Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (2018-Ongoing)

Precision worked with Truckee Meadows Water Authority (TMWA) to analyze the water right yield and reliability for the Return Flow Management Agreement (RFMA) between TMWA, City of Reno, City of Sparks, and TRI General Improvement District (TRI GID). This agreement pools management of water rights held by the four entities and the State of Nevada to utilize reclaimed water from the Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility (TMWRF) to meet existing and future demands in Reno, Sparks, and industrial customers within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center (TRIC). Expanded beneficial use will allow for new industry to come to the Tahoe-Reno area including the Tesla Gigafactory, Google, Switch, and others while improving the water quality in the Truckee River that is home to threatened and endangered species and ultimately flows to Pyramid Lake.

To meet these objectives the water right yield and operational flexibility allowed by TROA was modeled in the daily timestep TROA Operations and Accounting RiverWare® model to ensure that reuse demands could be met without harming downstream water right holders. To evaluate the water right yield several operational scenarios and strategies were run though a Stress Test hydrology sequence that included the recent 2012-2016 drought and more normal and wet years utilizing observed demand and ground water pumping patterns. The daily timestep of the model was crucial in assessing the water right availability in time and place since the demands of the reuse are often out of phase with the daily ground water pumping, privately owned stored water release and credit water release patterns that supply some of the water rights. Further analysis leveraged the TRI GID reservoir (2,000 acre-feet design capacity) to level out daily and seasonal discrepancies between the available water right supply and effluent reuse demand including consideration of peak demand factors, delivery and treatment capacities.

The pipeline to deliver water from TMWRF to TRIC, TRIC reservoir, and advanced treatment plant are expected to be completed as early as the end of 2022.