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<br />. <br /> <br />0011J6 <br /> <br />Dr aft - 9/ 8 1 <br /> <br />put new acreage into production. As an iiiustration, the total <br />amount of municipal return flow that might be added to the Platte <br /> <br />River system and therefore might theoretically be made available <br /> <br />for agrlcultural depletion is 100,000 acre-feet per year by the <br />?, <br />year 2000. However, the actual amount of water available for <br /> <br />agricultural consumption at the right times would be considerable <br />less than this. Thus no expansion of agricultural acreage would <br />be likely to result from these supplies. <br />Some expansion of irrigated agriculture may be possible as <br />the result of the construction of projects already planned by the <br />federal government. Two different levels of future project con- <br />struction are outlined below. These are used as the basis for <br />making medium and high projections about the potential for expan- <br />sion of Irrigated acreage in the state by the year .2000. The <br />delays involved with project planning and construction make the <br />formulation of an interim 1990 scenario irrelevant for our pur- <br />poses. The "likely" or "low" scenario, based on projects cur- <br />rently under construction, has been discussed in Chapter 5. As a <br /> <br /> <br />point of reference Table 1, below, presents data about all major <br /> <br /> <br />authorized federal projects. Table 2 shows additional water that <br /> <br /> <br />would be supplied to agriculture in each region under all three <br /> <br /> <br />scenarios. A description of the medium and high estimates fol- <br /> <br />lows Table 2. <br /> <br />The Medium Projection <br /> <br /> <br />Some, but not all, of the author ized projects (other than <br /> <br /> <br />those currently under construction) could be bulit by the year <br /> <br />3 <br />