Austin, Texas

Hydros Consulting Inc. (Hydros) has worked with the River Operations Center of the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) in Austin, Texas for over 10 years developing, enhancing, and maintaining RiverWare Models for daily river scheduling and operations.

Hydros originally developed three decision support models for daily river operations: a daily release model, an hourly routing model, and an accounting model.  The daily operations model simulates multi-use water allocation based on the prior appropriation administration of water rights.  The model recommends the minimum daily releases required to meet downstream demands given forecasted inflows, water orders, and environmental policies dictated by the water management plan.  The routing model simulates hourly releases from reservoirs through a river channel with a seven-day travel time to ensure that the scheduled hydropower releases will not violate instream flow criteria.  The water accounting model is used to classify releases and diversions with respect to priority water rights administration, stored/contract water releases, and environmental requirements.

In 2017, Hydros developed a fourth model to simulate the daily operations of Arbuckle Reservoir, a lower basin off-channel reservoir the construction of which is nearing completion.  The model is used as a daily operations model to determine the volume of excess water in the river that can be stored in Arbuckle Reservoir or the required releases from Arbuckle Reservoir to meet demands.

Hydros continues to work with LCRA to provide user support related to DROM as well as continued enhancements to DROM given the constantly changing landscape related to water rights, water management plans, and new infrastructure, etc.