Our efforts to get bids on a 1-mgd demineralizer also have presented new evidence that American industry is not ready to take over desalting research. We are working with some of the leading U.S. manufacturers, including the du Pont Co., Dow Chemical, Universal Oil Products Co., and Ionics, Inc. We originally required that the manufacturers guarantee their product. This did not seem unreasonable since we are dealing with our community's water supply. Each of these companies, despite the research done to date, notified us that it is unwilling to guarantee its product performance because of so many uncertainties and unknowns in wastewater desalination. We have had to modify our requests of the manufacturers and to redouble our efforts in support of the additional needed research. Please do not accept bland, general statements that the research is all completed. We who are at the point where the use must be made of these new water sciences are not finding this to be true. NWSIA recently completed under a contract with the Interior Department an updating of the inventory of the world's desalting plants. A total of 1,036 plants with capabilities of producing more than 25,000 gpd were found to be operating in the world. Of these, 346 were in the United States. Plants in Europe and those in the Arabian Peninsula and Iran produce as much or more fresh water than do ours. Desalination is on the verge of a quantum jump in expansion of installed capacities. We in the United States are proceeding with the Colorado River desalting plan, but the oil-rich countries of the Middle East are planning investments of $8 billion or more in the new desalters. The Bureau of Reclamation, by way of comparison, has spent $6 billion since its inception in 1902. So far, the American desalting industry has not fared at all well in international competition for this new business. Obviously, more research is needed to prepare our industry to meet the European and Japanese competition with technologies and tested equipment. This year, we have less than 20 desalination experts in the OWRT. With this level of research management and the level of financing that goes with this totally inadequate staff, the United States has resigned its leadership in desalting technology. The world markets have already been taken over by others. We see, therefore, that the deemphasis on desalination research has not served the domestic water supply industry well. I give you the Orange County Water District experience in proof. The deemphasis also is not serving American industry well in the world competition for business, but is opening the way for other competitors just when the market is most demanding. Mr. Chairman, I have talked only about desalting programs and only about some aspects of that research. The Orange County Water District and the National Water Supply Improvement Association are not so narrowly oriented as to be oblivious to the needs of additional water-oriented research. We are in support of continuation of and expansion of such additional research to extend our Nation's water supply through technological methods. We feel, however, we may be in the best position to lay before your committee the needs for desalination research and demonstration. That is why I have confined my presentation to these requirements. Thank you. Senator FANNIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Cline. I am concerned about your feeling, and I can say that you are wrong. We do not believe that the Government has carried desalination research to the point at which industry or the local agency can be relied upon to complete the job. Is that that the concerns involved in this activity, and there are some very large manufacturers that are manufacturing equipment-is it the difficulty of making the equipment that is involved or why do you feel they will not go forward with their development? Mr. CLINE. They will furnish material, but they will not guarantee the product. It is just rather early in the development of this equipment. This has not been a long-range experience. While their engineers might be optimistic, their attorneys aren't. We had to soften our guarantee, and we will accept what happens. I mentioned a 1 million-gallon-a-day plant. We actually will require a 5 million-gallon-a-day plant, but we are unwilling to build a 5 until we know how the 1 works, and the industry cannot guarantee us that the 1 million-gallon-a-day plant will work. So we are in effect_conducting research and development with local taxpayers funds in Orange County. Senator FANNIN. You mentioned the experimental plant in Fountain Valley. A plant that as I understood cost about $5 million. Was this substantial contribution from the Orange County Water District? I am a little confused over some of the figures you were using. I don't know whether or not I am mixing oranges with apples here. On page 3, you are talking about one plant here, waste-water plant 55 percent funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. There is no connection between these separate facilities? Mr. CLINE. Yes; they are connected. We claim waste water in one facility and desalinize water in the other, and blend the two waters. Senator FANNIN. The one project referred to, the $5 million project, is that included in the $15 million or is it separate? Mr. CLINE. It is separate. The water factory which combines the two technologies will cost about $23 million, of which $15 million is wastewater reclamation and the balance is for desalting. We will blend the two waters with the two water products. Without the desalter, the waste-water reclamation plant Senator FANNIN. I understand. Secretary Horton indicated that the Fountain Valley model will not move to a full-scale prototype desalting plant. What effect will that have on the future investment of the District? Mr. CLINE. If the desalter is not expanded, the water district will have to develop some other method of desalting water. Otherwise we will have spent Senator FANNIN. Your complete program? Mr. CLINE. We will have to completely redirect the program. When this program was undertaken, there was no guarantee that the Federal Government would expand the desalting plant. But it was our understanding there would be adequate testing to determine the feasibility, whether or not the plant should be expanded. It appears to us, with the emphasis on desalination programs, it does not appear that we will get an adequate test of the existing program, let alone expansion of the program. Senator FANNIN. That's what I was trying to determine. What effect this would have on the future work you will be doing. Of course, your answer is that you feel a great deal will be sacrificed if that is not completed, if you don't go forward? Mr. CLINE. Yes, sir. Senator FANNIN. What are the most important issues to be addressed relative to saline water conversion? What do you feel are the most important issues? Mr. CLINE. Speaking on behalf of the National Water Supply Improvement Association, we feel there should be an intensive expanded development program to analyze technological means to treat brackish water, industrial waste, and emphasis on osmosis, electrode dialysis, and freezing process that has not been fully developed. We are on the threshold of progress when it appears that the program is being sadly deemphasized. Senator FANNIN. What level of funding would be needed to resolve them in a timely fashion, do you think? Mr. CLINE. That is a difficult question for me to answer. Senator FANNIN. What do you think is between research and development. Mr. CLINE. It is the gap between research and development. We suggest it is coming along quite well. We are prepared to see the Office of Technology and Research emphasize development. Senator FANNIN. Has there been any work to your knowledge in the field of using solar energy in this activity in your California area? Mr. CLINE. I understand OSW did some work in the past, but at the present time we are so underfunded and understaffed Senator FANNIN. I was wondering if in your area of California, has there been any work? Mr. CLINE. No, there has not. Senator FANNIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Cline. We appreciate your testimony. Your full statement will be made a part of the record. It has been very helpful, and we certainly commend you for the work you are doing and wish you well. I hope that we can do a great deal more. I know you will be watching what is being done in my home State as far as that plant is concerned, and we certainly are supportive of programs that will help to solve this very serious problem we face in the years ahead. They have been brought out this morning, the interrelationship with energy and every phase of economic activity. We have a very serious problem at hand, and I think there will be a great deal of effort and coordination of effort to accomplish these objectives, and we appreciate your help. Mr. CLINE. Thank you, Senator. I would like to invite you to California to see our beautiful plant there and at that time to share with you a glass of reclaimed waste water. Senator FANNIN. Thank you, Mr. Cline. The subcommittee will now adjourn. [Whereupon, at 11:45 a.m., the subcommittee adjourned.] [Subsequent to the hearing, the following letter was submitted for the record.] I am advised that your committee recently held a hearing on I believe it is essential that the Secretary of the Interior have the water resources research and technology development authority that would be given by Title II of the bill. There have been recently indications that the Federal government intends to abandon or severely curtail its activities in saline water conversion research. I believe it is generally recognized that the Office of Saline Water under the authority given it by the Congress made extremely important contributions to the technology of saline water conversion, particularly in the development of the membrane processes. Nonetheless, I believe there remains a great opportunity to reduce costs and improve feedwater recovery efficiency by further membrane research and technology development. New Mexico is most vitally interested, of course, in the advancement that can be made by continuation and possible expansion of activities at the Roswell Test Facility of the Department of the Interior. In 1963 the State of New Mexico contributed $100,000 to the construction of a saline water conversion plant utilizing the vapor compression process at the Roswell site. The City of Roswell donated the land for the demonstration plant site and the facilities needed to dispose of brine effluent from the plant. In recent years the test facility has been converted to a brackish water test center with facilities for research in membrane processes including a high pressure pump loop for testing pumps of the nature used in reverse osmosis process desalting plants. The State of New Mexico, the City of Roswell, and the other communities of the state continue to be actively interested in the operation of the Roswell facility of the Department. There are several western water resources problems that could be solved, or at least mitigated, by the results of continued Federal research in membrane technology. In the course of consultations on the formulation of legislation to authorize the construction of a conversion plant to treat the return flows from the Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation Project for delivery to Mexico (P.L. 93-320) representatives of the executive department advised representatives of the Colorado River Basin states that then current reverse osmosis membrane technology would allow the recovery of only about 70 per cent of the plant feedwater, leaving 30 per cent of the feedwater to be disposed of as unusable brine effluent, but that ongoing research gave reason to hope that the recovery efficiency could be increased to 90 per cent. With a recovery efficiency of 70 per cent it would be necessary to dispose of about 40,000 acre feet of brine effluent from the plant authorized, thus reducing the amount of water available for use in the Colorado River Basin in the United States by that amount. Furthermore, it appears that several of the units authorized for study by Title II of P.L. 93-320 could usefully employ membrane conversion processes. Research and technology development that would reduce costs and improve the recovery efficiency of the membrane processes would be of great benefit to the states of the Colorado River Basin and to the United States. At this time it seems certain that recent enactment of the "Save Drinking Water Act" (P.L. 93-523) and the regulatons to be promulgated there under will profoundly increase the need for membrane conversion processes of low cost and high recovery efficiency in New Mexico and probably the rest of the States in the West. The impact of this legislation will probably be felt most by our small communities if research and technology development do not yield small capacity units having low capital and operation maintenance costs and high recovery efficiencies. Some have suggested that in consideration of the state-of-the-art of saline water conversion it is time for the Federal government to abandon its research and technology development and rely on private industry for future research and development in this field. I submit that this suggestion is not well taken in consideration of the immediate problems on the Colorado River and |