Drought Water Right Curtailment Analysis for California’s Eel River
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 144, Issue 2
Abstract
Water users in California’s hybrid water rights system have different legal priorities to available surface water in times of water scarcity. A set of two linear programming models was developed to determine curtailments of water use under drought conditions according to riparian and appropriative water right doctrines with spatially varying water availability and water rights within a basin. The models were implemented in spreadsheets and extended to estimate water right reliability and factors of safety in water rights administration. Alternate methods for calculating water use curtailments are discussed. Curtailments from the models are compared with actual water shortage notices issued by the state for the Eel River, California for June 30, 2014. Analyzing water use curtailments with an algorithm in spreadsheet software offers a mechanistic, transparent, accessible, and precise approach derived from legal doctrines to support water rights administration during drought.
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded by California’s State Water Resources Control Board, with additional support from the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis, with funds from the Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation. Ted Grantham, Quinn Hart, William Fleenor, and Nicholas Santos aided in developing the framework, data, and software for this project.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 144 • Issue 2 • February 2018
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 14, 2016
Accepted: Apr 14, 2017
Published online: Nov 20, 2017
Published in print: Feb 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Apr 20, 2018
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