In our reverse osmosis program we are also considering three prototype plants. Two of these would be of 1-3 MGD capacity. One would be operated on high hardness ground brackish water and the second would desalt surface brackish water contaminated by industrial effluents, agricultural runoff, or sewage effluent. The third plant, of 3-5 MGD capacity, will be designed to convert 95% of brackish feed to product water, as compared to the present 50%-60%. Special emphasis will be given to minimize the effects of brine disposal in all of these plants. Two test beds will explore the potential of reverse osmosis for seawater conversion.

Supporting research and development projects include high pressure pumps of new designs and materials of construction that permit high efficiency and low maintenance, and suitable feed water pretreatment methods for contaminants removal to extend membrane life.

Distillation and membrane development will be supported by pilot plant tests to determine the performance, service life and design integrity of new membranes, membrane supports, and new plant designs.

Other processes are being evaluated as well as pretreatmnt methods, brine disposal, and by-product recovery.

As many of you will recall, the desalting program had as one of its original objectives that of desalting seawater to provide fresh water for agriculture. This still remains an ultimate goal but by far the most difficult to achieve.

Studies carried out for OSW by the Bureau of Reclamation during the past several years show that high quality water together with innovative irrigation techniques can be utilized for the production of high value crops and increased yields in areas now dependent on midly saline natural supplies. Substantive economic benefits have been shown even though desalted water costs are more than the prices charged for irrigation water. As a follow-up on this concept, the Bureau of Reclamation, with cooperation by OSW, is proposing an experimental program to further develop such application and obtain definitive data on benefits to be obtained.

OSW is participating in the Department Task Force in assisting the Bureau of Reclamation in a study of the potential development of both water and power of the geothermal resources of the Imperial Valley Region. OSW's interest is in evaluating the potential of desalting existing geothermal brines and in developing processes to recover fresh water economically. This study is a facet of the Department's Western U.S. Water Study.

Our estimated cost for the proposed new program is $240 million. This amount would continue our research and development for an additional five years from FY 1973 through FY 1977 with an additional three-year period for completing these activities and one year for preparing a final report.

We urge the committee to adopt the proposed legislation and provide the tools to enable us to proceed toward the goals of this vital program.

STATEMENT OF JAMES R. SMITH, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR WATER AND POWER RESOURCES, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

As you indicated, I have with me Mr. J. W. Pat O'Meara, who is the Acting Director of the Office of Saline Water and who will be available for questioning at the conclusion of my highlight statement. Mr. O'Meara will also present our request for the authorization for program activities during fiscal 1972.

My statement today deals primarily with the legislative request to expand and extend the saline water conversion program submitted by the Department of the Interior; other pending legislation has similar objectives. When we compare the provisions of the House and Senate. bills with the legislation proposed by the Department of the Interior, we find there is general agreement that the saline water conversion program should be extended for 5 years. The differences between the legislative proposals are relatively small when judged against the

overall intent of each.

The bills are quite similar for the most part since they are largely concerned with continuing the existing authority beginning in fiscal 1973. They recognize the widespread potential which desalting technology holds for applications in addition to desalting, and, in turn, we intend to make our technology available to all who can use it.

The Department's request reflects our internal planning and represents a shift of emphasis from R. & D. to increased application of technology. The scope of the pending legislation indicated how closely the Congress has followed our progress. We are encouraged by this expression of interest and the continued support of our program by the gentlemen on the committee and by the Congress.

As we examine the water problems we face now and those that loom ahead in the remainder of this century, the prospects for supplying many parts of our Nation with the necessary quantities of good water will be greatly enhanced by desalting. The fact is that the increasing use of water caused by our continued population growth, accompanied by expanding industrial and agricultural activity, will turn many of our present available waters from fresh to brackish. This is already happening today in some parts of the Southwest.

Urbanologists foresee enormous metropolitan areas covering much of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Desalting advances will make the nearby oceans a source of fresh water to meet future needs in water short areas.

It is not necessary to search the future however, for any mandate for this technology. There are many communities, most of them small, whose water supplies do not now meet the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended standards.

Our task, then, is to continue the development of the technology which will soon be urgently required, and to apply the technology we have already developed to solve current water supply problems. And that is the purpose of the legislation you are considering today.

The authorization to continue the desalting program is justified by several factors.

In the light shed by our recently increased knowledge of our water resources and environment, there is a clear indication that desalting technology will be required, one, to provide new sources of water, two, to reuse water, three, to remove pollutants from water, and four, to recover valuable byproducts.

Government participation is required because of the complexity of our water resources system, which inherently involves values above and beyond pure economic considerations. This participation must include coordination, information, support of desalting technology to insure that it will be ready when required, technical assistance to communities, encouragement of technical and managerial innovation leading to a broad, stable, broadly based desalting industry.

The Federal Government and potential users must keep informed on the current capabilities and the future prospects of the technology to develop long-range plans for the optimum utilization of resources and concomitantly, of course, the protection of our environment.

Desalting can achieve any desired degree of water renovation required by the intensive use of water due to population growth.

Desalting will provide new water as we approach the limits on the quantity we can impound, and produce a reliable high quality supply.

Finally, the desalting program must continue uninterrupted because considerable time is required for technology refinement, for water supply planning, and for plant construction.

The bills before Congress would primarily extend the existing authority of the desalting program. The Department request, however, would grant additional authority to enable us to contract for a small amount of research with foreign organizations and individuals to make available their expertise to the U.S. desalting industry when we find that there are foreigners in certain areas who happen to know as much or more than we do.

During the period covered by the new legislation, the desalting program will have four main objectives. First, where the desalting state-of-the-art has been developed sufficiently, we intend to stimulate its application to existing water problems. In this regard, we would expect to furnish information and direction to agencies with loan and grant-in-aid authority to encourage consideration of desalting as an alternative in water resource programs under their jurisdiction. We feel that the most immediate need desalting will satisfy will be in improving the quality of small community water supply systems. The second major objective will be to continue our basic and applied research and development program to provide a base knowledge upon which desalting can continue to build. The third will continue the development of technology for large-scale plants which will be required in the last quarter of this century to provide water in large quantities for our cities, our industry, and, hopefully, agriculture. Finally, our program will strive to improve Federal and State water planning through cooperative studies in addition to engineering and economic studies relating to desalting costs.

We anticipate that during the 5 additional years of the full-scale program, we will undertake the cooperative construction of several types of prototype plants. A variety of prototypes is required because there is now no single optimum process for the variety of feed waters, the site characteristics and the product water quality with which we must contend. At this time distillation is most economical for sea water, while membrane processes are more economical for lower salinity brackish waters.

We will be reporting to you and to the President on our plans for constructing prototype plants. During this fiscal year, construction will begin on a distillation module of 3 million gallons per day capacity to provide the technological base for plants of 200 million gallons per day. We would exject to expand this module to a prototype as the development of technology permits. We are considering a 30 to 50 million gallons per day sea water conversion prototype plant, as well as an 8 million gallons per day plant.

In our reverse osmosis program we are also considering various types of test beds and prototype plants with capacities ranging up to 5 million gallons per day. The reverse osmosis program is now being intensively reevaluated to avoid duplication of existing technology and to ensure maximum return for every Federal dollar spent on research and development.

As always, the problem of brine disposal from all desalting plants will receive special attention.

In our applied research program, the emphasis will be on the development of new membranes and ancillary equipment. In addition, we

will continue our work on freezing, ion exchange, environmental problems, and the utilization of geothermal waters. As many of you will recall, the desalting program had as one of its original objectives that of desalting sea water to provide fresh water for agriculture. This is still an ultimate goal, but by far the most difficult to achieve. We intend to explore, in conjunction with other Federal agencies and State universities, an experimental program to develop an optimized agricultural system which could feasibly use moderate cost but high quality water.

Our fundamental and applied research will continue to provide the solid foundation for our development programs and to seek out new processes, materials, and process effects. We will give particular emphasis to those processes which offer the highest probability of a scientific breakthrough, and will continue to search for materials that will enable us to reduce the capital investment required for desalting plants.

We have defined our 5-year desalting program to meet the needs of potential use where desalting offers an alternative.

Our estimated costs for this program are approximately $240 million.

I wish to thank the committee for this opportunity to testify on behalf of a program which I think is vital to this Nation, and I would suggest we would be happy to answer any questions which the committe would ask, and also to suggest that along with Pat O'Meara, the Acting Director of OSW, are members of his technical staff who are also highly competent to answer some questions you may have. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. JOHNSON. We want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for a very brief yet comprehensive statement. To save time this morning, if you have no objections, I think we should hear from Mr. J. W. O'Meara, the Acting Director of the Office of Saline Water. If he will give us the benefit of his testimony at this time, we can then ask questions about statements. At that time, you can call on your experts that you have with you here to assist you.

We are now ready to hear from Mr. J. W. O'Meara, the Acting Director of the Office of Saline Water.

Mr. O'MEARA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You have previously received the justification that cover our proposed operations for fiscal year 1972. Before I begin my report on our activities this morning, I would like to thank the chairman of the subcommittee and the other members of the subcommittee who took the time from their schedule to visit our operations in San Diego, Calif., and we are pleased by your interest in our program, and we are happy to have any opportunity to show you what we are doing with the funds that you make available for our use.

Mr. JOHNSON. I want to say at this point, that you did give us a very good briefing there. You covered the whole operation that your people have underway in San Diego. We were very much disturbed about our little visit to Mexico. Each time we have visited there, we brought bad luck to the plant. This time when we approached the plant and saw all of the oil floating on the water at the intake for the plant, we doubted whether it would be open. When we arrived there, the engineer in charge for the Mexican Government said he had oil trouble. We could

certainly see that he had oil trouble, and the plant was down. But we did have a good opportunity to talk with him, and he explained the operation of the plant.

We had a good look at this plant that had been one-half in operation and one-half shut down. In the half that was down, we could see that there are certainly many problems in building a desalting plant.

Mr. HALEY. Mr. Chairman, in answer to that, the answer is to stay away and leave them alone.

Mr. JOHNSON. I visited your plant in your State, and I want to say that it was working very well. The sea water was very clean coming into the plant. But we had a little different story in Mexico. Last time it was the powerplant, this time it was an oil slick on the ocean. There are many problems.

You may proceed.

Mr. O'MEARA. I would like to make a comment, Mr. Chairman, that I have been coming to hearings on desalting since David Jenkins was the Director of the Office of Saline Water. I have always been able to sit in the back row, and I find there is a great deal of difference between sitting in the back row and being here in the electric chair.

Mr. ASPINALL. Mr. Chairman, I think that calls for a statement from me about one of the embarrassing things for the administration and for this committee. You started with the first Director of the Office, and we have seen some changes since that time. Now, for approximately 3 months the Bureau has been without a Director, and that is none of my business as far as the personnel is concerned. But, it is not fair to you and it is not fair to the Congress of the United States to have a directorship left open as long as this one has been, and have some Acting Director take the responsibility.

I commend you for the work you have done in the Office, Mr. O'Meara. I think you are qualified for the directorship, but I would like for the administration to get on the ball pretty soon, and fill these directorships and assistant secretaryships. It just isn't good business, good government, to go ahead and operate like we have been doing now for some time. I don't know why the other Director was removed; that is not my responsibility. But, he was removed. As far as this committee was concerned, we were very pleased with his appearance before the committee and with his work. But, he is no longer there. Three months is just too long to go without a Director.

You don't need to reply; I am just stating my position; that I think it is hurting the program, and I know it is hurting the administration. Mr. HOSMER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. ASPINALL. I'll be glad to.

Mr. HOSMER. I want to say for the record that during the previous administration I was making similar declarations about that administration.

Mr. ASPINALL. You are exactly right. I was with my colleague from California at that time.

STATEMENT OF J. W. O'MEARA, ACTING DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SALINE WATER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

Mr. O'MEARA. Mr. Chairman, we are convinced that continued progress toward competitive desalted water can be achieved. I think we are at a point in the program now where we are prepared to make a for