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<br />. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />....~ <br /> <br />its entitlement to just about every municipal water supplier in <br />the state. Kern County has objected to the proposal. To date, <br />Berrenda Mesa has been unsuccessful. <br /> <br />within the thirty state contra~ting agencies there have been <br />a few examples of water trading and exchange. The Kern County <br />Water Agency, for example, has an annual water marketing program <br />for its member agencies. These short-term transfers have been <br />exclusively between agricultual users or from municipal and <br />industrial entitlements to agricultual users. Most state <br />contractors, however, report no water transfers among their <br />subcontractors. <br /> <br />Although we have not yet surveyed federal water contractors, <br />we have found several examples of water transfers among federal <br />contractors. For example, in 1988, the Kings county Water <br />District transferred 12,000 acre feet of its federal entitlement <br />to the Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage District in exchange for <br />an equal amount of Tulare Lake's appropriative rights to water <br />from the Kings River. The Kings River water is wheeled to Kings <br />County through the state Water Project facilities. Both <br />agencies' goal is to increase the annual exchange to 30,000 acre <br />feet. <br /> <br />III. ISSUES FOR FURTHER STUDY <br /> <br />Before turning to case studies of individual transfer <br />proposals, we plan to conduct a survey of federal water <br />contractors and to interview officials of the Bureau of <br />Reclamation to determine what transfers of federal project water <br />have occurred. We also need to follow up on several interviews <br />that we conducted with state contractors. <br /> <br />The balance of our work will invlove a more in depth study <br />of several cases. These will include: <br /> <br />(1) The Imperial Irrigation District and Metropolitan <br />Water District negotiations to transfer upwards of <br />100,000 afa.of conserved water from lID to MWD. <br /> <br />(2) The Berrenda Mesa offer for sale of 50,000 afa. <br />This case will be used to focus on the transferability <br />of state project water and the effects of such a <br />transfer on groundwater use in the transfer area. <br /> <br />(3) One of the exchanges described above--e.g., the <br />Coachella-MWD exchange, the Kings County-Tulare Lake <br />exchange, or the YUba County-DWR exchange. <br /> <br />(4) A transfer of federal project water. The purpose <br />of this study is to consider the transferability of <br />federally subsidized water. <br /> <br />- 4 - <br />