Management Strategies for the Colorado River Reservoir System under Major Drought Scenarios

The Colorado River system of the western United States is a heavily appropriated network of rivers, reservoirs and diversions serving a water short region with major municipal and agricultural demands. Management of these very limited water resources in the Colorado River Basin has been a subject of great interest to hydrologists, water resource engineers, meteorologists and scientists in other related fields for a number of years — but never quite so much as today, with the drought of record plaguing the basin. The severity of the current drought has led managers and technical experts in the water resources community to question how common this event might actually be, and has inspired substantial debate as to how best to manage the reservoirs of the basin to deal with such droughts now and in the future. A technical work group composed of experts from government, the academic community and the private sector has come together to focus on these questions, and a variety of methodologies (parametric and non-parametric stochastic hydrology and tree-ring analysis) have been used to evaluate the frequency of major droughts such as the current one. Public meetings and other interactions with partners and stakeholders has yielded a series of potential strategies which will be considered by the Bureau of Reclamation in future shortage situations. This presentation will describe the process, findings, and conclusions reached to date and future steps toward implementation of shortage criteria for the basin.