The drought of 2002 was particularly severe for the Octoraro Watershed in the Chester Water Authority (CWA) Water Supply System.  Reservoir inflows to the Octoraro Reservoir dropped to record low levels for sustained periods. Through the use of CWA’s Susquehanna River source, customer conservation efforts and PADEP- permitted reduction of downstream reservoir release requirement; CWA recovered from this event without curtailing customer service.

In order to put things in perspective, CWA commissioned a safe yield study of their system which involved programming a computer model to replicate a complex set of operating rules. It was determined that the drought of 2002 was the "drought of record" of the 91-year period of record.  Amanda's paper describes the state-of-the-art technical approach and statistical analysis used to evaluate the CWA system performance and the significance of analysis statistics. It also emphasizes applying this analytical approach to evaluate the safe yield of other systems.