Colorado River Return Project

• Year: 2002
• Title: Colordao River Return Project
• Author: Boyle Engineering Corporation
• Description: Colorado River Return Project
• Publications - Doc Type: Other

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and physical constraints. BESTSM uses these
constraints — in conjunction with the system
demands from agricultural, industrial, and
municipal water users — to allocate water and
account for it's daily (or monthly) distribution.
The model was designed to help water
resource managers make comparative
analyses for the assessment of various historic
and proposed river basin management
policies. The model is capable of simulating
very complex physical systems operating under the water rights provisions of legal systems
such as the Prior Appropriations Doctrine. Nodes represent stream - gaging stations,
reservoirs, diversion structures, instream -flow sites, and demand centers, as well as a pipe
network that represents transmission lines, pumps, treatment capacity, and wells, reservoir -
store rights, and instream -flow rights. BESTSM's user - friendly data input structures,
accompanied by thorough documentation and report- writer capabilities, make application
of the model simple and efficient.
Boyle has used BESTSM for Denver's raw water system including reservoir operations, and
on basin -wide assessments of the Colorado River in Colorado, the San Juan and Dolores
Rivers, the Gunnison River, the Rio Grand River, the Arkansas River, the South Platte River,
and many other complex river and reservoir operation studies in many states. The
BESTSM model developed for the Joint Use / Green Mountain Exchange Project covered
8,000 square miles of Colorado River Basin and simulated the operation of 1,600 water
rights comprised of 800 direct diversions, nine existing and nine proposed reservoirs, and
13 transbasin diversions. The project was initiated to resolve problems associated with
increasing water demands in the Denver Metropolitan area and the concern over water
supplies on Colorado's western slope. The purpose of this study was to estimate water
yields for alternative joint -use and exchange projects, and to develop preliminary designs
and cost estimates.
We are also familiar with many other models including those developed by the
Department of Interior (DOI) agencies (e.g. the OPSTUDY model used by the USRB and
FWS on the North Platte), optimization models such as MODSIM, and decision support
system models such as RiverWare. Other types of water allocation modeling tools used by
Boyle include spreadsheet based water budgets, GIS interfacing and linked surface and
ground -water models.
We recently developed a Platte River water budget
spreadsheet covering the entire three state basin and it's
existing reservoirs for 20 years of monthly operation. The
spreadsheet was developed under Department of Interior
(FWS and USBR) direction under contracts with the States
of Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming.
We also routinely use the entire HEC package of models
applicable to reservoir and stream hydraulics. In many
cases we developed or obtain versions of these models to
enhance both the input and output processes. We have
also linked these programs with dam break, GIS, and
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