ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines conceptual foundation for public policy which helps to identify areas where research should be able to improve the planning process. An approach utilizing models of the general type, preferably programmed for machine solution, could provide significantly improved information to aid the social decision-making process. This would require that public policy endeavor to produce a result similar to that of the basin-wide firm, that it strives to devise plans and policies which will lead to equalization in all directions of the marginal costs associated with waste disposal. Public policy constraints can be viewed as requirements set on certain results which constrains the effort devoted to the attainment of others. The decision model framework itself is flexible enough to incorporate any constraints public policy wishes to impose upon the achievement of efficiency with respect to measurable pollution costs. The rise in value of land brought under irrigation is a measure of the discounted net return to an irrigation project.
