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<br />A: GEORGESON: For the arrangement that we just put together to store <br />up to 100,000 acre-feet, we pay the Central Arizona Water Conservation <br />District about $70 an acre-foot, which is their pumping cost and some <br />additional costs to get that water. The idea was to move in the <br />direction of providing some assurance to the state of Arizona, that as <br />we pull the reservoir from the Colorado River down during dry years, <br />there would be some risk insurance to the Central Arizona Project if <br />the drought continues. <br /> <br />Q: Give us some details about the reservoir you have completed the EIR <br />(Environmental Impact Report) on. <br /> <br />A: GEORGESON: It's the Domenigoni Valley Reservoir (referred to as <br />the East Side Reservoir), about 20 miles south of Riverside. We <br />started the environmental studies about six years ago, went through a <br />fairly elaborate process looking at a lot of different sites, and we <br />completed the EIR about a year ago, although the last threat to our <br />EIR was settled only a couple of months ago. So it took six years, <br />but it also took about $60 million to complete the EIR and to buy <br />mitigation lands. We had really good support from the Nature <br />Conservancy and the Fish and Wildlife organization. It is important <br />to keep in mind that it is an off-stream reservoir, it's an expensive <br />site because it's an off-stream reservoir, takes 80 million yards of <br />material to get 800,000 acre-feet. The engineers in the crowd will <br />appreciate that's a lot of dirt you've got to stack up. And most <br />importantly, we avoided a 404 permit and any possibility of EPA veto <br />by finding a site where we were able to prove there were no waters of <br />the United States. (laughter) <br /> <br />Q: untranscribable <br /> <br />A: GEORGESON: The question had to do with wastewater reclamation. <br />We're very proud of the leadership that is coming out of southern <br />California with wastewater reclamation. At the present time we have <br />over 200,000 acre-feet of water per year -- that's about two and half <br />times the water use by the city of San Francisco and criticism in this <br />regard frequently comes from where there is no wastewater reclamation. <br />Our program subsidizes wastewater reclamation to the tune of $154 an <br />acre-foot -- we hope to double that 200,000 acre-feet up to 400,00 to <br />500,000 acre-feet over the next ten to fifteen years. We're confident <br />we're going to make it because about 150,000 feet of new reclamation <br />is already under contract. <br /> <br />Q: untranscribable <br /> <br />A. My own view is that in a room like this there are a lot of <br />knowledgeable people who understand that in the years ahead, and not <br />very far ahead, there will be some dramatic changes in terms of the <br />rules and regulations that will apply not only to new projects but to <br />existing projects. Keep in mind that the city of Los Angeles, between <br />1972 and 1988, delivered an average of 500,000 acre-feet a year <br />through their aqueduct system. The first one that went into operation <br />in 1913 can deliver 300,000 acre-feet per year. In 1989, '90, and <br />'91, that aqueduct delivered less than 200,000 acre-feet, less than 40 <br />percent of capacity, and in one of those years, it delivered 120,000 <br />acre-feet, less than one-third the capacity it had been built to <br /> <br />44 <br />