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Bureau of Reclamation. We signed 63 land fallowing agreements, totalling 20,200 acres, about 22 percent of the land in the district. The program was oversubscribed: I suspect we could have doubled that amount of land fallowing. We get an average of 4.6 acre-feet per acre from that area, which uses water for multi-crop or several crops in the course of the year. We had a very tight program to ensure that the water was so-called "wet water" -- had to be a history of farming, etc. The manner in which we put the program together ensured that the impact was spread relatively uniformly throughout the district. The local farmers get $620 per acre-foot each year, a total $1240 over the two-year period. There are requirements that they carefully control weeds on the property. The program was extremely well received locally because the farming economy wasn't doing so great between farm prices for the crops that they grow out there -- alfalfa and cotton -- and the fact that the white fly was also adversely impacting the local farming economy. What crops came out of production? Well, the first three groups: forage crops like alfalfa or sorghum, wheat, and cotton, contributed 89 percent of the land put into the fallowing program. And only 11 percent came from other crops like vegetables. An important point to keep in mind for those who raise the issue of third party impacts is that those are the relatively low-value crops that tend to be non-labor intensive and so a relatively minor impact on farming job market. Future programs that we're working on: We're working on a s~ilar fallowing program in the Imperial Irrigation District. We have legislation from Congress that permits us to pay the federal government to line the All-American Canal through the sand dunes along the Mexican border. In return we get 100,000 acre-feet of water. somewhere in the.Coachella canal. We're working on a second phase conservation program with Imperial and also some opportunities for groundwater storage. I would like to emphasize four or five points that seem to be important in terms of how Metropolitan works. First, I think you would say it is relatively non-threatening to the members, because we have no regulatory authority. We have to rely almost exclusively on market pressures and pricing. Secondly, we've had almost universal participation by the member agencies, many of which did not choose to join originally, but now we have probably 95 percent of the population in our service areas, within the boundaries. We have what appears to be equitable voting and financing support. We generate over 80 percent of our revenues from water rates. There is strong commitment to environment protection, conservation and reuse, and that's made it easier for us to work with the regulatory groups at the local, state, and federal levels, and also the environmental groups. I think it is important that we have a relatively large diverse board that is strongly committed to meeting its mission statement. Thank you. Questions for Duane Georaeson Q: How costly is the storage in Arizona? 43