The $300,000 grant will help the district install automated monitoring devices on 23 water distributors, enabling it to implement new rate structures. The monitoring devices will improve distribution during peak demand periods, and will encourage more efficient water use, conserve water, and help the district manage local groundwater supplies in concert with imported water.

What: Water 2025 Challenge Grant ceremony

When: Wednesday, October 13, from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

Where: Calleguas Municipal Water District, 2100 Olsen Road, Thousand Oaks, California.

The Water 2025 Challenge Grants -- administered by the Bureau of Reclamation -- provide funding to local irrigation districts throughout the West to support a variety of projects to make more efficient use of existing water supplies through water conservation, efficiency and water market projects. The Challenge Grant program focuses on meeting the goals identified in "Water 2025: Preventing Crises and Conflict in the West." In late June, Interior Secretary Gale Norton approved more than $4 million in water conservation grants under the Water 2025 Secretarial Challenge Grant Program. President George Bush has requested $21 million for the Water 2025 initiative in Fiscal Year 2005.