Appraisal Report Central Arizona Project

Document: "Appraisal Report Central Arizona Project-Chapter V", January 1962, page 58Another is the continuance and improvement of such public institutions as schools, hospitals, churches, and libraries. In an area of ground-water overdraft such as the Central Service Zone, the intangibles are of major importance, since overdraft areas are particularly susceptible to reductions in living standards and public service values as water supplies become exhausted. The maintenance, alone, of existing living standards and present public service values would constitute a considerable intangible benefit to the project area. Likewise, many other general and public benefits would result from the stabilization and prevention of retrenchment that would otherwise occur in the Central Arizona area if additional water supply is not obtained. Municipal and industrial benefits--Municipal and industrial benefits are those which would result from the provision of a supplemental water supply of 312,000 acre-feet annually to the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas. A true measure of these benefits is pracitically impossible to evaluate in monetary terms. The benefits associated with this aspect of the water service to be provided by the project for the purpose of this study were assumed to equal the alternative single-purpose cost of providing a similar quantity of municipal and industrial water to the areas of use. The average annual equivalent of this cost was computed to be $7,624,000 and this is the assumed value of these benefits. Fish and wildlife benefits--The construction and operation of the Central Arizona Project features would affect the fish and wildlife values of the project area in many ways. The nature of some of these effects is described briefly in the following paragraphs. The fish and wildlife values of existing streams would be enhanced 58Epson Perfection 4870 Photo, 400 dpi, 8 bit, 1,084,859 byte