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<br />Arizona's Growth - Eldridge p. 5 <br /> <br />N <br />...... <br />0) <br />CD <br /> <br />compact written by the basin states within the next decade -- the salinity <br />control compact. But this still isn't the end of the question. The states <br />wi 11 want to recover thei r new costs for desalinization programs from the pro- <br />jects responsible for making them necessary. There is precious little room in <br />state budgets to cover new costs by general revenues. How do we internalize <br />the costs of water use for individual water projects? We haven't been doing <br />this; rather, the costs of water use, in terms of salt loading, have been ex- <br />ternalized for years, or passed on downstream in our return flows. I'm not <br />sure that we know how equitably and efficiently to assign the proportionate <br />cost of basin-wide salinity control to each individual water development or <br />diversion. We'll have to face this question again in item 6 that follows. <br /> <br />3. We don't know the effects of climbing energy costs on irrigated agri- <br />culture. We are having the same problem with pumping costs in Colorado -- in <br />the Ogallala Aquifer area -- that you are having here in Arizona. The amount <br />of electricity needed to pYllp water out of the ground goes up as the water table <br />goes down, and the prices for the power are themselves going up and up. Per acre <br />costs of irrigating with groundwater have doubled and tripled, and the end is <br />not in sight. Water is not just a supply issue in the West. but an economic- <br />energy cost issue as well. Two-thirds of Arizona's agricultural energy budget <br />now goes to pYllping, and the proportion of energy costs to gross revenues, and <br />ultimate profitability, has many agricultural economists very worried, not to <br />mention the farmers who are having to pay the energy bills. What this negative <br />influence will do to irrigated agriculture in the West over the next decades is <br />not known. If all farmers bringing products to the market had the same water- <br />energy costs, i~ wouldn't be so much of a problem, but they don't. Regions of <br />the country with naturally abundant water allow farmers there to get by without <br />such costs; farmers in arid regions with established federal subsidies for <br />their water supplies also get by with very low water costs. But as water supply <br />costs rise for certain farms, their products have to bring higher prices, and <br />can't compete well in national markets. We in the semi-arid Sun Belt where popu- <br />lation growth will be large during the next 20 years may not see a concomitant <br />growth in our region's agricultural sector. <br /> <br />4. We don't know the implications of the Supreme Court decision on Sporhase <br />v. Nebraska. This case tested the right of a farmer to take water pumped from <br />a Nebraska well across the state line for use irrigating land in Colorado. The <br />Nebraska authority to forbid this, on the grounds that Colorado has no recipro- <br />city agreement with Nebraska, was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court because the <br />