rainfall in Salinas is per year, and the average annual rainfall since 2000 is per year. Recent increases in water use, primarily in the agricultural sector, and the damming of the river and its tributaries may be contributing factors causing the now mostly-dry condition of the riverbed. The Monterey County Water Resources Agency currently operates a water use monitoring program which requires that all agricultural water users self-report annually on the estimated amount of groundwater pumped from the shrinking Salinas Valley aquifer. This is in contrast to some areas of the country where various water authorities both monitor and regulate water use for agriculture. The previous ecosystem of the Salinas River, which once included steelhead trout, and numerous other species throughout the full length of a once year-round flowing river, has clearly been drastically impacted in recent years by the expanding heavy demands of agricultural water use in the Salinas Valley, and the resulting most typical dry-river conditions. Despite regularly running dry, the Salinas River has at the same time had occasional notable floods. Amongst these were the flood of 1964 and the flood of 1995. History Hypothesized geological history The geological history of the ancient Salinas River is currently held by tectonic plate theory to likely be rather unique among the many rivers of the western North American seaboard: The shifting position of the raised section of the Pacific Plate that the river flows through was in ancient times aligned with the North American Plate at a point far south of its present location. The discovery of the Monterey Canyon, the remarkably deep submarine canyon extending into the Pacific from the mouth of the Salinas River, is the basis for the proposal of what is presently thought to be the most probable geological history of the Salinas River. The long and deep submarine Monterey Canyon dwarfs all other such canyons along the Pacific coast of North America. However, the known flow-rates and drainage area of the Salinas River in no way indicate the river as it presently stands was ever capable of creating such a large submarine outflow canyon. The current hypoothesis is that, at one point in the Miocene epoch, many millions of years ago, the river was probably located in the vicinity of what is now Los Angeles County, having been carried north to its present position due to tectonic plate drift at the same rate as