14 MULTIPLE PURPOSE RIVER DEVELOPMENT 



powers in a political institution. We then decide that the alter- 

 native is to rely on the intervention of representative government 

 in a democracy, a decision which mirrors the tradition in this 

 country's water resource development activities. A public body, 

 however, has access to revenues arising out of its coercive powers 

 to tax. Therefore, in Chapter IV, we analyze the social cost of 

 tax-raised revenue to round out our efficiency criteria. 



Chapters II through IV, dealing predominantly with the nature 

 of the economic gains and costs of multiple purpose river basin 

 development, provide the basis for analyzing a number of cases 

 which add to our understanding of efficient ways of developing 

 multiple purpose projects. Chapter V considers some significant 

 problems which arise from circumstances akin to those represented 

 by the development alternatives for Hells Canyon on the Snake 

 River. In Chapter VI, we take up the Alabama-Coosa River devel- 

 opment — where problems of the sort arising in the Hells Canyon 

 case are not present owing to certain differences in economic mag- 

 nitudes, but where issues of equity intrude strongly in spite of our 

 main preoccupation with questions of efficiency. 



Next, we look into the income redistributive consequences when 

 different approaches promising relatively equal efficiency are con- 

 sidered. That is, we take the case of a hypothetical site in the 

 Willamette River Basin where the amount of economic gains and 

 costs will be approximately equal as among alternative approaches 

 to the development of the site. The distribution of the gains and 

 costs, however, will differ significantly depending upon which of 

 several alternatives is assumed to be adopted. In Chapter VII, we 

 describe the distribution of costs in a particular case wherein 

 differences in economic efficiency appear to be of negligible signi- 

 ficance. In Chapter VIII, we treat similarly the distribution of 

 gains. 



Finally, in the concluding chapter, we present the principal 

 points established in the course of our investigation, and suggest 

 their implications for policy in the water resources field. 



