State of the River meeting featured CO’s lead water negotiator

By Olivia Emmer Sopris Sun Correspondent

On Tuesday, May 2, the Colorado River District and the Middle Colorado Watershed Council hosted an event in Glenwood Springs to update the community on the condition of the Colorado River and its local tributaries. This was part of a series held annually around the Western Slope by the River District.

The event featured a presentation by Rebecca Mitchell, the state of Colorado’s commissioner to the Upper Colorado River Commission, an interstate water agency representing Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico in negotiations around water use from the Colorado River Basin. Mitchell is also the director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), the state’s water planning agency.

Representing Colorado’s Division of Water Resources, Caleb Foy, lead assistant division engineer, Division 5, presented an outlook for the irrigation season. Water Division 5 is the mainstem of the Colorado River and tributaries including the Fraser, Blue, Eagle and Roaring Fork rivers.

Colorado River District’s Lindsay DeFrates, public relations and media specialist, gave a presentation to provide background education on regional and national water issues as well as to explain the role of the River District.

Paula Stepp, executive director of the Middle Colorado Watershed Council (MCWC) presented on the work her organization is doing to coordinate wildfire readiness in the Roaring Fork and Colorado River watersheds. “In Colorado, western Colorado and all of the West, it's not if we have a next wildfire, but when,” she said.

After the Grizzly Creek Fire, MCWC installed rain gauges in the burn area to help alert downvalley communities to changes in their water quality from events such as debris flows. Their current work is focused on building partnerships that reflect the cross-boundary realities of large wildfires and can facilitate wildfire readiness, response and post-wildfire restoration.

A representative of the Holy Cross Cattlemen’s Association, Don Metzler, spoke about the role of agriculture in the region. In conversations about water use in the West, agriculture — as the basin’s largest water user — gets pointed to as a logical place to reduce water use.

Metzler was there to highlight the value of regional agriculture in providing local food, protecting the legacy of family ranching, providing economic value to rural communities, conserving wildlife habitat, managing natural resources and contributing to the landscape aesthetics of the region.

Additional meetings are scheduled for late May and early June in Granby, Silverthorn and Edwards. Presentation materials from the Glenwood Springs meeting are available online at www. coloradoriverdistrict.org

Colorado River crisis

The seven states in the Colorado River Basin and the federal government are currently in tense conversation about how to respond to two decades of drought conditions throughout the watershed. Myriad tribes and the country of Mexico also have legal rights to the water.

Last summer, the federal government made an ultimatum to the basin states — agree on a plan to significantly reduce their water use, or the federal government would make the cuts for them. While six states did agree to a plan, California would not sign on. Negotiations are ongoing.

Commissioner Mitchell was very critical of California and Arizona in her comments at the meeting. “When you look at the last 20-some odd years, the overuse [equated] to about 34 million acre feet (MAF) in the Lower Basin; and if that overuse hadn't occurred, what would that mean of our security up here?” Part of the reason Lake Powell exists is so that the Upper Basin can store water to ensure they can meet their obligation under the 1922 Colorado River Compact to send an average of 7.5 MAF of water to Lower Basin states each year.

In April, the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages the Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam, both of which are threatened by low reservoir levels, released draft guidelines that would update how they can respond to water shortages. Those options include cutting back use by prior appropriation rules but also lay out the option to cut back water use evenly across the Lower Basin states. This would be a departure from the way water has been managed in the West. Prior appropriation rules give water users with the most senior rights first dibs on available water. California has some of the oldest and largest rights in the basin.

Commissioner Mitchell’s messaging was clear: “We didn't cause this problem, but that doesn't mean we don't want to be a part of the solution. For the last 20 years the Upper Basin has been using significantly less than what we are allowed to use under the Compact. No Upper Basin states, including Colorado, have enough water available to bail out the Lower Basin's overuse, we just don't. There's no amount of water that we could save that is going to allow them to continue to operate the way that they have been operating.”

Local water forecast

Bringing the water conversation specific to the local community, DWR Engineer Caleb Foy said the Roaring Fork River is projected to have 122% of average runoff this season. Foy expects most of the region’s major reservoirs to fill, including Ruedi and Green Mountain. He highlighted that due to the above average snowpack and other factors, like recent dust-on-snow events, there is some concern of flooding. That said, Foy forecast that the Roaring Fork River at Glenwood Springs is projected to peak around 6500 cubic feet per second, which is below “bankfull.” This does not mean that smaller tributaries won’t overflow, as the community has seen over the past week with Parachute Creek.

“What’s the crystal ball say?” joked Foy, referring to if and when water shortages might occur this summer. “There have been some recent years that have been slightly similar, notably 2015, ‘17 and ‘19. So in those years, we're typically looking at a Shoshone call coming on sometime mid-tolate August, and then a Cameo call sometime late August-early September. Now one thing to be mindful of is the date of those calls can be drastically impacted by the presence of monsoonal moisture this summer, as well as how fast the snow runs off.”

A “call” occurs when a water user with priority rights isn’t getting enough water and they demand junior water use upstream be restricted. According to the River District’s website, “the Shoshone Hydropower Plant holds the oldest, major water right on the mainstem of the [Colorado] river, 1,250 cubic feet per second, dated 1902. When river flows ebb after the spring runoff, Shoshone contributes most of the Colorado River’s water in Glenwood Canyon.”

A Cameo call refers to the diversion at the roller dam in De Beque canyon, just upstream of Grand Junction. Those senior and significant water rights support agriculture in the region, and, when they place a call, can reduce how much water is diverted to the Front Range through transmountain tunnels. Both calls lead to more water running west in the Colorado River.