The presented method enhances groundwater-mandated safe yield management. It is useful for settings that prevent sustained yield or integrated management. To protect hydraulically connected surface water rights, the Utah government's Cache Valley groundwater management plan proposes that total pumping increase not exceed 84,431 m 3 /day. To determine how best to spatially distribute additional allowable pumping, stakeholders quantified limits defining acceptable impacts on selected water resource indicators. A new simulation-optimization (S-O) algorithm used these limits while computing optimal spatially distributed perennial yield or safe yield groundwater pumping extraction strategies. The limits prevent unacceptable decreases in: head and net flow between aquifer and surface waters (rivers, surface/subsurface drains, springs, lakes). The optimization objective function maximizes weighted pumping to provide water for 18 growing municipalities. For 16 perennial yield scenarios, computed optimal pumping increases differ in protectiveness toward senior water rights, and range from 16% to 103% of the state plan-proposed increase. Implementing a protective strategy would achieve 90% of the storage changes needed to reach equilibrium within 23 years. Indicator potentiometric heads would reach equilibrium within 10-40 years. At equilibrium, an optimal Cache Valley perennial yield strategy acceptably minimizes net annual nonpumping discharges. By comparison, multi-period 20-year transient groundwater mining optimizations allow more pumping in early years. Pumping then must decline to satisfy seepage and head constraints through year 20. Adverse seepage impact would increase for years thereafter. For situations governed by safe or perennial yield policy, equilibrium-based (steady-state) optimization is very useful. It effectively develops optimal perennial yield strategies.

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Disagreement among policymakers often involves policy issues and differences between the decision makers' implicit utility functions. Significant disagreement can also exist concerning conceptual models of the physical system. Disagreement on the validity of a single simulation model delays discussion on policy issues and prevents the adoption of consensus management strategies. For such a contentious situation, the proposed multiconceptual model optimization (MCMO) can help stakeholders reach a compromise strategy. MCMO computes mathematically optimal strategies that simultaneously satisfy analogous constraints and bounds in multiple numerical models that differ in boundary conditions, hydrogeologic stratigraphy, and discretization. Shadow prices and trade-offs guide the process of refining the first MCMO-developed`multi-model strategy into a realistic compromise management strategy. By employing automated cycling, MCMO is practical for linear and nonlinear aquifer systems. In this reconnaissance study, MCMO application to the multilayer Cache Valley (Utah and Idaho, USA) river-aquifer system employs two simulation models with analogous background conditions but different vertical discretization and boundary conditions. The objective is to maximize additional safe pumping (beyond current pumping), subject to constraints on groundwater head and seepage from the aquifer to surface waters. MCMO application reveals that in order to protect the local ecosystem, increased groundwater pumping can satisfy only 40 % of projected water demand increase. To explore the possibility of increasing that pumping while protecting the ecosystem, MCMO clearly identifies localities requiring additional field data. MCMO is applicable to other areas and optimization problems than used here. Steps to prepare comparable sub-models for MCMO use are area-dependent.

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