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Introduction The Colorado River is undoubtedly the most legislated and probably the most regulated ma- jor river in the world. There have been more than 20 major legal actions, Congressional acts, United States Supreme Court decisions, in- trabasin compacts, and international treaties, that together formulate the "Laws of the River." An important tool for answering the many "what if 'questions that are addressed to water resource managers in any complicated river system, such as the Colorado River System, is a simulation model of the system. A simu- lation model is no more than a computational procedure, but so many calculations are re- quired that without a computer, the task would be impractical. The CRSM (Colorado River Simulation Model), the central feature of the CRSS (Colorado River Simulation System), is a deterministic simulation model that has been developed by the Bureau of Reclamation in ac- cordance with all the "Laws of the River" (see table 1), including the requirements of the "Operating Criteria" for maintaining equal storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead as long as sufficient Upper Basin storage exists and for, an assumed objective release of at least 8.23 million acre-feet annually from Glen Canyon. With CRSS, proposed changes to the operation or alternative development schemes of the river system can be modeled, and their effect on the future quantity and quality of water in the river may be evaluated. The following programs and data bases constitute the CRSS: 1. CRSM (Colorado River Simulation Model) 2. Operational control data 3. Demand data base 4. Demand input data generation program (SMDID) S. Natural flow and salt data base 6. Hydrology input data generation program (MHYDRO) 7. Output summary program (TAPEDIT) The block diagram in figure I illustrates the general CRSS flowchart.