A survey of decision-making processes for environmental flows in hydropower facilities
Abstract
Dam operations support multiple stakeholders and objectives, including hydropower generation, flood control and water supply. However, dam operations can disrupt elements of downstream ecosystems, including flow and temperature regimes, habitat and migration patterns of sensitive species and water quality. Water released from reservoirs as "environmental flows" can potentially preserve or restore affected ecosystems. However, decision-making processes to develop environmental flows by hydropower dam operators, who operate under multiple regulatory frameworks and operational timeframes, are poorly understood. For example, it is not clear that these processes formally or informally account for the challenges of a changing climate (e.g. extreme climate events), or if the operators' personal motivations and operational discretion influence these processes. These uncertainties hinder the ability of water resources managers to properly develop and prescribe environmental flows. We sent an online survey in 2018 to several hundred hydropower operators in the western United States to help fill this knowledge gap (IRB #: UCM2017-50). Participants were asked about water resource infrastructure and operational ability to provide environmental flows, as well as their own operational priorities, use of models, decision-making timelines, communication channels, perceptions towards climate change and environmental protection and demographic characteristics. We examined the results for differences in responses among geographical regions, job title types and other factors. Preliminary results suggest that respondents managing greater reservoir and hydroelectric power capacity (1) and exhibiting a positive, proactive attitude towards environmental flows (2) are associated with the more consistent use of environmental flow approaches, such as pulse flows, ramp rates and temperature releases. This analysis informs the development of operational models for hydropower that optimize for functional environmental flows, temperature regimes and fish populations under non-stationary future climate scenarios. In turn, these models can be used by hydropower operators and other water use stakeholders to improve environmental outcomes in a supply-constrained and climatically uncertain future.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H31N2144C
- Keywords:
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- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1808 Dams;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1878 Water/energy interactions;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCES