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Before-and-after studies of the effects of a power-plant installation on Lake LBJ: measurement and prediction of abnormal reservoir operations on Lake LBJ's water quality. Interim report No. 2

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6173739
The first objective was to determine the water quality characteristics affected by lowering Lake LBJ, rotenone killing the fish therein, and refilling the reservoir. These operations did not degrade the water quality but did cause significant changes in the hypolimnion's dissolved oxygen depletion rate, ammonia concentration, and total alkalinity concentration as well as the entire conductivity profile. The second objective was to determine if thermally stratified physical impoundment models could be used to predict qualitatively the water quality in the epilimnion and hypolimnion during the first summer stratification after the reservoir refilled. For those shallow areas of the reservoir containing sandy sediments and apparently not affected by the earlier reservoir operations, good success was achieved. For the reservoir's deep stations where the water quality was affected by the earlier reservoir operations, the model's predicted values were not as good. However, the model's water quality was very similar to the reservoir's deep pool station in 1968 when the reservoir was operating normally. In most cases the models' predicted water quality characteristics were within the same order of magnitude and never any more than one order of magnitude difference from those observed at the models' respective reservoir stations.
Research Organization:
Texas Univ., Austin (USA). Center for Research in Water Resources
OSTI ID:
6173739
Report Number(s):
CRWR-85; ON: DE83901433
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English