Distribution of Reservoir Water Rights to Accounts

StateMod has the ability to assign a reservoir (storage) right to one or more accounts. It is particularly important to assign storage rights to specific accounts for on-channel reservoirs as they can store in-priority without an operating rule. For off-channel reservoirs, reservoirs store under water rights that have been carried via operating rules and the user has additional control over which accounts can be filled using specific water rights. See the below for additional information on off-channel reservoirs.

• To assign a reservoir water right to a specific account, set the variable iresco of the reservoir right file (*.rer) to the account number specified in the reservoir station file (*.res).
• To assign a reservoir water right to serve several or all accounts, set the variable iresco of the reservoir right file (*.rer) to -n where n is the first n accounts specified in the reservoir station file (*.res). When water is stored in-priority under the storage right, it is distributed according to the ratio of space available in each account. For example if 30,000 AF is diverted to two accounts that have 20,000 AF and 40,000 AF of capacity available (account capacity - current capacity); the first account will receive 10,000 AF and the second will receive 20,000 AF.
• If each account is fully utilized in most years, this approach to distribute reservoir water rights typically works well. However, this approach can result in one reservoir account receiving what may be determined to be an inappropriate share of a reservoir’s water right because they typically have less of their available space in use. For such a case it is recommended the storage right be broken into a number of sub-rights which are assigned to each account directly. This approach has the additional benefit of being able to properly implement the one-fill rule between accounts.