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<br />Recently our board worked very hard in developing a mission <br />statement. I think you might equate this to identifying the problem. <br /> <br />The mission of the District is to provide its service area with <br />adequate and reliable supplies of high quality water to meet <br />present and future needs in an environmentally and economically <br />responsible way. <br /> <br />Let me tell you, our Board struggled over each and everyone of those <br />words for a period of about six months, but members seem to be pretty <br />comfortable with them today. <br /> <br />A quick overview: we have not only 27 member agencies, but as I <br />mentioned quite a few of those are districts. We have 250 <br />incorporated cities and other communities, 15 million people, about <br />half the state's population, half the state's gross product. We use <br />10 percent of the developed water being used in California. We've had <br />very high reliability in supplies up until a couple of years ago. Our <br />forecast for the future is for a relatively unreliable supply unless <br />we are able to dramatically change how we do business. <br /> <br />There are the three aqueducts to southern California. The first, <br />built right after the turn of the century by the Los Angeles <br />Department of Water Power, delivered half a million acre-feet of water <br />a year between 1970 and 1988. Until 1988, Los Angeles was getting <br />less than 10 percent of its water from Metropolitan. The Colorado <br />River Aqueduct is a little over twice the capacity of the Owens Valley <br />Aqueduct: 1.2 million acre-feet. Metropolitan has a contract for two <br />million acre-feet of water a year, and as a matter of fact, two years <br />ago, we took delivery of 'about 75 percent of that contract, and then <br />we had local supplies, primarily groundwater, of 1.4 million acre- <br />feet. You add all those numbers up, you get something like five and a <br />half million acre-feet. Our recent water use was about four million <br />acre-feet. Ten years or so ago, we looked fat and happy in terms of <br />future water supply. <br /> <br />What's changed? Well, we know we live on borrowed time on the <br />Colorado River; we have less than a half million acre-feet assured <br />supply from the Colorado. The Los Angeles Aqueduct, which I mentioned <br />delivered half a million acre-feet from '70 to '88, delivered an <br />average of less than 40 percent of that figure during the drought <br />years of '89, '90 and '91. In one of those years it delivered less <br />than 100,000 acre-feet. So, sometimes the past is not always a good <br />predictor of the future. Los Angeles is having some problems with <br />environmental issues, drought and the like. <br /> <br />State Water Project: we have a contract for two million acre- <br />feet. The State tells us they can give us about half of that, a <br />million acre-feet, although in 1991 we got about half a million acre- <br />feet. For that reason, we imposed rationing for the first time in the <br />District's history: a 31 percent reduction in water use. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />Southern California is blessed with water in its groundwater <br />basin. The problem is, that's the good news. The bad news is we have <br />water quality problems: organic contamination: nitrate problems in <br />some of the interior basins where agriculture has been around for a <br /> <br />41 <br />