Simulating California's water supply system under future climate stresses

Reclamation's Central Valley Project is coupled with California's State Water Project on a monthly time step in the CalSim 3 model. This study is adapting CalSim 3 to use projections of future streamflow, informed by dynamically downscaled climate model projections developed in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This will enable analysis on the potential effects of future climate on both the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, including changes in the magnitude and frequency of droughts and shortages throughout the region. These results will help to inform future drought preparedness activities by providing information on possible future conditions and pinch-points in the system.

Characterizing the Predictability and Sensitivity of Streamflow to Monsoon Season Precipitation

Flow in the Rio Grande comes primarily from two sources - snowmelt runoff originating in the river's headwaters and summer monsoon precipitation. As climate change reduces mountain snowpack and lowers runoff efficiency, so is spring runoff likely to be reduced, thereby increasing the likelihood of water stressed conditions for the Basin. As a result, warm-season, monsoonal precipitation is increasingly important to regional water supply, and being able to forecast such precipitation is key to managing limited water supplies. This project, along with a collaborative effort funded by the Lower Colorado Basin Region, is working to assess the predictability of monsoon precipitation in the Southwest and how that information can support Reclamation management activities, including mitigating the impacts of drought.

Development of short-range forecasts of weather-driven channel losses and gains to support Reclamation water management

The Colorado River Basin is challenged by an on-going, unprecedented 22-year drought. Although the Colorado River has tremendous storage in Lakes Powell and Mead, there is little storage infrastructure on the reach below Parker Dam. This can make managing operational requirements challenging when water orders change or flows increase due to local weather events. Increased efficiency in operations in this part of the Basin is critical to sustainable, long-term water management of the Colorado River. To that end, this project has partnered with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to pursue improved loss/gain forecasts for the Colorado River between Parker and Imperial Dams.

Improving runoff volume forecasts for snow dominated basins

Water supply forecasts are a critical component of reservoir operations within Reclamation. Accurate forecasts support maximizing seasonal reservoir refill while maintaining necessary downstream flood protection and other operational objectives. This project is a partnership between Reclamation's Columbia-Pacific Northwest and Missouri Basin regions to evaluate and enhance recently developed statistical water supply forecasting software. Through this project, Reclamation is building internal tools to support effective reservoir operations for enhancing water supply reliability.

Water America's Crops

Reclamation’s 8,000 miles of canals deliver water across the Western U.S., serving over 30 million customers and 10 million acres of farmland that produce 60% of the nation's vegetables and 25% of its fruits and nuts.

As water is conveyed by a canal from the source to customers, some water losses (such as from evaporation) are inevitable. However, a much more significant and preventable type of loss is seepage of water from a canal into the ground. Seepage represents the most significant cause of water loss in canals, reducing the efficiency of water deliveries and increasing costs for Reclamation and its customers. Moreover, if not adequately addressed, seepage can result in a canal failure over the long term.

The Water America’s Crops Challenge seeks to incentivize new approaches to minimizing seepage in canals that are cost-effective for the farmers and communities that Reclamation serves. The challenge is designed to accelerate development of new solutions and validate performance on criteria that will be critical for field testing and future deployment.

The prize competition is being held in two phases over a 24-month period. Phase 1 will culminate in the submission of technical proposals describing seepage reduction solutions, including expected performance on key criteria of effectiveness, durability, maintenance requirements, installation requirements, and cost. Up to five finalists will be chosen to develop laboratory scale prototypes for Phase 2 testing in Reclamation’s Denver laboratories.

More Water Less Concentrate

In many communities, existing fresh water sources are fully allocated or over-allocated; this challenge is exacerbated by ongoing drought across much of the West. When inland communities are evaluating potential sources for new water supplies, desalination is often overlooked or not considered due to its perceived high cost. A major cost factor is the handling, disposal and/or treatment required to manage concentrate streams. Using a prize competition, Reclamation is seeking innovative solutions for reducing the volume of concentrate requiring disposal from inland desalination systems in an affordable, environmentally sustainable, and efficient manner to make desalination an attractive option relative to other alternatives. This is a multi-phase competition spanning the next two years. Solvers with the most compelling solutions will be provided an opportunity to participate in the final phase of the competition to test their prototype technology as part of a demonstration event at Reclamation’s Yuma Desalting Plant in Yuma, AZ.

Sub-Seasonal Climate Forecast Rodeos

Improved sub-seasonal forecasts for weather and climate conditions (lead times ranging from 15-42 days and beyond) would allow water managers to better prepare for shifts in hydrologic regimes, such as the onset of drought or occurrence of wet weather extremes. Sub-seasonal prediction is particularly challenging as it targets a transitional period when recent weather is decreasingly influential, and other processes, such as the state of the oceans are increasingly influential. In support of advancing sub-seasonal prediction skill, Reclamation has partnered with NOAA to run two year-long prize competitions spanning 2016-2020. In each competition, participants issued sub-seasonal forecasts of temperature and precipitation every two weeks for a year, and were compared to state of practice forecasts. The most promising methods from these competitions are being further evaluated in partnership with Scripps Institute of Oceanography's (SIO) Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E).

Streamflow Forecast Rodeo

Streamflow forecasting is integral to water management, and with higher skill forecasts water managers are better equipped to operate facilities for high flows, mitigate impacts of drought, and achieve other improved outcomes like hydropower generation. This challenge seeks to improve the skill of short-term streamflow forecasts (10 days) via a year-long competition. Participants must develop and implement their methods for locations across the western United States, attempting to outperform state-of-practice streamflow forecasts. With this approach, Reclamation aims to spur innovation using data science communities and Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) methods toward enhancing streamflow forecasts. Reclamation is partnering with the CEATI International’s Hydropower Operations and Planning Interest Group (CEATI HOPIG), NASA Tournament Lab and Topcoder on this crowdsourcing competition. Partnering with CEATI HOPIG includes a companion project providing benchmarks the competitors will be evaluated against, as well as scoring of solver forecasts by RTI International. Other contributors include Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Innovative high recovery flow-reversal reverse osmosis desalination process for potable reuse providing essential physical barrier with higher recovery rate & reduction in concentrate flow

The objective of this project is to test a flow-reversal reverse osmosis technology with the purpose to introduce this technology to the US market. The technology has been implemented and installed in other countries. The company has partnered with Gwinnett County Water Resources to test this technology at their facility and determine feasibility, capital and operational costs for inland reuse desalination facilities. This modification on the operational process of reverse osmosis can increase the water recovery and augment the amount of water from desalination.

Enabling enhanced water recovery and minimized concentrate for desalination of San Joaquin Valley Irrigation Drainage

This project aims to develop a framework for identifying the best technology pathway to optimize the cost-effectiveness of brackish water desalination using the San Luis plant in San Joaquin Valley as an archetype. Columbia University has developed two innovative technologies, SIP and TSSE, which will be used to study the San Joaquin Valley irrigation drainage water by characterizing the water and optimizing the treatment of this type of water. This project if successful can provide new solutions to treat irrigation drainage and in turn be able to augment water supplies.

Cottonwood Direct Potable Reuse Preliminary Design Project

The City of Cottonwood, AZ currently serves potable water to a population of about 35,000 and the only source of water available to them is groundwater. Reclamation is completing a preliminary design project for Cottonwood to investigate the feasibility of expanding their drinking water supply portfolio to include direct potable reuse. Potable reuse systems use a series of advanced water treatment processes to remove contaminants from conventionally treated wastewater effluent, purifying the water to drinking water standards. As consequences from climate change and drought affect conventional water supplies, it becomes more important to develop a drought resistant supply of water like DPR. This will reduce interruptions in water delivery by diversifying water portfolios and ensuring water availability during droughts.

Enhancement of San Joaquin Snow Monitoring Program:

Operations for Millerton Lake (Friant Dam) have utilized Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) data for five consecutive years, pairing this remote sensing with snowpack modeling, improvements to ground-based stations, and an innovative approach to synthesizing data that is like Forecasted-Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO). The project will augment planned ASO surveys for winter/spring 2021. Enhanced monitoring of snow conditions can improve forecasts and operations by better characterizing available water, which is particularly impactful when managing limited supply during drought.

Exploring the Utility of CU-SWE Estimates for Water Supply Forecasting in the Colorado River Basin

This project will work with NOAA's Colorado Basin River Forecast Center (CBRFC) and researchers at the University of Colorado to evaluate the utility of their real time spatial estimates of SWE snow product (CU-SWE) for improving water supply forecasts. Runoff throughout the Upper Colorado River Basin is snowmelt dominated; exploring new resources for characterizing snow conditions can enhance reservoir operations and water management across a range of hydrologic regimes from floods to droughts.