ABSTRACTProviding adequate water supplies of good quality is becoming a serious problem in many areas of the United States. Some of the alternatives proposed for meeting the growing shortage of clean‐water or cheap‐water are reallocation, reuse, and importation. This paper outlines a methodology to assess all of these water supply alternatives by examining the amount and time‐staging for development of water sources. In conceptualizing the problem, sources of supply are classified in three categories: primary or base supplies, secondary or effluent supplies, and supplementary or imported supplies. A model of the water system is formulated as a “transportation problem” in linear programming depicting the possible sources of supply which can be used to satisfy the requirements of various water users. The optimizing objective in the model is to minimize the cost of water under various assumptions for operating the system. A case study of the Salt Lake Qty, Utah, area is used to illustrate the application of the model in obtaining optimal water supply allocations for projected future demands. Assessment of alternatives in the study include redistribution of supplies, time‐staging of supplies and related treatment facilities, and sensitivity of allocations to chang
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