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opportunities, hence characteristic of dryland agriculture in the High Plains. A second approach was an assessment of recent trends in counties before their experiencing significant declines in irrigation and after such declines. Both approaches proposed drawing only upon available secondary data sources for all indi- cators and measurements and the comparative analysis. No primary field work was proposed. Neither approach was found to be workable on closer examina- tion of data on the study area counties. The "with-and-without" approach to irrigated v. nonirrigated agricultural development was found wanting for two reasons. First, no county, area or group of counties which would meet the comparison criteria could be iden- tified of sufficient size for meaningful impact analysis. Second, and more important, no adjacent or nearby counties or areas could be identified of sufficient similarity except for availability or lack of irrigation water for a precise isolation of the impacts of that difference only. There were contiguous areas to be found, of course, with and without groundwater, but always there were enough other differences with pronounced influences on economic/social/ demographic health and welfare to significantly cloud the impacts of irrigated crop production only. These differences included soil quality, terrain characteristics, natural precipitation, oil and gas production, and prior development factors. A few reason- ably similar areas were identified (except for water), but they were so small that secondary data were unavailable, ; .e., below county level, hence comparative measurement was impractical. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I . - Arthur D IJttle Inc I I I II-2