. SAYLOR. Mr. O'Meara, might your witness tell us whether or not-whether you've done any work in the Wellton-Mohawk area of Arizona on those wells that were put down that supplement the water going back into the Colorado River?

Mr. O'MEARA. No, sir; we have not operated on Wellton-Mohawk waters.

Mr. SAYLOR. In other words, you understand one of the reasons they had to plug some of those wells and quit pumping was because of the

high salinity content, and it actually made some of the water in the lower Colorado River absolutely unusable in Mexico.

Mr. O'MEARA. The Wellton-Mohawk drain has been a substantial point source of salinity in the river, yes, sir.

Mr. JOHNSON. Now, the development that you are coming up with first, I understand is the new prototype at Brownsville?

Mr. O'MEARA. Yes, sir.

Mr. JOHNSON. I understood you to say, pretty nearly everything has been done as concerns that project?

Mr. O'MEARA. Yes, sir. We began our work with Brownsville prior to the enactment of the Saline Water Act of 1971. The act of 1961 directed the Secretary to report to the Congress from time to time his best opportunity for the construction of a large plant to demonstrate desalting technology and that any such report to the Congress should contain a report on the size, the location, the cost of water, and the relationship of the plant to other water resource developments in the area. This is what we have now brought together at Brownsville. In addition, we have brought together our environmental impact statements that was not a requirement of the 1961 act but certainly is a requirement today.

Mr. JOHNSON. Who is the local entity that is going to carry on the operation?

Mr. O'MEARA. The city of Brownsville is the major agency with whom we would enter into a contract.

Mr. JOHNSON. The Texas Water Development Board is willing to make a contribution?

Mr. O'MEARA. They are making a loan to the city of Brownsville for their share of the cost of the plant, yes, sir.

Mr. JOHNSON. And you expect to have that up here, then, within the next 30 days?

Mr. O'MEARA. I wish I could say within the next 30 days. We submit it to the Department for approval; from there it has to go to the Office of Management and Budget for approval and I have no control over whether it is approved or not approved along that route, but I certainly hope that we can get it up here very soon.

Mr. JOHNSON. How about the other one in Diablo Canyon there. Where are we there?

Mr. O'MEARA. The plant studies we're doing for Diablo Canyonwe hope to have our report completed on March 3, and as soon as the report is completed we will provide the committee with a copy of the report and at the same time, begin to develop our legislative package that will be required.

Mr. JOHNSON. That is proposed to be a 40-million-gallon-a-day plant.

Mr. O'MEARA. Yes, sir. And, at the same time, as I mentioned yesterday, in order to be fully responsive to the Congress in which they told us to come back with the "best opportunity" for a large plant, we are also making a study of feasibility of locating a plant in San Diego to operate on fossil fuel, or in San Diego to operate on steam obtained from a solid waste incinerator.

Mr. JOHNSON. In line with the legislative mandate of last year, the California plant at Diablo would be the first large type plant?

Mr. O'MEARA. Yes, sir. We believe that the studies we are making in