Lake Drainage Area Research Articles

OPTIMAL ALLOCATION OF WATER QUALITY CONTROLS IN URBANIZING RIVER BASINS1

ABSTRACT: Urbanizing river basins in the west are encountering serious water quality degradation resulting from the expanded water utilization. In order to avoid aggravating such conditions, water quality controls need to be implemented. The important questions are, therefore, where and how to impose such constraints on the urban and agricultural sectors to achieve the desired level of pollution control. An application of the model developed to address such questions is made in the Utah Lake drainage area of Central Utah as a test of the model's utility. The region is subdivided into five major sub‐basins containing both municipal and agricultural water demands. A submodel of each sub‐basin is developed which optimizes the water quality control strategies by linking the urban to the agricultural uses and then evaluating the levels of control for each sector. From these results, a cost‐effectiveness function for each sub‐basin is generated. By jointly considering the cost‐effectiveness relationship for each sub‐basin, an optimum policy for the entire basin is determined.

Pollution Potential of Some New Hampshire Lakes

A combination of simple water‐balance and mass‐balance equations produces an expression for the concentration of a dissolved pollutant in a lake as a function of time. Within this model are expressions characterizing (1) the lake equilibrium concentration, and (2) the rate at which equilibrium will be approached. These two parameters characterize the pollution potential of a lake. Pollution potentials for 23 New Hampshire lakes were evaluated and found to be closely correlated with lake size and drainage area.

EFFECTS OF INTERBASIN TRANSFERS UPON WATER MANAGEMENT ALTERNATIVES IN CENTRAL UTAH1

ABSTRACT. Most of Utah's rapid population and industrial expansion is taking place along the western base of the Wasatch Mountains, with consequent increases in water demand. As a part of Utah's “Developing a State Water Plan,” a foundation investigation of the Utah Lake drainage area, which is at the Southern end of the Wasatch Front, was completed which delineated the quantity and quality of the water resources, present water uses, and opportunities for further water conservation. To prepare water budgets, land use data was collected to delineate all areas using water in excess of normal precipitation, which includes agricultural croplands, phreatophytes, open water surfaces, industrial areas, and urban areas. The water budgets were prepared for the time base 1931‐1960, but adjusted to physical conditions existing in 1960.The Initial Phase of the Bonneville Unit of the Central Utah Project is presently under construction, with costs expected to exceed 300 million dollars. The principal feature of this project is the exportation of waters from the Colorado River Basin into the Utah Lake drainage area (Great Basin). This importation provides a large number of alternatives for allocation, reallocation of present supplies, and exportation. The possible effects of the Central Utah Project for realizing some of the above alternatives is delineated. Fortunately, the features of this project allow a wide latitude for water management in Utah, thereby facilitating its corporation into a “State Water Plan.”