The upper yampa water conservancy district (UYWCD) is located in steamboat springs, routt county, colorado, and is a category a applicant (water district)

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation awarded a $553,980 Project Grant under the Applied Science Grants program (CFDA 15.557) to the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District (UYWCD) located in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The primary goal of this 26-month project is to create a forecasting tool for the Yampa River Basin that provides projected streamflow conditions, reservoir yields, environmental flow impacts, and water rights availability. This will be achieved by integrating a streamflow forecasting framework with a water resources allocation model, and delivering the results through a publicly accessible web-based dashboard. The project aims to improve water management in the basin, which was recently declared over-appropriated, by enhancing streamflow forecasting, projecting water availability, and providing useful forecast metrics to local stakeholders.

The UYWCD is a water conservancy district, formed under the colorado water conservancy act. The primary goal of this project is to create a forecasting tool for the yampa river basin that provides not only projected streamflow conditions, but also administrative outcomes like expected reservoir yields, impacts to environmental flows, water rights availability, and others. This goal will be achieved through the integration of a robust streamflow forecasting framework with a well-established water resources allocation systems model, and delivery of model results through a publicly accessible web-based dashboard. In 2022, the colorado division of water resources declared most of the yampa river basin as over-appropriated for the first time. This situation has raised concerns among stakeholders who anticipate increased water rights administration and usage restrictions. The work conducted will address these challenges in three principal ways: 1) by improving the quality and spatial resolution of streamflow forecasts through the deployment of a WRF-hydro model that is calibrated for conditions in the yampa river, 2) by leveraging the state of colorados water rights modeling framework (STATEMOD) to project water availability on a by-reach scale throughout the basin, and 3) by delivering useful forecast metrics, and associated uncertainties, in a dashboard format so local stakeholders who lack resources to run their own forecast tools can be aided in their decision making. Regarding result delivery, many water management stakeholders in the yampa river basin already utilize the UYWCD S data dashboard for tracking various datasets. By integrating this tool with an existing portal, the project will reach a wider audience of engaged stakeholders.