CFS (cubic feet per second)
The standard rate unit for water flow in the West — one cubic foot of water passing a point each second.
One CFS is roughly 449 gallons per minute, and sustained for a full day it delivers just under two acre-feet. Water rights are typically expressed as a maximum diversion rate in CFS, while storage and consumption are expressed in acre-feet.
Rate and volume are not interchangeable, and conflating them is a common error in early analysis. A right for 5 CFS is meaningless without knowing the season of use and whether the source actually carries 5 CFS when you need it.
Where this shows up in the data
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