The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which is the agency tasked with overseeing the issue for the federal government, has estimated Colorado River cleanup costs for nitrates, alone, and construction to be approximately $2.4 billion from now to the year 2025. This is up from previous estimates of $1.5 billion. The question the federal government has not addressed is who will pay to protect the river.

The alternative — to do nothing and ignore the problem until it becomes so big it cannot be ignored — is even more expensive.

Removing nitrates or perchlorate from the water requires expensive technology, such as reverse osmosis. To provide reverse osmosis for the water supplies currently depending on the Colorado River could cost $8 to $12 billion. California officials estimate that treating nitrate contaminated water increases the cost of supplying water by times the basic supply cost.

This technology, in addition to being costly, also requires the disposal of a significant waste stream. Although not always easy, a place can be found to dispose of the waste stream. The real problem is the size of the waste stream which will deplete the actual water volumes available to the users.

This makes no sense for the Colorado River system, which already is allocated to the fullest extent. We need to be looking for every opportunity to conserve the water. Reverse osmosis is not practical on a large-scale basis and is a remarkably a wasteful technology.

Treating the problem at the source — in this case adequate wastewater collection and treatment infrastructure — is the least costly and maximizes the opportunities to conserve.

This is a regional problem that requires a regional solution, including all levels of government: federal, state and local.

The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and California’s State Water Resources Control Board have begun the process of defining the problems. Local entities have started to contribute millions of dollars to the cleanup. But the magnitude is so great and crosses so many jurisdictional boundaries that a regional solution with federal oversight is required. This model has worked in other areas of the country and can work on the Lower Colorado River as well.

If these pollution problems are not corrected over the next few years, the drinking water consequences for major cities like Tucson, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego will be immense.

The Colorado River Regional Sewer Coalition was formed to resolve this problem. CRRSCo is comprised of 25 member cities, counties and agencies from Arizona, California and Nevada along the Lower Colorado River from Davis Dam to the border with Mexico.

Many of the CRRSCo members with the largest environmental impacts have initiated implementation programs and authorized funding to support these efforts:

• Bullhead City, Arizona, has spent $42 million over the past 5 years for infrastructure improvements.

• Needles, California, has spent $200,000 for treatment plant improvements.

• The Buckskin Sanitary District in Arizona has initiated more than $3 million in improvements for collection and treatment.

• Yuma, Arizona, has more than $20 million in collection system and treatment plant improvements in development.

• Lake Havasu City, Arizona, passed the largest known bond election in the state’s history for $463 million in 2002 to provide collection, treatment and disposal facilities for a community of 50,000 residents.

Other members with plans in development to address the pollution problem include Blythe in California and Quartzsite, Parker and the Colorado River Indian Tribe in Arizona.

At the federal level, U.S. Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) and Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) were instrumental in securing a $200,000 Fiscal Year 2004 appropriation allowing the Bureau of Reclamation to study the impact of pollution along the Lower Colorado River. The study examined the remaining technical, structural, and intergovernmental steps that must be taken to protect the river.

In addition, Senator Kyl and Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) worked successfully to include $1.5 million in the FY 2006 Interior and Environment Appropriations bill to address the pollution problem.