302 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
communication requirements. Through the growth of industry and 
agriculture there arises a basic growth and a wider range of activities, 
thereby establishing a much broadened economy and culture. It is to 
the industrial and domestic water supply that converted saline water 
finds its first uses. 
It is generally accepted that water is worth what it can produce. 
However, the benefits that water can produce cannot always be meas- 
ured in terms of money. Although the crop or the manufactured 
product that water creates has a definite local monetary value, the 
indirect benefits in terms of improved living standards and a more 
abundant local and national economy, with resulting welfare and 
contentment of peoples themselves, comprise a wealth that can never 
be measured in dollars, rials, or rubles. 
As far as is known, the use of desalted water for irrigation is prac- 
ticed only to the extent of some subsistence and hydroponic farming. 
However, progress to date certainly justifies limited anticipation of 
some early agricultural uses without rigid equations of cash benefits to 
costs and some looking to the future when economic feasibility may be 
reached. For this purpose a preliminary study was made of irrigable 
areas in Texas and California [45] at various elevations and distances 
from the coast which need additional water and might be served 
directly or by exchange from converted sea water. This was done for 
California on a basin-by-basin basis as shown by plate 5. As one 
example, in basin No. 9 in California it was found that some 150,000 
acre-feet of new converted sea water could be used on irrigable soils 
below 500 feet elevation, after first making full use of all available 
fresh-water supplies in the entire basin. In the Jower Rio Grande 
Basin in Texas some 1,650,000 acre-feet could be used on the same basis. 
Similar information on areas bordering the eastern Mediterranean 
which might be reached with converted sea water could be compiled. 
Available topographic data indicate that there are more than 20 
million acres of land at elevations below 200 meters and within 100 
miles of the seacoast in the eastern Mediterranean countries of Greece, 
Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt. Additional extensive 
areas of arable land undoubtedly border sources of brackish waters. 
If use were made also of the valuable information on water deficiencies 
and surpluses of southeast Asia being prepared for this committee 
in the World Climatic Atlas by the Laboratory of Climatology of 
Centerton, N.J., together with available data on arable soils in the 
area, determination could be made of the location and extent of arable 
lands within these vast areas which could become productive with con- 
verted saline waters. It is urged that such studies be undertaken. 
The foregoing has to do with irrigation only, but we should not be 
unmindful that more than three-fourths of the people in the world 
