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The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is a regional wholesaler and the largest supplier of treated water in the US. The name is usually shortened to the "Metropolitan Water District," "Met," or "MWD." It is a cooperative of 14 cities and 11 municipal water districts and one county water authority that provides water to 19 million people in its service area. It was created by an act of the California Legislature in 1928, primarily to build and operate the Colorado River Aqueduct. MWD became the first (and largest) contractor to the State Water Project in 1960. It includes parts of Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. The district covers primarily the coastal and most heavily populated portions of Southern California; however large portions of San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside counties are located outside of its service area. The MWD headquarters is located at 700 North Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles, adjacent to historic Union Station. ==History== The Metropolitan Water District was formed in 1928 to build and operate a means to import water from the Colorado River to southern California: the Colorado River Aqueduct. The MWD is governed by a board of 37 directors whose powers and functions are specified in the 1927 authorization act. This board was in charge of issuing bonds and financing their repayment by selling water to member agencies. In the early years, revenue from water sales was too low, so MWD also collected taxes that ranged from 0.25 to 0.50 percent of assessed value. Ninety percent of the cost of the aqueduct has been paid for by the taxpayers. In 1929 the district was set up with an area of and served a population of around 1,600,000 in 13 cities. 〔The Great Aqueduct: The Story of the Planning and Building of the Colorado River Aqueduct. The Metropolitan Water District Of Southern California. 1941.〕 During the aqueduct's first five years of service from 1941 to 1946 it delivered an average of about of water, using less than 2% of its capacity. Only one pump at each lift, operating from one to six months out of the year, was needed to meet all the demands made on the system. At this time due, to availability of ground water, less than 10% of the Colorado River Aqueduct's capacity was used, only of water. 〔Erwin Cooper, Aqueduct Empire: A Guide to Water in California, Its Turbulent History and Its Management Today, The Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale, California 1968. pp 87-89〕 With too much water and too little revenue, MWD's directors searched for new sources of demand. They found a semi-willing partner in the San Diego County Water Authority, which joined MWD as its first wholesale member agency in 1946. SDCWA was formed in 1944 to facilitate joining MWD, but did not do so until those opposed (mostly because of resentment of Los Angeles's dominance of MWD) were defeated by those in favor (FDR ordered the Navy to connect SDCWA to MWD; after WWII ended, dwindling supplies did the rest of the job). SDCWA got its first deliveries in 1947 and was buying half of MWD's water by 1949. The SDCWA annexation broke two traditions at MWD: Member agencies had previously been cities (SDCWA was a water wholesaler) in the south coast basin (SDCWA was south of the basin). The next "break" came in 1950, when Pomona MWD (now Three Valleys MWD) joined MWD. Since Pomona was a largely agricultural member agency at the time, MWD was no longer selling water for "domestic use". 〔(David Zetland (2008), ''Conflict and Cooperation within an Organization: A Case Study of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California''. PhD Dissertation, UC Davis. pp. 13, 28-32. )〕 (The territory served by the Pomona district urbanized rapidly, with agriculture having disappeared almost entirely by 1970.) In 1952, MWD began a 200 million dollar program to bring the Colorado River Aqueduct to its full capacity of annually. The Colorado River Aqueduct added six pumps to the original three at each of its five pumping stations. CRA pumping expanded from about of water in 1950 to about by 1960. On August 9, 1962, the MWD set an all-time delivery record of 1,316,000,000 gallons of water in just a 24-hour period. Met's additional supplies and easier rules of entry facilitated an expansion through annexation of large areas of low populations: The eight MWDs that joined from 1946 to 1955 added 200 percent to Met's service area but only 75 percent to Met's population served.〔(David Zetland (2008), ''Conflict and Cooperation within an Organization: A Case Study of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California''. PhD Dissertation, UC Davis. p. 32. )〕 By 1965, Met had 13 cities and 13 municipal water districts as members. It covered more than in the counties of Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino—and served some 10,000,000 people. As of 2008 Met has 14 cities and 12 municipal water districts (San Fernando joined in 1973; MWDOC and Coastal MWD merged in 2001) and provides purified drinking water to nearly 18,000,000 people.〔(Metropolitan Water District of Southern California )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Metropolitan Water District of Southern California」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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