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JI" "A more widely dispersed population in the future promises the soundest, most economical and longest lasting solution to the problems of city compaction, such as traffic congestion, pollution, slums., crime and civil defense. At the same time, a broader distribution of population will benefit people in small cities, towns, viliages and on farms." The Task Force said further: "There should be a substantial acceleration in the development of land and water resources where lagging development in natural resources is impeding the growth of rural America." Adoption of the opportunity cost discount rate would run contrary to this recommendation of the president's Task Force. If the federal water resources development program must continue to satiSfy the favorable benefit-cost ratio criterion while most federal programs do not, the steeply increased discount rate would bring about a serious imbalance in federal investment for social and economic objectives. While an analogy could be drawn with many of our social programs, the one that comes to mind first in this context is the federal commitment to expenditures of $2 bil- lion annually for the construction of sewage treatment plants. One cannot reasonably question the need for improved sewage treat- ment, but if the opportunity cost discount rate is adopted for water supply projects, we may have an extremely well polished but grossly insufficient water supply. The Water Resources Council proposal states (Paragraph 0.3, page 24167): "Less capital intensive projects, scaled mainly to meet near-term needs, will result in relatively more efficient use of federal and non federal invest- ment toward meeting increasing critical water needs, given current budgetary constraints." Considering that the fiscal year 1972 budget provides about -5-