The current water dilemma for the Colorado River in Middle Park simply may be one of those aberrations that come from an ill-timed confluence of unfortunate circumstances.
More likely, it’s a harbinger of worse things to come.
The condition that last week reduced the river where it wanders through ranch country east of Kremmling to 85 cubic feet per second – lowest since records have been kept – serves as a case study how archaic Colorado water law and trans-mountain diversion conspire against protection of the aquatic resource.
Suffice to say that this meager flow for what normally would be a sizable stream posed real problems for trout and the insects they require for sustenance.
“The trout are all bunched up in the remaining pockets of deep water, and the bugs didn’t have an opportunity to migrate. They’re all cooking up on the bank,” Paul Bruchez said last Wednesday of a situation caused chiefly by up-and-down releases from area reservoirs.
The Bruchez family, Colorado natives, operates the Reeder Creek Ranch 5 miles upstream from Kremmling. Like many who have added trout fishing as a parallel component to agriculture, they feel the pinch both ways.
“If all the ranchers were taking their full water right, the river would be dry,” Bruchez said.
Trouble is, last week’s reduced flow stranded most pumps above the water line; ranchers couldn’t take their legal allotment if they wanted to.
On Thursday, Denver Water came to the rescue, switching dam releases from Dillon to Williams Fork, a tributary that enters the Colorado near Parshall. The result was to add an additional 30 cfs to the river, a good-neighbor act that eased but did not solve the problem.
A day later, the Williams Fork release went up another 10 cfs, and late Monday it ramped to 225 for full power generation – more of the same up-and-down action that leaves fish and insects scrambling for cover.
In announcing its benevolence, the agency that supplies domestic water to much of the Denver area only pointed up what remains the greater ill in a system that increasingly squeezes the very life from Colorado’s streams.
The agency didn’t mention the extra water was being provided for the struggling aquatic life; the stated reason was to allow ranchers to pump their share from the river for fall irrigation. So much for any real consideration of the habitat.
So it goes in a twisted system whereby water providers with money to burn increasingly purchase agricultural rights, then divert the water to drench Front Range lawns. On the flip side, antiquated use-it-or-lose-it state law forces ranchers to flood hay meadows like rice paddies, further diminishing our streams.
“This thing with substitutions and exchanges is so complicated hardly anyone understands what’s going on,” Bruchez said of a Byzantine system by which water is stored in a crazy quilt of reservoirs, then released in an ever-changing pattern to satisfy various rights and demands.
“They can ruin a river in the process. They need to be more careful,” Bruchez concluded.
Worrisome drought patterns, coupled with Colorado’s rapid population growth, cause mounting worry about the ultimate well being of river systems whose trout rank lowest on the priority pole.
This year’s pinch first can be traced to an early melt-out coupled with hot, dry conditions that increasingly sponged up snowfields and ground seeps that fortify headwaters.
Water managers are aware of the predicament, but often are at a loss for what to do.
“I want to get everyone together so we can be proactive and not reactive,” said Fred Orr, area manager for the Bureau of Reclamation, which controls giant Granby Reservoir on the Colorado River mainstem.
The legal requirement for release from Granby dropped on Sept. 1 from 40 to 20 cfs, exacerbating the condition. Granby storage is the centerpiece of
the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, which pumps water across the Continental Divide to the upper Front Range.
“If we release more than the state requires, we’re shorting the project and its sponsors,” Orr said. “But maybe there are times and situations where that’s warranted.”
Between a rock and a dry place, Orr last week gathered on the river with ranchers and Grand County officials to discuss solutions to what likely will be a recurring problem. As Bruchez suggests, these answers should come before the river starts to dry up, not after.
