Sutton Reservoir and Summersville Reservoir were intended to provide through storage sufficient water to augment the low flows of the Kanawha River in West Virginia with considerable benefit to pollution abatement, water supply, river water temperature reduction (beneficial in summer months), and to some extent, to sewage treatment in the Cincinnati-Covington Pool on the Ohio River. Maintenance of a given rate of flow is used in design rather than adding the amount of augmentation to the natural flows. A high degree of waste treatment or a large reduction in waste load added to the Kanawha is necessary even with the highest rates of low flow augmentation. Secondary treatment of municipal wastes and equivalent reduction of organic industrial waste loads were found to be necessary if the minimum water quality objectives of the West Virginia State Water Commission were to be met.