primary and secondary students, an eight-fold increase in mental health caseloads, a 200% increase in the patient-doctor ratio, a 60% rise in crime, and deficits in almost all of the other municipal and county facilities that people rely upon to maintain acceptable life standards.10 With the failure of the public and private infrastructure to provide adequately for the new and old residents, labor turnover rates rose and productivity in both the basic and secondary sectors of the economy declined. The infusion of new basic economic activity has long been viewed as a lever to be used by communities to increase local employment, add to local income, reverse historic patterns of out-migration and declines in productive populations, and generally revitalize the character of the public and private infrastructure. However, as both the description of the relationship between economic activity and population change in export-base theory and the example of Sweetwater County make clear, the consequences of new basic economic activity are not always desirable. Whether the stimulus provided by new basic activity will have beneficial or detrimental effects is a function of the size of the stimulus relative to the assimilative capacity of the region. 3.2.2 An Export-Base Model of Employment and Population Change The establishment of rectenna sites in large, low-density areas creates the potential for adverse social and economic impacts of the type, if not the severity, experienced in Sweetwater County, since: • large land areas of low population density are likely to have low assimilative capacities; • the construction and operation of a rectenna represents new basic activity; and • the existence of a rectenna may attract additional basic industry, hence even greater secondary economic activity and population growth. Because the potential exists for adverse social and economic impacts to occur in areas hosting the new rectennae, forecasts of the likely employment and population effects among candidate sites should be projected and used as a criterion of acceptability in the final site selection process. The Social and Economic Assessment Model (SEAM) was recently developed by the Economics and Social Sciences Section in the Energy and Environmental Systems Division of Argonne National Laboratory. It employs the techniques
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