Since the historic 2016 Water Settlement Agreement, which resolves decades of conflict over water resources in southeastern Oklahoma, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Chickasaw Nation and Oklahoma Water Resources Board have been actively collaborating on water planning activities across Oklahoma. Many of these initiatives utilize RiverWare to answer questions and explore topics ranging from economic value, sustainable flows, climate change impacts, and the evaluation of pending water rights as part of the implementation of the Water Settlement. This presentation will provide an overview of three projects, how they intersect with the Water Settlement and local water planning efforts, and how they use RiverWare to achieve their goals.

One project is an economic valuation study of the Blue River Basin in southern Oklahoma, which quantified the Blue River's economic activity and economic value to Oklahomans and used RiverWare to recommend a minimum flow standard for protecting the economic value of the Blue River. Another project is an ongoing South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center-funded study assessing the impacts of climate change across the Canadian River Basin. This study is using an ensemble of climate projections, a gridded rainfall-runoff model and RiverWare to model the impacts of climate change and future water demands on streamflow, reservoir levels and public water rights. The last project is ongoing and involves developing RiverWare models to be used for assessing the impacts of large pending water rights in the Choctaw Nation and Chickasaw Nation territories. These models integrate project-developed naturalized flows, domestic use set-asides, reservoirs, and all active water rights in the project basins, and will be used to implement key elements of the Water Settlement.