Hands on the levers, Colorado River controllers go with the flow

By: HENRY BREAN - Las Vegas Review-Journal | Saturday, November 19, 2005 10:25 PM PST ∞

BOULDER CITY, Nev. ---- In a nondescript office building, Joe Donnelly sits at an off-the-shelf computer and adjusts numbers on a spreadsheet.

He might not look the part, but at the moment Donnelly controls the flow of the lower Colorado River and the water supply of 20 million people.

Donnelly is a scheduler for the federal Bureau of Reclamation, part of a four-person team that fills water delivery contracts along more than 300 miles of river from Hoover Dam near Las Vegas to the Mexican border.

He and his colleagues work in a cramped conference room known as the Boulder Canyon Operations Office Water Control Center.

"People want water, and our job is to move it into the right place on the system at the right time," said Terry Fulp, the bureau's area manager in Boulder City.

Working in tandem with another bureau scheduling office in Yuma, Ariz., the water control center in Boulder City oversees the delivery of 8.7 million acre-feet of water a year. That's enough water to cover the city of Las Vegas to a depth of more than 100 feet.

Mexico gets 1.5 million acre-feet of that water. Of the 7.2 million acre-feet that stays in the United States, some supplies homes and businesses in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz. But most goes to farms in Arizona and Southern California that produce more than $1 billion worth of crops, including 85 percent of the nation's winter vegetables.

To get water from Hoover Dam to a head of lettuce in a field near El Centro takes five days.

All told, the schedulers fill about 150 water delivery contracts on the lower Colorado River.

The first order of business, Fulp said, is to understand how much water is available in the river and how much of it is due to be delivered over the next month and year. The schedulers' job is to translate such long-range planning into the daily and even hourly operation of the lower Colorado's dams and reservoirs, he said.

The goal is to meet water orders and maximize storage on the river so no excess water is allowed to flow across the international boundary.

Any river water that flows into Mexico outside of scheduled deliveries does not count against Mexico's 1.5 million acre-foot allocation.

The schedulers also are expected to hit target levels for the water elevation in lakes Mohave and Havasu and for the hydroelectric power output at Hoover, Davis and Parker dams.

And to make sure the water arrives at its destination on time, they must adjust their deliveries for the time it takes water to move through the system: six hours from Hoover Dam to Davis Dam, three days from Parker Dam to the canals that funnel river water to farms just north of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Adjustments made to the schedule are sent by computer to the Hoover Dam control center, a secure facility where the actual changes to water and power plant operations are made.

Unlike the scheduling office, which keeps regular business hours five days a week, the dam's control center is staffed every minute of every day year round. From there, operators control the flow of the water and the speed of power turbines at Hoover, Davis and Parker dams.

"Our goal is for all the water we release to generate power, but the water is our mission," said Richard McDaniel, acting director of the control center.

If the schedulers' work was a Las Vegas lounge act, the show would open with psychic predictions and close with a juggling act.

Using real-time information from flow gauges and weather satellites, the schedulers fill water orders and try to forecast downstream water demand days into the future.

"It changes, and sometimes it changes very quickly," said Bruce Williams, team leader for the scheduling operation in Boulder City.

Last month, for example, a storm system dumped rain on Las Vegas and soaked farms and fields along the California-Mexico border. That prompted the bureau's biggest customer, California's Imperial Irrigation District, to cut its scheduled water orders.

To compensate, lead scheduler Julie Merchen had to slow the flow of water from Parker Dam, which raised the level of Lake Havasu and reduced the amount of electricity being generated by the dam.

To make up the lost power, more water was sent through the turbines at Hoover Dam, prompting an unwelcome rise in the level of Lake Mohave, where biologists working for the bureau had requested low water to help them net endangered razorback sucker fish.

Those problems were nothing compared with what happened when heavy storms and flooding hit the Colorado River in January and February.

The extra water caused farmers to slash their orders and prompted the bureau to all but close the gates at Parker Dam to try to capture as much of the unscheduled surplus as possible.

That drove up the water level in upstream reservoirs, especially Lake Havasu, which quickly swelled to 99 percent of capacity.

During less hectic times, the bureau's scheduling office does what it can to accommodate requested changes in river operations that have nothing to do with water or power.

Lake levels have been changed and the delivery schedule altered to help retrieve the body of a drowning victim, recover the wreckage of a truck that drove off a bridge, and help wildlife officials load burros onto a floating barge.

"It is sometimes a matter of almost inches," Fulp said of the river-flow adjustments.

The flow of the Colorado River below Hoover Dam also has been changed for special boating events, Fourth of July fireworks shows, and repairs to boat ramps and docks.

Schedulers try to make sure there is plenty of water in the lakes and in the river on weekends ---- particularly holiday weekends ---- when boaters flock to the area.

In October, the scheduling office temporarily increased releases from Davis Dam for a boat race in Laughlin. And when organizers called during the event looking for still more water, the bureau found a way to meet the request.

It wasn't always like that, said JoElle Hurns, executive director of the Laughlin Chamber of Commerce.

About 4 million tourists visit Laughlin and Bullhead City, Ariz., each year, and about 30 percent of them come to use the river, Hurns said.

"Four or five years ago, we had a couple of rough Labor Day weekends. The water was completely low," she said. "On the front page of the local paper there were pictures of boaters literally stranded on sandbars."

Communication and coordination with the bureau has greatly improved since then, she said. "The last two or three years, we have really built a good relationship."

Back at the water control center in Boulder City, Donnelly answers a call while he looks over the computer spreadsheet of the day's deliveries.

"I think it's always there, but I don't think we can fully comprehend the enormous impact this water has on the lives and the livelihood of the Southwest," he said. "We can't see through the eyes of (20) million people, but it's definitely on our minds, without question."