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, .. l;;~C Water Resources Council, New Criteria for Evaluating Projeds The Water Resources Council maintains a continuous study of the nation's water sup- plies and water requirements, reviews exist- ing policies and programs to meet such requirements, and makes recommendations to the President on those policies and pro- grams, The Board's 1970 Annual Report described the actions taken by the Council and a special task force to establish a uniform procedure for evaluating water resources projects. Throughout most of 1971, meetings continued between the Council and the Office of Management and Budget to resolve differences. Finally, on December 21, 1971, the Water Resources Council published in the Federal Register "Proposed Principles and Standards for Planning Water and Related Land Resources". The proposed principles and standards call for evaluating future water projects on the basis of two main "accounts": national eco- nomic development and quality of the envi- ronment, A third account, regional development, would also be considered upon specific direction by Congress. The proposed criteria requires alternatives and tradeoffs to be developed, considered, and analyzed, One of the key items is the proposal to establish the opportunity cost concept as the basis for determining the discount rate to be used in evaluating projects. The initial rate would be 7 percent during the next 5 years. This compares with the current rate of 5% percent, The Council requested written comments on the new criteria by March 31, 1972. Type I, Comprehensive Framework Studies Under the direction of the Water Re- sources Council, state and federal agencies continued their efforts on the Comprehen- sive Framework Study of Water and Related Land Resources (Type I). These studies, re- ferred to as "Comprehensive", "Frame- work", or "Type I", are a reconnaissance type of survey of the land and water re- sources and needs of specific regions of the United States. The Water Resources Council delegated to the Pacific Southwest Inter-Agency Com- mittee (PSIAC) overall direction of the stud- ies for those regions shown on Plate 10. The Colorado River Board has represented Cali- fornia on the Lower Colorado Region Frame- work Studies since they were initiated in 1967. Following is a summary of the Board's major activities during 1971. Most of the Board's previous comments on drafts of the regional reports had been incor- porated into the final reports. At the request of California's PSIAC member, Director of Water Resources William R. Gianelli, the Board coordinated comments of California agencies, together with its own comments, on the final Framework Study appendixes and reports for the Upper Colorado and Lower Colorado Regions, California's offi- cial comments on the final Lower Colorado Region Framework Study were transmitted to PSIAC by Director Gianelli's letter of De- cember 13, 1971. 39