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<br />. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />~. <br /> <br />The preliminary estimate of 2001 end-of-year California agricultural consumptive use of <br />Colorado River water under the first three priorities and the sixth priority of the 1931 California <br />Seven Party Agreement is 3.852 maf. This estimate is based on the collective use through February <br />2001 by the Palo Verde Irrigation District (PVID), the Yuma Project Reservation Division (YPRD), <br />the Imperial Irrigation District (lID), and the Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD). Figure 1, <br />found at the end of this report, depicts the historicyrojected end-of-year agricultural use for the year. <br /> <br />Colorado River Ooerations <br /> <br />Fort Yuma Indian Reservation <br /> <br />I have included in the Board folder, for your information, correspondence that I have received <br />from Reclamation regarding a proposed development in Imperial County, located adjacent to the <br />westerly border of the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation. <br /> <br />A development company has proposed to develop 2,345 acres into a fully landscaped new <br />city housing approximately 22,000 residents and containing 550 acres of commercial and industrial <br />land. Water for development of the proposed site would come from groundwater located beneath <br />the site. The Fort Yuma Indian Tribe has raised a concern with Reclamation regarding the source <br />of water for the development aIid its impact on its senior water right. <br /> <br />Reclamation, in its response to the Tribe's letter, with which 1 concur, clearly points out that <br />the developer does not have a contract to pump ground water from beneath the proposed site, and <br />if the wells do pump Colorado River water, as preliminarily disclosed by the recently completed <br />work by the U.S. Geological Survey in identifying the "accounting surface" along the Lower <br />Colorado River, then the source of the developer's water would be the same as that from which the <br />Lower Colorado Water Supply Project is to obtain its water. <br /> <br />Lower Colorado River Accounting System (LCRAS) <br /> <br />Included in the Board folder is a copy of the agenda for the Third LCRAS Consultation <br />Meeting which was held in Henderson, Nevada on March 71h and 8th. Three staff representatives <br />from PVID, and one each from lID, MWD and the Board attended. <br /> <br />Reclamation is still investigating many of the technical features of LCRAS. Some of the <br />issues discussed at the meeting were: <br /> <br />- A recent study completed by Reclamation showed that, depending on where weather <br />stations are located, there was a significant difference in the estimated crop consumptive use. <br />Weather stations in Arizona overestimated potential crop water use by as much as 20% in some <br />months, with an overall annual overestimate by all Arizona stations of7% for the year. California <br />weather stations underestimated potential water use by 2%. The resolution of this problem requires <br />either finding proper sites for the weather stations, or applying numeric corrective constants to the <br />unrepresentati ve data. <br /> <br />- Review of crop coefficients (those factors multiplied by weather station data to obtain an <br />estimate ofa crop's water use) showed a need for change. For the 1999 report, a 7% drop in crop <br /> <br />2 <br />