After decades of litigation and negotiation, the Truckee Carson-Pyramid Lake Water Rights Settlement Act was passed in 1990. The law provides a foundation for developing operating criteria for interstate allocation of water to meet demands for municipal, irrigation, fisheries and wildlife, and recreational uses, as well as to meet water-quality standards, in the approximately 7.000square-mile Truckee River and Carson River Basins of western Nevada and eastern California (fig. 1). The Truckee-Carson Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is assisting the U.S. Department of the Interior in implementing the act. The program has the following objectives: Consolidate streamflow and water-quality data from several agencies into a single data base; Establish new streamflow and water-quality gaging stations for more complete water-resources information and more-consistent support of river operations; and Build, calibrate, test, and apply interbasin hydrologic computer models to support efficient water-resources planning, management, and allocation. Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran A computer model simulating storage, flow, and quality of the water in the Truckee River and Carson River Basins and in the Truckee Canal is being developed to help meet the third objective of the Truckee Carson Program. The model, based on the Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF; see Bicknell and others, 1993), simulates reservoir and diversion operations to analyze alternative water-management scenarios. This fact sheet summarizes some of the capabilities that were added to HSPF to simulate complex reservoir operations in the upper Truckee River Basin in eastern California. Examples of such operations include releases based on water-storage and floodcontrol criteria; releases to meet agricultural, municipal and industrial, and hydropower demands; and exchanges of water categories' between reservoirs. In this summary, simplified or isolated examples are used to illustrate specific reservoir operations that can be represented by HSPF. Actual day-today system management or simulation is more complex. It requires consideration of present and forecast flow conditions and of reservoir stages and volumes at various locations in the river basin as well as compliance with numerous legal agreements, legal decrees, and demands. A category of water is any block of water that is individually accounted for in an observed or simulated water budget. A single river, reservoir, lake, or diversion ditch may contain several categories. Water within a category may have specific ownership, such as "privately owned stored water." or have a designated use, such as "pooled water" (used to meet a minimum-flow requirement known as Floriston rates).
Techniques for estimating monthly mean Streamflow at gaged sites and monthly Streamflow duration characteristics at ungaged sites in central Nevada were developed using Streamflow records at six gaged sites and basin physical and climatic characteristics. Streamflow data at gaged sites were related by regression techniques to concurrent flows at nearby gaging stations so that monthly mean streamflows for periods of missing or no record can be estimated for gaged sites in central Nevada. The standard error of estimate for relations at these sites ranged from 12 to 196 percent. Also, monthly Streamflow data for selected percent exceedence levels were used in regression analyses with basin and climatic variables to determine relations for ungaged basins for annual and monthly percent exceedence levels. Analyses indicate that the drainage area and percent of drainage area at altitudes greater than 10,000 feet are the most significant variables. For the annual percent exceedence, the standard error of estimate of the relations for ungaged sites ranged from 51 to 96 percent and standard error of prediction for ungaged sites ranged from 96 to 249 percent. For the monthly percent exceedence values, the standard error of estimate of the relations ranged from 31 to 168 percent, and the standard error of prediction ranged from 115 to 3,124 percent. Reliability and limitations of the estimating methods are described.
After decades of litigation and negotiation, the Truckee-Carson-Pyramid Lake Water Rights Settlement Act was passed in 1990. The law provides a foundation for developing operating criteria for interstate allocation of water to meet demands for municipal, irrigation, fisheries and wildlife, and recreational uses, as well as to meet water-quality standards, in the approximately 7,000square-mile Truckee River and Carson River Basins of eastern California and western Nevada (fig. 1). The Truckee-Carson Program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is assisting the U.S. Department of the Interior in implementing the act. The program has the following objectives: Consolidate streamflow and water-quality data from several agencies into a single data base; Establish new streamflow and water-quality gaging stations for more complete water-resources information and more consistent support of river operations; and Build, calibrate, test, and apply interbasin hydrologic computer models to support efficient water-resources planning, management, and allocation. Berris (1996) and Hess (1996) describe the current progress of the Truckee-Carson Program objectives. Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran A computer model simulating storage and flow of the water in the Truckee River and Carson River Basins and in the Truckee Canal is being developed to help meet the third objective of the Truckee-Carson Program. The model, based on the Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF; see Bicknell and others, 1993), simulates reservoir and diversion operations to analyze alternative water-management scenarios. This fact sheet summarizes some of the capabilities that were added to HSPF to simulate complex river diversion operations in the upper Carson River Basin in eastern California and western Nevada. Examples include river diversion operations based on existing and possible agricultural or municipal and industrial demands, and operations used to divert water and fill reservoirs. River diversion operations are the distribution of waters based on legal decrees that govern the right to beneficial use of water established in accordance with the western system of appropriative water rights.' In this summary, simplified or isolated examples are used to illustrate specific operations that can be represented by Appropriative legal water rights in the Nevada parts of the Carson River and Truckee River Basins are based on the concept of "first in time, first in right." This means the first person to take a quantity of water and put it to beneficial use has a higher priority of right than a subsequent appropriative user. An appropriator usually is assigned a priority date (date of established water right). This date in relation to dates assigned to other users for the use of the same source of water is significant when the quantity of available water is insufficient to meet all the needs of all the legal users. TRUCKEE RIVER A '-BASIN ' 20 MILES CARSON RIVER 20 KILOMETERS j''-/
The modeling for this study is preliminary. Results of the model are constrained by current availability and accuracy of observed hydrologic data. Several inflows and outflows of the Carson River are not described by time-series data and therefore are not represented in the model. Additional gaging stations recording flow from the major tributaries, diversions, and return flows, as well as more sites along the Carson River would provide additional information for testing the current model and for future modifications to better define components of the hydrologic system.
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