7Q10 flows for SRS streams

The Environmental Transport Group of the Environmental Technology Section was requested to predict the seven-day ten-year low flow (7Q10 flow) for the SRS streams based on historical stream flow records. Most of the historical flow records for the SRS streams include reactor coolant water discharged from the reactors and process water released from the process facilities. The most straight forward way to estimate the stream daily natural flow is to subtract the measured upstream reactor and/or facility daily effluents from the measured downstream daily flow. Unfortunately, this method does not always work, as indicated by the fact that sometimes the measured downstream volumetric flow rates are lower than the reactor effluent volumetric flow rates. For those cases that cannot be analyzed with the simple subtracting method, an alternative method was used to estimate the stream natural flows by statistically separating reactor coolant and process water flow data. The correlation between the calculated 7Q10 flows and the watershed areas for Four Mile Branch and Pen Branch agrees with that calculated by the USGS for Upper Three Runs and Lower Three Runs Creeks. The agreement between these two independent calculations lends confidence to the 7Q10 flow calculations presented in this report