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1936 more property has been hazarded to flood damage, The objective of this study was to determine the nature of the increase in flood plain use that has occurred at specific locations. Urban areas were selected for study because they account for a high and increasing proportion of flood losses, because they are more compact in extent than the rural areas, and because they were considered to be more susceptible to change. The program, within the limitations of the funds and facilities available, was necessarily exploratory. It was based on analysis of seventeen urban areas of 10,000 population or more, located in flood plains, and selected so as to represent a wide variety in types of situations. In each case the flood plain and its present uses were mapped, changes in number of struc- tures since 1936 were estimated, and representative citizens and public officials were interviewed. The areas studied were: Albuquerque, New l\:Iexico; Augusta, Georgia; Binghamton, New York; Boulder, Colorado; Carnegie, Pennsylvania; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; East St. Louis, Illinois; Kansas City in Kansas and in l\'Iissouri; Los Angeles (Pico-Rivera), California; Lowell, l\:lassachusetts; Portland, Oregon; Streator, Illinois; Wabash, Indiana; \Vaterbury, Connecticut; and \Vheeling, West Virginia. The research for the program has now been completed. Though still tentative and open to re,,'ision in detail, a preliminary report sholVs quite clearly that large public expenditures on flood protection works since 1936 have not been accompanied by commensurate decreases in flood losses. In all of the urban areas the group examined, there was a net increase in number of structures in the flood plain between 1936 and 1957; this increase occurred even in cities which declined in total population during the same period. Occupance of the urban flood plains as a whole, they deduce, probably has increased at least 30 per cent since the Flood Control Act was passed. Moreover, the report concludes that the increase in potential average annual flood loss in urban areas is, disturbingly, not too far behind the rate of prevention by construction. - A growing shortage of water in the semiarid parts of the country, notably the Southwest, raises a troubling question. Can economic growth of a kind necessary to support the sharply increasing population of such regions be easily sustained? To help answer this question a study was undertaken under a 1956 grant, in which a committee composed of econo- mists, geologists, biologists, and engineers from the University of New .i\'Iexico, the New lHexico College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, the New Mexico School of :l\1ines, and the New Mexico State Government attempted to show how different patterns of water use might affect a particular economic entity. The assumption was that the results obtained from study of a selected area might be extended with appropriate modi- fications to broader regions of generally similar type. , l 15