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water annually). President Clinton has proposed giving $1.5 million in federal funding to the project. In a similar vein, a tertiary treatment plant and dis. tribution system began operating in Monterey County in 1998 to help reduce the serious groundwater overdraft and concurrent threat of salt water intrusion from the adjacent Monterey Bay. The region's primary source of water, groundwater, is threatened by Recycled water can play an integral part of industry, sllch as for the cooling towers of oil refinieries. encroaching salt levels. Alter 20 years of planning and studies, treated water is mixed with groundwater and used to irrigate a variety of vegetables. The plan is expected to partially alleviate groundwater overdraft. The Monterey County Water Recycling Project's reclaimed water is mixed with groundwater on a IWQ- to-one ratio and used to irrigate 12,000 acres of lettuce and other vegetables. The recycling project is expected to reduce the annual average ground- water extraction from approximalely 30,000 acre-feet to about 10,000 acre-feet in Castroville and about 13 million gallons less in Salinas Valley. Some local farmers, however, have voiced concerns about possible market impacts due to the public's percep- tion of irrigating vegetables with recycled water. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the use of recycled water in the petroleum industry began growing. In 1995, the West Basin Municipal Water District began sending 5 mgd of advanced treated water to Chevron 18 and Mobile Oil Refineries for use in their cooling towers. West Basin will send 4 mgd more to Mobile for use in its boilers and plans to send 6 mgd of advanced treated water to Area Refinery by the year 2000. In 1996, Chevron Richmond Oil Refinery began using recycled waler from EBMUD's recently completed North Richmond Waler Reclamation Project. EBMUD will treat up to 4.5 mgd lor use in Chevron's cooling towers. The water undergoes advanced tertiary treatment including filtration, disinfection, chlorination and water softening. Coastal regions discharge over 2 million acre-feet of treated wastewater into the ocean a year. Reduced water allocations, a growing population and instream flow demands to restore declining fish populations in the Bay-Delta and Central Valley streams are increasing the regions' incentive to pursue additional water recycling opportunities while regulating discharge rates. Since the early 1990s, 14 Bay Area water and waste- water agencies, the Bureau and DWR have been working together to explore the possibility of recycling some or all of the region's 650,000 acre-feet of recycled water discharged to the San Francisco Bay and Ihe Pacific Ocean. Presently, the Bay Area recycles over 40,000 acre-feet annually - over 9 percent of statewide reuse and state water officials estimate that 33 percent of all new water in the Bay Area will come from recycled water sources by the year 2020. Water recycling also holds the advantage of reducing discharges to the Bay. The Bay Area program originally planned to send 400,000 acre-feel of recycled water to the San Joaquin Valley for agricultural irrigation. The proposal was dropped because of costs and environmental concerns about management of the salty agricultural drainage. The program's feasibility study, expected for release in 1999, focuses on recyciing opportunities within the Bay Area. Possible uses of recycled water include irrigation of land- scape, parks, schools and golf courses, industrial supply and for agriculture south of Santa Clara. A companion study is being conducted by the Bureau and 8 state parlners to examine the feasibility of maximizing beneficial reuse of recycled water in southern California. The six-year, $6 million study aims to determine if up to 4 million acre-feet can be recycled in southern California by 2040 and includes a report to Congress of long-term and short-term implementation strategies.