An unusual coalition is making Chico State University the premier place in Northern California to learn about using and conserving what may be the region's most endangered natural resources - water and power.

In an all-but-unheard of combination of skills and expertise, Fresno State University and Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo, joined to help Chico State create the "Irrigation Training Facility" at the university farm off Hegan Lane.

The facility, which is a combination of a 12,000-gallon reservoir and a series of different but typical agricultural pumps, allows students, farmers, orchardists, water district officials and even golf course operators to learn how to most efficiently use various pumps in conjunction with a range of water control gates and weirs.

Fresno State is the home of the Center for Irrigation Technology, and Cal-Poly has the Irrigation Training and Research Center.

Charles Crabb, dean of the Chico State College of Agriculture, said his college had an idea for a training facility and they took it to Fresno and San Luis Obispo for help.

James R. Tischer, regional program manager for the Fresno center, said in times past cooperation between the various campuses, even though they were all part of the California State University system, wasn't the norm.

"It used to be we would go after our pots of gold, and we would go after our students" and as far as other CSU campuses were concerned, "To hell with you," explained Tischer.

But he said that world has changed.

"The way things get done in 2003 is with collaboration," said Tischer.

In the case of the Chico training facility, that collaboration included nearly $500,000 in funding from the federal Bureau of Reclamation and the California Public Utilities Commission, along with the help of a pair of private businesses - Durham Pump and North State Electric - to build the necessary equipment.

Crabb said, while the Chico facility has the capability of being used for formal research, that's not the role he sees for it.

He explained Cal-Poly and Fresno State are doing the irrigation research.

"We see our role as trying to demonstrate the emerging technology as it relates to water management.

"Our intent in going down this path was to create the training facility," explained the dean.

Wednesday the Chico State farm hosted just such a training program, aimed at growers and focused on agricultural pump efficiency.

Bill Green, an educational specialist with the Fresno program, used a trailer-mounted self-contained agricultural pump operation to demonstrate the different elements that can reduce pump performance.

He explained how everything from the depth of the well, to the pressure needed for sprinkler operations, to the distance the water must be transported to reach the field all combine to impact the efficiency of the pump.

He said an exceptionally well set-up pump may be no more than 65 percent efficient in the amount of water that can be moved for the fewest dollars for energy, and many pumps still in operation are at "20 percent to 25 percent" efficiency.

"Most things in life, if you are only at 50 percent efficiency that's not very good, but in pumping, that's not bad," said Green.

Helping the growers to use the least water and the least energy is all part of the program. Green explained the PUC offers rebates to have agricultural pumps tested for efficiency.

For all history, the application of water to a farmer's field has been a matter of "it seems like it is about right, but 'about right' is not good enough."

The change from guessing about irrigation and knowing is part of what Chico State will be teaching, according to the dean.

Crabb said the future of the university farm as a platform for irrigation training is going to expand with the addition of a "supervisory control and data acquisition" or SCADA program.

As part of SCADA, the farm's six agricultural wells are all currently being monitored by computer. The computer watches how much water is being pumped and how good a job the pumps are doing in terms of moving the water.

Crabb said in its current incarnation, SCADA keeps track of how much water is being used and where, and it can automatically shut down a pump if there is indication of a mechanical problem.

However, the dean said remote sensors are going to be distributed in the university farm's 800 acres of fields. These sensors will be able to measure the amount of moisture in the soil and can, through the SCADA computer, tell the pumps to turn or turn off to provide the crops just the right amount of moisture, and avoid wasting water and the electricity that is used to move the water.

Crabb said the current vision circulating in the ag industry is of the farmer on vacation, who somewhere in Europe hooks his laptop computer into the Internet, and from half a world away checks on the moisture in his fields and then sets or adjusts the irrigation program.