Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2010UT146B

Developing a Priority System for Managing Sediment in Smaller Reservoirs

Institute: Utah
Year Established: 2010 Start Date: 2010-03-01 End Date: 2011-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $20,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $49,757

Principal Investigators: Rollin Hotchkiss

Project Summary:

Water storage in Utah reservoirs has been declining due to reservoir sedimentation since the original construction of the dams that provided the storage. Many of the more than 100 reservoirs in Utah of more than 1,000 acre-ft are now approaching their design life of 50 years and require bathymetric surveys to determine the extent of storage loss. It is not possible to perform regular bathymetric surveys on all of these reservoirs due to time and cost constraints. Working with the Utah Division of Water Resources and using information from some of the facilities for which sedimentation rates are known, an empirical equation will be developed to predict the extent of sedimentation in the reservoirs where no survey has been performed. Likely inputs to the predictive equation include variables describing the local climate, geology, watershed, dam, and reservoir. The relationship will be verified using the remainder of the reservoirs for which sedimentation rates are known and will be checked by performing a bathymetric survey on a selected reservoir. The process developed in this project can be replicated nationwide.