WMOD00414

• Title: Water and Choice in the Colorado River Basin
• Date: 5/1/1968
• Weather Modification - Doc Type: Report

CHAPTER ONE

Alternatives in
Water
Management

In the United States a growing population, increasing affluence, and expanding
industry have put new demands on water resources. Aside from its funda-
mental role in the maintenance of human life, water has been regarded as a
resource to be exploited primarily for economi(; gain. This is no longer true.
To national economic efficiency and the control of nature for the benefit of
man, long the dominant aims of large-scale water development, has been
added a strong concern for regional economic growth, political equity, and
environmental quality.
Because the aims, new and old, of water development are perceived differ-
ently and pursued with different intensity by diifferent sectors of society, and
because the technological alternatives for achieving these aims continue to
multiply, water management today is much more complex and difficult than
it once was.
Sound water management depends on thoughtful planning in response to
public aims. Wise planning, in the face of the usual time span of 30-50 years
between conception and fulfillment of a major water-resource development,
requires improved means of predicting conditions and consequences of
particular courses of action; more accurate forecasting of technological ad-
vances; and sedulous cultivation of methods for considering nonmarket costs
and benefits, for formulating and comparing alternative measures, and for
maintaining flexibility for future choice. Good planning also requires recog-
nition of the fact that water-resources development is but one of many tools
that may be available to achieve the goals of re~~ional economic growth.
The theme of the Committee on Water's first report, Alternatives in Water
Management (National Academy of Sciences 1966c), that comparison of
many alternative actions is essential to improved water development, may have

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