OCR Text |
Show of the ( joint) marginal value of water confirm what is already suspected by those familiar with water problems. The marginal income value of water to the state is lowest for the Agricultural sectors. What is of far greater importance, however, is not so much this confirmation, but the relative values of these marginals for the different industry sectors. These ranks provide a basis for forming priorities for future water demands, given our assumptions concerning the marginal cost of supplying water to alternative uses. The estimates in Table 6 of the increase in the demand for water intake show that the total state- wide increase in demand for water is projected to be about 1,455,000 acre feet. The Crops sector is expected to require about 1,203,000 acre feet of this amount. This large share is due not so much to the direct increase in the Final Demand for Crops, but to the direct increase in the Final demand for commodities which are ultimately strongly linked to the output of the Crops sector. The remaining increase, some 252,000 acre feet, will be required by the nonagricultural sectors. The most significant sectors in this group were indicated before. The estimates in Table 7 revealed a similar picture. Again, the relative magnitudes of these projected increases in demand for water intake should provide a basis for forming priorities on the relative needs and scarcity of water. The estimates in Tables 4 and 6 provide, therefore, a basis for forming a list of priorities on the relative marginal value of alternative uses of water and on the relative needs and scarcity of water. The final allocative decision concerning the use of water would emerge from a set of information which included these priorities as a subset. Much of the validity of our results on 59 |