Reclamation and the seven Colorado River Basin States, in collaboration with stakeholders throughout the Colorado River Basin (Basin), conducted the Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study to assess future water supply and demand imbalances in the Basin over the next 50 years and develop and evaluate options and strategies to resolve the imbalances. The Study adopted a scenario planning approach to address the considerable amount of uncertainty in projecting the future state of the Colorado River system, which resulted in four water supply scenarios and six water demand scenarios. After soliciting options from the public, portfolios or suites of options were developed as examples of different strategies for addressing the potential supply and demand imbalances. All supply and demand scenario combinations were used to simulate the state of the system using Reclamations long-term planning model (CRSS). Recent RiverWare advances, including distributed MRM and the RiverWare Study Manager, aided in the multitude of simulations performed during the Study. The Study employed a novel technique for dynamically selecting and implementing options within CRSS. This approach helps reduce overinvestment while more realistically simulating a need-based process that only implements options when they are deemed necessary to avoid or resolve vulnerabilities. The presentation will highlight the RiverWare features applied in the Study and describe the implementation of dynamic portfolios.

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