Improved flood control is needed for the North Delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. The Cosumnes and Mokelumne rivers are main tributaries to the North Delta. The Cosumnes River watershed is approximately 940 sq mi and is primarily unregulated. The Mokelumne River watershed is approximately 700 sq mi and is regulated by several large dams. Camanche Dam, the largest on the Mokelumne River, has a flood control reservation of 200,000 ac-ft. Because of the complex watershed and channel system configuration, including backwater and tidal influences, an unsteady flow hydraulic model, such as HEC-RAS, is required to compute water surface elevations. To evaluate proposed flood-reduction alternatives in a systematic and fair fashion, the entire range of possible flood events must be considered. For consistency, the strategy is to consider the 10-, 25-, 50-, 100-, and 200-yr events, for economic and hydraulic impact evaluation.
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We developed the hydrology to "feed" the North Delta HEC-RAS model: the 0.10 (10 yr), 0.04 (25 yr), 0.02 (50 yr), 0.01 (100 yr), and 0.005 (200 yr) annual exceedence probability flows. This hydrology includes runoff hydrographs from the Cosumnes River, Dry Creek, Mokelumne River, and Morrison Creek watersheds. These flows serve as upstream boundary conditions in the HEC-RAS model for computing stage-frequency functions in the lower portion of the watershed. The hydrographs are now available as input in the North Delta HEC-RAS model to compute stage-frequency functions at key downstream points.
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