Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have licensed a new computer modeling tool that is being used coast-to-coast and abroad to help balance the competing objectives of flood control, water supply, environmental regulations, navigation, power generation and recreational uses on the nation's rivers, lakes and reservoirs.
Now available commercially, "RiverWare" is a powerful management tool developed by the Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems at CU-Boulder, in collaboration with the Tennessee Valley Authority and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The modeling tool was developed to help set water policy and manage day-to-day operations on systems as complex as the seven-state, 34-reservoir Tennessee River Valley and the 1,450-mile Colorado River extending to the Gulf of California.
RiverWare can be used to simulate and analyze the effects of proposed regulations or to determine optimum operating procedures when competing goals or policies are involved. The modeling tool, which can be fully customized, allows an agency to manage its system more efficiently and with greater public participation.
"We've created a tool that allows water system managers to look at alternative scenarios and policies and demonstrate the results to others," said Edith Zagona, principal investigator and project director with CADSWES in CU-Boulder's College of Engineering and Applied Science.
Zagona leads a team of about a dozen people, including software engineers, water resources professionals and engineering students, in research and development.
Terry Fulp, operations research analyst for the Bureau of Reclamation's Lower Colorado Region, said RiverWare is being used to support long-term planning and monthly and daily operational decisions on the Colorado River.
For example, the Bureau released a large "spike flow" from Glen Canyon Dam in spring 1996 to study the effects of more natural, higher spring flows on the ecosystem in the Grand Canyon. The Bureau has used RiverWare to estimate the possible frequency over the next 50 years for such releases, while still maintaining water supplies to the seven states that depend on the river.
"States, water districts, environmental groups and other stakeholders on the Colorado River can now modify and run the model themselves to explore alternative operating policies using RiverWare," Fulp said.
Other Western applications of RiverWare by the Bureau of Reclamation include a joint project with five other federal agencies, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Geological Survey, to assist in managing the Upper Rio Grande Basin, and projects on the Yakima River Basin in eastern Washington, and the San Juan River Basin in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. These projects involve issues such as endangered species, American Indian water rights and municipal and agricultural water supplies.
In the Southeast's Tennessee River Valley where flood control, navigation, power generation, recreation and water quality are of primary importance, Dick Shane, a water resources engineer with TVA, said RiverWare has allowed his agency to minimize its power production costs while balancing other priorities.
The TVA also was able to ensure the proper amount of flow needed for the whitewater canoeing and kayaking events at the 1996 Olympics. The events were held on the Ocoee River in eastern Tennessee and water flow was managed by TVA with the aid of RiverWare. "It was a high pressure situation. Fortunately, everything went very well," Shane said.
More recently, TVA has used RiverWare in a river basin study for the Chinese government. TVA and Chinese officials are cooperatively studying development plans for the Han River Basin, the largest tributary of the Yangtze River.
For more information about RiverWare and its applications, contact Edith Zagona in the department of civil, environmental and architectural engineering at CU-Boulder, (303) 492-2189, or send e-mail to rwinfo@cadswes.colrado.edu. More information also is available on the World Wide Web at cadswes.colorado/edu.