CEAE Professors Edie Zagona, Director of CADSWES, and Joseph Kasprzyk joined the CADSWES Reclamation Colorado River modeling team in meeting with the Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation and other Department of Interior officials on September 28 in Washington D.C.
The team gave the Commissioner, Camille Calimlim Touton, updates on the development of a Web App for collaborative decision making that will be deployed for use by stakeholders for the upcoming Environmental Impact Study (EIS) negotiations for new Colorado River operating policies when current policies expire in 2026. Kasprzyk and Zagona, with their graduate students, led the research and development of the science and methods of decision-making under deep uncertainty that underpin the Web App under research grants from Reclamation.
Zagona briefed the officials on the 30-year collaboration between CU-CADSWES and Reclamation that has developed the tools and analysis capabilities that the government has used to finalize successful agreements with US and Mexico stakeholders. She pointed out the many previous graduate students who are, as Reclamation scientists, leading the technical efforts in this upcoming challenging process on the Colorado River.