A progress report on the Malaga Bend Experimental Salinity Alleviation Project, Eddy County, New Mexico

At Malaga Bend on the Pecos River in Eddy County, New Mexico, a brine aquifer about 1950 feet below the stream channel has a pressure head about 10 feet above the river bed. This aquifer normally discharges about 430 tons of dissolved minerals daily into the river of which about 370 tons was sodium chloride.

The Malaga Bend Experimental Salinity Alleviation Project, authorized by the U.S. Congress in 1958, Public Law 85-333,is an attempt to determine if the salinity content of the Pecos River below Malaga Bend can be decreased by reducing the inflow of saline water into the river at Malaga Bend by pumping from the brine aquifer.

Construction for the project was supervised by the Bureau of Reclamation, and the collection of data and its interpretation were the responsibility cooperatively of the U. S. Geological Survey and the Pecos River Commission.