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<br />t:: <br />i- 3 \:J <br /> <br />Outstanding among the potential irrigation projects listed in the Report <br />is the Colorado River-Central Arizona project, involving an estimated construc- <br />tion cost of $462,900,000, which alone is greater than the costs of all other <br />irrigation projects in all seven States of the Colorado River Basin (that <br />together total $302,845,000). It contemplates diversions of Colorado River <br />water from the potential :Bridge Can;yon reservoir, through a tunnel 80-miles <br />long to Big Sandy River, a tributary of the W11liaIDB River, and thence via a <br />canal 270'"lll11es long to Salt River, and includes 8-units in the Gila River <br />Basin, each with canal and reservoir facilities, to serve 107,000 acres of <br />nw land and provide supplemental supplies for about 593,000 acres. Unit <br />costs of the project are e'luivalent to about $4,300 per acre of new land, or <br />$660 per acre of land benefited, and to about $290 per acre foot of water to <br />be diverted from the Coloxado River. <br /> <br />By reason of the distances to which the water would be conveyed, the <br />opportunities for rediversion and loss of return flows, and the excessive <br />channel losses known to exist in the Gila River between Central Arizona and <br />its mouth in the Colorado River near the Mexican border, the Colorado River- <br />Central Arizona project is similar in its effects to so-called export diver- <br />sions in the Upper Basin for use outside the natural basin, and is not unlike <br />those to the basin of BaHon Sea and to Pacific Coast drainages in southern <br />California. All of these in the Lower Basin should be so classified and <br />separately summarized in the Report, in the same manner in which similar <br />projects are treated in the Upper Basin, <br /> <br />12. POTENTIAL EXPORT DIVERSIONS. <br /> <br />Much of the summary data of the Report, cooeernin{! potential export <br />Clivers:lone from the Upper Basin, must be revised. Estimated diversion <br />'luantities shown as averages for drought-cycle (1931-1940) conditions should <br />be shown also, if not exclusively, for normal conditions. All projects for <br />diverting water from one tributary to another, and from one division to <br />another, within the natural basin, should be excluded from the depletion and <br />cost summaries of export diversion projects. This mayor may not rB'luire <br />revisions in the depletions and cost summaries of potential irrigation <br />projects. In several instances the potential export diversion projects are <br />charged to the wrong State. <br /> <br />(17) <br />