What is the Future of the Yuma Desalting Plant?

A decade after the Yuma Desalting Plant’s six-month inaugural run was cut short, a combination of hydrological conditions and political pressure may result in the shuttered desalination plant – dubbed by some a “white elephant” – going back on line.

Completed in 1992, the $250 million federal desalting plant was designed to desalt drainage return flows from Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District (Wellton-Mohawk) prior to the putting the water back into the Colorado River. As planned, once most of the salt had been removed, the water would have been returned to the Colorado River above Mexico ’s Morelos Dam and counted as part of U.S. delivery obligations to Mexico , consistent with Minute 242 of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), replacing the lost bypass water for use in the United States . But for a variety of reasons, the desalting plant has not been operated as once planned. Instead, since 1977, the salty drainage water has been bypassed around the plant through a 53-mile bypass canal, emptying into Mexico ’s Cienega de Santa Clara and giving new life to this wetlands area south of the border.

In spring 2001, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) sought stakeholder input from the Colorado   River Basin states, IBWC, environmental groups and others on the idea of using alternatives such as forbearance mechanisms to meet 1974 Salinity Control Act Title 1 objectives in lieu of operating the Yuma Desalting Plant. (In 2000 Congress had requested Reclamation to identify less expensive ways to meet the Title I objectives.) In summer 2002, Reclamation officials released a “preliminary draft report” that proposed a two-pronged approach: prepare the plant to operate while pursuing forbearance agreements, water transfers and other measures designed to serve as “make-up water” for a portion of the bypass flows, saying these sources would be less expensive than operating the desalting plant.