In light of the rather meager funding requests for saline water research by the administration, is it your opinion that this program as directed by the Congress is being vigorously carried out?

Dr. BUTCHER. We believe in the past the saline water conversion program has had many achievements. These achievements found their place in the commercial market and that was the objective of the program. We are looking at the further opportunities in that area. The further opportunities we have judged to be of sufficient priority to include in future programs are the treatment of sea water through membrane processes and possibly through a freezing process.

We are pursuing these consistent with other priority needs for water research and quality.

Senator FANNIN. We talked about the crisis programs, and I don't like the idea of crisis programs. We would want programs carefully worked out and ones that when they have been completed the results are justifiable in comparison to the costs involved.

I do feel, though, that now when we are up against the situation where we have made commitments as to what we will do, especially the national treaty, then I do feel that we perhaps will need to move more rapidly than what was contemplated a short time ago.

Dr. BUTCHER. Mr. Chairman, you will recall that the Congress did make a supplemental appropriation to the Office of Water Research and Technology for supportive work for the Yuma desalting plant. We are pursuing that vigorously. We have committed a large part of that money. We are working with the Bureau of Reclamation who has also expended funds on their part of the program.

I assure you we are working hard to make sure that the needs are met.

Mr. HORTON. Mr. Chairman, the Yuma effort is an arrangement between OWRT, responsible for the basic membrane research, and the Bureau of Reclamation, which will actually construct it.

If you look at the Bureau's funds for that, we believe it would be upwards of $100 million for that plant. In that one area we are not being skimpy in our budget request.

Senator FANNIN. I realize we have a total budget there of $135 million. That does not include the canal-$20 some million or $30 some million, but the magnitude of it is vast in comparison with anything that has ever been done before.

Just to complete some of these questions, then I do have some further questions on my own.

It is my understanding that it is the opinion of the Department that distillation technology, developed pursuant to the Saline Water Conversion Act, has reached the state of the art whereby private industry is in a position to take over the role of research and development. Is that a correct statement as to the Department's opinion?

Dr. BUTCHER. We believe it is now commercial and extra work would not be productive for us to undertake. There are other problems, but not for us.

Senator FANNIN. When we are talking about solar research, then we are getting into another field of activity and something that has been done over the years whether or not the type of a program we are discussing now could be measured by what has been done in the past is questionable, is it not?

In other words, there have been rather limited developments of distillation by solar energy.

Dr. BUTCHER. Sir, our Office is not now addressing directly distillation by solar energy.

Senator FANNIN. We have the project at Puerto Penasco I think it was a cooperative program between the University of Sonora, the University of Arizona, and the Department of Interior. They practically abandoned it. It was not unsuccessful, but it was not of a sufficient size to make it a profitable venture.

Mr. O'MEARA. We conducted a rather extensive program on solar distillation, but we have not conducted any work in that area for 6 or 7 years now. The current work that we are interested in solely is to use solar as an energy source in support of the Yuma plant.

Senator FANNIN. The University of Arizona is considering both as far as their research is concerned. Dr. Mynell was in my office a couple of weeks ago and stated that he was approaching it from the angle of producing the power and also from the standpoint of the distillation

process.

I think you are familiar with some of the projects that they are testing now. The one that would not apply to Yuma-I don't know of any place in Yuma that would be appropriate for the particular installation that is contemplated for the open pit mine at Presby, Arizona.

I think you are familiar with that where they are going to have mirrors in the mine reflecting back up to an absorber-reflector on top and similar to the project there that in some of the countries such as France. France has several units in place now, some generating 1,000 kilowatts of electricity. But they have them on high temperature utilization, 4,000-degree temperatures being generated.

But the work is being done by the University of Arizona and that particular program is also connected with the work being done with parabolic units of some size that would, they hope, generate 10 megawatts of electricity.

I think you are figuring 40 megawatts of electricity at the Yuma plant, is that right?

Mr. O'MEARA. It is approximately 36 megawatts.

Senator FANNIN. So four of those units would be sufficient for that? Mr. O'MEARA. OWRT gave a contract to a firm called Arthur D. Little, and they conducted a feasibility study for us on the potential use of solar energy as an energy source for the Yuma plant. Their approach is somewhat different than has been studied by others in that they propose to use a flat plate collector rather than mirrors. It will operate at much lower temperatures but the cost would be very competitive with any other solar development for energy that is underway. Our interest in that would be for direct pumping energy from solar, or electrical generation from solar. We did the feasibility study, but any demonstration would have to be funded by ERDA. We sent our proposal to them for their consideration.

Senator FANNIN. I understand the procedures you would follow, but Mr. Secretary you would be interested in any type of a presentation that would be made whereby distillation could be with solar energy without going through the processes now considering where they would generate 36 megawatts of electricity.

I think the greatest factor involved is that we have a commitment now, and that commitment must be fulfilled or we would be in difficulties with Mexico. If this could be done, these tests could be made without delaying your forward progress, would you not be interested in seeing just what is feasible?

Mr. HORTON. We have a very open mind. I think we have to balance off our international commitments timewise along with our enthusiastic review of any solar proposal that would come onstream.

Senator FANNIN. I understand that. In any conversation I have had with people who are going to make proposals have been along that line. They cannot be talking about something 10 years in the future, or even 2 to 3 years in the future. They must talk about months rather than years, and I think the program properly financed, determinations could be made in months.

Just to continue the questions that have been given by some of the members, how many U.S. firms are presently manufacturing equipment for saline water distillation?

Mr. O'MEARA. To give you a complete list, I would like to furnish it for the record. There are a number of companies.

[Subsequent to the hearing the Department supplied the following:]

List of U.S. Manufacturers and Vendors of Distillation Equipment

Aqua-Chem, Inc., 240 W. Capital Drive,

Milwaukee, Wis. 53201. Hydro-Dyne, 225 Wetmore Avenue SE., (P.O. Box 443), Massillon, Ohio 44646. Mechanical Equipment Co., Inc., 861 Carondelet Street, New Orleans, La. 70131.

Resources Conservation Co., P.O. Box
936, Renton, Wash. 98055.

Riley Beaird, Inc., P.O. Box 1115,
Shreveport, La. 71130.

Rosenblad Corporation, P.O. Box 2325,
Princeton, N.J. 08540.

Senator FANNIN. With what U.S. distillation equipment manufacturers have you discussed this opinion?

Have you had any discussions as far as what can be done with regard to the desalting plant-some of these questions are repetitious. The opinion referred to was, private industry is capable of doing this work, that's what I was referring to in my question.

Have you discussed that with some of the private industries? Mr. O'MEARA. Are you saying our position is that private industry is ready to take over further research?

Senator FANNIN. In other words that they are at the point now that they are developing the equipment and they have successfully operating equipment.

As I understand, when I asked the question, it is my understanding that it is the opinion of the Department that distillation technology, developed pursuant to the Saline Water Conversion Act, has reached the state of the art where private industry is in a position. to take over the role of research and development. You said, yes. And then the further question was what U.S. distillation manufacturer have you discussed this opinion with?

Dr. BUTCHER. Sir, there are distillation firms actively in business

Mr. HORTON. For example, Fluor Corp. Have you discussed it with them?

Dr. BUTCHER. Not in those terms.

Senator FANNIN. That is one of the firms building this equipment. Is there a consensus within the industry that the manufacturers are in a position to assume the financial burden associated with research and development of distillation technology?

Mr. HORTON. Mr. Chairman, we have indicated in our statement that the construction of distillation plants that have a capacity of 25,000 gallons a day or more, there is something on the order of 447 million gallons a day now being produced. That would be substantially by private enterprise in the distillation process.

Dr. BUTCHER. May I add to that, sir? Our involvement with the distillation technology is not complete. We are not requesting further funds, but we have underway at Fountain Valley, Calif., the culmination of distillation technology. We plan to transfer the technology developed there to all firms who want to come to us, and it will be their responsibility to move on it.

We believe we will have a very developed technology available to

them.

Senator FANNIN. As I explained, these are questions some of the other members had. I will try to not have repetitive questions and see if we can't take less of your time on this.

Do you have any plans to expand the Fountain Valley module to a full-size prototype desalting plant?

Dr. BUTCHER. No, sir. That is a test plant, and our plans are for transmitting the results to the industry and that was the end of our commitment.

Senator FANNIN. When the Department announced its partnership agreement with the Orange County Water District, it was stated that if the operation of the module met anticipated performance it was the intent of the Department to expand it to a prototype.

If you do not expand, as originally planned, what effect will this have on the investment of the Orange County Water District and their water development program?

Dr. BUTCHER. Sir, this is a question that might best be answered by the Orange County Water District.

Senator FANNIN. Fine. We will wait on that.

The administration's position regarding the funding for the State institutes, as I understand it, was at the $200,000 level per year. The legislation authorizes $250,000 per institute per year. You consistently ask for funds in the neighborhood of $100,000 per year per institute, which appears to be inconsistent with the administration's policy and inconsistent with the intent of Congress. Would you please explain this?

Mr. HORTON. That is a matter of budgetary balance, Mr. Chairman. As you appreciate, there were levels in the administration last year that cut it down way below $100,000 and that has been increased. That request will be made to the OMB, and the final decision was made in the light of overall departmental administrative budgetary objectives. We believe that the figure of $110.000 is adequate for institutes. We are also convinced that they would like a lot more than that.

Senator FANNIN. I understand. Many agencies in the Federal Government are involved in water or water related research and development. Would you explain to the committee how your programs are coordinated with these other agencies?

Part of that has been done, but just for this record.

Dr. BUTCHER. Coordination is accomplished through an arm of the Federal Council for Science and Technology, the Committee on Water Resources Research.

Last year, lead agency responsibility for that committee was assigned to the Office of Water Research and Technology. The chairman of that committee has a very active coordination effort with all agencies on water resources research.

Senator FANNIN. One last question. In the proposed bill submitted to the Congress by the administration, I see that the patent article has been greatly expanded. Would you please explain to the committee why you felt expansion of the patent article was necessary and what advantages this expanded patent article would have over previous patent articles?

Mr. HORTON. Mr. Chairman, we have Mr. Moody Tidwell here who can give a very expansive answer. There were two basic considerations engaged.

First was what we deemed to be a highly desirable objective in attracting bids from companies who otherwise would not bid on a particular research project in a way that we could protect their patent rights.

The second, of course, was the language drawn up we understand by Mr. Dan Dreyfus for the ERDA legislation and we have adopted the patent language of the ERDA bill to this particular OWRT legislation.

Moody Tidwell is here. Moody, if you would, why don't you just expand on that.

Senator FANNIN. Could you just be very brief?

Mr. TIDWELL. That was complete, Mr. Chairman. The OSW and OWRR did not have problems in contracting with companies in the past under the patent policy of the Department of Interior. It was forced upon them by interpretations of those two acts that existed. We have tried to expand the policy to give some discretion to OWRT as was given to the Administrator in ERDA.

Basically we take title to inventions. But we do have discretion in certain instances to leave the title with the contractor or to exclusively license the rights to those inventions.

Senator FANNIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary and gentlemen. Thank you for your testimony and fine responses. If there are further questions, they will be submitted to you in writing. I appreciate very much your being here this morning.

Mr. HORTON. Mr. Chairman, I had the pleasure of having lunch a little over a month ago with Governor Castro from the State of Arizona. He was then making a public proposal that the new National Solar Institute be located appropriately in Arizona and he did so under three arguments.

The first was that Arizona had a high population density and could well use the energy. The second one, obviously Arizona had lots of solar energy to use. And third, there were more professors in Arizona that knew about solar energy than anywhere else.

I said to the contrary, that the Solar Institute should be located in Wyoming because it had limited sunshine and no professors at all that knew anything about solar energy, but he disagreed with me.