Implementation Strategies for Salinity Projects

Abstract

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has the responsibility for developing implementation strategies for salinity control projects in the Colorado River Basin. Determining when and which projects should be built depends primarily upon the planning and construction funds available at various times during the program period and other considerations. The paper describes the development of a methodology that is used by Reclamation for analyzing implementation strategies for salinity control projects in the Colorado River Basin. The methodology uses a variant of the more traditional dynamic programming formulations of the capacity expansion problem which allows total project costs to be used as the state variable. Objective‐space dynamic programming was used to efficiently develop multiple solutions for a range of possible funding levels for the life of the program. The solutions allow the evaluation of the sensitivity and effects of various funding scenarios on the overall salinity control program. Examples of the information developed by the methodology and the types of sensitivity analysis that can be conducted are presented.