To improve coordination and transparency of water management operations within the Upper Colorado River basin, Eastern Colorado Area Office developed a Web-Based Decision Support System that allows real-time sharing of a visual representation of the Upper Colorado River as it responds to actual and anticipated reservoir releases, diversions and return flows.

As manager of Green Mountain Reservoir, ECAO facilitates coordination meetings with stakeholders responsible for the management and operations of storage reservoirs and irrigation diversions in the Upper Colorado River basin from the Colorado River headwaters to the confluence with the Gunnison River in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Frequently, operation changes occur at multiple reservoirs and diversions. In the past, the projected flow at targeted locations based on these changes were roughly estimated by hand by the participants in the meetings. These estimates were difficult to determine in real-time due to the various reservoirs and diversions, numerous tributaries, and transit times and losses associated with long river distances.

The DSS has improved the quality of discussion of the HUP meetings. The user-friendly web service allows to share modeling outputs in real-time, which has been extremely helpful to evaluate proposed operations.