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one has ever gotten a permit from a state in any of the western states to waste water. Many of the states have constitutional prohibitions against wasting water. All of the state water rights systems have been based on beneficial use and prescribing waste. And I think that the task before the states-the challenge to the states is to provide contempo- rary meaning to those original terms in what may have been acceptable practice given the state of technology and markets and so on in 1990. It's clearly wasteful today when there're commercially available practical alternative ap- proaches that are on the market can maintain or improve yields and so on and continue to use obsolete irrigation methods, as a for instance, is a waste. And the challenge to the states is to review particularly with our senior water rights holders current water use practices to make sure that they're keeping pace with the state of the art. And in many cases where the senior rights holders have facilities that have been built and paid out decades ago and have rights that are so senior that they're fairly secure even in the driest of years, there has not been a great premium placed upon efficiency, and that's an area I think that could yield substantial dividends. Much of the momentum that's building efficiency in California now got its impetus when the California State Water Resources Board, which is the entity that administers the water rights system in the state, made a formal board finding that the Imperial Irrigation District was wasting water. Wasting water is against the Constitution-is barred by the Constitution of California, so Imperial's right was in fairly substantial jeopardy at that point. And within a few years, they had developed this fairly ambitious investment program that they brought the metropolitan water district in to make efficiency improve- ments in their service area. And that has opened a lot of eyes and gotten a lot of things going in the state. But that's a challenge, I think, for the state engineers and state water right administrators. A-(John Hill) Let me comment on that. You said you were from Idaho. There's an ancient U.S. Supreme Court case that came out of Idaho called Shoddy v. Twin Falls, and it says that every appropriator on the stream has to have a reasonable means of diversion. No appropriator can command the flow of the whole stream in order to take the fraction to which he's entitled. Well that applies to the appropriation process, it seems to me. And I could see that involved a water wheel being an efficient means of diver- sion, but it seemed to me that you could argue a leaky ditch or a ditch through porous soil would be an unreasonable means of diversion particularly in light of today's standards. So, at least theoretically, there's a possibility of doing that and most of the other western states have adopted that view as well. A-(John Keys) Let me answer the other part of her question, and that is anything else being new being done as far as technology, really is what 1 think you asked. As part of the Phase Two program of the Northwest Power Plan- ning Council, Bureau of Reclamation is implementing water conservation demonstration project in the Upper Snake River Basin to try to provide some flows for flushing salmon to the ocean. We are working with an irrigation district, a large irrigation district, in the Upper Basin. One of the things that we're looking at there is instead of the tradi- tional go in and line canals and laterals, put in sprinklers, put in measuring devices. Of course, all of those are important, but we're looking at the concept of going the district before they put that in and saying put up "x" acre feet of water for this project, and then we will help you with the programs to produce that amount of water. In other words, you, district, decide how you want to do it. Maybe they will take out some of their unproductive land to produce that water. Maybe they do need to line canals and laterals. Maybe they need to put in sprinklers, but the district itself makes its decision on how to do that. We don't run in there with a bag full of money saying line 23 miles of canal and so forth. That's one that is underway that we're looking at, and we think it's got some good promise right now. A-(Dennis Underwood) Let me make just one other comment. When Ed was talking about imperial and this is kind of an interesting twist to it when Ed was saying that the State Water Resource Control Board said they were wasting water, basically what they said is not that they were wasting water at this particular time. But if they continue the practice they were doing that there were higher needs or potential greater needs within the region, they could waste (??) use that water and a continued practice would be a waste of water. That when you look at that they knew there were some viable programs for outside financing that potentially be able to pay for those improvements. In other words, there were financial partnerships, that those types of improvements which may be beyond the ability of the farmers to pay, could be financed by others. The farmers would still maintain the same amount of acreage, but there would be an additional water made available for other beneficiaries. And those beneficiaries would pay for those improvements. 35