Projects

The Situation

Municipalities and private water vendors often approach the Huntington District of the US Army Corps of Engineers to propose withdrawals from Corps reservoirs. These reservoirs are located within complex river basin systems, so a change in operation to any one project can affect other projects’ abilities to meet requirements such as flood control, water supply, and recreation.

The Huntington District needed over a month to calculate storage allocations and reservoir impacts for each withdrawal, using mainframe computer models and an iterative process requiring a specially trained engineer. Municipalities, water suppliers, and the US Congress requested a more rapid turnaround.

The Solution

GKY developed river basin simulation models for the 6 reservoirs of the Big Sandy River Basin and the 15 reservoirs of the Muskingum River Basin. The models can calculate the required storage allocation for any given withdrawal rate and quantify impacts to all river basin projects in about 10 minutes – cutting response time from over 30 days to approximately 10 minutes. With this tool, the Corps can now respond rapidly to water supply development questions from every stakeholder.