San Diego (special) -- While congressional subcommittees debated bringing peace to the Middle East, a powerful congressman from San Diego County could close his eyes and remember the time his parents' farm was threatened by a war over water.

Rep. Ron Packard, R-Oceanside, spoke about his family's personal nightmare at a San Diego State University ceremony on Friday, June 2, at which the university's president and the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) signed a memorandum of agreement outlining a three-year, $3.9 million program to promote the use of alternative water sources in Israel, Jordan, Egypt and the Palestine Authority.

Saying he was raised on "a little irrigated farm up in Idaho, where water was our lifeblood for our big family," the nine-term congressman recalled that his father ordinarily "was a very mild-mannered, sweet, wonderful, gentle man that I just idolized.... "Only once in my entire growing up did I ever see him get angry, and it led to violence which was absolutely uncharacteristic of my father," Packard related to a room overflowing with celebrants now hushed by his reflective mood.

PEACE HAND--The hands of SDSU president Stephen Weber, left, and USAID administrator J. Brady Anderson sign a  memorandum of understanding for a $3.9-million program to  teach Middle Eastern farmers how to use saline and recycled  water for agricuture.

"He was led to violence because a neighbor had shut off, put a dam, in our irrigation ditch that cut off our water to our little farm," said Packard. "And that is quite replicated throughout the history of the (American) West. Major wars have occurred west of the Mississippi over water. It did happen on my little farm when I was growing up. I'll never forget it."

As chairman of the subcommittee on energy and water of the House Appropriations Committee, Packard is in the position to be a major force in the shaping of American policy on water resources. Over the last four years, he had shepherded through Congress an appropriation of $5 million a year, for five years, envisioning a consortium of nine Middle Eastern nations working together on water problems, and in so doing sowing the seeds of peace.

Though Packard's bills were enacted, so too were the bills of other members of Congress -- so many in fact, that the U.S. Agency for International Development simply didn't have enough money to fund all the programs Congress said it wanted. So, the agency trimmed here, cut there, and sometimes simply put bills on the shelf.  As a proposed program totaling $25 million was cut down to one for less than $4 million, the nine-nation consortium--which had included Morocco, Oman,

TEAM APPROACH--Key roles in developing SDSU's proposal for alternative water programs in the Middle East were played by, from left,Tim Hushen, SDSU Foundation director of program  management; SDSU President Stephen Weber; Frea Sledak,  interim general manger of the SDSU Foundation; USAID  Administrator J. Brady Anderson; Bonnie Stewart, SDSU  Foundation program manager for Middle East projects, and U.S. Rep. Ron Packard, (R-Oceanside).

Qatar, Tunisia and Turkey--was trimmed to four nations: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority.

Similarly, a wide range of projects which included combatting desertification of the Middle East, promoting use of alternative crops, and even developing a satellite tracking system to monitor water in the Middle East, was cut down to two objectives: promoting the use of saline water and recycled water in agriculture.

"Where you put your money is where your priorities are," said Packard. "You can give lip service to some program that you'd like to see or that somebody mentions, but if you don't put money there, it's really lip service. It's really rhetoric, and we have a lot of rhetoric in Washington. But the Appropriators are determining the priorities of this country by putting money where we think it should go. I'm very grateful that we felt that this was one of the priorities of spending of your tax dollars."

Packard, who previoasly announced that he would retire after this term, conceded the memorandum for $3.9 million was just a fraction of the intended $25 million. "It won't be to the level that we'd like because we're still on a very stringent budget," he said. "We've made a commitment--when I say 'we,' I mean the whole Congress--we've made a commitment to live with a balanced budget. Now we balanced the budget a year or two ago and we're going to absolutely stay on course. We're not going to spend money we do not have. We've done it in the past; we built up a huge national debt to the tune of almost $5.5 trillion. The fact is, we've got a huge debt because we lived on money that didn't belong to us..."

Dr. Stephen Weber, president of San Diego State University, emphasized the importance of changing water practices in the Middle East. "Today in the Middle East region, the agricultural sector is the major consumer of water, utilizing up to 80 percent of the available water," he said. "As water demand increases, as population increases, as the cost of obtaining additional water supplies grows more expensive, traditional agriculture practices need to be reevaluated."

CELEBRANTS--A room filled to capacity with San Diego State  University staff members, faculty and Hansen Institute board  members were on hand to withness and celebrate the signing  ceremony for a $3.9 million program to promote alternative water resources in the Middle East.

Saying that he too grew up on a farm, Weber acknowledged "you don't just change traditional practices overnight." 

"Using saline water or local recycled wastewater is an approach for improving the efficiency of water use in agriculture," he said. "This program will focus on expanding the use of recycled wastewater and saline water for agriculture through demonstration of farmers and trainers."

The San Diego State University Foundation's Hansen Institute for World Peace brought the parties from the Middle East together in an academic setting to develop peace-through-agriculture proposals. The International Arid Lands Consortium, a group of leading university researchers in arid land studies, provided technical expertise. And the Peres Center for Peace, formed by Israel's former Prime Minister (and presidential nominee) Shimon Peres helped acclimate the American academics to the overall context of Middle East peacemaking. Weber serves on the board of directors of the Peres Peace Center.

For Israel, the program is less about new ways to use water than it is about finding methods to promote and sustain regional peace. Israel pioneered the use of brackish water found under the Negev Desert to grow tomatoes and cantaloupes that are sweeter tasting than those grown in more temperate climates. Teaching its neighbors the secret behind "desert sweet" agriculture helps Israel to build non-adversarial relationships with Arab countries. J. Brady Anderson, the administrator of US AID, said

SIGNING CEREMONY--Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside),right, reads a copy of the memorandum of agreement that is being  signed by SDSU President Stephen Weber and USAID  Administrator J. Brady Anderson.

that in the Middle East, "water is a source of conflict in the region simply because social and economic progress is impossible without water.

"Yet, there are no new sources to be tapped," he said. "To get a sense of the scale of the problem, somebody told me, consider that one in 20 people on earth live in the Middle East and North Africa, yet they have access to less than one percent of the world's water."

The administrator, who formerly was U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania, cited some of the projects that USAID has funded to address the water problem in the Middle East.

"In Gaza City, storm water that used to flood homes is now stored in a reservoir for irrigation," he said. "In Amman, Jordan...rehabilitation of broken water mains and pumps across the city will give residents access to millions of gallons of water that's treated which used to simply leak into the ground. In Egypt, millions of city dwellers are connected to sewers for the first time ever, protecting not only their health but also the health of the aquatic and ecosystem." SDSU's Hansen Institute program is aimed at "reusing water sources such as wastewater and salty water that are currently useless or even dangerous for farmers, consumers, and the environment," Anderson said. "This

BEHIND THE SCENES--Bernard Lipinsky, left, and Harry Albers, respectively a board member and  executive director of SDSU's Hansen Institute for warld peace, were among those attending the June 2 signing ceremony at San Diego State University.

program can help make such water sources a valuable new resource."

Anderson said the work to develop water resources "is really a part of USAID's broader mission to help developing countries and countries in the Middle East to build the democratic and economic institutions people need in order to take advantage of economic opportunities and protect U.S. Interests.

"Really all our programs ultimately support that mission: disaster assistance, preventing sickness and disease, helping protect the world's environment, promoting sound economic policies."