Colorado needs more reservoir storage and ways to manage urban growth in order protect its water supplies, prominent politicians said at a major gathering of water officials in Steamboat Springs.
“Water is central to our livelihoods and its increasing scarcity is a challenge of the first order for everyone who calls the American West home,” said Joe O’Dea, a Republican challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet for one of Colorado’s U.S. Senate seats.
O’Dea spoke, along with Bennet, Gov. Jared Polis, and republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl at the Colorado Water Congress’s summer convention. The Colorado Water Congress is a statewide association that represents water districts, utilities, environmental groups and tribal communities.
“You can’t solve our problem without talking about storage. We know this region is getting drier and large-scale weather events are coming at unpredictable times,” O’Dea said. “That makes it all that more important to store water resources whenever they do appear.
“But we need a more rational process to approving them. Chatfield took the better part of 23 years to permit a single common sense project. Environmental review and public comment are central to good decision making, but they shouldn’t take decades,” O’Dea said.
O’Dea was referring to the successful effort to convert some of the space in the federally owned Chatfield Reservoir southwest of Denver for storage rather than simply flood control, which was its mission when it was built in the 1960s.
Gov. Jared Polis, too, pointed at climate change as a key driver that will shape how Colorado and other states manage their water supplies in the coming decades.
“Over the past two decades we have faced forces that threaten our access to water. The chronic, extreme drought, the changing nature of precipitation across the West. These pressures threaten water security, not just of our farms, cities and rivers, but the entire region,” Polis said.
“As a headwaters state, our resources flow to 18 states and Mexico. The entire region relies on Colorado to be a good steward. We’re proud of that responsibility and we take that responsibility very seriously,” he said.
To fulfill that responsibility within and outside the state’s borders, Polis called for more major investments in water sustainability, citing as an example the $60 million that Colorado lawmakers approved this year to fallow land in the Rio Grande and Republican River basins to improve aquifer health and ensure the state can meet its obligations to deliver water to New Mexico and Texas, which also rely on the Rio Grande, and Kansas, which relies on the Republican River.
“As we look to the future of our state, we need to understand the connectedness of water to the many challenges we face,” Polis said. “We are facing consistent growth in Colorado. But we can’t afford the water profile of exurban sprawl. We need to grow in a sustainable way,” he said, citing the need to develop more housing that reduces Coloradans’ per capita water use.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl also called for more water storage and promised to limit federal intervention in Colorado’s water affairs, including negotiations over how to reduce water use among the seven states that rely on the Colorado River. These include the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, and the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.
“The Upper Basin states have done just fine working through water issues. But expanding water storage is a must … and we must go in a different direction [regarding federal permitting requirements],” Ganahl said, adding that she would push the federal government to streamline water project approval processes.
She also criticized the Colorado Water Plan, a multi-million dollar collaborative effort by the Colorado Water Conservation Board to ensure the states’ major river basins are able to plan for and secure the water they need. Ganahl said it was too expensive and bureaucratic and that the current work to update the plan, first approved in 2015, “misses the mark. As governor I would simply work to develop more water.”
Bennet urged the conference attendees to look ahead and continue the hard work that has already been done.
“The conditions are as dire as we’ve seen, and we have a very difficult negotiation in front of us,” he said. “The people in this room have stepped up and made sacrifices,” he said. “But we know temporary Band-Aids are not going to cut it. All parties have to live with what the Colorado River can provide. This is an opportunity to make decisions that will strengthen the West for the next 100 years and fulfill our responsibility to the next generation.”
Political pollster Floyd Ciruli said that so many candidates spoke at the water conference was an indicator of the national attention that Western water shortages are generating, and he gave the politicos credit for providing on-point suggestions for what could be done.
“All four of these candidates were ready for today,” Ciruli said. “All of them talked about water.”
Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.
Canby Mountain, 13,460 feet in elevation, near Stony Pass in the San Juan mountains of southwestern Colorado is the headwaters of the Rio Grande. The 1,885 mile-long river flows to the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: Dean Krakel
Albuquerque, New Mexico — In late June, the mornings start out at 80 degrees but temperatures quickly soar past 100. Everywhere fields are brown and the high desert bakes in glaring sunlight. But there is one long, narrow corridor of green here: the Rio Grande.
Jason Casuga, CEO of the Middle Rio Grande Water Conservancy District, and Anne Marken, water operations manager, have been watching the river’s water gauges around the clock for days, knowing that entire stream segments below Albuquerque may go dry at any time. If rains come over the weekend, everyone will relax, at least for a while.
If that moisture doesn’t come, Casuga and Marken must move quickly to release to these dry stream segments whatever meager water they can squeeze from their drought-strapped system, giving the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation time to save as many endangered silvery minnow as they can from almost certain death.
“We only have so much time to start the drying operation,” Casuga said, referring to a practice where his district shifts water in its system so that Reclamation can rescue the fish before the stream goes completely dry and leaves them stranded to suffocate.
The Rio Grande Basin spans Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. Credit: Chas Chamberlin
“If we don’t do it, you might see 30 miles of the entire river go dry. It’s stressful. We’ve been doing this controlled hopscotching for weeks now.”
The Middle Rio Grande district, created in 1925, is responsible for delivering waters to farmers as well as helping the state meet its obligations to deliver water to Texas under the 1938 Rio Grande Compact. It coordinates management activity with Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of engineers on a river system that includes five major reservoirs and hundreds of miles of canals.
A crippled river
The district’s liquid juggling act is becoming increasingly common, and it is painful for everyone to watch, from the 19 tribes and six pueblos whose homes have lined its banks for thousands of years, to the 6 million people and 200,000 acres of irrigated lands that rely on the river across the three-state river basin.
“The worry is heavy,” said Glenn Tenorio, a tribal member of the Santa Ana Pueblo north of Albuquerque, who also serves as the pueblo’s water resources manager.
The Pueblo of Santa Ana lies just north of Albuquerque on the Rio Grande. Credit: Creative Commons
Under the terms of the 1938 Rio Grande Compact, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas share the river’s flows before it reaches Mexico. They have watched drought cripple the river, with flows dropping by 35% over the last 20 years.
But unlike other Western states, in New Mexico water users share both supplies and shortages, and that’s a lesson other states might benefit from, experts say. In most Western states where the prior appropriation system, known as first-in-time, first-in-right exists, water users with younger, more junior water rights are routinely cut off in times of shortage, creating expensive, conflict-ridden water management scenarios.
Water scarcity grows
Still, in response to growing water scarcity, Texas sued New Mexico in 2013, alleging that groundwater pumping in the southern part of New Mexico was harming its own share of water in the river. After being heard briefly before a special master for the U.S. Supreme Court last year, the three states—Colorado is also named in the case—agreed to pause the lawsuit while they conduct mediation talks.
Whether the talks will succeed isn’t clear yet. In addition to the groundwater dispute, New Mexico owes Texas roughly 125,000 acre-feet of surface water from the river and, under the terms of the compact, cannot store any water in its reservoirs until Texas is repaid.
But there is some hope emerging, as Colorado embarks on a $30 million land fallowing program to reduce its Rio Grande water use and as New Mexico seeks new federal rules that will allow it to store more water and re-operate its federal reservoirs.
Abiquiu Reservoir, in northern New Mexico, is one of several that are being drained by the mega drought. Credit: Mitch Tobin, Water Desk, March 2022
Page Pegram helps oversee Rio Grande river issues for New Mexico’s Office of the State Engineer. Unlike Colorado, New Mexico has never had the resources to quantify its various water users’ share of the river. Until now, the state has survived on healthy snowpacks and summer rains.
Though the drought has lasted more than 20 years, in the last five years, Pegram has seen the system deteriorate significantly.
“We’re seeing a fundamental change in water availability,” she said. “Suddenly, everything is different. Temperatures are higher, evaporation is higher, and soil moisture is lower. It’s new enough that we can’t pinpoint exactly what’s happening and we don’t have time to study the issue. It’s already happened.”
In the beginning
The Rio Grande has its genesis in the lush high mountain tundra above Creede, Colo., flowing down through Monte Vista and Alamosa, making its way along Highway 287, crossing the Colorado state line as it flows toward Santa Fe and Albuquerque, then dropping down to the tiny town of Truth and Consequences before it hits the Texas state line. At that point it travels through El Paso and forms the border between Texas and Mexico until it hits the Gulf of Mexico.
It is in the headwaters region in Creede where the majority of its flows originate. And while the hay meadows outside Creede are lush, and the streams cold and full, water has become so scarce even here that if homeowners want to drill a water well, they have to buy water rights from elsewhere to ensure those farther downstream on the river have adequate supplies.
Visitors walk along the sidewalks and streets of Creede, Colo., during a summer rain on July 18, 2022. Creede came into existence during the silver mining boom of 1889. The nearby Rio Grande, which rises on Stony Pass in the San Juan mountains that surround the town, has played a key role in the area’s farming and ranching history. (Dean Krakel, Fresh Water News)
Zeke Ward has lived in Creede for some 40 years, and has served on citizen advisory boards that oversee the river, water quality, and mine residue cleanup efforts.
He said the headwaters area has largely been protected from the most severe aspects of the mega-drought gripping the Rio Grande Basin and much of the American West because there are few people here and 80% of the land is owned by the U.S. Forest Service.
Still, he says, the river is vital to the region’s small tourist economy. “We don’t have a ski area,” he said. “So we have to make a living in 100 days, and that’s not easy.”
Follow the river below Creede and soon you enter the San Luis Valley, where irrigated agriculture dates back at least to the 1500s and where the combination of drought and overpumping have sapped an expansive, delicate series of aquifers. So much water has been lost that the state has issued warnings that it will begin shutting wells down if the aquifer, which is fed from the Rio Grande and its tributaries, is not restored within 10 years.
Craig Cotten is the top Colorado regulator on the Rio Grande and has overseen state and community efforts to make sure Colorado can deliver enough water to fulfill its legal obligations to New Mexico and Texas.
Craig Cotten, Colorado’s top regulator on the Rio Grande, stands on a ditch that delivers water to New Mexico to help meet Colorado’s obligations under the Rio Grande Compact of 1938. Credit: Jerd Smith, Fresh Water News
To do so, Cotten routinely cuts water supplies to growers, based on where they fall in the valley’s system of water rights. Right now, Colorado is meeting its compact obligations, but the cost to the valley is high and the cost of failure higher still.
“The farmers are struggling with reaching sustainability,” Cotten said. “If they don’t get there, wells will be shut down.”
But Cotten said he is cautiously optimistic that the Rio Grande can be brought back to health as the climate continues to dry out, in part because there are new tools to manage its lower flows more precisely, including sophisticated airborne measuring systems that show with greater accuracy how much snow has fallen in remote areas and how much water that snow contains.
Knowing more precisely how much water is in the system means the state can capture more when flows are higher, and see more accurately when streamflows will drop. Previously, snow-water estimates have varied widely, miscalculating by as much as 70% or more how much water is in a given mountain region.
In addition, this year Colorado lawmakers approved $30 million to begin a program that will pay San Luis Valley farmers to permanently fallow their lands, something that will relieve stress on the aquifer and the Rio Grande and which could stave off a mass well shutdown.
Plenty to learn
Cleave Simpson manages the Rio Grande Water Conservation District in Alamosa and is also a Colorado state senator.
He believes that the work on the upper Rio Grande holds important lessons for the three states sharing its water and others in the American West.
The people of the Rio Grande Basin have been living with whatever the river can produce for years now, and effectively sharing in any shortages. In addition, though the San Luis Valley aquifers are deteriorating, the farmers in the region have taxed themselves and used some $70 million from those tax revenues to fallow land, something that more and more experts agree will need to be done everywhere, including in the crisis-ridden Colorado River Basin.
“You don’t have very far to look to see your future on the Colorado River,” Simpson said. “Just look at the Rio Grande.”
With storm clouds looming over the distant La Garita mountains windrows of freshly cut alfalfa hay wait to be baled up on a farm near Center, Colo., on July 19, 2022. (Dean Krakel, Special to Fresh Water News)
Farmers in the San Luis Valley, including Simpson, are also testing new crops, such as quinoa and industrial hemp, which use less water than potatoes, a longstanding local mainstay.
“I don’t think I can keep doing what our family has been doing for four generations,” Simpson said. “I raise alfalfa because my dad and my grandpa did. But now I am raising 50 acres of industrial hemp for fiber … it certainly uses less water than my alfalfa crop.”
Daily prayers
The work in the San Luis Valley, including the new $30 million paid fallowing program, is a major step toward bringing the Rio Grande Basin back into balance.
And while “fallowing” is a term somewhat new to the water world, it is a management practice some of the oldest users of the river, its tribes, have practiced for millennia.
Tenorio’s family has lived in Santa Ana Pueblo for thousands of years. He said tribal members have learned to balance their needs with whatever the river provides. These days that’s not easy, but he said they focus on the future, to ensure their communities can grow and that their irrigated lands continue to produce the corn, melons, grains, beans and alfalfa that they’ve raised as long as anyone can remember.
“We only can do with what we’re given from Mother Nature,” Tenorio said.
Like other tribes in New Mexico, the Santa Ana Pueblo’s water rights have never been quantified, but because they are so old, they get their water first based on how much is available.
Looking ahead, Tenorio is hopeful that better coordinated use of New Mexico’s few reservoirs, as well as more efficient irrigation systems, will allow everyone to adapt to the drier environment.
“We pray every day for our farmers and everyone who lives on the river,” he said.
Near Wagon Wheel Gap, Colo., the Rio Grande flows through an area known as the Pinnacles. Wooden, numbered trout signs guide visitors through the Wagon Wheel Gap interpretive site. The Gap is one of the few places early settlers could find passage for wagons into the upper Rio Grande Valley. (Dean Krakel, special to Fresh Water News)
Unlocking manmade infrastructure
Casuga, of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, describes himself as the CEO of bad news. But he said he has some hope that the river can be better managed.
If new rules to operate the federal reservoirs are eventually approved, he says New Mexico could easily meet its water obligations to Texas. An effort is now underway in Washington, D.C., to make that happen.
“This river is highly developed from a human standpoint,” Casuga said. “We as men impact the river so we have to unlock this manmade infrastructure to help it.”
Until then though, the day-to-day reality of operating the river remains complex. In June, when the temperatures were soaring, the rain did come, but it offered only a brief respite for the Rio Grande.
This week, as the searing heat returned, the river began drying out, forcing Casuga and Marken to launch their elaborate hopscotch game again.
Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.
This reporting was made by possible by a grant from the CU Water Desk.
Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.
From left, Mike DeHoff, Eric Balken and Pete Lefebvre walk near the mouth of White Canyon, a previously inundated area, now exposed as Lake Powell recedes. Alex Hager / KUNC.
On a scorching July afternoon, Mike DeHoff steered his small metal motorboat down what one could argue is the weirdest stretch of the Colorado River in all of its 1,450 miles: the delta of Lake Powell.
DeHoff’s boat floated on roiling water supercharged with sediment, the same color as an iced latte. Craggy, gnarled mud formations rose up from the river channel. Rapids made of mud, which change their contours by the hour, tossed the boat from side to side.
“I mean, look at this,” DeHoff said. “It’s like boating through what you think Mordor would look like.”
Winds whipped up dirt and fine sand from giant, dried-out mud flats, spilling more sediment back into the river. Whole slabs of mud cleaved themselves clean off, like a calving glacier. One attempt to climb up the sediment-caked canyon walls by this reporter and his photographer nearly triggered a dirt avalanche big enough to bury a person. In the delta, the river’s water appeared so thick with sediment that it threatened to turn back into mud at any moment.
A rafting outfitter motors through Lake Powell’s delta. Alex Hager / KUNC
The launch point for this trip, an access area called North Wash, near Hite, Utah, is so steep and unstable that rafting outfitters have to use complex winch and pulley systems just to get boats out of the river. It can’t really be called a boat ramp with a straight face, DeHoff said. The chaos created by a receding reservoir caused the Colorado River to jump its channel, and begin carving away at the ramp.
Lake Powell’s delta is the place where the flowing Colorado River meets the stillwater reservoir. And it moves, depending on the year. The river’s flow and the reservoir’s elevation dictate where they meet. It is a “no man’s land,” as DeHoff called it, between the whitewater rapids of Cataract Canyon and the motorboater’s paradise of Lake Powell.
This trip was an investigatory one for DeHoff, a longtime river runner who’s spent decades rafting down Cataract. Features long hidden underwater were on the surface, and he wanted to see them.
For the last five years, with a few partners, DeHoff has run a project called Returning Rapids, an attempt to document the change that comes as the nation’s second-largest reservoir plummets to a record low.
Mike DeHoff of Returning Rapids matches a historic photo taken near the mouth of White Canyon to see how far Lake Powell has dropped. Alex Hager / KUNC.
DeHoff piloted the boat around what he dubbed “mud-bergs,” like icebergs, but made of the claylike mud that collected at the bottom of Lake Powell for decades.
“The mud-bergs that we see defining and changing the river corridor, they change day to day, month to month,” DeHoff said. “And that’s a terra incognita for me.”
When the reservoir was full back in the 1980s and 1990s, this delta would have been deep underwater. With the reservoir at a historic low, more than ever before, that lake bottom is exposed. With the force of gravity behind it, the Colorado River is just doing what it does best: carving canyons.
Though, instead of the grandeur of the Grand Canyon, on this trip DeHoff took us through a mini-canyon of mud at the edge of Lake Powell.
“This is like a river on an acid trip right now,” he said.
Mudbergs rise up from the Colorado River’s channel as it flows into the still waters of Lake Powell.
A new historic low
For decades the Colorado River filled Glen Canyon to the brim. Lake Powell has been a fixture of the southwest since the 1960s, providing hydropower to southwestern utilities, water supply reliability to downstream users, and summer vacation memories to families on houseboats.
Over its lifespan, the reservoir’s level has fluctuated wildly, driven by the massive piles of snow that gather in the Rocky Mountains each winter and melt off in the spring.
Since Glen Canyon Dam was commissioned in 1964 and it first began filling, Lake Powell has never been like it is right now, at just 27% of its capacity. It’s threatening to dip below the minimum elevation needed to produce hydropower within the next year. A string of dry winters could push it to dead pool status.
An ore cart, encrusted in invasive mussel shells, rests on a ledge above a receding Lake Powell. Alex Hager / KUNC.
The megadrought plaguing the Colorado River basin has splashed across national and international headlines as the river’s two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, hit new historic lows. Combined, their dwindling levels leave the water supply for tens of millions in the Southwestern U.S. uncertain. The current crisis garnered attention from the UN’s Environment Program, which warned of water and energy shortages without action.
Prompted by low reservoir levels, the Bureau of Reclamation has called for an unprecedented amount of conservation, two to four million acre-feet over the next year, to preserve current levels at the reservoir. The agency’s leader, Camille Calimlim Touton, threatened the seven states that rely on the Colorado River with unilateral action in absence of a commitment to conserve.
This summer, Lake Powell hit a high point of 3,539 feet in elevation. It is now on a long, slow decline until it receives another rush of snowmelt in spring 2023. As it declines, the reservoir’s upper reaches and its famous side canyons long buried underwater, are reemerging. River runners, scientists, environmentalists and journalists are rushing in to document the rapid change.
Even as problems mount at Lake Powell, DeHoff and others see this moment with a certain kind of somber optimism. They say if the region’s leaders frame it in a certain way, the reservoir’s decline could be viewed as hopeful, not catastrophic.
Camping on the Colorado
On a beach nestled inside Glen Canyon, DeHoff took a seat in a wooden fold-up chair next to Pete Lefebvre, a longtime river guide. This was camp for the night after boating through mud-bergs, a narrow stretch of sand close to the mouth of Trachyte Canyon, also formerly inundated as part of Lake Powell.
“This is the first time we’ve camped along the Colorado River, where it’s flowing in what would be Glen Canyon proper,” DeHoff said.
Mike DeHoff and Pete Lefebvre of Returning Rapids document the changing levels of Lake Powell, and how it affects Cataract Canyon upstream. Alex Hager / KUNC.
The two men work together on Returning Rapids out of their home base in Moab, Utah. The project has started installing time-lapse cameras to watch erosion happen in real-time and get a sense of when mud-buried river rapids will be unearthed.
Early on, Lefebvre said they found that asking one admittedly selfish question — “where can we go rafting?” — led to asking dozens more about sediment movement, water supply, hydropower production and the future of recreation.
“We just didn’t even expect to be studying this area the way that we are right now,” he said of the reservoir delta. “Just because of how fast the river is moving downstream and the lake is dropping.”
The federal government has recently pulled emergency levers to prop up Lake Powell, sending more water from upstream reservoirs and restricting releases from Glen Canyon Dam. With warming temperatures sapping snow in the Rocky Mountains and downstream demands for water going unchecked, Lefebvre said it feels like the whole Colorado River basin is at a breaking point.
“I just think that we don’t, as a species, react until it’s like, ‘Oh man, we need to do something,’” he said. “We’re getting to the point where people are saying, ‘Man, we need to do something.’”
As the region grapples with how to use less Colorado River water, this is the place where those decisions show up on the ground, Lefebvre said.
“Until there’s a scarcity of water, I don’t think people treat it like it is the most important resource we have,” he said. “Being subsidized, being cheap, allows us to act frivolously with it and I think that’s possibly going to change in the future as we get squeezed.”
A side canyon sensory experience
The next day, the boats rolled into Lake Powell and veered up into one of its many side canyons. Years ago, when the reservoir was full, a boat could continue up for miles into this narrow canyon. Now the low level forces boaters off at a narrow sand bar and requires a hike up to see any natural wonders that await.
Dead cottonwoods, long buried under the still waters of Lake Powell, have reemerged as “ghost forests.” Alex Hager / KUNC.
This canyon featured a forest of formerly underwater cottonwoods, flooded during the reservoir’s initial rise in the late 1960s and preserved in place at its bottom. They now stand darkened and dead among vibrantly green regrowing vegetation. A shallow flowing creek full of tadpoles winds its way through the canyon. Willows line its banks and play host to an insect symphony.
“Oh, man, that smell,” said Eric Balken, as he led a group up the canyon, inhaling deeply. “The willows smell so alive.”
Balken runs the Glen Canyon Institute, which advocates draining Lake Powell and moving what’s left of its waters downstream. DeHoff and Lefebvre’s Returning Rapids is a project underneath the Institute’s umbrella. Balken pointed out a high water mark from the reservoir stained on the redrock one hundred feet or more above our heads.
“There are a lot of big changes coming to the Colorado River,” he said. “And this is one that’s a good change. To see this canyon come back is really special.”
Eric Balken, of the Glen Canyon Institute, walks past a sunken speedboat in a side canyon in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Alex Hager / KUNC.
The hike yielded artifacts from when the reservoir still inundated this canyon — four pairs of sunglasses, empty beer cans, a life jacket, a sunken speedboat half-buried in the sand.
Groups like Balken’s want to see Lake Powell’s dam decommissioned and Glen Canyon behind it restored. Balken says this current moment of reckoning on the river, where users are collectively trying to figure out how to use less, should be seen as an opportunity. Lake Powell was built to hedge against lawsuits among the river’s Upper and Lower Basins and ensure a legally-required amount of water flowed downstream. Many of the legal concepts and engineered systems used to manage this river system are woefully out of date, Balken said. A crisis like this one can be a powerful motivator to change, he said.
“Now we’re being given a chance to rethink this place. The reason why it was a mistake was because it had so much value beyond a storage tank,” he said. “We should prioritize water storage elsewhere. We should stop thinking about Glen Canyon as a place to store water and start thinking about it as a place that has natural values, intrinsic values.”
Eric Balken of the Glen Canyon Institute hikes through a narrow slot canyon. Alex Hager / KUNC.
Balken said the federal government and the states who rely on Lake Powell for storage need to be planning for a future without it. Climate change and its ability to warm up and dry out the southwest will continue to put pressure on the reservoir. In the very near future, he said, it might not be feasible to keep Lake Powell in operation for hydropower and recreation. A failure to plan for a very low reservoir, and instead rely on optimistic models that show possible recovery, could put the water supply for downstream users in jeopardy.
“We need to think about what conditions would it actually make sense to fully phase this reservoir out,” he said. “It’s hard for people to imagine right now, but once you can’t come here for your houseboat vacation anymore, once it’s not generating any more hydropower,” it’s easier to begin reconsidering Lake Powell’s usefulness.
Balken noted that his organization’s views were until very recently seen as fringe among the West’s water elite. Now national news outlets have showcased Glen Canyon’s wonders reemerging. He’ll even run into boaters, those who will need to find a new place to dock their houseboat if Balken’s dream is realized, who tell him how fascinating it is to watch the canyon emerge from the water after being buried underneath it.
“It’s encouraging for me,” Balken said. “While also being mindful of the fact that the fabric of western water management is coming apart at the seams.”
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. This article was also supported by The Water Desk, an independent journalism initiative based at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.
Grizzly Reservoir will be drained next summer for a rehabilitation project on the dam, tunnel gates and outlet works. The reservoir serves as the collection bucket for water from the surrounding drainages before it’s diverted through the Twin Lakes Tunnel to the Front Range. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Grizzly Reservoir, the high-mountain lake above Aspen formed by damming Lincoln and Grizzly creeks, will be drained next summer for repairs to the dam, tunnel and outlet works.
After spring runoff next year, Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company will draw down the reservoir so workers can install a membrane over the steel face of the dam, which was constructed in 1932 and is corroded and thinning, according to a May report on the feasibility of the dam rehabilitation.
The report, by RJH Consultants, Inc. of Englewood, included an inspection and evaluation of the infrastructure, and presented different options for rehabilitation. Half the cost of the study — $50,000 — was funded by the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
The project will also replace the gates that control the flow of water into the Twin Lakes Tunnel and repair the outlet works that release water down Lincoln Creek. According to the report, the outlet works have issues with cracks, holes and seepage, and the more-than-80-year-old tunnel gates have problems with leakage, are difficult to operate and require significant maintenance every year.
“The purpose of the rehabilitation of the dam is to address dam safety concerns associated with the corroded and thinning upstream-slope steel facing, uncontrolled seepage, and operational problems with the outlet works,” the report reads.
Twin Lakes officials expect the project to be completed in October 2023. They will also draw down the reservoir this month to weld a small test portion of the dam membrane to see how it fairs through the harsh winter at 10,500 feet. That work is scheduled to begin Aug. 22 and the reservoir will be refilled in October.
“That infrastructure is aging and it’s time to do some rehab work on it,” said Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company Board President Kalsoum Abbasi.
Grizzly Dam is considered a high hazard dam by the Division of Water Resources. That does not mean it’s likely to fail, but it means loss of life would be expected if the dam did fail. The last state inspection in 2021 found the dam satisfactory — the highest rating — and said full storage capacity was safe.
The report estimated a nearly $7 million price tag for the rehabilitation work. Twin Lakes plans to get a CWCB loan for some of the cost and will pay the remainder with money raised from assessments on its water users.
Kalsoum Abbasi, the president of the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company, explains how the water collection system works at a July tour of Grizzly Reservoir. The system is the biggest supplier of Western Slope water for the city of Colorado Springs.CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Twin Lakes system
Grizzly Reservoir is part of a complex system of storage buckets, tunnels and canals that takes water from the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River basin under the continental divide and delivers it to Front Range cities. The system collects runoff from 45 square miles of mountainous terrain, including the New York, Brooklyn, Tabor, Lincoln, Grizzly and Lost Man creek drainages and dumps it into Grizzly Reservoir, which can hold 570 acre-feet of water.
From there the water flows into the 4-mile-long and straight-as-a-pin Twin Lakes Tunnel under the Continental Divide and into Lake Creek, a tributary of the Arkansas River. Twelve miles later the water arrives at the Twin Lakes Reservoir where it is stored before being sent to Front Range cities via pipelines and pumps.
Four municipalities own 95% of the shares of Twin Lakes water: Colorado Springs Utilities owns 55%; the Board of Water Works of Pueblo has 23%; Pueblo West Metropolitan District owns 12% and the City of Aurora has 5%.
The Twin Lakes system is so integral to the cities’ water supply that they employ two caretakers to live year-round in a cabin at the remote reservoir site to make sure everything operates smoothly. It’s Colorado Springs’ largest source of Western Slope water and represents about 21% of its total water supply.
The project is able to divert up to 46,000 acre-feet annually, or nearly 40% of the flows in the Roaring Fork headwaters, according to numbers from the Roaring Fork Conservancy. In recent years, Twin Lakes has diverted between about 31,000 and 38,000 acre-feet annually, according to data from the Colorado Division of Water Resources.
During next year’s rehabilitation work most of the creeks — Lost Man, New York, Brooklyn and Tabor — will be allowed to flow downstream instead of being collected by a canal system that feeds Grizzly Reservoir. As long as the water rights are in priority, Twin Lakes will probably still take and send through the tunnel whatever flows they get from Lincoln and Grizzly creeks, according to Abbasi. This means a stretch of Lincoln Creek below the dam will be dry.
When irrigators in the Grand Valley place the Cameo call, which happens most summers and often commands the entire Colorado River and its tributaries upstream, those with junior water rights have to stop diverting so irrigators can get their share. That’s because under Colorado water law the oldest water rights have first use of the river and Cameo’s right is older than Twin Lakes’.
“As long as we are in priority, we can still bring some water through the tunnel,” Abbasi said. “Whatever is making it into the reservoir, we will have a way to route that through the tunnel for the majority of the project.”
Abbasi said overall, Twin Lakes will probably divert less water than normal in 2023.
This dam backs up water from Lost Man Creek so it can flow into a canal and into Grizzly Reservoir. The reservoir is part of the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company infrastructure that moves water from the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River to the Front Range.CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Pitkin County’s stored water
Once work begins on the dam next summer, there will probably be more water flowing in the upper Roaring Fork above Aspen when the creeks that usually flow into Grizzly are allowed to go downstream. But there will also be a 200-acre-foot hole where water stored by Pitkin County won’t be released.
As part of a 2018 water court settlement, Pitkin County received 800 to 1,000 acre-feet of water from the Twin Lakes system, which is sent downstream instead of to the Front Range. Two hundred acre-feet of that can be stored in Grizzly Reservoir to release during the late summer.
“The rationale for Pitkin pushing for that was that’s when we tend to need the water the most,” said Laura Makar, assistant Pitkin County Attorney. “That’s when flows matter and every cfs makes the biggest difference.”
This year, the county used the 200 acre-feet to help boost streamflows between the end of spring runoff and when the Cameo call came on this week.
“We timed it perfectly so there’s no hole in the river,” Makar said. “The fish and river got the full benefit. We could sort of nurse the river along until the Cameo call came on.”
But next year, releasing the 200 acre-feet of stored water won’t be possible since there won’t be any water in Grizzly Reservoir during the late summer.
“It sounds like next year we will be limited to whatever exists naturally in the system,” Makar said. “We are making sure that when we plan for next year, we are ensuring we get the full benefit… but knowing we won’t have 200 acre-feet in late season releases that could actually come from the reservoir.”
Aspen Journalism covers rivers and water in collaboration with The Aspen Times. This story ran in the Aug. 14 edition of The Aspen Times.
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.
Houseboats on Lake Powell on Dec. 13, 2021, near Wahweap Marina, where the quarter-mile-long boat ramp is unusable due to low water levels. The Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner has said 2 to 4 million more acre-feet of conservation is needed to protect the system, leaving water managers wondering what authority the feds have over upper basin water projects. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
As the deadline approaches for the seven Colorado River basin states to come up with a plan to conserve water, some Colorado water managers are asking what authority the federal government has in the upper basin and which water projects could be at risk of federal action.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton sent water managers scrambling when she announced in June that they had a 60-day window to find another 2 to 4 million acre-feet of water to conserve or the federal government would step in to protect the system. With many reservoirs, transbasin diversion systems and irrigation projects in Colorado tied in one way or another to the Bureau of Reclamation, some are asking if the water in these buckets could be commandeered by the feds to make up the shortfall.
“I think that there’s probably a good argument that the Secretary (of the Interior) has some authority under those projects,” said Eric Kuhn, Colorado River author and former Colorado River Water Conservation District general manager. “The projects on the Western Slope and in the upper basin states that are owned by the federal government and are ultimately under the authority of the Secretary of the Interior, those are the projects at risk.”
There are many dams and reservoirs across Colorado that are tied to the Bureau of Reclamation’s 20th century building frenzy to impound water and “reclaim” arid regions through irrigation. On the Western Slope, some of the well-known projects include the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project (Ruedi Reservoir), Dallas Creek Project (Ridgway Reservoir), the Dolores Project (McPhee Reservoir), Paonia Reservoir, the Grand Valley Project, the Silt Project (Rifle Gap Reservoir), the Uncompahgre Project (Taylor Park Reservoir) and more.
In general, the local entities like conservancy districts, irrigators and municipalities who use the water are responsible for repaying the Bureau for the cost of the project. But the infrastructure is owned by the Bureau of Reclamation. Some projects are operated by Reclamation and some are operated by a local entity. Many also have a hydropower component.
“I think each project operator is having to look at their contractual obligations with the Bureau and their attorneys are going back over those with a fine tooth comb to see if the arm of the Bureau can reach up through Lake Powell and into the upper basin states,” said Kathleen Curry, a rancher and Gunnison County representative on the Colorado River Water Conservation District. “All of the upper basin projects are going to need to look real hard at what authority the Bureau has.”
Last year Reclamation made emergency releases out of Blue Mesa, Flaming Gorge and Navajo reservoirs to prop up Lake Powell. In this instance their authority was not questioned since these reservoirs are, along with Lake Powell, the four initial reservoirs of the Colorado River Storage Project. They store what’s called “system water,” which is used specifically to help the upper basin meet its delivery obligations to the lower basin.
But water managers still don’t know exactly what, if anything, Reclamation is allowed to do with the water contained in other reservoirs with Reclamation ties.
The crest of the dam across the Fryingpan River that forms Ruedi Reservoir, which can hold 102,373 acre-feet of water. Some Western Slope water managers are asking what authority the Bureau of Reclamation has over water projects with Reclamation ties in the upper basin.CREDIT: PHOTO: COURTESY OF BUREAU OF RECLAMATION
No answers from officials
At the River District’s third quarterly board meeting in July, board members repeatedly tried to pin down answers from federal and state officials without much luck.
Montrose County representative and state Rep. Marc Catlin asked state engineer Kevin Rein where he stood on whether the Bureau of Reclamation could make reservoirs with Reclamation ties release water downstream to Lake Powell to meet the 2 to 4 million acre-feet conservation goal.
“If the Bureau of Reclamation comes into the state of Colorado and says it wants to move water… down to Lake Powell, what’s the state engineer going to do?” Catlin asked. “Are those water rights under state law or federal law?”
Rein did not know the answer.
“I’m not sure what authority — this is not one of those rhetorical ‘I’m not sure,’ I really am not sure — what authority the Bureau of Reclamation would have to induce a federal project with state water rights to release them to get to Powell,” Rein said.
Later in the meeting, Katrina Grantz, the Bureau of Reclamation’s Upper Colorado Basin Assistant Regional Director, gave a presentation and took questions from board members. Curry asked if changes could be proposed to the operation of projects within the 15 counties represented by the River District with federal ties to get closer to the 2 to 4 million acre-feet. Grantz side-stepped the question.
“At this point we are not looking at specific locations,” she said. “I would turn it around and say: Are there areas where you locally think there might be areas to conserve?”
River District General Counsel Peter Fleming said the authority of the feds in the upper basin is untested. This is partly because the upper basin has dozens of small Reclamation projects as well as thousands of individual water users on private ditch systems that are not affiliated with the federal government. Colorado has generally been left alone to administer this complex system of water rights under the state doctrine of prior appropriation, which means older water rights get first use of the river.
The lower basin, in contrast, has only about 20 diversions — and only six or so big ones — from the Colorado River. And each entity that uses water from Lake Mead has to have a contract with Reclamation, meaning the federal government is directly involved with water deliveries.
“The reason I think these issues are untested is historically the secretary’s role in the upper basin has been different than the secretary’s role in the lower basin,” Fleming said. “It’s much more hands-off. The difference in river administration is huge.”
Fleming said that the River District does not have advice for its water users on the situation, other than to reiterate the upper basin stance that the responsibility to come up with the 2 to 4 million acre-feet lies overwhelmingly with the lower basin.
“At the end of the day I think there will be a big effort to try to resolve things through agreement and I believe the secretary will exercise her authority to the greatest extent she can without triggering litigation,” Fleming said.
Water managers may not have to wait long to get some clarity. The deadline for the states to come up with a conservation plan before the feds take action to protect the system is fast approaching. The upper basin states, through the Upper Colorado River Commission, have put forward a 5 Point Plan, which lays out actions they say are designed to protect the reservoirs.
Amee Andreason, public affairs specialist with the Bureau of Reclamation, said officials may answer the question of federal authority in the upper basin at a media event on Aug. 16 that coincides with the release of the August 24-month study, which lays out reservoir operations for the following water year.
If the feds end up curtailing uses in the lower basin, it could set a precedent that would strengthen the argument that they can do the same in the upper basin, Kuhn said.
“That’s one I think is the elephant in the room,” he said. “The fact that the River District board was asking about authorities tells you people are thinking about it.”
This story was also published by the Sky-Hi News, Glenwood Springs Post Independent, Summit Daily News, Aspen Times, Vail Daily, Pagosa Springs Sun and KKCO 11 News.
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.
A woman paddles on Shadow Mountain Reservoir, which is caught in federal stalemate over how to improve water quality to help improve its neighboring Grand Lake. Credit: Daily Camera
Fourteen years after Colorado adopted standards to restore Grand Lake, the state’s largest natural water body once known for its astonishing clarity and high water quality continues to deteriorate.
Frustrated and worried about the future, Grand Lake locals are asking the state to intervene to break through a log jam of federal and environmental red tape that has prevented finding a way to restore the lake’s clarity and water quality, despite a 90-year-old federal rule known as Senate Bill 80 requiring that the work be done.
At issue: Grand Lake serves as a key element of Northern Water’s delivery system, which provides water to more than 1 million people on the northern Front Range and thousands of acres of irrigated farmlands.
Owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and operated by Northern Water, what’s known as the Colorado-Big Thompson Project gathers water from streams and rivers in Rocky Mountain National Park and Grand County, and stores it in man-made Lake Granby and Shadow Mountain Reservoir. From there it is eventually moved into Grand Lake and delivered via the Adams Tunnel under the Continental Divide to Carter Lake and Horsetooth Reservoir, just west of Berthoud and Fort Collins respectively.
During that process, algae, certain toxins and sediment are carried into Grand Lake, clouding its formerly clear waters and causing algae blooms and weed growth, and harming recreation.
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In a hearing before the Colorado Legislature’s Interim Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee on Aug. 4, Mike Cassio, who represents the Three Lakes Watershed Association in Grand County, pleaded with state lawmakers to intervene and launch a study process that would help trigger federal action.
“We have the highest respect for all of our partners,” Cassio said, referring to ongoing remediation efforts involving Northern Water and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
“But due to the design of the system, you have this beautiful natural lake and then you fill it up with reservoir water. Usually, in July when spring runoff is going on, Grand Lake is flowing from east to west. It is extremely clear. But as soon as Shadow Mountain’s water sits and starts to cook and grow weeds and algae, and the pumps come on, this massive plume of nitrates, inorganics, just basic muddy water flows into Grand Lake,” Cassio said.
In 2008, the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission moved to set a clarity standard, but it has since been replaced with a clarity goal and the aim of achieving “the highest level of clarity attainable.” Instead of working under a regulated water quality standard, Northern Water and others have implemented different management techniques, including changing pumping patterns, to find ways to improve water quality in all three water bodies.
In 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation took the first steps required under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) to do the scientific and engineering studies and public hearings that would be required to fix the system. But Reclamation stopped the process in 2020, saying that it could not definitively establish any structural alternatives that would work, nor could it find a way forward on funding what could be a project that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Jeff Rieker, general manager of Reclamation’s Colorado Eastern Plains office.
During last week’s hearing, lawmakers said they want more information and that Northern Water’s system is too critical to the northern Front Range to do anything without careful consideration.
“We are in a moment of time like none other,” said State Rep. Hugh McKean, a Republican who represents Loveland and other northern Front Range communities. He cited the warming climate and the effects of the massive East Troublesome fire in 2020, which engulfed lands around the three lakes and created additional water quality problems, which still impact the watershed today.
“Is this the moment to create a long-term plan, when right now our water situation is in flux? I’m resistant to say let’s stop everything and study this,” McKean said.
But Grand Lake Mayor Steve Kudron disagreed.
“This is exactly the right time,” Kudron said. “Tourism impacts my community more than almost any other community in the state. One million people visited [Fort Collins’] Horsetooth Reservoir last year. Are we getting to the time when recreation on the East Side of the [Continental Divide] is more important than the West Side?”
Northern Water’s Esther Vincent told lawmakers at the hearing that management efforts have improved clarity somewhat. In 1941, before the Colorado Big Thompson Project began operating, clarity was measured at 9.2 meters, Vincent said.
“The [state’s] clarity goal is 3.8 meters,” she said. “We don’t hit it every year, but we’re doing a lot better. Over the past 17 years we’ve met the 3.8-meter goal 35% of the time and in the past five years we’ve hit the goal 60% of the time,” she said. “But East Troublesome complicates everything. We are still trying to wrap our heads around what this means for the system.”
Still, she said Northern was committed to finding a path forward and indeed is legally obligated to do so under the terms of its operating contract with Reclamation.
What that path may look like isn’t clear yet. Lawmakers did not recommend any action in the form of bills to authorize a study after Thursday’s hearing, according to interim committee staff.
But Grand Lake advocates say the state rightly should step in because it was the Colorado water users in Northern’s system that repaid the federal construction loans on the project.
“We have a lake unlike any lake in the country,” Kudron said. “The moment we start talking about closing the lake, it has a long rippling effect. There isn’t a Target [store] that will make up the tax dollars that would be lost. There are just 16,000 people in Grand County. If the natural resources that attract people to our county are interrupted, the county becomes interrupted. If we can’t rely on the water resource, we are in big trouble.”
Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.
Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.
Due to low inspection and enforcement rates, there could be unmonitored contamination in groundwater, the primary source for New Mexico’s drinking water. (Photo by Cavan Images/Getty)
By Megan Gleason
Nearly 80% of New Mexicans depend on groundwater sources for their drinking water, according to the state. But the N.M. Environment Department isn’t keeping up with inspections and enforcement of health standards with those who hold permits to discharge into groundwater systems.
People in New Mexico can discharge liquid waste or pollutants into water sources with permits. This activity is supposed to be monitored by the Environment Department to ensure health standards are being met, and water is still safe to drink. But due to low inspection and enforcement rates, there could be unmonitored groundwater contamination.
There were 597 groundwater permittees reported from January to March, but only 35 inspections — just 6% — were conducted, according to a recently released report by the Legislative Finance Committee. The target goal of 65% for the whole fiscal year likely won’t be met.
This will be the third year in a row the state hasn’t met their goal for groundwater inspections, reports show.
Of the groundwater permittees inspected from January to March, 8% violated health standards. But it’s not likely that they’ll be forced to comply, either.
Environment Department spokesperson Matthew Maez said a lot of violations aren’t being penalized or corrected due to lack of staff. Seven out of 28 inspector positions at the Ground Water Quality Bureau are vacant, leaving the rest of the employees to make up for a missing 25% of the workforce.
He attributed much of these below-target rates to lack of sufficient funding from the state Legislature.
“In general, a significant number of inspections that identify violations are not enforced given the lack of adequate agency funding,” Maez wrote via email.
Dairies, nitrates and drought
Food and Water Watch is a national advocacy organization that advocates for clean water, and spokesperson Jessica Gable said regulation of groundwater discharge is an issue across the nation. In New Mexico specifically, she said most of the organization’s work is related to mega-dairies that play a large part in groundwater contamination.
Dairies in the state account for nearly 20% of all groundwater permittees and are allowed to cumulatively discharge over 6.3 million gallons of waste every day. But, according to Food and Water Watch, 80% of New Mexico’s mega-dairies have half the amount of land necessary to absorb manure nutrients. Gable said that can threaten groundwater, and there’s really none to spare during the historic drought the state is enduring.
When there are excess manure nutrients in groundwater, there’s a risk for that to turn into elevated levels of nitrate that contaminate groundwater sources, Gable said. With drinking water, this can lead to health issues, including cancer and birth defects, according to the National Institutes of Health. Gable said mega-dairies are the primary sources of nitrate contamination in groundwater.
“It’s a vicious cycle, and with any kind of lack of regulation, that is only likely to get worse,” Gable said.
To help with inspection rates, Maez wrote that the department is using innovative technology but still needs staff to “to hold polluters accountable.” They have some incentives, like an employee referral program and pay raises for advanced retirement notice, but he noted that other things like increased funding and competitive salaries “are critical to boosting inspection rates.”
Gable said the immediate solution is a moratorium on new and expanding mega-dairies.
The Food and Water Watch is also calling on the Environment Department to deny more discharge permits, specifying that no permits should be given out times of a drought, permits and renewals shouldn’t be allowed for discharges into highly contaminated aquifers and repeat violators should have their permits terminated.
But the number of groundwater permittees has been increasing still, according to the Legislative Finance Committee report.
And the globe’s just getting hotter.
“This issue is not going to go away as long as this drought continues,” Gable said, “and as long as the climate continues changing.”
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.
As two major new water storage projects designed to capture the flows of the drought-strapped Colorado River are rising on Colorado’s urban Front Range, observers say they represent the end of an era on the river.
The projects, Northern Water’s Chimney Hollow Reservoir west of Berthoud, and Denver Water’s Gross Reservoir Expansion, in Western Boulder County, both more than 20 years in the making, will store an additional 167,000 acre-feet of water, the majority from the Colorado River. That’s enough water for more than 320,000 new homes.
The projects come during a period of crisis on the river, with the federal government in June ordering Western states to find radical new ways of cutting water use by next month to stabilize the deteriorating river system.
“These two projects, [Chimney Hollow] and the Gross Reservoir Expansion, might be the last of their kind. They are coming in under the wire of a change in how we have to see the Colorado River – it’s not something we can keep tapping,” said Jeff Lukas, an independent water and climate researcher and consultant, who spent a decade working for the Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado.
The river basin includes seven states and Mexico. In the U.S., Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming comprise the Upper Basin, while Arizona, California and Nevada comprise the Lower Basin.
One hundred years ago, the Colorado River Compact of 1922 divided 15 million acre-feet of water equally between the Upper and Lower Basin states, but in this drier world, the river likely provides an average closer to 13 million acre-feet. Climate change is expected to further reduce that flow. More water has been allocated to the two basins than is available most years.
Northern Water and Denver Water are building new water storage to meet the demands of a growing urban Front Range and to provide themselves more flexibility in managing their Colorado River supplies.
Northern Water delivers municipal and agricultural water to about a million people over about 1.6 million acres. They bring over about 220,000 acre-feet of water each year from the West Slope to the Front Range via the Colorado Big Thompson Project and Windy Gap. About half is used for agriculture and half for cities and industry.
Joe Donnelly, Northern’s project manager for the Chimney Hollow Reservoir Project, said the project is a major mechanical and logistical feat, with water passing through two pump stations, five hydropower plants, seven reservoirs, and nearly 20 miles of tunnels before reaching Chimney Hollow.
Chimney Hollow will be an off-channel reservoir with 90,000 acre-feet of capacity and will sit just west of Carter Lake in Larimer County. According to the project’s website, it will be the second-ever asphalt-core dam in the United States and, once dam construction is fully underway, the on-site rock quarry “will be producing 63,000 tons of material per day, making it one of the largest mining operations in Colorado.” The project broke ground in August 2021.
Northern Water plans to begin storing water in Chimney Hollow Reservoir upon completion in 2025 and hopes to fill it within three years by storing approximately 30,000 acre-feet of water each year out of the Windy Gap Project’s average of 48,000 acre-feet of water per year.
In Boulder County, less than 50 miles south of Chimney Hollow, sits Denver Water’s Gross Reservoir. Originally built in the 1950s, it was designed with expansion in mind. Construction recently began to increase the height of the dam from 340 feet to 471 feet. This will add 77,000 acre-feet of storage, more than doubling its current capacity. Water from the Colorado River Basin is diverted under the Continental Divide through the Moffat Tunnel into South Boulder Creek, then stored in Gross Reservoir, and then delivered via South Boulder Creek to other Denver Water infrastructure.
Denver Water serves about 1.5 million people, a number that is slated to grow by 1 million residents by 2040, according to its website. All of their water goes to municipal and industrial uses. In 2021 Denver Water diverted about 140,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water, approximately half their supply.
“As the climate warms and the atmosphere becomes wetter because of more evaporation, that causes more significant storm activity. If you look right at the Continental Divide where our facilities are, the climate models are basically split as to whether we’re going to see more or less precipitation,” says Denver Water CEO Jim Lochhead. The expansion of Gross Dam will capitalize on “those significant events that we believe will occur in the future with climate change.”
Denver Water has also cited resiliency goals as part of its motivation for expanding Gross Reservoir’s capacity. “The Buffalo Creek and Hayman Fires caused significant sediment loads [in our water supply] and exposed a vulnerability in our system. Eighty percent of our water supply is in the south end of our system,” explains Lochhead. “The other event was the severe drought in 2002. During that drought, the north end of our system almost ran out of water.”
Northern Water and Denver Water both say that these added storage projects will help them protect their customers from climate variability. They are betting on enough wet years to fill their reservoirs to help get through the more frequent dry years, even as the population in their service areas grows.
“If we’re thinking about putting in new water storage projects, all the risk is really on the dry side. Are we going to be able to fill this and get the yield we’re assuming in our economic analysis for the project?” cautions Lukas. “I would be much more focused on all of the dry scenarios, the lower runoff outcomes coming out of the climate model informed projections, than the relatively fewer projections that suggest we could get more runoff in the future.”
In the face of shrinking river flows, some environmentalists and other experts are critical of building more water storage when existing reservoirs struggle to stay full and river ecosystems are more stressed than ever.
Save the Colorado sued both storage projects as part of its mission to oppose dams and diversions on the Colorado River. Director Gary Wockner takes a hard stance, saying “These two projects will further drain and destroy the Colorado River at the exact moment the system is collapsing.”
But other environmental organizations take a more pragmatic position. Legal Counsel for the Colorado Water Project at Trout Unlimited, Mely Whiting, said that her organization didn’t oppose these two storage projects because they were a preferred alternative to building the Two Forks Dam, a vetoed project that would have inundated some of the headwaters of the South Platte under 1 million acre-feet of water.
Whether a warming climate will create more precipitation and improve storage levels is a major question.
While Chimney Hollow and the Gross Reservoir Expansion are underway, any future storage in Colorado or elsewhere will be problematic, Lukas says.
“Climate change cuts both ways with respect to storage. It both makes it more appealing, and it is a potential tool for resilience, but only if that reservoir can be filled enough to create the benefits that are expected,” explains Lukas, “If those storage projects involve transbasin diversions from the Colorado [River], that is looking increasingly untenable in a multi-state and a national-political sense, let alone at the local, East Slope-versus-West Slope context. To propose new diversions out of the Colorado River Basin to anywhere, for anything, is really going to be looked at sideways unless things really improve in the basin.”
Olivia Emmer is a freelance journalist based in Carbondale, Colorado. She can be reached at olivia@soprissun.com.
Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.
Friends of the Yampa board members and members stand in Juniper Canyon, scouting the Maybell Irrigation Ditch, a diversion that takes water off the Yampa River into the Maybell Valley west of Craig. Photo courtesy of Friends of the Yampa by Kent Vertrees.
After an attempt last year to secure funding for a green hydrogen pilot in the Yampa River Valley failed, state officials and Tri-State Generation and Transmission, among others, are taking another run at the idea, using a new program launched earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Energy.
In February, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it would make available $8 billion from the new bipartisan federal infrastructure funding package to create hydrogen hubs across the country. In March, Colorado New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming formed a partnership to compete for the financing, a process that is likely to take months, if not years, to complete.
According to the Colorado Energy Office, the idea would be to create multiple sites in each state, in part to boost each state’s chance of winning some of the funding to build the hydrogen plants and to use each state’s unique natural assets to test different scenarios, such as whether to use hydropower or solar, and which storage and transmission systems could work best.
The Yampa River Valley’s coal-fired power plant at Craig, which is operated and partially owned by Tri-State, will be decommissioned beginning in 2025, with the process set to be completed in 2030. The plant once employed more than 300 people, but is now down to roughly 100 employees, according to Tri-State’s spokesman Mark Stutz.
Last year, Tri-State, Xcel and the State of Colorado applied for a federal grant to begin a feasibility study on producing green hydrogen, a process that could use hydropower, solar energy or wind to create the electricity needed to split water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen can be emitted without increasing greenhouse gases, while the hydrogen can be stored and used to create electricity.
But Colorado’s proposal was rejected. Now, with an eye on helping the Yampa River Valley protect its water and its economy from the loss of coal jobs, the utilities, the state, Yampa Valley economic development agencies, and Colorado State University are looking at other routes to a green energy transition.
“We’re listening to every and all options,” Stutz said. “We will be a small player in this. But we have a site, and we believe Craig is a good location because of the transmission, water and site availability.”
There is also some interest in building a small nuclear facility at the site, because the hydrogen technology has yet to be perfected and costs remain high, Stutz said.
Still, hydrogen has been described as the missing link in the transition away from fossil fuels. It can be produced in several ways. Green hydrogen, the subject of the proposal at Craig, is made from water using electrolysis. The oxygen separated out of the H2O can be vented, leaving the hydrogen, a fluid that can be stored in tanks or, as is in a demonstration project in Utah, in salt caverns. The hydrogen can then be tapped later as a fuel source to produce electricity or, for that matter, put into pipelines for distribution to fueling stations.
How much water would be needed to produce green hydrogen isn’t clear. But the Yampa Valley’s existing coal-fired plants have strong water portfolios that could be used.
Craig Station, in 2022, is projected to use 7,394 acre-feet of water, according to a Tri-State filing with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. By 2029, the last year of coal generation at Craig, Tri-State projects water use will decline to 4,270 acre-feet.
With drought depleting streamflows across Colorado and the West, the Yampa River is being watched closely, in part because it is a major tributary to the Colorado River.
Environmental groups have long hoped that either the state or environmental coalitions could purchase the water rights from the utilities in order to keep more water in the river and improve its health. But because hydrogen production would likely use less water than coal production, there could still be an environmental benefit in the conversion of the plants to hydrogen production, according to Jennifer Holloway, executive director of the Craig Chamber of Commerce who also serves on the Yampa/White/Green River Basin Roundtable.
“There are a lot of scientists who think it is a great opportunity for our area to use the hydrogen to repurpose our infrastructure. We have a lot of skilled workers that could easily be shifted into a hydrogen production scenario,” Holloway said.
But she said she would like to see as much water as possible left in the river.
“My concern with hydrogen is are they going to take too much? Everything they’ve told me is that the hydrogen would use less water. If that is indeed the fact, that is good news,” she said.
Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.
Fresh Water News is an independent, nonpartisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Our editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.
State Highway 133 crosses the Crystal River several times as it flows downstream to its confluence with the Roaring Fork River in Carbondale. Some proponents of a federal Wild & Scenic designation are pushing for a quick timeline while others want a more cautious approach. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
A campaign to protect one of the last free-flowing rivers in Colorado is moving forward, but some proponents say not enough progress has been made over the past year.
Last spring a handful of advocates led by Pitkin County revived an effort to secure a federal Wild & Scenic designation, which would protect the upper Crystal River from future development, dams and diversions. A year into the effort, some say a planned stakeholder process is moving too slowly, while others say a designation can’t be rushed and must be approached carefully and inclusively.
The different philosophies underscore a rift between those who say a cautious and thorough multi-year approach is what’s needed to ensure success and those who say mounting threats to the river, driven by the climate crisis, demand bold and immediate action.
“That difference of opinion concerns me a great deal,” said Kate Hudson, Crystal River Valley resident and western U.S coordinator for Waterkeeper Alliance. “We are at an existential moment both in terms of water and climate and our congressional balance of power that requires we at least try and do this faster. We should at least try to move this as quickly as possible.”
In 2021 Pitkin County Healthy Rivers granted $35,000 to Carbondale-based environmental conservation group Wilderness Workshop to start up a public outreach and education campaign, with the goal of laying a foundation of grassroots support for the effort. The organization has built a website, held events and collected about 1,000 signatures on a petition supporting the designation. The next step will be working with Pitkin County to hire a facilitator for a formal stakeholder process.
At the June Healthy Rivers board meeting, Wilderness Workshop’s Wild & Scenic campaign manager Michael Gorman gave a presentation about progress so far. Board member Wendy Huber asked about the timeline and whether the process should be moving faster. Gorman said a designation could take several more years.
“I’m feeling a little urgency,” she said. “To sort of dilly dally seems to be losing opportunities.”
Grant Stevens, communications director for Wilderness Workshop, said that while he understands the community’s urgency, it’s important to develop a proposal that Colorado’s congressional representatives can get behind. A designation must be approved by Congress and advocates have been in contact with representatives from Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper’s offices.
“We want to make sure we have something that a federal elected official will support, and we need to make sure we go through a community-driven process to get to that point,” Stevens said. “We don’t want to rush that.”
The view looking upstream on the Crystal River below Avalanche Creek. A Pitkin County group wants to designate this section of the Crystal as Wild & Scenic.CREDIT: CURTIS WACKERLE/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Designation details
The U.S. Forest Service first determined in the 1980s that the Crystal River was eligible for designation under the Wild & Scenic River Act, which seeks to preserve rivers with outstandingly remarkable scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic and cultural values in a free-flowing condition. There are three categories under a designation: wild, which are sections that are inaccessible by trail, with shorelines that are primitive; scenic, with shorelines that are largely undeveloped, but are accessible by roads in some places; and recreational, which are readily accessible by road or railroad and have development along the shoreline.
The potential proposal for the Crystal includes all three types of designation: wild in the upper reaches of the river’s wilderness headwaters, scenic in the middle stretches and recreational from the town of Marble to the Sweet Jessup canal headgate. Each river with a Wild & Scenic designation has unique legislation written for it that can be customized to address local stakeholders’ values and concerns.
Despite its renowned river rafting, fishing and scenic beauty, which contribute to the recreation-based economy of many Western Slope communities, Colorado has just 76 miles of one river — the Cache La Poudre — designated as Wild & Scenic. This underscores the difficulty of trying to preserve free-flowing streams, especially in a water-scarce region where some would like to see rivers remain available for future water development.
This map shows the sections of the Crystal River that could be designated wild, scenic and recreational according to the finding of eligibility by the U.S. Forest Service.CREDIT: COURTESY ROARING FORK CONSERVANCY
Stakeholder participation
Since the Crystal flows through Gunnison County and the town of Marble, advocates say getting those residents and elected representatives on board will be key to moving the effort forward. A first attempt at a Wild & Scenic designation, which sought to prevent the possibility of a future dam and reservoir project, couldn’t get buy-in from some Marble residents or Gunnison County. Advocates shelved the discussion in 2016 with the election of President Donald Trump. This time around, they hope to secure at least the participation if not the support of past opponents.
Marble Town Administrator Ron Leach acknowledged there is still a lot of work to be done as far as gauging public sentiment and building awareness.
Leach has been heavily involved in the town’s multi-year process to address overcrowding on the Lead King loop, a popular off-highway vehicle route near Marble. He said when it comes to these things, slow and methodical is the right strategy and that town officials are totally supportive of the Wild & Scenic stakeholders group, in which he participates as the Marble representative.
“The more process, the better the product,” Leach said. “I’ve learned that the hard way. Take it easy and make sure it’s right.”
Gunnison County Commissioner Roland Mason agreed. He said more conversations need to happen before he could say whether Gunnison County would support a designation.
“I appreciate the fact that they are not trying to rush the timeline,” Mason said. “From my perspective it’s moving at a little bit of a slow pace because of trying to get everyone on board but at the same time, it’s kind of necessary.”
But supporters may never get everyone on board. Larry Darien, who owns a ranch on County Road 3 that borders the river, was one of the early opponents to the designation and still remains opposed to Wild & Scenic because of its potential effect on private property.
While the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act does give the federal government the ability to acquire private land, there are many restrictions on those abilities. Condemnation is a tool that is rarely used, according to a Q&A document compiled by the Interagency Wild and Scenic Rivers Coordinating Council.
“I’m not in favor of a dam on the Crystal River and I’m not in favor of water being taken out and sent someplace else and I’m not in favor of Wild & Scenic designation,” he said. “There are other ways we can manage this besides Wild & Scenic and I think that’s the way we need to go instead of getting the federal government involved.”
The alternate route Darien is referring to is a collaboratively created alternative management plan on the Upper Colorado River, which offers some of the same protections as Wild & Scenic, but still allows for some water development.
Advocates will have to decide whether total consensus is a realistic goal and if they should move forward even though some opposition remains.
The headwaters of the Crystal River include the tributary of Yule Creek, the drainage seen to the left from an Eco-Flight, where Colorado Stone Quarries’ marble quarry is located. Some, including Pitkin County, would like to see the Crystal River designated under the federal Wild & Scenic River Act.CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
Threats to the Crystal?
While there may be a general feeling of worry about drought and falling reservoir levels in the Colorado River basin overall, it’s unclear what — if any — specific, imminent threats there are to the upper Crystal River. In 2012, conservation group American Rivers deemed the Crystal one of the top 10 most endangered rivers. This was spurred by plans, which have since been scrapped, from the Colorado River Water Conservation District and the West Divide Conservation District to preserve water rights tied to reservoirs near Redstone.
Still, in a place where much of the state’s headwaters are taken across the Continental Divide to thirsty Front Range cities, Wild & Scenic proponents say it could happen on the Crystal, even if those threats are currently hypothetical. Many of Colorado’s rivers have been overly tapped, but there’s still water left to develop on the Crystal.
“To me, the greatest threat to the Crystal isn’t so much the storage facility, it’s that there’s still water in the Crystal,” said Pitkin County Attorney John Ely. “The biggest risk to the Crystal is just taking water out of the drainage. That’s why I think the (Wild & Scenic) effort is still worth doing.”
The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism.
