Cite as: 533 U. S. 1 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
estimate of crop losses is too high. The favorable economics of drilling wells may not have been understood at the time. Quality information regarding costs and returns was not readily available. [211 Tr.] 31. Some farmers, for reasons of age or otherwise, may not have wanted to go into long-term debt. Some farmers may not have had the available capital, or the credit to borrow. Many farmers were 'cash poor.' Id. at 32. Some farmers may have been averse to risk. Some farmers may have been tenants, and the landlord may not have been willing to undertake the necessary investment. Some farms may have been small in terms of total acreage, or the acreage spread out over space, so that it was not feasible or practical to consider a well investment. [208 Tr.] 37-39. Capital for well investments, with three to ten year repayment periods, was less available than for long-term investments. [211 Tr.] 32." Third Report 60-61.
We agree with the Special Master that accepting Colorado's argument requires a good deal of speculation, not only about the comparative advantages of wells as opposed to irrigation, but also about the ability of the farmers fully to understand or to implement different choices without the benefit of expert hindsight. Given Colorado's inability to mount an effective challenge to Kansas' experts on their own terms and its complete failure to provide a plausible alternative estimate of the crop damage that resulted from its violations of the Compact, we conclude that its attack on Kansas' conclusions is unpersuasive.8
8 We also agree with the Special Master's decision to disregard the Colorado expert's comparison of the numbers produced by Kansas' model with numbers drawn from the literature on the various crops planted on the affected farmland. As Colorado admits, see Brief for Colorado 46, the water values in the literature were not based on "a 'short-short run' situation, that is, an intra-seasonal transaction in which no capital costs were involved, and only additional harvesting and irrigation costs would
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