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ECONOMIC EFFECTS supply of ground water.' Where ground water is used faster than it can be replenished, the farmers must drill increasingly deeper wells. At some point, the cost of pumping eats away the profit on their crops, and they "need" surface water supply projects. Other projects are urged because land is available that could grow some kind of crop if irrigated. However, most of the land that has not yet been irrigated is good only for feed grains for livestock. No one today is short of water in the Colorado River Basin. If we could freeze the situation at the present level of develop- ment, we could forget about future shortages. However, there are many pressures for development There is land in the Upper Basin that could be irrigated to grow feed grains for livestock. There are vast oil shale deposits in Colorado and Wyoming that could be mined and processed to yield petroleum products, although they are not currently economical. There are large coal deposits in the Four Corners region of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico that could be strip mined. These deposits could fuel huge electrical power generat~ ing plants that supply the large metropolitan areas of the Southwest, they could provide a source of low sulfur coal for generating electrical power throughout the country, and they could be used to manufacture synthetic natural gas. (Some strip mining has already begun.) There are growing urban areas and agricultural areas in eastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming, central Utah, and central New Mexico that are becoming dependent on water supplies from the Upper Basin. There are agricultural and urban areas in central Arizona that are dependent upon a ground water supply with a falling water level. The extent of future water shortages in the basin depend upon two factors: the existing supply, and the claims that can be made upon it by these pressures for development. SNOWPACK, CLOUD-SEEDING, AND THE COLORADO RIVER The economic impact of WOSA on transportation falls into several categories. An increase in snowfall hours will raise yearly snow removal and ice control costs, increase traffic delays and travel time, and make highway accidents more probable. WOSA will not affect high-altitude military or commercial air operations over the target area, since clouds suitable for seeding are well below altitudes that would interfere with flight opera- tions. Falling snow will affect local landings and take-offs by reducing visibility at the few airports in the target area. (Most airports depend on county or city road crews for snow removal once the snow has fallen.) Throughout the western United States, all sorts of projects are in various stages of development-feasibility analysis, planning, construction, and operation-to move water from where it is available to locations where it is "needed" for municipal, in- dustrial, and agricultural uses. It takes many years to carry a water supply project from the drawing board to the irrigation ditches. Water needs, therefore, are necessarily based upon some kind of projection of the future. However, even the most reasonable projections often become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we are planning water projects for Los Angeles for the year 2000, for example, we may take the projected growth rate, multiply by present water use per person, and come up with an estimate. Then we begin planning facilities to get that water to Los Angeles in time. If Los Angeles doesn't run out of air or power first, it may grow to require the amount of water that was projected. In the arid west, irrigated agriculture consumes most of the available water supply. Expansion of agriculture depends al- most completely upon the availability of water. Therefore, the future water needs for agriculture are largely determined by the policies that make water available in a given location. In some areas, agriculture has become established because of an existing Water Requirements m I..... Ii ;; 47 ti' 46