State Water Board releases Shasta River LSPC–Modflow package and shares step‑by‑step run instructions

Shahab Aragad, senior water resource control engineer specialist at the State Water Resources Control Board, opened a technical workshop on the draft Shasta River integrated surface–groundwater model and told participants: “Please send us your comments, your written comments and email it to us by not later than June 12th.”

The model package the board posted bundles the LSPC executable, climate forcing data and two Microsoft Access databases (baseline and unimpaired scenarios) along with scripts and coupling files needed to reproduce the LSPC–Modflow linkage. John Riverson, a consultant with Paradigm Ult, said the package also includes Modflow groundwater level outputs used during calibration and that users can run the simulation either from the packaged LSPC run or by iterating the LSPC/Modflow coupling from scratch.

Consultants walked attendees through execution steps and system requirements. Ashish, a member of the modeling team, advised users to unzip weather files, update the weather and output paths in the model Access database (avoiding spaces in file paths), load the appropriate database into the LSPC executable and then click run. He demonstrated that the executable in the package is labeled “LSPC model version 6.33.” The run produces per‑subwatershed “.out” daily files and monthly summary files; the presenters highlighted VA_102.out for the watershed outlet and 1087.out for Lake Shastina as examples.

The team described typical resource needs: the integrated LSPC runs may require about 8 GB of disk space and can take 4–6 hours for the full simulation period; Modflow runs require about 1.2 GB and roughly 1 hour. The package includes readme documentation and a data‑processing folder for advanced pre‑ and post‑processing. Presenters said Microsoft Access may display security warnings when opening the databases; only the path updates are required to run the model.

The presenters also confirmed they will add GIS reference layers—reach shapefiles and a Modflow grid shapefile—to the model package or readme and will notify users when those files are posted.

Next steps: the board requested written comments by June 12th, and the modeling team said they will post the workshop recording, slides and follow up with answers to outstanding technical questions.