OCR Text |
Show a full crop on that land, and consign 10 acres to idleness. The 73,000 acres referred to are the aggregate of all the parcels of land which individual farmers are forced to consign to idleness in order to adjust their cultivated acreages to their short water supply. It follows that these lands will not, and cannot be treated as if they will receive the whole of their water supply from that made available by the central Arizona project. In operation, if the project is built, the individual farmer spoken of in the preceding paragraph who owns basic water entitlements for the whole of his farm would spread his basic water supply over all of his land and purchase as much project water as would round out a full supply. Each acre, in other words, will receive both new water and water from the supply to which the farmer is presently entitled. It must be noted, moreover, that the assumption with respect to these lands receiving a wholly new water supply is incompatible with the process by which the Bureau of Reclamation computed the irrigation repayment capacity of the project. That analysis is based upon the 73,000 acres having, in common with all project lands, a base water supply available at such cost that high-cost supplemental water can be justified. It is entirely probable that no lands in the area could afford a full water supply from the project. Since the assumptions on which the question appears to be predicated are, as has been pointed out, untenable, it would be inappropriate to attribute any specific proportion of the project water supply or construction cost to these 73,000 acres. 5. Question. How are construction costs of the project to be repaid? |