Multiple-Purpose Reservoirs: A Symposium: Hydrometeorological Services

The theme of this brief paper could well be, “How to eat your cake and have it, too.” The “multiple-purpose family,” made up of hydroelectric power, irrigation, municipal water supply, and navigation, was “getting along” most amicably until flood control came to live with it officially. Until then it had been the common purpose to maintain full reservoirs and to hold withdrawals from storage to business-like schedules. Furthermore, there had always been reasonable time for the adjustment of control works as the needs of changing power load, or a retarded irrigated crop, or deeper navigation waters were disclosed by these operations themselves. In other words, the conservation of stored water was to the common interest of all who were participating in a multiple-use project. However, flood control, demanding not a full, but an empty reservoir, has called for compromises which place on the operator the requirement that he “eat his cake” one minute and in the next have it, or wish he had.