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. I I I' I I I .. I I I I I I J I I , I c::) '-::J .... '.') N '""" " Most estimates of future demands for water and wat('r- related activities have been based 011 a single projpetion of the important variables affecting water requirements. Future water demands will depend, however, on a numb,,!' of variables, including: (1) population, (2) the rate of national income growth. (3) per capita energy consumptioll, (4) factors affecting demands for food and fiber for domestic use and for export, . . ., (5) government programs dealing with resource development and distri- bution, such as environmental protection gonls and crop price support programs, (6) tile rate of technological change, (7) recreational water uses, and (8) the price of water to the various users. Any attempt to anticipate and identify future water resource problems should conside'r all of these and other factors which will in- fluence water demands. It is difficult, if not impossible, to attach values to or make a single 'best' estimate for many of these variables 50, 30, 20, or even 10 years in the future, and it is impossible to assign a single value or 'best' estimate to these same variables at some future , time period. Therefore, in formulating national water policy the Nation should not be bound by any particular projection or forecast of the future. Rather, the probll'ms of meeting future water requirements should be investigated in terms of a range of possible outcomes or alternative futures. " (Emphasis added.) Analysis indicates that many of the major recommendations in the NWC's Final Report of June 1973, indeed have crystallized into firm national policy. 2. Reanalysis and Strengthening of Socioeconomic Projections. The staff believes that socioeconomic projections, especially the population projection, presented on pages 76- 78 of the captioned draft Assessment Report, should be reexamined in the light of the data released by the Bureau of the Census on or about December 11, 1975, regarding U. S. population shifts during the past five years. (See the Census Bureau's publication Series P-25, No. 615, "Population Estimates and Projections"). The gradual but massive shift of the American population nway from the industrialized North and toward the South and West, documented by the 1970 census, has accelerated greatly in the last five years. Some of the eight states in the Arkansas- White- Red River Basins grew at rates which are far greater than the national average population growth rate of 4.8 percent: 179