Conjunctive‐Use Planning in Mad River Basin, California

Abstract

A conjuctive‐use management model is presented that can be used to develop planning and operational strategies for a river basin. In contrast to previous investigations, the conjunctive‐use model explicitly incorporates (1) The hydraulics of the surface and ground‐water systems; and (2) water‐supply, hydro‐power, and ground‐water cost and benefit objectives. Operational constraints include hydropower production limits, water‐quality constraints on the blended surface water and ground water used to meet the municipal demand, and minimum instream flow needs downstream of the water‐supply abstraction point. The model is applied to the Mad River basin in Northern California. Optimal planning policies are developed for the water resource system. The optimization model is solved using MINOS, a large‐scale, nonlinear programming algorithm. The results indicated that conjunctive‐use management is a viable tool for multiobjective water resources planning problems.