Hydrodynamic Data of Bushy Park Reservoir, South Carolina 2013-2015

The Bushy Park Reservoir is a relatively shallow impoundment in a semi-tropical climate and is the principal water supply for the 400,000 people of the City of Charleston and the surrounding areas including the industries in the Bushy Park Industrial Complex. Although there is an adequate supply of freshwater in the reservoir, there are taste-and-odor water-quality concerns. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) worked in cooperation with the Charleston Water System to study the hydrology and hydrodynamics of the Bushy Park Reservoir to identify factors impacting water-quality conditions. This data release is for the hydrodynamic data collected during the study to support the application and calibration of a 3-dimensional hydrodynamic model and the analysis of water-quality conditions to give insight to the principal causes of the Bushy Park Reservoir taste-and-odor episodes. The existing USGS real-time network on the West Branch of the Cooper River was augmented with a tidal flow gages on Durham Canal, Back River, and Foster Creek. The Charleston Water System intake structure was instrumented to collect water level, water temperature (top and bottom probes), specific conductance (top and bottom probes), wind speed and direction, and photosynthetically active radiation. These data are available from the USGS at http://dx.doi.org/10.5066/F7P55KJN. In addition to the gages attached to fixed structures, four bottom-mounted vertical velocity profilers were deployed over different periods at six locations (VPP sites). Deployment period for the vertical velocity profilers range from two weeks to four months, and data were collected at 15-minute intervals. During the investigation, 4-tidal cycle (13-hour) streamflow measurements were made at 30-minute intervals at five locations (VMT sites).