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In C"") ..-4 ~ Comment 13: The cost of purchasing lands, especially if .-; condemnation is used, would exceed the costs of lining the canal ~) with concrete. Resoonse 13: Reclamation hopes to avoid condemnation, but if it is necessary the costs of land acquisition have been estimated as described above, and the increased costs of concrete lining still exceed the annualized, long term costs of the modified Ml alternative. Anticipated costs of condemnation were factored into the estimated costs of lining alternatives and would not vary among alternatives. Comment 14: The ROW needed as both permanent fee land for membrane lining and as temporary construction ROW for all lining alternatives seems excessive. The acreages cited in the text do not agree with the tables, and acreages between tables conflict with each other. Resoonse 14: Standard Reclamation practice would have utilized 45 feet of additional, fee land acquisition and ROW. Reclamation has revised, consolidated and reviewed to eliminate acreage inconsistencies. Tables 2 and 3 have been developed to identify minimum land requirements which would be sought where landowners are unwilling to sell fee land or temporary ROW for the lining of Reach 1. Reclamation has responded to the requests to minimize the use of private lands by evaluating the design for the proposed membrane lining to make the best use of the existing U.S. land in all of the alternatives. The resulting Ml alternative, including the modification to adjust the design centerline 10 feet south wherever possible to make better use of the existing land, reduces the required width of additional fee land by 66 percent to 15 feet. The more expensive Alternatives M4 and Modified C2, and Cl are designed to avoid fee land acquisition completely. In addition, the canal designs have been modified for short stretches to minimize impacts to high value lands. Widths requested for these temporary ROWs are necessary to allow movement of construction equipment. Any further reduction would significantly increase construction costs. During construction of some of the salinity features in the west end of the Grand Valley, Reclamation tried to reduce the temporary ROW requirements. When the construction began, the contractor found the ROW to be too restrictive and requested that Reclamation obtain additional land. Where there are high value crops or other improvements, Reclamation may be able to reduce temporary ROW requirements even further for short stretches of the canal. Comment 15: Temporary construction rights-of-way should avoid all permanent crops, especially fruit trees and grape vines. Resoonse 15: All of the alternatives have been modified to reduce both temporary ROWand fee land requirements around permanent crops 46