Headwaters Summer 2018: What Does A Stream Need? by Water Education Colorado

WHAT DOES A STREAM NEED?

COLORADO COMMUNITIES FIND OUT AS THEY CRAFT LOCAL MANAGEMENT PLANS

SUMMER 2018

RAN C H E R. F I S H ER M A N. CON SE R VAT I O N I S T.

Different Hats, Common Values Watch A River’s Reckoning, a new film by American Rivers and Trout Unlimited, to learn how ranchers on the Upper Colorado River worked with conservation groups and other partners to improve the fishery and the ranchers’ access to irrigation water. Colorado’s Water Plan encourages stream management plans to create similar partnerships. There are more than a dozen communities currently undertaking plans.

Learn more about how to initiate a plan to benefit your local river at rivernetwork.org/smp

Photo by Russ Schnitzer.

Pulse Water and Weed Marijuana farmers and water administrators face a common challenge: working together.

12 A Hedge Fund Hunting for Hedgerows A Madison Avenue investment firm buys up Colorado ag water rights.

13 The Ripple Effect Student contest winners receive cash to implement watershedsaving projects.

Inside DIRECTOR’S NOTE

4 WHAT WE’RE DOING

Contents | Summer 2018

WEco's upcoming events, reporting and more. FROM THE EDITOR

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2018 PRESIDENT'S RECEPTION

THE STREAM MANAGEMENT PLANNING ISSUE What do rivers need? At the heart of Colorado’s current swell in stream management planning is a goal to uncover what the state’s rivers need to stay healthy and, in places, to sustain recreation. Many communities, though, are also collecting social data on water users’ goals. Spurred by an infusion of state funding, Colorado coalitions, towns, and entire basins are making progress on local plans that focus on the lifeblood of any community—the river.

AROUND THE STATE

Water news from each of Colorado’s eight river basins.

F E AT U R E

15 MEMBER’S CORNER

Engage, volunteer and celebrate the impact of WEco’s work.

Best-Laid Plans

How Far We’ve Come

With a stream management planning boom underway across the state, communities are assessing river health to determine how to keep their waterways healthy.

Colorado aims to cover 80 percent of prioritized rivers with stream management plans by 2030. Are stakeholders on track to meet the goal?

By Kelly Bastone

By Jacqueline Ronson

On the cover: A stream management plan in Grand County led to projects that improved the health of the Colorado River, including flows, fishing, and ranchers’ ability to divert. Photo by Russ Schnitzer Above: Diverse stakeholders depend on the Yampa River, including irrigated agriculture. While the Yampa Basin Roundtable hasn’t yet launched an official integrated water management planning effort, outside of the City of Steamboat’s stream management plan, it expects to include all stakeholders and consider all water uses. Photo by Kent Vertrees

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Jayla Poppleton Executive Director

Lisa Darling President

Jennie Geurts Director of Operations

Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr. Vice President

Stephanie Scott Leadership & Education Programs Manager

e’ve filled these pages with stories about stream management planning across the state, including approaches, tools and progress being made. Nurtured for their connectivity, our Colorado streams bear an immensely valuable resource around the state and beyond our borders. Pairing legal rights to water use with consideration for natural stream function is a heritage worthy of our headwaters state’s continued dedication. As you enjoy reading how Coloradans are going about this invigorating work, I want to mention other relevant “streams.” Employed as a verb, this word has come to mean connecting people around the world with those around the corner via the internet. I’m pleased to announce that Water Education Colorado is upping its presence in the digital arena. After many months of development and content migration, we are live with a new website: www.watereducationcolorado.org. You’ll find new features and a vastly improved user experience to find what you’re looking for quickly, with plenty of complimentary content to dive into once you’re there. Try it out! Go to our publications library, upcoming tours and events, all the new postings. The site is clean, modern and mobile friendly. We believe it’s a powerful way to share the constantly evolving story of Colorado water. We’ve also launched our Fresh Water News digital news initiative. This flows from a desire to spur awareness about water issues among a wider range of Coloradans. We expect to fill gaps in the coverage water receives from traditional news outlets. News articles will be available on the site. We will relay a weekly news digest to subscribers. And we’re inviting other news organizations to run our content. I encourage you to visit the website regularly, to sign up for our e-newsletter, and to follow us on social media. Refer friends and colleagues. Help us build a pathway of water connectivity to all communities. May these new streams permeate the landscape well! “Stream” may also mean a “stream of engagement.” Join us. We are dedicated to helping along water students, leaders and stewards of all ages for a more water-aware Colorado.

—Executive Director—

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STAFF

Sophie Kirschenman Education & Outreach Coordinator Alicia Prescott Development Coordinator Jerd Smith Digital Content Editor Caitlin Coleman Headwaters Editor & Communications Specialist Charles Chamberlin Headwaters Graphic Designer

Gregg Ten Eyck Secretary Alan Matlosz Treasurer Eric Hecox Past President Rep. Jeni Arndt Nick Colglazier Jorge Figueroa Greg Johnson Scott Lorenz Dan Luecke Kevin McBride Kate McIntire Reed Morris Lauren Ris Travis Robinson Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg Laura Spann Chris Treese Reagan Waskom

THE MISSION of Water Education Colorado is to promote increased understanding of water resource issues so Coloradans can make informed decisions. WEco is a non-advocacy organization committed to providing educational opportunities that consider diverse perspectives and facilitate dialogue in order to advance the conversation about water. HEADWATERS magazine is published three times each year by Water Education Colorado. Its goals are to raise awareness of current water issues, and to provide opportunities for engagement and further learning. THANK YOU to all who assisted in the development of this issue. Headwaters’ reputation for balance and accuracy in reporting is achieved through rigorous consultation with experts and an extensive peer review process, helping to make it Colorado’s leading publication on water. © Copyright 2018 by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education DBA Water Education Colorado. ISSN: 1546-0584

What we’re doing

SUSTAINING COLORADO WATERSHEDS CONFERENCE WESTIN RIVERFRONT RESORT, AVON, CO | OCTOBER 9–11, 2018

“The Color of Water: Exploring the Spectrum” Investigate how diverse watershed interests interact at this year’s conference as we delve into water for environment, agriculture, recreation, mining, energy, forest health, cities and towns, and water reuse.

The Sustaining Colorado Watersheds Conference is cooperatively hosted by the Colorado Watershed Assembly, Colorado Riparian Association, and Water Education Colorado.

Water Educator Workshop Need to boost your programs? Join Water Education Colorado in October for a daylong workshop prior to the Sustaining Colorado Watersheds Conference where we’ll propose an innovative approach to project design and evaluation.

Water Reuse Event As the population in Colorado grows and the demand for water increases, some are looking to water reuse as a possible strategy for addressing concerns related to water scarcity. Join us this October for a “social water” event focused on reuse— what it is, how it works and what it could mean for the future of water in Colorado. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to drink wine made with reused water! Stay tuned for more info.

WEBINAR Implementation of a stream management plan can take many forms; while low flows are a common challenge, instream flows aren’t always prescribed. Join us later this summer for a webinar where we’ll hear about Steamboat Springs’ new plan on the Yampa, upcoming opportunities for implementation, and how the plan informed some cooperative ongoing water release programs.

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What we’re doing Corporate Responsibility and Water

2013 Flood Anniversary Tour The 2013 Front Range floods were Colorado’s costliest natural disaster. It’s been five years since the deluge devastated local communities and we are going back this September to tour the area, hear from flood recovery experts, and check in on the progress that’s been made. Stay tuned for details.

Many businesses are intentionally evolving their operations to focus on sustainable practices. Join us this fall for a "social water" happy hour event featuring a panel of experts who will speak to their various companies’ commitment to water stewardship.

A conversation with… Why should people care about healthy streams and a healthy environment?

TIME ON THE WECO BOARD:

Five years HOME:

Boulder

DAN LUECKE We met up with Dan Luecke, a Water Education Colorado board member, to discuss river and stream health and planning in Colorado. Dan is a retired hydrologist and environmental scientist who has focused on developing water in environmentally sustainable ways. He also focuses on river system restoration and has often been involved at the intersection of federal law and water rights. 6 • WAT E R E D U C AT I O N C O LO R A D O

We, as a society, have an obligation to protect what we rely on, not only for ourselves, but for the larger community and also for other species which we interact with on a daily basis. I think it makes us a better community and it delivers the message to others that we care. How does science or research play into the way Coloradans manage their streams?

Science is essential. Without the underpinning science, trying to develop a set of measures that might make a difference is virtually impossible. These are very complicated systems. You’re doing experiments in nature, and nature doesn’t often cooperate. In part, that scientific underpinning can take the rough edges off because people then are reasonably confident that certain actions or measures

will make a difference. Is it important to involve people with various interests, backgrounds, and stakes in the community’s use of a stream in planning?

There’s hardly any interest that doesn’t touch water one way or another. Every interest, or every group, has a right to be heard. Beyond that, putting together programs for protection or enhancement of riverine and aquatic habitats can be stopped by almost any one given interest. So, on the one hand, everyone has a right to be heard, and on the other hand, anyone has the ability or the power to stop a particular activity. Therefore, getting all the interests around the table is the way to go about solving problems, improving aquatic systems, and having them there for all to enjoy. BY CODY WILLIAMS Read the full interview and watch excerpts online at watereducationcolorado.org.

WEco RADIO

“Mother Nature didn’t cooperate with us and gave us the flood prior to doing the stream management plan. So now we’re pivoting from stream recovery to long-term thinking.”

—Sean Cronin, executive director of the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District, speaking on our radio show, Connecting the Drops, about beginning work on a stream management plan five years after the 2013 floods in northeastern Colorado.

Fresh Water News Fresh Water News, an initiative of Water Education Colorado, is live and reporting on water stories across

FROM THE EDITOR

’ve focused on water through the lens of journalism for almost a decade and find it exciting to see new water-related trends in Colorado. Such is the case with stream management planning. Sixteen plans across the state are in progress or completed, most of them initiated within the past year or two. We hear the roster may grow. The purpose of each plan is to understand what the river and its communities need to remain viable and healthy, and in some cases, to meet other needs that stakeholders prioritize. This kind of understanding could lead to the implementation of projects that help achieve those community-driven goals. We don’t need to guess how it will look. Not only can we see the thusfar implemented projects outlined in completed plans, some of which are described in this issue, but we can also eye agreements that aren’t associated with plans at all. Stream management planning may be new, but we’re reminded Coloradans aren’t strangers to striking agreements— including handshake deals that retime streamflows for the benefit of the environment, recreation and water users. While we can firmly count the number of official new stream management plans, there are many more operational agreements around the state achieving similar outcomes. They aren’t always backed by extensive data, as a stream management plan would be, but the end result may not be that different. Take, for example, the Joint Operations Plan on the Poudre River, where reservoir operations are coordinated to augment low wintertime flows and optimize aquatic habitat. Reservoir releases rush through 37 miles of the Poudre before being diverted and stored for municipal use. Similarly, the Voluntary Flow Management Program on the Arkansas River boosts recreational flows by moving water from upstream reservoirs down to Pueblo Reservoir during the summer rafting season. Look too at the Rio Grande Cooperative Project between the San Luis Valley Irrigation District and Colorado Parks and Wildlife, or at the Colorado Water Trust’s numerous projects to lease water and augment flows. These efforts wet rivers while meeting user needs. New solutions and new partnerships are emerging, now along with the data to back and encourage them. It seems stream management planning is a catalyst for the kind of exploration and commitment Coloradans hope for and expect of each other.

the state. Watch for our weekly news digests emailed on Wednesdays. Check it out on our new website watereducationcolorado.org.

—Editor—

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Water Education Colorado supporters gathered at the History Colorado Center for the 2018 President’s Reception on May 11.

2018 President’s Reception

o celebrate water leadership in Colorado, Water

Education Colorado annually recognizes two individuals who demonstrate above-and-beyond commitment to water resources stewardship and education. In 2018 we proudly recognized Tom Cech of the One World One Water Center at Metro State University with the Diane

Hoppe Leadership Award for lifetime achievement in water education and Joe Frank of the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District with the Emerging Leader Award. The awards were presented during WEco’s annual President’s Reception on May 11 at the History Colorado Center.

THANK YOU TO OUR PEAK AND TORRENT SPONSORS FOR THEIR GENEROUS SUPPORT

Theo Stroomer

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Tom Cech Rural-Urban Educator

2018 Diane Hoppe Leadership Award

BY GREG HOBBS

om Cech knows what water-short looks like close up. He grew up on a “dirt-poor” dryland farm his great-grandparents homesteaded in 1878 near Clarkson, Nebraska. “That’s where I first learned about groundwater. We got our drinking water from a well 283feet deep sunk into glacial melt.”

TOM AIMED TO BE A TEACHER. With an undergraduate degree in education from Kearney State College, he taught high school math in Wilber, Nebraska, for two years. He and his wife, Grace, also a Nebraskan, moved to Salt Lake City in 1977 to be near the mountains. Tom found a job with an architectural and planning firm. Fascinated by the city’s spacious urban layout, he followed up with a Master’s Degree in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 1982, with two young daughters, no job, and a continued yearning for the mountains, he spotted a Sunday Denver Post advertisement for Executive Director of the Central Colorado Water Conservancy District in Greeley. When the district asked him for an interview, “I got goosebumps flying over the South Platte. Oh my goodness, I could actually have a chance at working at a job that sort of follows the thread of Centennial.” His distinguished service for Central extended 29 years through the great water years of the 1980s and 90s into the blistering well crisis brought on by the 2002-2003 drought. Senior priority ditch calls on a depleted river shuttered thousands of junior priority groundwater wells lacking adequate augmentation plans under Colorado’s 1969 Colorado Water Right Adjudication and Administration Act.

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Central’s boundaries extended down the throat of the South Platte from Commerce City through Fort Lupton, Platteville, Gilcrest, Kersey and Wiggins to Fort Morgan. Before the early 21st-century well curtailments set in, this district was already busy buying water rights, constructing recharge projects, and pursuing water court cases to keep junior wells pumping. Central formed and still operates two groundwater management subdistricts to aid its constituents in protecting against injury to other water rights. Tom, the former high school math teacher, oversaw Central’s issuance of a $40-million Water Augmentation Subdistrict bond issue approved by its electorate in 2006. Through Tom’s energetic commitment, Central became a water education leader. In 1991, it convened the world’s second children’s water festival. Ever since, water wizards have blossomed across Colorado. Amidst the drought, working with Rep. Diane Hoppe, Sen. Jim Isgar, and the Colorado Water Congress, he helped bring into being the Colorado Foundation for Water Education (now Water Education Colorado) in 2002. Tom has never lost sight of Colorado’s rural-urban water education needs. He’s served on the faculty of the University of Northern Colorado and Colorado State University. Rounding out their spousal

partnership in education, Grace served in library acquisitions at UNC and CSU. A prodigious writer, Tom’s book authorships include Colorado Water Law for NonLawyers (with Andy Jones); Water, Colorado’s Real Gold (with Dick Stenzel); and Defend and Develop, a 75th Anniversary history of the Colorado Water Conservation Board (with Bill McDonald). He’s also authored two college water textbooks used by students nationally and internationally—Principles of Water Resources and Introduction to Water Resources and Environmental Issues (with Karrie Lynn Pennington). During the well crisis, Tom took up ice hockey so “I could relieve stress by putting on a helmet and shoulder pads to get beat up with!” He studied durable leaders. His role models became Judge Clifford Stone of Gunnison, CWCB’s first director, and Russell George of Rifle, former Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives and author of the 2005 Colorado Water for the 21st Century Act. “They were fair, inclusive, and forward thinking, educators and public servants in the best possible terms.” Tom was the perfect fit for starting up the One World One Water Center for Urban Water Education and Stewardship in 2011. Housed at Denver’s Metropolitan State University, the OWOW Center has sparked Metro’s comprehensive water curriculum offering a Water Studies Minor and Water Studies Certificate. A partnership with the Denver Botanic Gardens has expanded the center’s off-campus leadership role in water use and conservation. Jenny, April and Melissa, Tom and Grace’s daughters, are engaged in professional endeavors worthy of their bright western upbringing. Jenny is a thermal engineer at Blue Canyon Technologies in Boulder, ensuring that satellites function securely in space. April is a post-production sound engineer at 20th Century Fox studios in Los Angeles. Melissa serves as social media manager at University of Colorado-Boulder, and, yes, she will talk to her dad after CU plays in Lincoln this fall! H Theo Stroomer

Joe Frank Anchoring the Lower South Platte 2018 Emerging Leader Award

BY GREG HOBBS

oe Frank and his family prefer living in the wideopen plains of northeastern Colorado near Merino. A civil engineering graduate of the Colorado School of Mines, Joe has been the General Manager of the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District since 2004. This district extends along the South Platte River west of Fort Morgan through Sterling and Julesburg to the Nebraska state line. “Previously, as a consulting engineer, I’d been working on Front Range subdivisions, commercial developments and flood drainage plans,” Joe says.

NOW HE SHEPHERDS WATER use for farmers and ranchers intent on preserving Colorado’s rural way of life. A member of the South Platte Basin Roundtable, Joe is a student of how Delph Carpenter put together the 1923 South Platte River Compact between Colorado and Nebraska. “Return flows from irrigated agriculture and cities along the Front Range produced a living year-round stream all the way into Nebraska that didn’t exist before.” Between 1903 and 1910, nine irrigation districts came into existence down the South Platte from Kersey to Nebraska for conserving these return flows. They built off-stream reservoirs for diverting water into storage during late fall, winter and early spring for use in the lower South

Platte reach during the irrigation season. Says Joe, “Carpenter showed Nebraska water users how they, too, could benefit from these upstream return flows. That’s why the compact entitles Nebraska, an 1897 priority, to use 120 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water between April 1 and October 15 and affords Colorado unrestricted use of the river above and beyond that.” Created in 1964, the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District envelops the irrigation districts, ditch companies, towns, and individual farms and ranches essential to maintaining a viable rural economy. Originally formed to partner in the proposed Narrows Reservoir project, it now acts to protect water users dependent on return flows

and the storage of storm flows not owed to Nebraska. On their behalf, Joe is working for alternatives to drying up downstream South Platte farms and ranches. “We don’t want a repeat of how lower Arkansas River ditches were picked apart for urban water supply.” Joe embraces implementation of Colorado’s Water Plan, particularly its water-conscious landscaping recommendations and its call for completion of pending projects “such as Northern’s Integrated Water Supply Project and the Chatfield Reservoir Reallocation Project.” He also appreciates the Colorado Legislature’s study of new cooperative urban-rural storage possibilities in the South Platte Basin. “We’ve had a lot of water leaving the state recently we could have put into surface and groundwater storage under the compact.” He emphasizes how Colorado’s contribution to the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program for endangered species operates through various recharge sites for timing return flows just above Nebraska. “The Tamarack Ranch State Wildlife Area and other nearby recharge projects protect water users present and future throughout the South Platte Basin, so they can exercise their water rights under this umbrella.” Joe’s wife, Kori, an experienced elementary school teacher, has been home-schooling their five sons, Matthew, Andrew, Tyler, Jacob and Caleb. This way the family can enjoy living on their 20-acre place close to fishing holes amidst the perennial seeps, rivulets and reservoirs of the Eastern Plains. H

Thank you also to our Cascade and Ripple Level Reception Sponsors Applegate Group, Inc.

Forsgren Associates, Inc.

South Metro Water Supply Authority

Brown and Caldwell

George K. Baum

Southwestern Water Conservation District

Central Colorado Water Conservancy District

Guaranty Bank and Trust

Special District Association

Cheryl Benedict

Kogovsek & Associates

West Sage Water Consultants

Colorado River District

Metro State University

White & Jankowski

Denver Water

Mallon Lonnquist Morris & Watrous

Wilson Water Group

Ducks Unlimited

Pueblo Board of Water Works

Wright Water Engineers

Theo Stroomer

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Pulse

↑ A new breed of irrigator, marijuana growers have flocked to Pueblo County since 2012, when Amendment 64 passed.

Water and Weed Marijuana cultivation poses challenges for administrators and growers alike BY JOSH CHETWYND

Known as the Napa Valley of marijuana cultivation, Pueblo County has welcomed more than 300 new pot growers since 2014. Financially, the effect of this boom has been impressive. In 2016 alone, the county experienced $35.6 million in net positive impact to the local economy. That number is projected to increase to $99.1 million by 2020, according to a Colorado State University-Pueblo study released in March 2018. But with this spike has come massive water challenges for both local water authorities and cultivators. “Water rights and administration is a concept that is really pretty thoroughly ingrained in the culture in [the] Arkansas Valley,” says Rachel Zancanella, who plays a key role with marijuana growers in Pueblo County as an engineer for the Colorado Division of Water Resources Division 2 office. “[But] many people entering the marijuana industry have appeared in what’s felt like a mass migration to the area accompanied by a ‘gold rush’ mentality.”

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For those entrepreneurs, limited initial knowledge about water regulations can be a huge stumbling block. Zancanella recalls one woman who invested her entire college fund to purchase property for a grow operation only to discover she had no accessible water supply. She looked at alternatives like hauling water, but there was no affordable option. Zancanella is unsure of that grower’s fate, but many in that situation fold while others sell out to larger cultivators. Zancanella’s office has struggled to keep up with the tremendous oversight required for the budding industry. With no additional personnel to meet demand, local administrators still must conduct field inspections, new well inventories, water right application reviews, and water diversion monitoring and reporting to ensure water is used legally. State staff are not alone in navigating the water challenges inherent in this new industry. Shawn Honaker, a 12-year veteran of pot

cultivation and founder of Pueblo-based Yeti Farms, says the state initially struggled to establish clear policies. “I literally went through four water sources that were permitted and were OK, and then I was told it wasn’t OK,” he says. “We ended up investing well over six figures to get our well up and going that met standards. It was an extreme challenge to get water.” According to Honaker, the issue has improved as Colorado regulators have developed clearer protocols. Now he says the biggest problems for cultivators are water bills. While the cost can vary, Honaker, who says he only uses three acrefeet of water a year, pays around $1,100 per acre-foot for the minimum 10 acre-feet required annually to receive raw water as a pot grower from Pueblo Board of Water Works, a municipal water provider. That’s in addition to slightly more than $15,000 in annual service fees. Honaker’s operation is outside of the Pueblo Board of Water Works’ regular service area. In contrast, traditional crop farmers in the area typically spend between $30 to $100 per acre-foot with no annual fee, while the one or two grow operations located within the City of Pueblo pay standard municipal water rates. Alan Ward, water resources division manager at Pueblo Board of Water Works, attributes the discrepancy primarily to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s policy prohibiting use of federal water or facilities for marijuana cultivation. Not only does this substantially limit the amount of water available for growers in Colorado, but additional administration is required to assure compliance with Reclamation rules. As a result, few water providers are willing to take on the burdens of leasing water to this industry, so, says Ward, “a premium price can be charged.” H JOSH CHETWYND is a Denver-based journalist and author. He has worked as a staff reporter for USA Today and U.S. News & World Report, and has written for other publications, including The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Negotiation Law Review and The Times (of London).

Adobe Stock

A Hedge Fund Hunting for Hedgerows An investment company is buying up Grand Valley water rights. Are they banking on a water-short future? BY NELSON HARVEY

In recent months, a New York City-based hedge fund has been rapidly buying up agricultural land with senior water rights in western Colorado’s Grand Valley. Since September 2017, Water Asset Management (WAM) has paid more than $6.2 million for at least five separate farms comprising about 800 acres around the towns of Fruita, Loma and Mack near the Utah border, according to Mesa County property records. Neither WAM’s founding partner Disque Deane Jr. nor the company’s Colorado asset manager Matt Ketellapper responded to requests for comment. Yet the men have told officials at the Colorado River District they plan to purchase around 2,500 acres in the Grand Valley—about one tenth of all the irrigated land served by the Grand Valley Water Users Association. Although WAM is leasing its Grand Valley farms to agricultural producers this year, Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River District, is concerned the company’s long-term plan is to sell or lease its land and water to municipalities during a water-short period. “They say they are interested in supporting sustainable agriculture,” says Mueller. “We are concerned about whether or not that is accurate.” Although its representatives may have indicated otherwise, the company’s website is explicit about the goal of these activities: “Water Property Investor, LP (“WPI”) will invest primarily in a diversified portfolio of water resources, in the water-stressed Western U.S., purchased at agriculture value. These resources shall then be repackaged and repurposed and sold to higher value municipal, industrial and environmental consumers …” WAM’s website also states that it aims to generate a financial return of between 17 and 22 percent on its water investments. The farms WAM is acquiring are irrigated with water from the Bureau of Reclamation’s Grand Valley Project, which diverts water from the Colorado River in De Beque Canyon. Importantly, that project’s water rights were appropriated before the 1922 Colorado River Compact. Pre-1922 water rights are coveted because they aren’t subject to the compact’s water-sharing terms with the lower Colorado River Basin states.

Greg Poschman

↑ Mark Harris with the Grand Valley Water Users Association stands above the Government Highline Canal in the Grand Valley. This water is used to irrigate the farms that Water Asset Management has recently purchased.

If water shortage were ever to result in a compact “call” on the Colorado River, a municipality that bought the land and water now owned by WAM could potentially send that water downstream to the lower basin to offset the continued use of more junior water rights—which supply most transbasin diversions made from the headwaters region—provided their plan to do so was approved by a water court. That’s according to Denver-based water attorney David Robbins, who has represented the State of Colorado in a wide range of interstate water matters. The idea that water-strapped Front Range cities could one day pursue acquisition of Western Slope agricultural water rights to cope with shortages is not new. But the notion that a Madison Avenue hedge fund could swoop in to capitalize on the deal— effectively “buying low” from farmers then turning around and “selling high” to cities—represents a new twist in a long-anticipated story, one that could affect all Coloradans. H NELSON HARVEY is a freelance reporter and editor based in Denver. He has written for Modern Farmer, High Country News and many other publications. See more of his work at nelsonharvey.com.

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Pulse ← Grace Patrick presents her first-place winning project, collecting single-use-plastic straws from nearby restaurants, at the 2018 Caring For Our Watersheds competition.

The Ripple Effect —From Metal Straws to Better Streams

BY MAYA GURARIE

nnovative ideas from local high school students will result in water bottle filling stations, less consumption of plastic straws, and other moves toward sustainability, thanks to a contest designed to improve watershed health.

On May 11, 10 teams of students gathered at the University of Northern Colorado to present their ideas at the Caring For Our Watersheds competition. They were the finalists among a group of 564 student competitors who participated by identifying an environmental issue in their home watershed—the Big Thompson or Cache la Poudre—and proposing realistic solutions. The 10 winners received cash prizes of $300 to $1,000, totaling $6,000, to implement their ideas. Another $6,000 was sent to those students’ classrooms for materials and supplies, plus an additional $5,640 for all classrooms that entered the contest. Prizes

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and the program are funded by Nutrien, a worldwide corporation that sells crop nutrients, inputs and services to growers. “This program actually gives money to implement practical solutions. That ripple effect is making a difference, not only today but for generations to come,” says Caring for Our Watersheds Colorado coordinator Mike Switzer. While the implementation of projects has an impact on northern Colorado watersheds, students also feel the effects of taking action and putting their ideas to the test. “Some projects are wildly successful and some need more reworking to gather

information and make adjustments. The students are learning tremendously valuable skills to see what works with their ideas,” says Poudre Learning Center director Ray Tschillard, who helps support the program. Greeley Central High School student Grace Patrick won first place in this year’s contest. She asked owners at three restaurants—Rio Grande Mexican, Palomino’s Mexican, and Roma Restaurant—to only distribute straws to customers upon request. Patrick collected 1,158 used straws to create pictures for the restaurant owners. These wall hangings are meant to raise awareness about the waste generated by the use of disposable plastic straws. Since the competition Patrick has revisited those restaurants as a customer and happily reports that she hasn’t been handed a plastic straw. She continues to implement her project with a recent order of paper straws that she plans to distribute to participating restaurants. She even gave the judges their own metal straws during the competition, highlighting alternatives to the disposable option. In the same spirit of local solutions, previous Caring for Our Watersheds winner Ivonne Morales has returned to the competition. In 2013, Morales launched a campaign to replace drinking fountains with water bottle filling stations in her high school. Her project not only reduces plastic waste, but has propelled Morales onto center stage as the next Colorado coordinator of the program. She will replace Mike Switzer who is retiring. In June Morales met with other Caring for Our Watersheds coordinators from across the United States, Canada and Argentina at the international headquarters of the program in Calgary, Canada to set goals for next year. H MAYA GURARIE is a writer who combines storytelling with digital media to create dynamic content that has a positive impact.

Courtesy Caring for Our Watersheds by Mike Switzer

Around the state | BY JERD SMITH “For every dollar you put into drought mitigation, you save six dollars in response costs.” Taryn Finnessey, Colorado Water Conservation Board ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN Rafters on the Upper Arkansas River should have plenty of water fun ahead of them after the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced in May that a minimum of 10,000 acre-feet of water will be available for recreation and fisheries this summer. Some 50 different outfitters operate on the river. Last year they served more than 225,000 visitors. The water, released through what is known as the Voluntary Flow Management Program, should ensure flows of at least 700 cubic feet per second (cfs) from July 1 to Aug. 15 at the Wellsville gauge, downstream of Salida. COLORADO RIVER BASIN The Eagle River Water and Sanitation District wants to make it easy for home and business owners to ratchet down indoor water use. To that end, the district offers an array of free devices, including an ultra-efficient showerhead along with a 5-minute shower timer. The 1.5 gallon-per-minute showerhead with the timer reduces water use to 7.5 gallons per shower. New faucet aerators, toilet tank displacement bags, and toilet leak detection kits are also available at no cost. Customers can get more information at www.erwsd.org. GUNNISON RIVER BASIN The Upper Gunnison Water Conservancy District awarded nearly $150,000 in grant money to 13 different projects this year. The cash will go toward a variety of projects including $22,000 to replace and restore the Gunsight Bridge, $15,000 to restore Tomichi Creek Wetlands, and $7,000 for the Slate River Working Group. The district received requests for more

than $300,000 in grants, the largest wave of applications the district has ever processed, according to Beverly Richards, a member of the district’s grant committee. “This was a pretty unusual year,” she says. NORTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN The Natural Resources Conservation Service and the North Platte Basin Roundtable, working through the Owl Mountain Partnership, have awarded a combined $233,000 in grants this year to help rebuild irrigation systems in the basin. NRCS district conservationist Debbie Heeney says the work will cover rebuilding and improving diversion structures and headgates as well as canal lining, all of which are intended to improve the efficiency of those ditch systems. RIO GRANDE BASIN Like farmers in the South Platte Basin, potato growers and others in the Rio Grande Basin have been struggling to comply with a court order to reduce pumping of the aquifers there. To comply with pending rules from the Colorado Division of Water Resources, growers have been forming subdistricts through which they tax themselves to pay for land fallowing programs and to reduce pumping levels. Cleave Simpson, general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, says this year four new subdistricts have been approved by the court and each is now working on a plan to comply with the new rules once they take effect. Simpson says the structure for the subdistrict initiative will finally be complete this summer when six subdistricts will be up and running.

SAN JUAN/DOLORES RIVER BASIN From Telluride to Durango, Pagosa Springs and beyond there was little to cheer about this year from a water perspective. The San Juan/Dolores River Basin came in with the lowest readings for snowpack and precipitation statewide, according to the Natural Resource Conservation Service. Of some 32 SNOTEL sites in the basin, 12 recorded historically low precipitation for the 2018 water year, which runs Oct. 1, 2017 through Sept. 30 of this year—most precipitation typically falls during the winter months. Eight more sites recorded their second-lowest levels ever. A third group of much younger SNOTEL sites saw historic lows as well, according to the NRCS. SOUTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN A group of Front Range water providers have partnered to explore further maximizing South Platte River water before it exits the state and enters Nebraska. The South Platte River Opportunities Working Group, dubbed SPROWG, began presenting its proposal to various water groups in May. The concept calls for three new off-channel storage facilities downstream of Denver. Upon hearing about this idea, the South Platte Basin and Metro roundtables agreed to create a task force to further analyze the SPROWG’s work. YAMPA/WHITE RIVER BASIN The Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District in Steamboat Springs has begun permitting work on a small firming reservoir that would hold some 5,000 acre-feet of water. The reservoir is to be located at the confluence of Morrison and Silver creeks, according to Kevin McBride, general manager of the Upper Yampa district. The idea, McBride said, is that the reservoir would hold additional water supplies for delivery into Stagecoach Reservoir during drought periods. H

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BEST-LAID Communities across Colorado are embarking on stream and water management plans that promise to safeguard river health BY KELLY BASTONE

ne morning last August, I waded into the Yampa River to fish. I hadn’t bothered to pull on waders. For weeks, the water had grown warm enough to let me stand barelegged in the current—but on that day, my skin didn’t even register the shock of cool, mountain water. Instead, the river felt soothing, like my daughter’s kiddie pool after it’s been sitting out in the sunny yard all afternoon. The next day, the City of Steamboat Springs closed the Yampa River to all recreational users. Flows had dropped below 80 cubic feet per second (cfs)—well below the lateAugust average of 120 to 130 cfs—and the river was, essentially, suffocating. Spiking temperatures and low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water posed a critical threat to the river’s health. In its weakened state, the Yampa couldn’t withstand the load of fly fishers, tubers, paddlers, swimmers and dogs that flock to it every summer day. Fishing guides canceled their trips. Vacationers groaned about foregoing the splashy attractions they’d counted on. And city officials asked themselves: Is there anything we can do to end such voluntary closures, which had happened four or five times over the past decade, on our cherished river? After all, Lincoln Avenue may be the motorists’ thoroughfare, but Steamboat Springs’ other main street is the Yampa River, one of the West’s last untamed rivers (aside from a few dams on its headwaters, the Yampa runs unchecked for some 250 miles, and provides one-third of Colorado’s contribution to Colorado River flows earmarked for downstream states). A few months earlier, in April 2017, the city had initiated a river health assessment and stream management plan to address current problems and meet future needs. But August’s river closure

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PLANS

Courtesy Friends of the Yampa by Kent Vertrees H E A DWAT E R S S U M M E R 2 0 1 8

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↑ Steamboat Springs stakeholders meet at a local coffee shop to discuss the city-led stream management plan on a stretch of the Yampa River through town. ← PRECEDING PAGE: 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.

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only underscored the urgency of such efforts. If “business as usual” was battering the Yampa, which supports the recreation and tourism industries that Steamboat Springs depends on, then the community might have to re-imagine its modus operandi.

A plethora of plans

teamboat Springs is hardly the only community to invest in some sort of stream management planning. At least 16 localities have completed or initiated such plans, according to the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s (CWCB) tally. Thirteen of those stream management plans have been launched over the past two years with grant funding from the CWCB, while more are in the scoping process and could kick off later this year. Still other

handshake agreements exist across the state to coordinate flows for environmental and recreational uses, just as the implementation of a stream management plan would. In fact, Colorado is in the midst of a veritable stream management planning boom—one triggered, in large part, by Colorado’s Water Plan. The concept of planning for current and future water needs isn’t new. Municipalities are constantly evaluating their populations’ demands and how to provide for them. And as severe weather events become more common, communities are increasingly planning for forest fires, floods and other natural disasters that may impact water sources. Watershed groups, too, from all reaches of the state have worked with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to complete watershed plans—39 such plans are now in existence, according to CDPHE. Watershed plans typically focus on restoring water

“The goal is to improve water security and stream health.” Hannah Holm RUTH POWELL HUTCHINS WATER CENTER

Ben Beall

quality by reducing non-point source pollutants. But stream management plans, while complimentary to existing watershed plans, are different. Colorado’s Water Plan, published in 2015, raised the bar for the state’s rivers and streams by assigning equal importance to all of the state’s key values—municipal, industrial, agricultural, environmental and recreational. That document also calls for local communities to develop plans that are specific to their streams: By 2030, it calls for 80 percent of the state’s locally prioritized rivers to be covered by stream management plans. To meet that goal, the Colorado General Assembly allocated funding to develop those plans. Last year it earmarked $5 million in grants for projects and plans that protect or restore watershed health and stream function; another $2 million was allocated in the CWCB’s 2018 Projects Bill. That puts Colorado at the forefront of the nation’s stream management planning efforts.

“At conferences, people often come up to me and say, ‘I wish we had money for this in our state,’” says Chris Sturm, stream restoration coordinator for the CWCB. Prodded by state leadership, and with money to make planning happen, communities across Colorado have begun to map out their water future using a variety of planning approaches. Two primary types of plans are emerging across the state—stream management plans and integrated water management plans. Stream management plans address environmental needs and recreational goals. Using scientific assessments to measure the ecological health of a particular stretch of water, these plans help communities figure out where and how their waterways are impaired, with a focus on streamflows, so they can develop strategies to preserve or improve their environmental and recreational assets. Integrated water management plans go one step further to factor in consumptive uses from the municipal, agricultural and industrial sectors. Neither type is regulatory—users aren’t obliged in any way to participate—and plans aren’t necessarily appropriate for every stretch of every river in the state. “Local areas need to prioritize which waterways benefit the most from planning, based on where environmental and recreational values are the highest,” says Sturm. Part of stream management planning’s appeal is its potential to save stakeholders money: Healthy rivers cost less than degraded ones and save municipalities from investing millions of dollars to counteract declining water quality in their water treatment processes. Planning also helps communities prepare to address population growth and to become more resilient in the face of climate change. It can even preserve scenic or aesthetic values, which contribute to quality of life or recreational appeal. However, like the Colorado Water Plan that’s behind the planning wave, such efforts require a collaborative mindset because planning demands cooperation among multiple stakeholder groups. “It used to be that environmental advocates and water utilities and ranchers and recreationists all had separate meetings and discussions,” says Hannah Holm, coordinator at the Ruth Powell Hutchins Water Center at Colorado Mesa University. “But the state water plan brought these communities a lot closer together than they had been before,” says Holm, adding that stream management plans and integrated water management plans have the potential to do that on a more local basis. “The hope is that through planning, we can bring different factions together in a really tangible

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“What emerged was a shared goal, that the environment should not be the loser.”

way, and figure out what they can do for mutual benefit. The goal is to improve water security and stream health.”

The role of science

Jim Lochhead DENVER WATER

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n the early 2000s, representatives from Grand County met regularly with the Front Range utilities that sought to divert more water from the Upper Colorado and Fraser rivers. Each time, talks dissolved into a volley of slurs. Denver Water and Northern Water had a growing body of customers to serve, and they aimed to do so through the Moffat Firming Project and Windy Gap Firming Project. Plus, their legal rights gave them clear access to water from Grand County. But their existing projects already diverted nearly 70 percent of the local river water, moving it from the headwaters region to the Front Range. As those rural mountain communities watched fish populations shrink, water temperatures rise, and their river dry up, they glimpsed the decline of the ranching and recreational traditions that had long shaped the region’s customs and culture.

Negotiations were at a standstill as Northern Water and Denver Water asked Grand County what it wanted in order to advance the diversions. “What you want and need can be two different things,” explains Lurline Curran, Grand County manager at the time. County residents saw an unhealthy river, yet nobody knew what the river needed. “We decided we would take a scientific approach,” Curran says. Thus began Grand County’s stream management planning process. The $3 million plan which covered 80 miles of river was published in 2010, examining existing impacts to streams and aquatic life, flows needed to keep the rivers healthy, and priority segments that were hurting. Importantly, the plan also provided data to negotiate with. “The stream management plan didn’t necessarily unite us, it just gave us the technical information needed to make decisions,” says Mely Whiting, an attorney with Trout Unlimited who was involved with the plan and with negotiations. “It was a humongous commitment on the part of Grand County—an effort to bring science into our discussions and understand

Courtesy Denver Water

the problems before we started throwing out solutions,” Whiting says. The plan gave everyone pause, from the Front Range utilities to the Kremmling ranchers whose irrigation pumps sat several feet above the receding river. “What emerged was a shared goal, that the environment should not be the loser,” says Jim Lochhead, Denver Water’s CEO and manager. Backed by science and supporting data, negotiations led to win-win compromises including the Colorado River Cooperative Agreement and issuance of Grand County’s 1041 permit for the Windy Gap Firming Project. Both agreements will leave the river healthier than it was, Whiting says. Those hoped-for results are already being actualized, as seen through the recent restoration of Fraser Flats. This 0.9-mile stretch of river suffered from a wide channel where flows slowed, sediment built up, and the water level would drop late in the year. Plans for restoration, prompted by the stream management plan, were conceptualized in 2015 and completed in May 2018 by Trout Unlimited, Grand County, Denver Water, Northern Water, the Colorado River District and others. This $200,000 project involved willow and cottonwood plantings along the riparian corridor and the installation of rock point bars that will direct water into a narrow, deeper channel and maintain the river’s velocity when water levels drop. A healthy section of the Fraser Flats project is now open for public fishing. Colorado’s Water Plan asks localities to evaluate their streams’ functional health and to assess flows and conditions needed to support environmental and recreational water uses. It holds up the Grand County Stream Management Plan as an example of what a plan could be, but it doesn’t describe a set methodology for how to measure or develop a plan. Steamboat Springs, for example, wanted to find out how river flows affect water temperature. Adding to existing data on air and water temperatures, the city used its plan, completed in June 2018, to incorporate flow data into a model that can predict how various streamflows and weather conditions combine to impact water temperatures on its 12.5-mile study area, which passes through town. Modeling found that significant flows would be needed to cool the warm water, but also that radiation from the sun is the biggest factor in heating the stream. The city’s stream management plan draws on that science to recommend action items to establish riparian vegetation, like cottonwood trees, to increase shading on the river. The plan also suggests

Courtesy Public Counsel of the Rockies by Chelsea Brundige

identifying water rights for purchase, contracting with water rights owners, and exploring other voluntary streamflow restoration projects to decrease temperature and restore flows on water-short reaches. “You can study anything for any purpose,” says Holm. But, she adds, to play a valuable role in water planning, the data and science relied upon must come from a source that has credibility among all vested interests. “It needs to address what people really want to know. What are the mysteries? What do people always fight about? Those are the issues that science should address.”

Science can also help communities identify a realistic course of action. Data doesn’t always have to light the way to best-case scenarios for river health. On the Crystal River, for example, 2015 studies revealed that restoring the river to perfect functionality required streamflows that would put the valley’s agricultural interests out of business. But those same studies also answered irrigators’ key question: How much water would make a measurable difference to river health? “The idea that ‘every drop counts’ doesn’t really fly,” says Heather Tattersall Lewin, watershed action director for the Roaring Fork Conservancy, one of the lead entities on the Crystal River’s stream management plan. Instead, irrigators along the Crystal River needed to know whether those dry spots that routinely appeared in late summer actually impaired the river’s health. They

↑ Facilitator Jonathan Bartsch from Collaborative Decision Resources works with Crystal River stakeholders at a 2015 meeting as part of the Crystal River’s stream management planning process. This group includes agricultural water users, the Town of Carbondale, Colorado Parks and Wildlife representatives, U.S. Forest Service employees, board members who sit on the Pitkin County Healthy Rivers and Stream Board, and others. ← On May 16, 2018, a ribbon cutting marked the opening of Fraser Flats, a restored stretch of the Fraser River, for public fishing. Representatives from Grand County, Trout Unlimited, Denver Water, Northern Water, the Colorado River District, and others gathered for the celebration.

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↑ A center-pivot sprinkler irrigates agricultural land near Paonia in Colorado’s North Fork Valley.

A Testament to Inclusivity When stream management planning began for the North Fork of the Gunnison River in late 2015, not all of those who live in Hotchkiss or Paonia and on outlying farms and orchards were pleased. “Ag users were concerned the conservation groups would use this as an attempt to change their uses. My point of view is that it’s a groundless fear,” says Tom Alvey, president of both the North Fork Water Conservancy District and the Colorado River District’s board of directors. Alvey is an agricultural user himself. He operates a packing shed, the Rogers Mesa Fruit Co., that ships cherries, apricots, peaches, pears and apples. He says he sympathizes with those who see ag water supplies as threatened. He sees urban growth along the Front Range and the tightening vice in the Colorado River Basin as legitimate threats. “But I don’t think stream management plans are one of the threats,” he says. “I think they are actually a potential way to protect our water rights against the real threats.” Still, planning efforts on the North Fork of the Gunnison River fell apart after irrigators secondguessed an effort to combine environmental and infrastructure assessments. “People started coming to me saying they’d heard that [Trout Unlimited] just wanted to take their water, and other rumors that just weren’t true,” says Cary Denison, Trout 22 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

Unlimited’s project coordinator for the Gunnison River Basin. Denison helped write the grant that launched that initial plan. They’ve since taken a new tack—rather than launching into a stream management plan, North Fork interests are working on a needs assessment and project identification. But the initial difficulties there taught Denison that local water users—rather than outside organizations—need to take charge of planning. “Irrigators should be driving the bus,” he explains. “If I had to do it over again, I’d work harder to put it in their lap. They need to be asking for [planning], defining what it is, what they need from it.” Greg Peterson, director of the Colorado Ag Water Alliance, emphasizes the need for having agriculture users involved at every step of the process. Agriculture still is responsible for more than 85 percent of water use in Colorado. “Your goals should be as diverse as the users in that river basin.” Alvey concurs about the need for inclusivity. That keeps the planning real, and not just an exercise in environmental wish-thinking, he says “Don’t misunderstand me,” he adds. “I am completely in support of planning for streams and attempting to maintain the environment of the stream whenever possible. But the only way you’re going to get that done is by having the agricultural water users at the table.” H ALLEN BEST

also doubted that flow increases as small as 5 cfs could benefit the river’s ecology. Turns out, they can—in some years, at least. The scientific findings that explain how much water would help, where, and under what conditions is bogglingly complex. But Seth Mason of Lotic Hydrological, the consulting company that studied the Crystal River, had a knack for turning that data into visual graphs and charts that stakeholders could easily understand.

The recipe for success

ecause local and regional stream management planning is a relatively new field, there aren’t a lot of completed examples to guide communities that are just getting started. So far, only four plans or assessments have reached the finish line—they involve the Crystal River near Carbondale, the Upper Colorado through Grand County, the Poudre River in Fort Collins, and the Yampa through Steamboat Springs. So to help keep each locality from re-inventing the wheel with their planning efforts, the Colorado Basin Roundtable has hired Holm and the Hutchins Water Center to coordinate the development of a framework document that will help inform integrated water management planning in the Colorado River Basin, though its guidance could be used across the state. At the same time, River Network, a national nonprofit dedicated to watershed conservation, is compiling a guide of best practices and lessons learned. But, says Nicole Seltzer, River Network’s science and policy manager, “It takes people trying and running into obstacles in order to say what’s a best practice.” What works and what doesn’t might not be obvious for several more years, therefore River Network’s guidance documents are a work in progress. Already, though, it’s clear that good plans share several key factors. First and foremost: They have to be crafted by locals who have a stake in their community’s water future. “You can hire consultants, but at the end of the day, it takes a trusted community member that sees planning’s opportunity and has the time and energy to be the point person and motivator,” says Seltzer. Even planning efforts that span a vast area are more likely to be successful when they’re broken down into smaller sections with stakeholders that live right on that reach. In March 2016, the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District initiated planning efforts because climate change is expected to produce a 10 to 20 percent decline in local streamflows by mid-century—alongside a

Caitlin Coleman

population increase of 50 to 100 percent. Its integrated water management plan comprises seven sub-basins, each with its own planning groups. That’s because recreational and municipal uses dominate some valleys, while others are primarily agricultural. “We feel that it is very difficult to come up with a one-size-fits-all plan for these different basins,” says Frank Kugel, general manager of the Upper Gunnison district. Sub-basin working groups can tailor their planning to their unique needs—which is what keeps them involved. Although the Upper Gunnison River Basin’s planning process involves the full spectrum of stakeholders, negotiations aren’t always easy. The East River sub-basin surrounding Crested Butte, for example, includes a kaleidoscope of users that range from ski area recreation to agriculture to environmental advocates. “If we can make it through that one, we’ll breathe a big sigh of relief,” says Kugel. Yet often, the most powerful and influential user groups might see little need to participate in the planning process. On the Upper Colorado, for example, the main driver for Denver Water and Northern Water, the river’s two biggest diverters, to enter discussions with Grand County and its stakeholders was that they needed local support to acquire the permits for their reservoir storage projects. Generally, though, senior water rights holders aren’t compelled to participate in water plans, which rely on voluntary cooperation. Getting everyone to the table—particularly users that are poised to make the biggest difference in the river’s future—doesn’t magically happen.

Calling all stakeholders

tream management plans typically follow a similar sequence of phases. First comes the survey of stakeholders and an assessment of their needs. Then, plans identify desired outcomes, develop an action plan to achieve management objectives, move through an implementation phase, and finally turn to monitoring the results. But for any plan to truly influence the stream it targets, it must involve key users from the very start. And since individuals and institutions are loathe to donate time to projects that seem to offer them little benefit, they need to understand what they stand to gain. “You’ve got to identify how each stakeholder can get what they want or need by participating,” explains Seltzer. The Eagle River Water and Sanitation District,

for example, needs a water-savvy population. A senior water rights holder, the district is voluntarily participating in the Eagle River’s in-progress integrated water management plan because it experienced tremendous pushback during the drought of 2002 when it asked the valley’s irrigators, which include 13 golf courses, to cut back on their water consumption. “We realized we needed to educate our constituents, so that when we have to take steps to manage water, they’d already know why,” says Linn Brooks, the district’s general manager. “Planning is a great forum for education and outreach,” Brooks explains. “We have seen a significant return on that investment during times of action, when we depend on the community to fund a project or support our call to conserve.” Cultivating community buyin means the Eagle River Water and Sanitation District now spends less on crisis management. “There are certainly upfront costs to planning,” Brooks says, “But planning is the only way to be successful in the long run.” Other factions, including the recreational and agricultural communities, may not feel motivated to attend planning sessions unless they’re nudged to join in. Farmers and ranchers struggle to take time off work to show up for meetings— especially when they suspect they’ll walk in with bullseyes on their backs and all eyes on their water, says Paul Bruchez, a sixth-generation rancher and fly-fishing guide who ranches and guides at his family’s Reeder Creek Ranch on the Upper Colorado River near Kremmling. Sometimes, ranchers are simply reluctant to have their neighbors and governments peering over their shoulders and scrutinizing their operations and water management, says Holm of the Hutchins Water Center. Participating in planning processes often requires ranchers to reveal intimate details about their irrigation practices, and that kind of information-sharing comes hard for a culture that historically holds its cards close to the vest. Besides, says Kugel, some agricultural families have senior water rights that provide them with all the water they need for their personal production, so they see little incentive to box themselves up with other stakeholders in a boardroom. But the agricultural and recreational communities, including senior water rights holders, also stand to benefit from planning. When Grand County worked through its stream management plan, nearby ranchers and landowners were suffering from low flows. Declining river levels exposed irrigation pumps, making the physical feat of diverting water impossible in some spots. Such

“We feel that it is very difficult to come up with a one-sizefits-all plan for these different basins.” Frank Kugel UPPER GUNNISON RIVER WATER CONSERVANCY DISTRICT

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“The reality is, we’re all facing water deficits.” Paul Bruchez REEDER CREEK RANCH

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was the case at Bill and Wendy Thompson’s Riverside Ranch Company in Kremmling. Led by Bruchez, landowners who had previously formed a coalition, Irrigators of Lands in the Vicinity of Kremmling (ILVK), worked to analyze persistent ecological problems on a 12-mile reach of the Colorado River that ran past their ranches. Bruchez foresaw the end to ranching on his property and neighboring land unless he could enact remedies on a watershed scale. The ILVK used the Grand County Stream Management Plan to leverage funding from the Natural Resources Conservation Service and CWCB to implement diversion and stream enhancement projects, which would boost water levels for irrigation and also enhance river habitat. A stream restoration project on the Thompson’s ranch solved the couple’s irrigation woes, helped bring back some of the reach’s long-lost bug populations, and attracted trout. When neighboring landowners saw the result, they clamored to get similar structures built on their reaches. “The reality is, we’re all facing water deficits,” says Bruchez. Colorado’s population is expected to nearly double by 2050, when the state may be 560,000 acre-feet short of its water needs. “We’ll all be in that pickle, and that’s a scary thing for ag to face,” says Bruchez. “But deficits are going to

↑ Paul Bruchez and other local irrigators relied on the findings of the Grand County Stream Management Plan to launch river- and irrigation-improvement work near Kremmling.

happen whether we participate or not, and when we participate [in stream management planning], we’re making our own solutions rather than letting other people make them for us. We can evaluate and enhance long-term water supplies for ag as well.” The agricultural community might even parlay the planning push into an opportunity to update their equipment with newer, more efficient versions. “There’s a lot of old agricultural infrastructure across the state,” says Greg Peterson, executive director of the Colorado Ag Water Alliance. “This [recent emphasis on planning] has the potential to provide funding to replace some of that.”

fluent water fact

In 2016, the Natural Resources Conservation Service awarded $7.75 million for the Colorado River Headwaters Project, a series of restoration projects by various partners—the ILVK is one of those partners. When complete, this work will benefit more than 30 miles of the Colorado River and 4,500 acres of irrigated lands.

Russ Schnitzer

Still, developing trust is a long, slow process. While Bruchez is a rancher himself, he struggled to get ILVK stakeholders involved with Grand County’s plan. “It took me 10 years to get some of those landowners to even come to the table,” says Bruchez, who worries that the state’s timeline of 80 percent of prioritized streams under management plans by 2030 may be too aggressive. By rushing to grab funding before it dries up, stream management planners may be tempted to steamroll over stakeholders that don’t immediately convert to the cause. That would be a mistake, says Bruchez. “If we don’t understand ag’s role, then what, really, is the point [of a stream management plan], considering ag’s role in irrigation? We have to work together.” Even if stakeholder participation is initially reluctant and protectionist, that’s OK, says Seltzer. “Over time, that can soften. Common interests take time to develop,” she says.

The way forward

eing a forerunner in the planning movement has its downsides. There’s no set methodology for creating a stream management plan. And it’s hard for communities to estimate how much planning their money will buy—communities often propose a project scope and apply for grants before hiring the consultant to advise them about scope and funding. “You can get halfway into the planning process and realize that to do what you had hoped to do, you’ll need twice the money,” Seltzer says. But there are resources coming down the pike. The planning framework commissioned by the Colorado Basin Roundtable includes both a guidance document and a set of data dashboards that facilitate exploring historical flow patterns, water quality data, water use and shortages, and previous studies of stream health. The dashboards cover every sub-basin along the mainstem of the Colorado River, from Grand County to the Grand Valley. That way, local planners don’t have to duplicate existing stream science, but can instead fill in the remaining gaps. For now, communities need to decide whether to jump in and join the stream management planning movement, or wait and see how initial planning efforts play out. The coming years will present more examples of successful plans that can serve as models. “My hope is that we can create different examples at different scales,” says Seltzer. Trinidad, on the Purgatoire River, is planning for a very discrete five miles of river, while

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Parallel Studies Seek to Integrate Farm, Recreation and Stream Needs Two planning efforts have begun on the Colorado River between Glenwood Springs and De Beque Canyon. A river assessment is examining environmental and recreational needs, while a second study on the same stretch of river at the same time, focuses on consumptive uses, including agriculture and industry. In the end, and along the way through open communication and quarterly meetings, the results of both studies will come together and inform an integrated water management plan. By completing these tandem efforts, all stakeholders will have an opportunity to help create the future they want without the fear of diluting other interests or having their voices come in second to other users. That’s what prompted interest in the consumptive use study, says Elizabeth Chandler, who is coordinating the study on behalf of three area conservation districts. “[Agricultural interests and conservation districts] said we need to help create the plan and not deal with the plan somebody else has created,” says Chandler. “We need to look after our own interests.” The consumptive study will involve a granular examination of water allocations and uses along the river, but also gaps that could be addressed to improve those uses. It might detect problems in the water delivery infrastructure, for instance, or other issues. The base task is to provide

documentation and data on those water allocations and uses. The other study, the river assessment, aims to help stakeholders better understand the health of the river and the streamflows needed to sustain or improve it, says Laurie Rink, executive director of the Middle Colorado Watershed Council who is coordinating the assessment. The study will examine the needs of threatened and endangered fish, native fish, and the riparian community, and will look at flows needed to maintain water quality. “We are going to dive into technical details of particular flow needs, habitat needs, those types of things,” Rink says. Nobody has ever set out to quantify these needs before, she says. Rink’s study will also assess the wants and needs of recreational interests—what streamflows they currently need, and what flows they’ll need to support future plans. Most ambitiously, the river assessment seeks to view the river not just as it is today, but in terms of how it will change with increased demands. Down the road, with work projected to wrap up in 2021, the two studies will be merged into the Middle Colorado Integrated Water Management Plan, with the aim of improving security for all water uses. H ALLEN BEST H E A DWAT E R S S U M M E R 2 0 1 8

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Unifying the Colorado Basin With a Common Framework

ith integrated water management planning (IWMP) trending, the Colorado Basin Roundtable released a framework in June 2018 to build a foundation for IWMP, provide resources for those embarking on plans, and to create commonalities among plans in the Colorado Basin so they can be integrated or compared. The framework includes two components: a report and a website. The centerpiece of the report is a matrix to help stakeholders

holistically assess how the stream is meeting both environmental and community needs. The website features interactive data dashboards where users can zoom in on major Colorado River tributaries. Both tools were developed specifically for the Colorado Basin, but stakeholders embarking on IWMPs across the state may find the matrix and resources in the report equally useful. Find the report online at www.coloradomesa.edu/water-center.

B C A D E THE SAMPLE SCORING MATRIX, above, will help communities

organize and present stream data, prioritize stream segments, or select which attributes to assess. It can also help facilitate conversations about expectations, priorities and values.

A All major streams in the Colorado River Basin are divided into

one-tenth-mile segments, referred to by SMiRF IDs, short for Stream Mile Route Framework. This common spatial framework will allow people throughout the basin to easily identify major stream segments and integrate information into one database, searchable through the roundtableâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s online dashboards.

B Ecosystem Conditions are objective science-based stream

assessments, whereas the Benefits to Local Communities categories represent subjective values. By considering these benfits, communities can discuss and draft priorities relative to river conditions.

C Although many of these categories represent technical

assessments, definitions and example methodologies to assess them are provided through the final framework report, making the science more accessible.

D Numbers and colors are used to score stream functions on

each reach where one (red) is poor, five (green) is good, and zero (white) is not relevant.

E Color coding can help with quick prioritization. In determining

where to begin work on a stream, stakeholders would likely prioritize direr segments with more red, like segment 3.2.

F A series of interactive dashboards like this one, focused on

hydrologic alteration, are available online (http://uppercoloradoriver. org/co-river-headwaters/data-dashboards/) to make data accessible.

26 â&#x20AC;˘ W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

burgeoning efforts on the basin-wide Yampa River span nearly 300 miles. But if communities decide to take a wait-andsee approach, money for planning might not be available when they decide to jump in. “The CWCB budget is evaluated annually, so program funding fluctuates and we can’t see beyond 2018,” says Seltzer. Still, if communities aren’t sure how much they want to commit to planning, or if they don’t have the capacity to tackle planning whole-hog, they can approach it in phases. For example, the Mountain Studies Institute in southwestern Colorado sought a grant to do stakeholder work only for a plan on the upper San Juan River. Later, the Institute can apply for funding to complete environmental assessments and an implementation plan. Big or small, speedy or slow, stream and integrated water management plans can help all communities ease the sting of our future’s hard realities. In Steamboat Springs, as elsewhere, demands on the Yampa River are only growing—but planning has helped stakeholders feel optimistic about its future. “We’ve created a report card that analyzed the river’s health across five separate sections, and now we’re reaching out to various groups who can get involved to create solutions,” says Dan Chovan, who has participated in Steamboat Springs’ stream management plan as president of Yampa Valley Fly Fishers and as plant operator for the city’s wastewater treatment facility. Reforestation groups have expressed interest in planting cottonwoods and other shade trees along the Yampa’s banks to cool its water; others have set their sights on fire prevention along Fish

Christi Bode

Creek, a tributary that forms part of the Yampa’s broader watershed. City officials are also looking at the stream management plan to guide future building setbacks and make sure they provide for places where the river can safely overflow its banks during spring runoff. This growing momentum suggests that, although it’s difficult to balance diverse interests through stream management planning, those combined forces can have remarkable benefits to long-term river health. “We’re hoping that, through planning, we’ll reduce or even eliminate the need to close the Yampa,” says Chovan. That’ll mean better fishing—and vitality for the lifeblood upon which communities depend. H

↑ Stream management planning efforts in the Rio Grande Basin are just getting started. This May 25 kickoff meeting for the plan’s technical advisory team boasted a mix of agency representatives, water districts, water users, and watershed group staff. Pictured here is the stream management plan coordinator, Daniel Boyes with Emma Reesor, executive director of the Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project, talking with a table of stakeholders. The basin’s efforts will be community driven, focused on the values of stakeholders. That is why, Reesor says, stream management planning “can be so powerful—if you get that buy-in.”

A freelance writer living in Steamboat Springs, KELLY BASTONE enjoys fly-fishing on the Yampa River and on waters across the Rockies. She covers conservation and the outdoors for publications such as Outside, AFAR, 5280: The Denver Magazine, Backpacker, Field & Stream, and others. When she’s not meeting deadlines, she logs lots of backcountry adventures with her seven-year-old daughter, who wants to be a fishing guide when she grows up.

TAKE THE NEXT STEP Pan and zoom through the data dashboards and other resources referred to in the Colorado Basin Roundtable’s Integrated Water Management Planning Framework Project available online at uppercoloradoriver.org/ co-river-headwaters/data-dashboards.

H E A DWAT E R S S U M M E R 2 0 1 8

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How Far We’ve Come When Colorado’s Water Plan set a stream management planning goal, the state provided tools for planning. Is it working? BY JACQUELINE RONSON

28 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

n 2015, Colorado set a goal to better understand and protect the environmental and recreational assets of the state’s rivers and streams. The objective: to cover 80 percent of locally prioritized rivers with stream management plans by 2030. This goal was written into Colorado’s Water Plan, which draws a roadmap for the state to assess and address water needs into the future. By including stream management planning, the water plan asks Coloradans to account for more than just consumptive water needs. To date, no official list of

priority streams exists. That’s because the goal aims to put prioritization in the hands of the stakeholders, says Becky Mitchell, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB). Stream management planning only makes sense where local users and interest groups buy into the process, and it’s therefore important that stakeholders set objectives for themselves. How and if regional groups prioritize is not up to the CWCB to determine, echoes Chris Sturm, the agency’s stream restoration coordinator. In basins where stakeholders haven’t initiated a thorough

Courtesy St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District

← Participants at the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District’s annual symposium met in March 2018 to learn about this year’s theme—stream management planning—through an interactive activity exploring the theoretical “Bliss” watershed.

scientific assessment to determine which streams to prioritize for planning, they’ve instead started to plan where they have local support. “You couldn't stand up and say, ‘Yes, we did 80 percent of the prioritized rivers,’ but you could say we did stream management planning in the areas the locals deemed appropriate. And that, really, is at the root of that objective,” says Sturm. While there’s no precise way to assess progress toward an undefined statewide count of priority segments, many regional bodies, particularly the nine roundtables that represent Colorado’s major river basins across the state, are getting to work prioritizing and planning. Some local groups have begun formal processes to determine where the most pressing needs lie. For others, the in-progress or completed plans are de-facto priorities. From the state’s view, the basin roundtables, watershed groups, and others have taken major steps, both in terms of assessing priorities and the planning work itself, Mitchell says.

PRIORITIZING With at least 16 plans underway or completed across the state, according to the CWCB’s count, the scope of prioritization and progress toward planning varies from basin to basin and watershed to watershed. For the Upper Gunnison Basin, the priority is clear: to cover the entire basin with an integrated watershed management plan. “In our case, we felt that we should really apply it to all streams within our basin,” says Frank Kugel, general manager of

the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District. The district is divided into eight sub-basins, and work is underway on needs assessments for three of them, with plans to complete all eight by 2021. Other efforts are so fresh that stakeholders haven’t yet determined who will be involved, or how they’ll prioritize streams. In the Yampa River Basin, the roundtable launched a scoping process in February to determine priorities. Over the coming months, the roundtable will engage stakeholders to determine if and where stream management planning makes sense and has local support. “I honestly don’t know if what we will learn will equate to a basin-wide integrated water management plan, or if it will end up being targeted stream segments that are ripe for an integrated water management plan,” says roundtable chair Jackie Brown, who works as the natural resource policy advisor for Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. One thing is clear, the roundtable has already concluded that stream management plans will only make sense for the Yampa Basin if they also consider consumptive water demand, as is being done in the Upper Gunnison Basin. Not all areas of the state are taking up stream management planning as enthusiastically. While the uptake has been quick in many parts of the West Slope, planning efforts in eastern Colorado are rarer. As of June 2018, while planning and assessment efforts were in progress or complete on at least four discrete segments of

the South Platte and Republican rivers, no basin east of the Continental Divide could boast a concerted approach to prioritization. Joe Frank, a previous chair of the South Platte Basin Roundtable, says that while the roundtable is supportive of stream management planning, it hasn’t set out to formally consider where priorities lie and how to get plans underway in those areas. Why the slower rate of planning east of the Continental Divide? It might just be that priorities are different in different parts of the state, says Sean Cronin, executive director of the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District. Cronin is coordinating planning efforts on the St. Vrain and served as chair of the South Platte Roundtable before Frank’s tenure. “The South Platte Basin’s greatest future water need is municipal and industrial, and its greatest challenge is providing alternatives to the dry up of agriculture,” Cronin says. “The roundtable simply doesn’t have the resources to try and address its other needs such as stream management.” Whereas on the West Slope and in headwaters streams and tributaries, it’s natural to see more enthusiasm for planning and the assessment of environmental and recreational water needs. “There’s more eyes on the rivers, in the streams up in that area,” Frank says. “There’s more people who recreate on those streams and tributaries.” Not only are there more people recreating, but there’s generally more water on the West Slope—perhaps the

amount of available water, in addition to how it contributes to a region’s economy, makes stream management planning more or less of a priority. “For some basins on the West Slope, their greatest future water need is for the environment and recreation,” Cronin says.

THE TOOLBOX To encourage planning and prioritization across the state, and to meet the water plan goal, the CWCB has made new funding and tools available for stream management planning. Up to $5 million was allocated for projects in 2017, with another $2 million approved through the CWCB’s 2018 Projects Bill, money that can be used for local prioritization projects and stream management plans. New tools can also streamline the planning process. The CWCB is currently updating the Statewide Water Supply Initiative (SWSI) with new tools and data on environmental and recreational values. As part of this update, consultants at CDM Smith are creating a flow tool, which will examine environmental and recreational impacts from different water supply and demand conditions across the state. The tool will allow water managers to identify gaps between water availability and potential flow needs based on environmental and recreational data, both under current conditions and potential future conditions. The SWSI update will also include major enhancements to the Environment and Recreation Database, previously H E A DWAT E R S S U M M E R 2 0 1 8

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Planning Supported By State Funding

State funding allocated to advance stream management planning is making an impact. Of the 16 plans complete or underway across Colorado, 81 percent of them have been partially funded through the Colorado Watershed Restoration Grant program over the past two years. Take a look:

Steamboat Springs

Fort Collins

Denver

Glenwood Springs

4 Limon

PROJECT 1

San Miguel River Stream Management Plan Pilot Project

Grand Junction

Awarded Jan 2016 End Date June 2018

2 North Fork Environmental and Recreational Needs Assessment and Project Identification

Awarded Jan 2016 End Date Jan 2018

3 City of Steamboat Springs Stream Management Plan

Awarded Jan 2016 End Date Aug 2018

4 Biological and Ecological Benefits from Chatfield Reallocation Environmental Pool Increased Releases

Awarded Jan 2017 End Date Feb 2019

5 Upper Gunnison Basin Watershed Assessment and Management Planning: Initial Steps for Ohio Creek, East River, and the Lake Fork Sub-basins

Awarded Jan 2017 End Date July 2019

6 St. Vrain & Left Hand Stream Management Plan

Awarded Jan 2018 End Date Aug 2020

7 Rio Grande, Conejos River, and Saguache Creek Stream Management Plan – Phase 1

Awarded Jan 2018 End Date Oct 2019

called the Nonconsumptive Needs Assessment Database, maintained through CWCB. The database serves to organize and make available statewide information on environmental and recreational water values, along with projects that protect or enhance them. The updated version will integrate data from completed stream management plans and those under development and will include a map to make the data 30 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

14 Colorado Springs

5 2

Pueblo

7 10

Pagosa Springs

Alamosa

FUNDING SOURCE

PROJECT

8 Upper San Juan River Basin Stream Management Plan, Phase I

Awarded Jan 2018 End Date Feb 2020

12 Assessing Existing Conditions in the Upper Poudre Watershed

Awarded Jan 2018 End Date Feb 2020

Colorado Watershed Restoration Grants (combined with non-state funding and, for many, Water Supply Reserve Fund grants)

9 Middle Colorado Integrated Water Management Plan

Awarded Jan 2018 End Date June 2021

13 South Fork Republican Restoration Coalition: Stream Management and Restoration Planning

Awarded Jan 2018 End Date July 2020

Water Supply Reserve Fund monies (combined with non-state funding)

14 Crystal River Management Plan

Completed March 2016

10 Mancos Watershed Drought Resilience Planning

Awarded Jan 2018 End Date July 2019

11 Eagle River Integrated Awarded Water Management Jan 2018 Plan (ER-IWMP) End Date Feb 2022

easier to locate. Work on the update is ongoing, with new tools expected later this year and a final report anticipated in June 2019. As for Colorado’s Water Plan itself, it’s due for review in 2020. That will be an opportunity to go back to stakeholders and consider progress toward the stream management planning goal. “That’s going to be a checkpoint of, ‘OK, how are we doing on this?’” says Mitchell.

Solely non-state funding

15 Grand County Stream Completed Management Plan Aug 2010 16 State of the Poudre: A River Health Assessment and Report Card

Completed May 2017

“Maybe we want to look at how to expand it, how to facilitate it, what’s worked, and what hasn’t.” For Mitchell, the 2030 goal is about more than completing a certain number of stream management plans. Success means “that we have a healthy ecosystem across the state, in all areas of the state,” she says, “and that we’re working for the environment, just as the environment is working for us.” H

JACQUELINE RONSON is a freelance journalist based on Vancouver Island, Canada, where she writes about human relationships with land and water.

TAKE THE NEXT STEP Get funded! Learn about the Colorado Watershed Restoration Grant Program at cwcb.state. co.us/LoansGrants/coloradowatershed-restoration-grants.

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