Practical Aspects of Town Water Planning

Data-base management is used to create a water-supply system concept that optimizes the available economic safe yield for the Towns of Danvers and Middleton, Mass. Variations in rainfall, runoff, and estimated water demands are integrated within the constraints of other river diversions along the reach of the Ipswich River, achieving a new perspective on the developable safe yield, which is compared to the design demand. Knowledge of the precipitation probability afforded the development of power costs for different degrees of precipitation, power sources, and pipeline sizes; while digital computer analysis allowed daily computation of these values based upon the South Middleton gaging station data. Additional impoundment storage and divertable river flows were virtually created by this approach while substantial capital and pumping costs were also saved.