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million acre-feet. As all Colorado River water users, they must put their water to "reasonable and beneficial use" within defined boundaries of their service area. They can't waste water and water they don't need flows to the next priority. California, which led the battle for construction of Hoover Dam, was soon using more than its basic entitlement and that practice continues today as other states along the river have not yet devel- oped their full supplies. This condition is rapidly changing in the lower basin, how- ever, with the completion of the Central Arizona Project, rapid growth in Nevada, and California's failure to complete the State Water Project which was supposed to replace water lost to Arizona when its project was completed. Coachella Valley Water District is the last agricultural user on the system in California. It must be content with what remains of the 3.85 million acre-feet after higher-priority users finish putting water to "reasonable and beneficial use" within their service areas. During the last two decades, the district's Colorado River water use has actually been dropping, partially because farmers con- verting to drip irrigation found cleaner well water easier to use. Unfortu- nately, this has contributed to a rapid decline in well water levels which must be corrected by increasing the importation of Colorado River water. Knowing that it would ultimately need additional water from the Colorado, Coachella officials worked with the federal government in the late 70s to concrete- line 49 miles of the Coachella Branch of the All-American Canal. Here, 132,000 acre-feet of water had been lost annually through seepage. Under the terms of the agreement, this water would be used by the federal government to help meet treaty obligations to Mexico until Coach ell a Valley water users needed it at which time it would be made available to them. Coachella officials have viewed with alarm the increasing amount of Colorado River water flowing into the Salton Sea from the largest diverter in the state- Imperial Irrigation District. This alarm was shared by the California Water Resources Control Board which, after an Imperial Valley farmer sued, ordered Imperial to reduce its water wasting practices. Imperial contracted with Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to fund construction of water-saving facilities in exchange for saved water. After the agreement was signed, Metropolitan Water District began taking additional water from the river but so did Impe- rial. As a recent report of the Bureau of Reclamation noted, not only did the Imperial diversions increase, so did the percentage of those diversions flowing to the Salton Sea as waste. Large quantitiesofwaterare measured in acre-feet . . . enough Water to cover an acre ()f land (picture a football field) a foot deep. An average desert family uses about one acre..;foot of water in and around the house annually. In the big cities, . . where concrete and paving replace landscaping and where rain. and cooler temperatures reduce landscape irrigation needs, average home use is about half an acre-foot. In Coachella. Valley's climate, the average water use per developed acre is about 6 acre-feet a year. This generally holds true for homes, crops, golf courses and lakes (the rate of evaporation is 6 feet per year here).