LINKING OPERATIONAL HYDROLOGY AND WATER QUALITY MODELING IN THE WEBER BASIN: A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM

Competing uses for water within the Weber Basin continues to challenge water resource managers. This is exacerbated due to water quality problems associated with land-use characteristics and reservoir operations that significantly affect water treatment operations while meeting agricultural and other water use needs. The Weber Basin is highly developed with eight reservoirs and twenty-one service areas whose water management is highly constrained by complex water rights and storage allocations within the reservoirs. The Utah Water Research Laboratory has developed a Decision Support System (Weber-DSS) that models the integrated water resource operations of the system that is linked to stream and reservoir water quality and temperature models. The DSS allows water resource managers the ability to evaluate alternative operational scenarios in terms water supply and water quality throughout the basin. The system has been shown to provide insight to creative water management operations that reduce impacts associated with water treatment costs while maintaining target water delivery schedules for service areas. The DSS can also be utilized to evaluate affects of best management practices on nutrient loadings associated with land-use issues while integrating these affects in terms of both water quantity and quality. This paper present an overview of the Weber-DSS and highlights several practical applications to water resource issues within the Weber Basin.