DEPARTMENT of the INTERIOR BUREAU OF RECLAMATION news release Holloway (303) 234-4695 Gillespie (303) 234-4180 For Release April 26, 1982 INTERIOR AND W. R. GRACE & COMPANY TO STUDY USING COLORADO RIVER BASIN SALTY The Department of the Interior said today it will help W. R. Grace & Company and other interests determine the possibility of using unwanted salty waters from the Upper Colorado River Basin to transport plastic "baggies" of coal to the West Coast. Donald Paul Hodel, Under Secretary of the Interior, said a proposal from W. R. Grace to explore the feasibility of an aquatrain a saline water pipeline carrying plastic capsules of dry, clean coal "appears to offer significant potential." - "If a technology using these concepts could be proven economically sound, it would help control the damaging salt content of the Colorado River, benefit the Nation and the 15 million users of the Colorado's water, and put an unwanted product saline water to good use," Hodel said. - Robert N. Broadbent, Commissioner of Reclamation, said the proposal evolved from a Reclamation report last September that suggested alternative uses of the Colorado River Basin's saline waters. "The proposed aquatrain, using saline water as a medium, looks promising," Broadbent said. "It's the type of project -- a cooperative program among Federal, State, and industrial interests we look for." - In a letter to Ira E. McKeever, Jr., President of Grace's Western Mining Division, Hodel said Reclamation will take the lead Interior role in preparing for a feasibility study and will work with the Bureau of Land Management, Interior's legal staffs, and with other Federal, State, and industrial interests. Reclamation and Grace will contact utilities, transportation companies, and other coal development interests to develop a broader joint venture. "That initial phase will include development of a plan of study and Federal/ non-Federal financial arrangements for feasibility and environmental analyses of the proposal," Hodel said. He said the Department of the Inter or now has authority to prepare for feasibility studies and that pending legislation (S. 2202) would enable the agency to participate in the study. 97-082 0-82--59 (more) In the project, W. R. Grace & Company will assume the lead role for developing the innovative coal transport technology and formation of a consortium of private interests for financing the non-Federal share, Hodel said. The Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Forum, composed of representatives appointed by the Governors of the seven Easin States (Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming), will address "water rights issues and other related concepts that are a matter of State rather than Federal jurisdiction," Hodel said. The Grace proposal was presented to Hodel, Reclamation, and other Interior representatives during a meeting in Washington, D.C., on March 26. As proposed by Grace, the aquatrain would consist of a 36-inch pipeline stretching from near Axial, Colorado, to the California Pacific Coast, about 1,200 miles in distance. The burnable, plastic capsules 30 inches by 15 feet in size would carry between 3 and 4 tons of coal each. Up to 15 million tons of coal mined and cleaned in Colorado and Utah would feed the pipeline annually. - About 12,000 acre-feet of fresh water, owned by W. R. Grace & Company, would be used to transport the coal from Axial to near Rifle, Colorado. There the fresh water would be replaced by salt-laden water -- about half the salinity of sea water taken from Colorado's Glenwood and Dotsero Springs for the rest of the journey. The Glenwood and Dotsero Springs are major sources of saline water which feed into the Colorado River. Grace said it believes the project would remove an estimated 250,000 tons of salt per year from the Colorado River and help control a major source of salt pollution. Revised 11-24-81 SUBJECT: CONCEPT PAPER A pipeline unique to the Colorado River drainage area for transporting coal contained in disposable plastic capsules and thus completely separated from the saline water medium used to obtain neutral buoyancy of the coal container. The Salinity Control Forum has grappled for many years with the problems of excessive total dissolved solids in the Colorado River, and we in the coal industry have been struggling to remain competitive in the face of rapidly escalating rail rates. I would like to offer you an idea that we at W. R. Grace & Co. are working on that could partially solve both of these problems. An unusual opportunity exists in the Colorado River basin for transporting coal via pipeline to the Pacific Coast and in the process disposing of some of the Colorado River's total dissolved solids problem. The project envisions the cooperation of Federal, State, local, public, and industrial entities to remove about 10% of the salts currently entering the Colorado River and to pass this saline water through a pipeline to the Pacific Ocean. We feel the capital investment for the pipeline could be obtained from private sources based on federal payments for removal of salts from the Colorado River and transportation fees for encapsulated coal to market. A 36-inch diameter pipeline would be constructed from a point near Axial, Colorado, to a point yet to be ascertained on the California Pacific Coast, a distance of about 1,200 plus miles. Coal mined in Colorado and Utah would feed the pipeline with up to 20 million tons per year. Fresh water owned by |