Headwaters Winter 2010: The Yampa White and Green River Basins-- No Longer A Valley Too Far by Water Education Colorado

C o l o r a d o F o u n d at i o n f o r Wat e r E d u c at i o n | W i n t e r 2 0 1 0

The Yampa, White & Green River Basins Aiming for the Bullâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Eye: The Future of Oil Shale Development in the White River Basin A Rancherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Life | Playing on a Monster | An Ecological Lifeline Pumped Up: The Debate Over Future Transmountain Diversions Continues

HEADWATERS | W inter 2010 Currents................................................................................................... 1 Watermarks............................................................................................. 3 The Yampa, White & Green River Basins.............................................. 4

Colorado Foundation for Water Education

Introducing the Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable.................... 5

1580 Logan St., Suite 410 • Denver, CO 80203 303-377-4433 • www.cfwe.org

A Rancher’s Life .................................................................................... 8 Kourlises, Citizens of the West............................................................ 12

Board Members

Aiming for the Bull’s Eye The Future of Oil Shale Development in the White River Basin.. 13 Playing on a Monster........................................................................... 18

Matt Cook

An Ecological Lifeline........................................................................... 20 Pumped Up The Debate Over Future Transmountain Diversions Continues... 24 River of Words...................................................................................... 28

President

Justice Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr. 1st Vice President

Rita Crumpton

2nd Vice President

Wendy Hanophy Secretary

Taylor Hawes

Assistant Secretary

Dale Mitchell Treasurer

Alan Hamel

Assistant Treasurer

On the Cover: Yampa Valley rancher Matt Belton drives a hay-laden sled pulled by four Percheron horses through the snow in order to feed his cattle near Steamboat Springs. Photo by Kasia Broussalian

C o l o r a d o F o u n d at i o n F o r Wat e r e d u C at i o n | W i n t e r 2 0 1 0

The Yampa, White & Green River Basins aiming for the Bull’s eye: the Future of oil Shale development in the White river Basin a rancher’s life | Playing on a Monster | an ecological lifeline Pumped up: the debate over Future transmountain diversions Continues

About the authors… Based in Boulder, Jerd Smith is a freelance writer and editor with an interest in water issues. She has won numerous awards, including Stanford University’s Risser Prize for environmental reporting. Excited to write about the Yampa, Jerd says, “I’ve spent hours and hours driving the Yampa River Basin’s back roads and talking to the people. The ranchers’ stories and their deep attachment to the land and the river are always profoundly moving.” Denver-based freelancer Allen Best has written about water issues for Planning Magazine, Forest Magazine, and High Country News, among others, and has contributed articles on energy, transportation, and other topics to such diverse publications as The New York Times and The Telluride Watch. In 2008, he was driving along a gravel road southeast of Rangely researching Colorado’s oil shale and water nexus for Colorado Biz Magazine. Spotting several wild horses, Allen deemed them a telling detail for the region that contains the bull’s eye for the world’s richest deposits of oil shale. Tom Ross is a longtime reporter and photographer with the Steamboat Pilot & Today newspaper in Steamboat Springs. In 2007, he and colleagues shared a first-place award for best explanatory reporting from the Inland Press Association for a six-part series on the future of the Yampa River entitled “Shifting Currents.” Also in 2007, Ross realized a life-long dream during a 19-day, unguided rafting trip through the Grand Canyon. Wendy Worrall Redal is a freelance writer and editor based in Boulder, where she has also taught courses in environmental media studies at the University of Colorado. She writes regularly about wildlife, natural resources, conservation and sustainable travel. “Now that I’ve learned so much about the unique features of the Yampa River, I can’t wait to raft it with my family,” says Wendy. “And I’ll encourage my avid angler son to catch as many non-native smallmouth bass as he can.” Joshua Zaffos is a Fort Collins-based freelance writer who reports on the environment, science and politics. He has written for High Country News, Earth, Fly Fisherman, and Orion, among others. Having previously reported and worked along the Yellowstone River in Montana, Josh says, “In writing about dams or pipelines aimed at a mostly free-flowing river, such as the Yampa or the Yellowstone, I expect to hear some polar opposite viewpoints. That held true for this story, but I also heard from others who have a more nuanced approach.”

Becky Brooks Tom Cech Rep. Kathleen Curry Rep. Randy Fischer Jennifer Gimbel Callie Hendrickson Sen. Mary Hodge Rebecca Mitchell Chris Piper John Porter Chris Rowe Rick Sackbauer Robert Sakata Travis Smith Steve Vandiver Reagan Waskom

Staff Nicole Seltzer Executive Director

David Harper Office Manager

Kristin Maharg Education Program Associate

Mission Statement The mission of the Colorado Foundation for Water Education is to promote better understanding of water resources through education and information. The Foundation does not take an advocacy position on any water issue. Acknowledgments The Colorado Foundation for Water Education thanks the Yampa/White/ Green Basin Roundtable for funding production of this issue, and for providing review, comment and assistance in its development. Headwaters is a magazine designed to provide Colorado citizens with balanced and accurate information on a variety of subjects related to water resources. Copyright 2010 by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education. ISSN: 1546-0584 Edited by Jayla Poppleton. Designed by Emmett Jordan.

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A historic barn sits snug in the snow near the base of a few of Steamboat ski area’s 165 trails.

These basin-focused issues of Headwaters are, without a doubt, my favorites. While I learn something from each Headwaters we produce, I especially enjoy the process of learning about areas of Colorado through the eyes of those who live there. What better way to understand the issues concerning our state than to sit down with the people who deal with them day in and Exploring the basins of Colorado, whether by car or by plane, is day out! I am very grateful to the Yampa, an important part of CFWE’s work. Left to right: Robert Wolff White and Green basin residents who vol(Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy District), Kristin Maharg unteered their time to help us bring their (CFWE), Nicole Seltzer (CFWE) and Sen. Bruce Whitehead. understanding of Colorado to life. Thank you as well to the basin roundtable for helping to fund this issue. In 2009, I traveled over 6,000 miles as I crisscrossed Colorado numerous times for conferences, meetings and workshops. Aside from moments when I really wished we had a company car, those 6,000 miles encompass some of the most fun I have had at work. I can’t begin to explain how gracious the water community in Colorado is. CFWE staff has been put up at a farm in Alamosa, on a nature preserve outside Steamboat, and in the homes of countless friends and colleagues. And then there is the “work” that just doesn’t seem like work: rafting the Arkansas River with Colorado State Parks; a private plane flight over southwestern Colorado to plan for our 2010 tour; and seeing the Colorado Springs water system from downtown Colorado Springs to Leadville. I am lucky to have such a great job in such a spectacular state. My gratitude and optimism extends to 2010 as well. We have many new programs in place this year, including a set of “mini-tours” to build on the success of our annual river basin tour, a workshop for state legislators in early spring, and partnerships with many local water education providers. It is shaping up to be a great year for water education in Colorado, and we could not do our part without your support. Finally, you will notice something new in this issue of Headwaters. For the first time ever, CFWE is accepting a limited number of advertisements in the magazine. We set a goal for ourselves in 2009 to begin aggressively diversifying our revenue. This change is part of that strategy. I hope a number of our supporters will see this as a good investment of their advertising and marketing dollars. Contact our office if you are interested. Best wishes for serious fun in 2010!

Nicole Seltzer, Executive Director

H e a d w at e r s | W i n t e r 2 0 1 0

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The d e Ar inr pr design gatio ct e de stan unpac ethreg agre able to vet.r am or rvat took elec have Reserv stretch th the Bu th nde Rio r an thre com ter CFWE.org er the l from the oi waterreuse dard that dispute ion te oposed ed to n impr e Ri te stre ific engi Conse The emen to der inis The wh es of oir idter re be spil ich so n thesse rv nd er rl au , ise un en lv wee se re Co ta ch Co ra white neBasin bet adm de of de simpr evalua ovem able lorad the riv Re to nolo ansloby lora t date e Kans decree otherw sa ater ient4 Citizen’s Guide to Colorado’s Interstate Compacts ters oG in 1 en d Juel- as’ horized only me vereas Kan pie. artin istoaut Arka water ra to impr o stake er abov er, H r the Ri to all in rough sc orado W atters. ng an do Strvo Mmis devne 26 conc , the the irri gy on ovemen te the t rule were the sion ns ov fti gine m o gato fo ol retu th ater mai ld inc ts rese ateirEn ot n s ef er cou , fishin as as we ng seas e the woholders e blica of w state en sioner Colorad growth of the C to water found that her set of gineer’s O 2009. ns re ntaining rs with rn flow of ir fect of the basin Co Repu efforts y also r lorado riga turn abilit g withou ll as im on on th rld-clas n mis ic As ffi t s com d the s in m The stud Found e pr s y to t com tative fo onom creatio pact ce bega litic create t to assis prop flow their hi ultiple and pr tion ation com endang ove flo upper am ec ture s tric n ov g po the for Wa rules, ws ply wi er stre esen n and legisla ation Dis the osed ne to the storical options ide ucin sed ter Ed this repr th th ing Color for Col w ru Arka 04, the nserv seep ucatio nce. for e co and regulatio rly oppo as introd ado’s Sept In 20 ter Co complia nem orado ag ns le m e w as s r t Wa pa Cit an w W ct. bitte ng it Ri ber rive River compac izen cation ion vi 2009 ater D ere subm ver. 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Colorado’s rivers provide water for 19 states and Mexico. The allocation of this water has a long and conflict-ridden history, resulting in two international treaties, nine interstate compacts, two U.S. Supreme Court decrees, and two interstate agreements that directly involve Colorado. Written by experts and peer-reviewed, this is a Citizen’s Guide you won’t want to miss! 42 illustrated pages. Available at cfwe.org or by calling 303.377.4433.

WATER TABLES 2010 ACROSS STATE LINES: SHARING THE RESOURCE

Join us for dinner and conversation to benefit the Water Resources Archive. Make your reservations today at: lib.colostate.edu/wt10 or call: (970) 491-1833.

Date:

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Location:

Morgan Library Colorado State University, Fort Collins

Kasia Broussalian

Tell Belton, 10, rides on the back of his family’s horse-drawn sled, dropping hay for hungry cows in the upper Yampa Valley.

Locals in the Yampa River Basin tease each other—and their guests—about the Yampa Valley Curse. Supposedly, the friendly curse originated from the Yampatika Utes, who once spent their summers in the valley. It says that once you have visited, you will forever want to return. When we first discussed devoting an issue of Headwaters to the Yampa, White and Green river basins, I pictured working on the project in the summertime. I thought it might be nice to get out on a raft on the Yampa, or visit Dinosaur National Monument, two things I have long desired to do, in an effort to get a feel for Colorado’s northwestern corner. As the timing shifted, and late fall became winter as we put together this group of stories and photos, I had to adjust my expectations. One of our writers was unable to carry out a planned visit to the region due to weather. Likewise, I almost visited the Carpenter Ranch near Hayden and thought of taking my family to Steamboat Jayla Poppleton, Editor for a weekend to conduct some in-person interviews. But the weekend we picked promised to be blustery, frigid and snow-laden, so we aborted the mission. Alas, my experience, and many of yours, of this remote and special part of Colorado will remain largely vicarious, seen and felt through the eyes of those who call northwestern Colorado home. I have a few remnant experiences to draw from: several trips to ski on Steamboat’s infamous “champagne” powder, a weekend camping east of town near Strawberry Hot Springs, where strawberries once cornered the agricultural market instead of cows. I must have an old bite of the curse, because I’ve been growing increasingly itchy to get back. As I read now about the adventures in ranching that Matt and Christy Belton have embarked upon, as covered by Jerd Smith, I wonder if I, too, could muster such strength and resolve. There are others who’ve inspired me as well, people fiercely dedicated to the region such as Moffat County Commissioner Tom Gray, who obviously desires the very best for his community. Or oil shale guru Frank Cooley, who can recite the White River Basin’s history as though reading from a textbook. And there’s the regional roundtable, a group of individuals whose devotion to the place they call home rings out with echoes of the Yampa Valley Curse. For them, it may not be so much a curse, but a blessing, that has knitted their communities tightly together along the rivers on which they depend. I invite you to come along on a journey to the White, Yampa and Green rivers as we explore how the 21st century is impacting this long-quiet place. Next summer, maybe I’ll make it out there. And, lest you fear getting bitten by the curse, maybe you will too. That is, unless you’re already home.

ton Jayla Popple

H e a d w at e r s | W i n t e r 2 0 1 0

By Jayla Poppleton

Colorado’s Yampa River retains a distinction not afforded to any other major river in Colorado or the entire Colorado River system stretching southwest to California and Mexico. It is substantially undammed but for a few small to mediumsized reservoirs near its headwaters. In the 250 or so miles it runs from the Flat Tops Wilderness Area southeast of the small town of Yampa, north to Steamboat Springs and west toward Utah, the snowmelt-flooded river courses wildly each spring. Flows taper off by the end of the summer following the natural hydrograph, or charted rise and fall, of the river’s cyclical runoff pattern. On the southern side of the Flat Tops, another Colorado River tributary collects snowmelt and follows first a southwesterly route, then northwesterly, and then nearly parallels the Yampa heading west. The White River, which flows into the Green River in Utah, has an annual runoff of about 600,000 acre feet. That’s just over one third of what the Yampa provides to the Green on average—1.6 million acre feet—when the two merge in the heart of Dinosaur National Monument at Colorado’s western border. The region is seemingly awash with plenty of water, so much so that most people who divert it do so without ever invoking Colorado’s prior appropriation system where senior water rights take precedence over junior. Only a few tributaries of the Yampa River—but nowhere on the mainstem downstream of the town of Yampa— Wyoming Lit

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have been subject to administration, when the priority system kicks in and water commissioners representing the state have to cut off junior users. During the one summer, 2002, when the river ran really low and a couple of entities could have made a call, water users cooperated to avoid forcing anybody out. Instead, everybody took a little less. On the White, the story is much the same. Just twice have water commissioners stepped in on the mainstem. It was upstream of the town of Meeker in 1997 and in 2002. The most heavily administered stretch of water in the White River Basin is farther west, on a major tributary of the White called Piceance Creek. Most of the water rights there are held by energy companies, there to extract coal, natural gas, and probably, eventually, oil shale. This northwestern corner of Colorado has long been a quiet place, home to hardy individuals in search of wild, open spaces they imagined would be impenetrable to the forces of modern society’s advance. It would seem, however, that in the Yampa, White and Green river basins, the 21st century echoes increasingly louder with the march of that advance. Not only is the region beginning to contend with its own increasingly rapid growth rate, but it is also being confronted by other parts of the state that are growing more dramatically. As the Front Range searches for water security, they’ve identified the Yampa River as a potential future spigot. And the White faces its own uncertainties as energy companies continue, as they have for decades, to shore up water rights that would be necessary for developing the abundant oil

shale resource the Piceance Basin happens to be riddled with. Times are a changing. But residents are saying “not so fast.” Change, in the northwest, happens slowly. First occupied by an ancient Freemont people and later home to the Ute Indians, the region was the last part of Colorado to be settled by white man. First, the mountain men came after beavers and their pelts. Then, in the 1860s, gold lured settlers to Hahn’s Peak north of Steamboat Springs. Ranchers followed, raising sheep and cattle. When the railroad, dubbed Moffat Road, reached Craig in 1913, high-quality coal was mined and shipped out. And finally, natural gas, once the technology for extracting it from deeper layers was developed in the 1930s, created a boom in the White River Basin. Yet the region’s population remained small. “Have you ever tried to get over there?” asks Willis Carpenter, the last living son of Farrington (Ferry) Carpenter, renowned Yampa River Valley patriarch who homesteaded there in 1909. His question alludes to the roughness of the land, the breakneck passes that must be traversed and the relative inaccessibility rendered by the jutting Continental Divide. Some of the initial inaccessibility is harder to imagine now that one has vehicles and roads. Yet, the location of the tricounty region encompassed by those three watersheds, the Yampa, the White and the Green, is still remote enough to leave it largely uninhabited relative to the rest of the state. With a 2005 population of just over 42,000, Routt, Moffat and Rio Blanco counties–the portion of which lie in the Yampa, White and Green basins—are home to fewer people than most of the

Introducing the Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable On alternating months, several dozen committed individuals sit down to discuss water-related concerns relevant to the three river basins of northwestern Colorado. The Yampa, White and Green rivers flow through this remote region of the state, and those at the table are invested in the future of those rivers, not necessarily for the same reasons. Nine roundtables convened by the 2005 Colorado Water for the 21st Century Act bring diverse interests together to plan for future water supply on a regional basis. Roundtable members include representatives of municipal, industrial, agricultural, environmental and recreational water users as well as each city and county government in the region. For the past four years, the Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable has been conducting water analyses of con-

sumptive and non-consumptive needs. Consumptive needs include uses that divert water from rivers, such as municipal, industrial or agricultural use. Non-consumptive needs, as the name implies, do not consume water. There is no diversion. These include environmental or recreational uses. All of the roundtables started with data collected through the 2003 Statewide Water Supply Initiative. The Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable also requested help from the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the state agency assisting the process, for several progressing studies to specifically assess future water needs for the energy and agricultural sectors. Access more information and a schedule of roundtable meetings at www.ibcc.state.co.us. —Jayla Poppleton

On a December morning near Steamboat Springs, Matt and Christy Belton’s cows munch on hay that was just dropped off in the field. This daily routine will sustain them through the long winter.

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Allen Best (background), Kasia Broussalian (2)

Front Range’s medium-sized towns. To Willis Carpenter’s eye, the Yampa River Valley looks remarkably the same as when he was growing up there in the 1930s and ‘40s. The same railroad bisects the middle of his family’s ranch, now owned and managed by The Nature Conservancy. But now, the coal isn’t simply shipped out. A huge coal-fired power plant looms over the ranch. The plant is one of two that were constructed in the valley in the 1960s and ‘70s. The other is in Craig. Combined, the plants divert about 1 percent of the Yampa’s average annual flow for cooling. Irrigation is the most significant water use in the region. Though crops like wheat are minimally grown, hay is another story. For thousands of cows and millions of sheep raised by local ranchers, hay nourished by the rivers sustains them for much of the year. In fact, the necessity of feeding the livestock for so many months makes the whole business pretty uneconomical, says Carpenter. “People stick with it because they like the life. They’re not there for the money. There is no greed in their hearts.” According to a 2007 Census of Agriculture conducted by the Colorado State University Extension Office, total agricultural sales in Routt County, which occupies the upper part of the Yampa River Basin, were $34 million that year. Routt County Extension Director C.J. Mucklow says that the agricultural piece of Routt County’s economic pie has steadily declined to represent less than 1 percent. Tourism has, in turn, grown to account for a much bigger slice. However, the irony of the relationship between the two industries, according to Mucklow, is that the ag lands have a greater value as a tourist draw—$38 million according to a separate 2-year-old CSU study—than they do for the actual products they provide to market. “Agriculture creates a feel for the community,” says Geoff Blakeslee, who manages Carpenter Ranch for The Nature Conservancy. “It’s something that is attractive; it preserves open space; it’s a reason for people to move here.”

The region is assisted in open space preservation by a vast proportion of public land. The three counties, Routt, Moffat and Rio Blanco, are 49 percent, 69 percent and 75 percent public respectively. Most of it is under the Bureau of Land Management’s jurisdiction, but some is also designated national forest, wilderness, national monument and state park. The BLM land is used for grazing, as it has always been. In fact, the history of grazing on BLM land is intricately tied to the region. It was the 1934 Taylor Grazing Act, introduced by Edward Taylor, a U.S. Congressman from Colorado’s Western Slope, that created the U.S. Grazing Service, which later became the BLM. The regulatory act was intended to halt overgrazing, which had led to range deterioration and soil erosion. Willis’ father, Ferry Carpenter, was appointed head of the new grazing service and was instrumental in creating grazing districts across the West and in tempering some of the ‘range wars’ resulting from competition between sheep and cattle ranchers. The Carpenter Ranch water right on the Yampa, dated 1881, is the most senior water right on the river. On the South Platte River, where settlement occurred earlier, that right would be junior to many others. Many water rights on the Yampa and White rivers are not so fortunate. If they have a priority date later than 1922, they are subject to the possibility of a future state-administered curtailment—or stop-use order—on the river related to the 1922 Colorado River Compact. The “what-if” topic of the lower basin states on the Colorado River suing the upper basin states, including Colorado, for underdelivery at the agreed-upon point of Lee Ferry in Arizona, has been increasingly on statewide and local water planning agendas. In the northwest, under Water Division 6, many major water rights have a priority date post-1922. Says the Division Engineer Erin Light, “So few of the water rights in the Yampa will not be subject to curtailment. It is a definite concern of everybody’s.” In anticipation of the State Engineer’s eventual rule-making process in which he will determine how Colorado would go

Rancher Christy Belton grabs flakes of hay to throw to cattle (above). Another Yampa Valley rancher, Jay Belton, prepares to start his daily chores (above right). The White River pictured near its confluence with Piceance Creek (below), in the heart of the existing natural gas industry and possible oil shale industry’s geologic gem: the Piceance Basin.

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about curtailing water use, a prominent water lawyer and board member of the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, Tom Sharp, has floated a legal argument that he refers to as the “Yampa Doctrine.” The argument essentially suggests that under certain provisions of the 1948 Upper Colorado River Basin Compact, which apportions the upper basin’s share of Colorado River water amongst the four states of Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, the Yampa River should not be subject to curtailment as long as it is meeting the compact requirement that it deliver an annual average of 500,000 acre feet, as measured at the Maybell Gage, to the Green River. Many regional water users are not convinced yet that the Yampa River will be protected under the Yampa Doctrine. But, the community has long been leery that state politics could trump the interests of its small basin. And, as its representatives, the roundtable believes the doctrine’s arguments are substantive and worth debating. The struggles ahead certainly won’t be the first the region has encountered. And, depending on the point of view, it has prevailed in large controversies in the past, successfully averting the efforts of outsiders in manipulating its prized rivers. In the 1950s, the Sierra Club, led by David Brower, battled for the integrity of the free-flowing Yampa River. The original plan for the 1956 Colorado River Storage Project included a dam in Echo Park, just below the confluence of the Green and Yampa rivers in the middle of Dinosaur National Monument. Brower argued that if a national monument weren’t safe from development, how could any wildland be kept intact? Brower and his cohorts succeeded in getting Echo Park Dam removed from the plan, but in exchange they dropped their objection to Glen Canyon Dam, which, once constructed, flooded Glen Canyon farther downstream on the Colorado River, creating Lake Powell. Brower later regretted giving up the fight. Residents of northwestern Colorado, including members

of the Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable, want to slow down and plan for a future without regret. They are aware that what they have is special. As modernity catches up, certain changes will be made. Light, for one, is charged with bringing the Water Division 6 community into compliance with state statutes requiring that every water diversion have a measuring device and operable headgate. This is a major shift for the region, one that began in the lower Yampa River below Elkhead Reservoir as a means of protecting reservoir releases intended to reach endangered fish habitat. Upstream, however, the measuring devices could protect older agricultural water rights from a call by the Colorado Water Conservation Board for a 1977 instream flow decree or from the city of Steamboat for its 2003 recreational in-channel diversion decree. If the senior users don’t get the required devices installed and either entity places a call, Light’s water commissioners will be forced to cut off the senior users and give priority to the junior users, in which case she fully expects to hear cries of ‘bloody murder.’ The population, expected to grow faster here than in any other region in the state over the next 40 years, will also tax regional water planners. Entities like the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District are already looking for ways to expand storage, says the district’s manager Kevin McBride. And Steamboat Springs, which will likely absorb much of the growth, is preparing to spend more than $30 million to build additional municipal water-related infrastructure. The future of northwestern Colorado is dotted with unknowns. But the Yampa, White and Green river basins sustain a resilient breed of advocates who are increasingly speaking out with one voice. Whether their message will be heard over the din of time’s relentless march remains to be seen. q

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A Rancher’s Life By Jerd Smith | Photographs by Kasia Broussalian

Ranchers have muscled their way across the lands of the Yampa River Basin for more than 125 years, welcoming the river’s huge flows to their hay meadows in the summer, using sleds to feed that hay to their cattle when winter snows cover the valley. Matt Belton, 40, and his wife Christy, 37, are no exception. Matt is a fifth generation Yampa Valley rancher. On a bright Saturday morning in November, he is impatient to get to work. His equipment—four gleaming, black, Percheron work horses—is nearly ready as well. At 7:30 a.m. the horses are waiting to be harnessed to a giant hay sled. Throughout the winter, on sub-zero mornings, Belton can be found in a gracious, old, red barn that nearly touches Elk River Road northwest of Steamboat Springs, loading the sled with more than 70 hay bales. It will take several hours to feed the 150 mother cows that comprise Matt and Christy’s permanent herd. “What I love about ranching is that it’s very rewarding work, although it’s also very hard,” Belton says. Yampa Valley ranchers, like those everywhere, are addicted to the outdoor life—the light, the howling winds, the silence, the scent of grass. So blessed is the quiet that Belton insists on using the Percherons instead of tractors for the heavy, relentless work of feeding livestock in deep snows. “It’s more peaceful,” he says. “The horses start every day. They don’t have broken hydraulic hoses or flat tires.” Anyone who has driven from Steamboat north to Steamboat Lake has passed the headquarters for the Beltons’ hay and cattle operation. They don’t own it. Few young ranchers these days can afford the millions needed to buy land in this scenic high country just minutes from Steamboat ski resort. But this is an exciting time for the Beltons. They’ve just purchased 50 acres of land. It’s not enough to support a cattle herd, but it comes with federal grazing permits for more than 20,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management terrain. That’s enough land to double the number of cattle they can feed during the summer for sale in the fall. This year, Matt and Christy will grow their 1,000-head summer herd to 2,000 head. For Belton, there is no time to waste. He’s hired two young men, at $20 an hour, to help him lay down fences in the mountains where the new grazing permits are located. The fences are flattened during the winter to allow wildlife to roam safely. In the spring, they will raise the fences to contain the cattle. Mile after mile of fencing will be scrutinized to make sure it is sound and ready for the season. “There 8

are no Sundays west of Omaha,” Belton says lightly, repeating the mantra of western ranchers. Winter is normally a slow time on ranches. But here in the Yampa a critical water planning process is coming to a head, one which area ranchers are watching closely because it could forever alter the way they live and work. Northwestern Colorado has always been a wild, unreachable place, a fact that has long protected the Yampa River’s flows from the growth and development pressures that have tapped every other river in the state. The Yampa is one of the last rivers in Colorado, and one of the few in the American West, that has water left to develop. The Yampa generates roughly 1.6 million acre feet of water each year, according to annual flow records compiled by Colorado’s Division of Water Resources. That’s enough for more than 3 million households in a region where barely 36,000 people live. Contrast that with the Front Range’s South Platte, a river that generates about 1.4 million acre feet, but which supports a population of more than 3 million. Of course, the South Platte is assisted by nearly 400,000 acre feet of water imported through transbasin diversions. As growth continues, urban users on the Front Range are already discussing a new pipeline that could, if it were ever funded and permitted, bring several hundred thousand more acre feet of water east. The water would come from the Yampa. Moffat County Commissioner Tom Gray, who ranches outside Craig, is chairing the Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable, a state-funded, regional body charged with determining how much water these rivers provide, how much the adjoining region needs for its small towns, ranches, coal mines and gas wells, how much could be shared with people outside the basin, and how much should be left in the stream for fish and river runners. The work is deeply contentious. Gray says when he took over as chair of the roundtable in October 2009, friends offered him condolences. Ranching advocates want to ensure the heavy flows they use to irrigate their hay meadows will remain in place, protecting the agricultural economy here, and by default, riparian lands, fish and wildlife. “There’s no question we’re at a crossroads,” Gray says. “In the lower end of the valley, there is recognition that if we don’t allow the excess water to be developed, if we say ‘no way, no how,’ companies like Shell could come in and just start buying up

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Jay Fetcher moves calves down an alley to load into a waiting truck that will take them to auction in Fort Collins. .

Matt Belton moves hay bales to his horse-drawn sled, with son, Tell, helping him through another hard morning’s work.

agricultural water rights, and no one wants to see that happen.” Shell already filed for a significant water right on the Yampa in December 2008, proposing to transfer the water into the White River Basin for oil shale development, but it has yet to be granted. According to Gray, Moffat and Routt counties comprise roughly 3 million acres. Most of this is publicly owned land which the federal government allows to be used for grazing. About 1.1 million acres are privately held, with the vast majority also devoted to agriculture. Gray and others would like to see agriculture expand even further in the Yampa Valley, but first they would need additional storage reservoirs for irrigation. “If we had the mechanism to

deliver agricultural water at a reasonable rate, we have a lot of acres that could be irrigated,” Gray says. The subject is currently being examined by the roundtable through its Agricultural Water Needs study. Not only is the roundtable looking at water needs associated with agricultural expansion, but it’s also addressing current water shortages resulting from the lack of irrigation storage. By late summer, many farmers who rely on direct river diversions to continue irrigating their meadows are coming up short. Climate change is another variable the study is factoring in. Concerns about climate change have begun to surface in the Yampa, where warm, early springs are causing the runoff to

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Adjusting the team’s rigging as he prepares his horses to pull the heavy hay sled, Matt Belton appreciates the absence of a tractor’s noisy motor…and its mechanical troubles.

Jay Fetcher, feeding grain to his calves, wonders whether the water used to grow about $6,000 worth of hay on one of his meadows would better serve Coloradans on the other side of the mountains.

start and finish earlier. Rising temperatures will likely reduce runoff in addition to lengthening the growing season and increasing the amount of water plants need to survive in northwestern Colorado, putting additional pressure on agricultural water supplies. The current Colorado River Water Availability Study by the Colorado Water Conservation Board is looking at these types of issues statewide. Adding irrigated acres in a semi-arid region—where other river basins are watching such acreage melt away as water is sold to urban areas—is a radical concept. But Gray and some ranchers believe it represents a reasonable use of the water not only because agriculture is vital to this isolated, rural economy, but because putting water on hay meadows ultimately means some of it will travel back to the Yampa’s mainstem and tributaries as return flows. By some measures, 60 percent of water applied to the meadows in this region returns to the stream. Jay Fetcher, who ranches up the road from the Beltons, is less sure than Tom Gray that adding irrigated acres in a watershort state can be justified. From his living room windows he watches over a 20-acre hay meadow, irrigated with water rights on the Elk River that date back to the 1880s. “We use flood irrigation,” Fetcher says. “It’s very inefficient in terms of 10

how much water we need to deliver to each plant, but it’s very cheap. There are no pumping costs.” Like the Beltons, Fetcher uses his hay to feed his cattle. If Yampa Valley ranchers had to buy feed, the costs of raising cows would be prohibitively high. Fetcher’s hay and cattle operation spans about 2,000 acres. The hay from that 20-acre meadow—if it were sold publicly—would generate about $6,000 in annual income. “But the same water used to produce the hay would support about 6,000 people on the Front Range. Or it could be used to grow more valuable crops than hay,” Fetcher says. “How do I justify that when there is such a strong demand for water on the other side of the divide? My peers have said ‘I can’t justify it,’ and they have sold their water rights.” So Fetcher and other ranchers continue their debate, hoping an equitable solution can be found for stewarding the basin’s water for agriculture and other uses. Those outside the Yampa Basin are also keeping close watch on its celebrated, storybook ranches. Thousands of acres have been preserved here using conservation easements. Easements are legal agreements under which private property owners agree to forego their right to develop their lands in exchange

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View a multimedia presentation featuring the Beltons at cfwe.org. Christy Belton and son, Tell, load their sled with more than 70 hay bales. It will take several hours to feed the 150 mother cows that comprise the family’s year-round herd.

for tax credits. Ranches can remain in operation and in private hands, but will be permanently protected from development. According to the Yampa Valley Land Trust, dozens of ranches encompassing more than 60,000 ranching acres in the region have been protected through easements by such entities as The Nature Conservancy, the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust, the Trust for Public Land, as well as the Yampa Valley Land Trust itself. One such easement is the Carpenter Ranch, a nearly 1,000acre spread purchased by The Nature Conservancy in 1996. The ranch runs along the Yampa River on Highway 40 between Steamboat and Hayden. The river floods the ranch’s hay meadows each year, at the same time sustaining a rare riparian forest. Geoff Blakeslee, Yampa River project director for The Nature Conservancy, has managed the ranch since 1996, though he no longer runs the day-to-day ranching operation. That part is now attended to by a local ranching family, who continue to produce hay and raise cattle. Blakeslee also sits on the roundtable and the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s board of directors. He believes it’s vital that the basin look ahead to ensure its roaring streams remain healthy even as they are asked to do more for the region and the state.

He is hopeful that new concepts will emerge, such as reworking old flood irrigation systems to make them more efficient, something he has undertaken at Carpenter Ranch. He also thinks ranchers in the Yampa may be able to utilize interruptible supply agreements with cities—giving urban areas some water in dry years for ongoing cash payments—although hay meadows can’t go without water for a full season without sustaining significant damage. Colorado Agriculture Commissioner John Stulp says the loss of agricultural water on the east side of the Continental Divide through the sale of private water rights should provide a cautionary tale to the Yampa Basin. “Part of the heritage of the Yampa and the ranchers’ 401Ks lie in those water rights,” Stulp says. “But if they’re all purchased, it will diminish the overall agricultural economy over time. The lesson we learned on the Front Range is that we give up a lot of the economy when we give up irrigated acreages.” Matt Belton, who sits on the board of the Routt County Cattlemen’s Association, says he and his wife, who is a real estate broker, are looking forward to years of ranching. “But I am worried about the water,” Belton says. “If we can’t protect our ag water, then we can’t do this.” q

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Courtesy of National Western Stock Show

Kourlises, Citizens of the West By Jerd Smith

In northwestern Colorado the ranches spread out forever. Thousands of acres of these sage brush plains are needed to raise the sheep and cattle that lie at the heart of the agricultural economy here. Tom Kourlis’ father, Harry, founded the Kourlis Ranch, between Craig and Meeker, in 1926. Now, Tom and his brothers and sisters run the ranch, which includes a hunting operation. Their cattle and sheep are shipped around the country and the world, and so is their wool. Tom, a former Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture, and Rebecca Love Kourlis, a former water judge and justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, have been active across the state on natural resource issues. This year they’ve been named Citizens of the West by the National Western Stock Show, 21 years after Rebecca’s parents, former Gov. John Love and wife Ann, received the award. The honor is given to those who’ve dedicated themselves to serving Colorado and embracing the western traditions that make the state unique. Former Gov. Roy Romer, in a statement about the award, described recipients as “just plain wise.” Like other long-time residents of the Yampa River Basin, Tom and Rebecca are monitoring the water planning that’s underway. Tom believes the region is at a critical juncture. He says the work of the Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable is yielding valuable information. But the issues are complex and highly charged. Long isolated from the development that has forced other rural Colorado regions to give up their water, the Yampa River Basin is now facing relentless pressure from regional oil and gas companies, real estate developers, and Front Range communities, all of whom hope to tap its supplies. If too much water is developed, it will harm ranchers’ ability to irrigate their lands. Without strong protections for irrigated ranches, Colorado’s food production will continue to shrink, Tom says. “The prediction that we’re going to become a net importer of food is becoming a reality because we keep taking productive land out of farming.” “Agriculture has to be honored in Colorado as a source of revenue and open space, and as a source of protection of natural resources,” says Becky. “Trying to get people to understand that so we don’t do things that are shortsighted is really important. We’re going to have to be as effective and persuasive as we can be to ensure there is some balance.” But the Kourlises also believe that any effort to ignore the interests of those outside the basin ultimately would be counterproductive. “We’re Americans. We’re Coloradans. And we ranch in the Yampa Basin,” Tom says. “All of these roles are important. I’m hopeful we won’t have to sacrifice one for the other.” q 12

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by Allen Best

Aiming for the Bull’s Eye The Future of Oil Shale Development in the White River Basin

To squeeze the stone of oil shale,

A rich source of petroleum

I had parked the car along Piceance Creek Since at least 1916, Coloradans, along with Road. Piceance Creek itself flowed by about the rest of the nation, have talked about oil Holding a piece of oil shale, the rock that 100 yards away as I walked to a road cut shale. Technically, the rock is not shale, and bears kerogen where deposits were exposed. Three miles downstream from the kerogen is not oil. The smelly substance began to form here, the creek would join the rippling currents of the White around 6 million years ago from rich organic material at the River. It was quitting time in the gas fields, and big trucks and bottom of an ancient sea called Lake Uinta. pickups hurtled past, crowding the pavement on a country In another several million years from now, the shale might road built for the occasional needs of local ranchers traveling succumb to the Earth’s heat and pressure to produce oil like to Meeker, Colo., 15 miles away. that which has flowed so plentifully from beneath the sands The natural gas boom of the past decade had turned this of Saudi Arabia. But today, people exert the necessary heat to once-pastoral region of northwestern Colorado into a maze of produce the oil. giant pipelines, warehouses, and house-sized air compressors Kerogen is common enough in the world. In 2007, Estonia, sealed off by chain-link and barbed-wire fences. At the time of Brazil and China were each producing between 3,000 to 8,000 my visit in the summer of 2008, the derricks of several dozen barrels of oil a day from it. But no place on the planet has such drill rigs sprouted amid the rolling hills of sagebrush, grease- rich resources of kerogen as the Green River Formation in wood and piñon pine. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. About 72 percent of it is on fedFollow almost any gravel road in this remote part of the eral land. And within this expansive region, by far the richest White River Basin, and suddenly, around a bend, would be deposits are found between Meeker and Rangely, Colo., and some facet of industrialized energy extraction—perhaps with slightly south, within the sprawling geologic structural basin a herd of wild horses nearby. Here in hidden Colorado was a known as the Piceance Basin. boom of immense proportions. Officials said it was only beginDrive up Piceance Creek, then take one of those backcounning. And oil shale, the reason for my trip, could dwarf what try roads. There, Cooley said, was the answer to our depenhad so far occurred. dence on foreign oil. There, in the ridge between Ryan Gulch “You can see the mahogany marker in the rock,” Frank and Yellow Creek, much of it privately owned, the kerogen Cooley said when he directed me to the road cut. The mahoga- deposits contained 3 million barrels of oil per acre: the bull’s ny marker, as the practicing water lawyer and trained geologist eye for oil shale. described it, was a layer of whitish volcanic ash several inches When I first visited 86-year-old Cooley at his law office in thick atop the mahogany layer itself. Mahogany is the richest of Meeker, he was wearing a bolo tie and sat at a desk piled high eight zones of kerogen—the precursor to oil and gas. with studies and a map of the Piceance Basin. He was happy “You can smell it in the rock,” Cooley said. Sure enough, to have an audience, lectured as if at a blackboard, and was when I cracked a piece of the shale open, it reminded me of an convinced that the time for oil shale had finally come. It was ashtray, grimy after a night of snubbed cigarettes. August of 2008. At the pump that day, gas cost $4 a gallon. H e a d w at e r s | W i n t e r 2 0 1 0

Yampa and Colorado rivers. It could also cause much agricultural land to be taken out of production as oil shale companies continue to purchase land tied to senior water rights. Just how much water the oil companies need remains open to debate, however. For the last four years, Jeremy Boak, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines, has conducted an annual oil shale symposium, attracting 300 delegates worldwide. He says the oil companies, who he considers partners, dispute conclusions of the widely-quoted 2005 Rand Corporation report, which predicted oil shale extraction would require three barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced. That report relied too much on information from the 1980s, they say. Although the technology remains uncertain, estimated water needs have declined. “The whole thing is very much in flux,” says Boak. Some water would be needed for site remediation and dust control. Water would also be required Stop and go development for ancillary demands, such as resiOil shale of late has become the standdential development. But the greatest ing punch line to any number of jokes. demand would come from the extrac“You mean the fuel of the future that has tion process itself, especially for heatalways been the fuel of the future,” one ing the rock and pumping liquids. skeptic said when I called. Consider the freeze wall methColorado worked its way into a lather od being tested by Shell near its in the 1970s during the two Middle East Mahogany Research Project headoil embargoes. The federal government quarters, located in what Cooley calls launched a synthetic fuels program in the bull’s eye for oil shale. The idea is response. Then came that dripping-withto freeze some of the rock into walls ink exclamation mark in May 1981, still 40 feet thick, forming a protective referred to as Black Sunday, when Exxon Demand, technological advancement and improved barrier. Within this barrier, existing suspended its $1 billion investment in oil distribution led to a boom in the natural gas industry water is pumped out. Electrical rods shale research and testing. Rifle, Grand during the past decade, and with it, extensive drilling in Colorado’s White River Basin. are then inserted to heat the kerogen Junction and the new company town of Battlement Mesa emptied. All of Colorado’s economy suffered. for several years, accelerating its conversion to oil, like a giant Exxon’s withdrawal didn’t end oil shale research, though. Crock-Pot. The liquid oil is finally pumped out and the water Some oil was actually produced, if just for research purposes, returned to the ground. To reduce the massive energy needs required, American in the Roan Cliffs north of Parachute, Colo., a few miles from Interstate 70 and the Colorado River. But as oil prices tumbled Shale Company has said it would only mine shale from the from $100 per barrel (as adjusted for inflation) to $28 per bar- deepest levels, where there is no water to remove. Exxon rel, companies shelved their programs to wait on a market that Mobil, reports Boak, similarly intends to begin production from zones with very little water flow. “Once they have some operamight justify further investment into new technology. Despite the jokes about oil shale, many see development tional experience of producing shale oil, they plan to go in and as a serious possibility. Others see it as a distinct threat. This solve some of the hydrological problems,” Boak says. At its Colony site north of Parachute, Exxon Mobil has been concern is rooted partially in potential impacts to water quality. Most shale deposits lie within 2,000 feet of the surface, so min- working on a new method for the last four years. The method ing kerogen or processing it underground—referred to as in involves creating a very large electrode, what Boak likens to situ conversion—could affect groundwater. Several companies a giant underground toaster. The greater heating efficiency hope to bypass the issue by mining kerogen from zones where “cooks” the rock more rapidly than Shell’s Crock-Pot method. Boak says, “Exxon has talked about their target being one bargroundwater is non-existent. The amount of water needed in the process of extracting rel of water for every one barrel of oil.” How the required power is generated will significantly oil from kerogen has been the more public issue, and it is an issue of scale. If and when the industry moves forward, how affect water demand. Coal-fired plants currently provide the much will it seek to develop annually? If Frank Cooley’s dream majority of the electricity in the region. But, the shale deposits of the resource bringing an end to foreign imports materializes, also contain natural gas, which, if used to produce electricity oil shale’s development will require large amounts of water. is 30 percent more water-efficient than burning coal. Tri-State The demand will almost certainly sop up whatever remains of Generation and Transmission, which supplies electricity to Colorado’s unallocated water, located primarily on the White, White River Electric, hasn’t received word to expect any addi14

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Kevin Moloney

Oil shale has been the broader theme of Cooley’s life. While still in college, he discovered the peak oil theory of M. King Hubbert, a geologist who predicted a point of peak worldwide oil production after which petroleum extraction would drop off, becoming less and less economical. In 1972, that point was reached in the United States. Cooley is among those who believe it has now happened globally: The easy oil is gone. In Cooley’s mind, great unpleasantness lies ahead—unless, he says, we begin developing oil shale. In the three-state region of the Green River Formation, the amount of potential recoverable oil may be three times that of Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves. Government agencies have estimated that it holds between 500 billion and 1 trillion barrels of oil. “Oil shale is inevitable,” Cooley told me later. “But will I live to see it? Probably not. But we’re not going to be able to have a civilization based on windmills.”

tional electrical demand in the next 10 years, implying oil shale companies don’t anticipate large-scale production anytime soon, or that they have a different power source in mind.

Shoring up water Still, water will eventually be needed, and oil shale companies have made that clear by their actions. Even in the 1950s, they had begun filing for conditional water rights in the White River Valley. Such rights have yet to be perfected, or put to beneficial use, but they can remain on the books with their original priority dates as long as the owners show up in court every six years with evidence of continued financial investment and progress toward the goal. Shell, in particular, has been firming up its portfolio in recent years. Late in 2008, the company filed for a conditional water right of 375 cubic feet per second from the Yampa River near Maybell. If approved, Shell could collect on the order of 50,000 to 100,000 acre feet per year, storing the water in a res-

ervoir in the White River Basin. Western Resource Advocates, a Boulder-based group, warns of mashed apples across Colorado. “If energy companies use approximately 5 percent of the conditional rights that they have, that would fundamentally change water allocations throughout Colorado—just 5 percent!” says David M. Abelson, a consultant to the group. Erin Light, the division engineer for Water Division 6, which covers the White and Yampa river basins, says the number of conditional water rights in the White River Basin—a majority of them owned by oil and gas or oil shale companies—is “flabbergasting.” “I can guarantee you right now that if all of the conditional water rights were developed in the White River Basin, we’d be way over our 1948 [Upper Colorado River Basin] compact allocation.” Light says she thinks few people grasp this yet. Last September she spoke at a Colorado Water Conservation Board meeting in Steamboat Springs. “When I showed those num-

Shell has been developing its patented In Situ Conversion Process for the past 25 years. By heating kerogen underground, the company is attempting to minimize the environmental impact created by open-pit mining and offsite conversion of the resource. Shell’s Freeze Wall Method is now being tested on 25 acres of the company’s private property in Rio Blanco County as a means of protecting groundwater supplies surrounding the production zone.

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the absence of clear definition of technology and the resulting water needs, he adds, any number is about as good as anybody else’s. None of this seems imminent. Both oil industry and water officials have publicly advised against expecting anything for at least 10 or 15 years, or possibly 30. Boak foresees 1 million barrels a day in world production by the 2030s. However, from the basin roundtables’ perspective, it’s only prudent to begin planning now, even if the final need for water is unclear. Given that 72 percent of oil shale deposits lie below federal lands, the U.S. government plays a significant role in determining whether a sizable oil shale industry develops. Led by Coloradan Gale Norton, who now works for Shell’s oil shale division, the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Bush administration awarded six leases of federal land for research, Led by Gale Norton, who now works for Shell’s oil shale development and demonstration to division, the U.S. Department of the Interior awarded six leases of federal land for oil shale research, development oil shale companies, five of them in and demonstration projects. Colorado. Three of the leases were given to Shell. In October 2009, current Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, another Coloradan, announced a new round of research and development leases. But he has proposed that oil companies face higher hurdles before the research leases can be expanded to commercial leases, allowing full production. Water needs, for example, must be documented, as well as the carbon footprint. Oil shale’s fate Western Resource Advocates disThe energy subcommittee of the agrees with Salazar’s new round of Colorado and Yampa/White/Green basin leases despite the restrictions. The oil roundtables has been conducting a companies, notes Abelson, the group’s study of projected water needs for the consultant, have yet to show results entire energy sector in the region. A from existing federal leases. Shell’s Phase I draft was released in September freeze wall testing is on private land. 2008. The group is now working on a And Red Leaf, another oil shale comsecond phase and a revision. Dan Birch, pany, has 17,000 acres of non-federal the subcommittee’s co-chair, says water lands in Utah for testing its technology, demand for natural gas, coal, and oil he says. shale combined is estimated to range Moffat County Commissioner Tom from zero to 400,000 acre feet—but will In 2009, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced a Gray, who chairs the Yampa/White/ be at least 200,000 to 300,000 acre feet new round of oil shale research and development leases. Green Basin Roundtable, unabashedif oil shale production of 1 million barrels ly advocates oil shale development. a day occurs. Like Boak, Birch says oil companies have criticized those “We’re pretty practical down here,” he says. “We understand high-end numbers as overstated but have provided no good that as a nation we need the energy, and as a county we need reason for rejecting them. “It’s not clear how much the indus- energy. Seventy-five percent of our tax base is energy.” In Rio Blanco County, which borders Moffat County to try knows and doesn’t want to say, because it’s proprietary, or they just don’t know,” says Birch, who is also deputy general the south and constitutes much of the White River Basin, 16 manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District. In percent of the workforce is engaged with energy compared bers, their jaws dropped to the floor.” And then, there are the absolute water rights. Shell has purchased land along the Colorado River near the Utah border. The company has not said as much, but many observers suspect that the associated water rights motivated the purchase. Exxon Mobil also has water rights on the Colorado and is seeking legal authority to move a portion of that water to the White River. In other words, portions of both the Yampa and the Colorado rivers could be pumped into the White River Basin to produce oil shale. Ranches around Meeker would be among the most directly impacted by perfection of conditional rights. Their more junior water rights are used for late-season irrigation of hay meadows. In response, Yellow Jacket Water Conservancy District—which covers much of the eastern part of the White River Valley and happens to own some conditional rights itself—hopes to investigate feasibility of a reservoir to hold spring runoff that could be tapped by ranchers for irrigation. Front Range cities and East Slope farmers also have legitimate concerns. Several significant transmountain diversion projects with junior water rights could be limited if conditional rights held by oil companies on West Slope rivers are perfected, effectively cutting off supplemental water supply to highly populated urban areas.

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with 4 percent in nearby Mesa County, according to State Demographer’s Office calculations from 2007. Gray contends that some people expressing opposition to oil shale development and citing environmental concerns, professing to want it done right, just don’t want to see it done at all. He also believes that Front Range interests want Yampa Valley water for urban development, at the expense of northwestern Colorado. Ultimately, it may not matter what Moffat and Rio Blanco counties want, or even what Colorado wants. If oil shale development becomes a national imperative, the federal government could insist that the water somehow becomes available.

From his office, Cooley charts the flattening global oil production curve and contrasts it with growing petroleum demand as people in China, India, and other developing countries start acquiring cars in large numbers. The basic economics of supply and demand points to rising prices for gasoline—and greater financial incentive for oil companies to peel back the technology of oil shale extraction. Still, Cooley admits he might be wrong about this—again. “I have thought that the time for oil shale has arrived for approximately 55 years, and my view of timing is that it will begin next Wednesday,” he says. “Of course, I’ve been wrong every dang time.” q

Natural Gas and Water Quality Concerns

Kevin Moloney (3)

The boom in natural gas drilling that began in northwestern Colorado in the late 1990s has resulted in concerns about water quality. A central issue has been the potential for contamination of drinking water. To get at the natural gas found in tiny spaces between grains of rock, drillers inject water, sand, and various other chemicals at high pressure. This causes tiny fissures, allowing the gas to escape. The process is called hydrofracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, and a recent report showed that 90 percent of natural gas wells use the technique. Petroleum geologists say that, done properly, hydrofracking should cause no danger to drinking water supplies. Still, there have been enough anecdotal reports in Garfield County and elsewhere in Colorado that public concern about contamination remains high. These concerns prompted the creation of a repository website by the U.S. Geological Survey containing water quality data collected from domestic wells; gas and other industrial wells; and rivers, streams and springs in the Piceance Basin. The basin includes not only the creek of the same name but the gas-bearing formations around Rifle, Parachute, New Castle and Silt. Half of the website’s $600,000 cost was met with a state grant, with additional contributions from Williams, Encana and other energy companies as well as local water districts and governments. The goal, says Kirby Winn, a former USGS employee, was to “create a common repository where the layperson, the technically-minded or anyone else interested in water quality conditions in the Piceance Basin has equal access to the most complete data set available.” Check it out at: http://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/cwqdr/Piceance/. —Allen Best

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By Tom Ross

Rafters paddle through the Class 1V “Osterizer” rapid at the entrance to the 5-milelong Cross Mountain Canyon on the Yampa River. At 5,000 cfs, the rapid evolves into

The Yampa River may be the last most accessible place to squeeze in whitewater thrills before dinner on a weeknight. It’s also one of the few places an angler can catch an 18-inch rainbow trout over the lunch hour and still be back in the office by 1:30 p.m. The prospect might make you want to live in Steamboat Springs, Colo. More than 100 miles downstream, the Yampa also offers one of America’s best multi-day raft trips as it flows through Dinosaur National Monument. All along the river are camping, paddling and fishing opportunities galore. The broad combination of recreational amenities the river provides has created a veritable tourist-based economy in the upper Yampa Basin—a region previously more reliant upon mining and agriculture. In 2007, according to the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, 23 percent of income and 34 percent of employment in Routt County was tourism-related. And the Yampa welcomes more visitors every year. Pouring off the uplifted volcanic flows of the Flat Tops Range, the sibling Yampa 18

a river-wide monster hole called “Mammoth Falls.” To view a video of this rapid at a flow of 11,000 cfs, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ls1hm-gUfw.

and White rivers have seen noteworthy increases in recreational activity during the first decade of the 21st century. Hikers and anglers returning to “secret” wilderness lakes in Flat Tops, at the head of the White River, say they are beginning to see other people where previously there were few signs of human activity. And in downtown Steamboat Springs, it’s necessary to hold river cleanup days twice a summer where volunteers collect bags of sandals lost by carefree tubers. They come by the hundreds each mid-summer day to bob through the manmade kayak play holes that parallel the pubs and restaurants dotting Yampa Street. On those days, the river resembles a theme park with no admission fee.

Choose your own adventure In terms of sheer size, Yampa River State Park is the dominant recreational facility on the river. The park stretches over 134 river miles with 13 public access points scattered from just upstream of Hayden to just upstream from the intense whitewater experience of Cross Mountain Canyon.

In terms of international fame, the tightly regulated multi-day float through Yampa Canyon in Dinosaur National Monument gets all the accolades. Only a handful of people get to enjoy the canyon’s special attributes on their own terms. The National Park Service reports that in 2009 it received 4,608 applications for the lottery that allocates float permits through Yampa Canyon. Of those several thousand, 298 parties were awarded launches. And of those, just 198 were put to use. For those who can afford it, a commercial trip is the only sure way to get to enjoy this sublime stretch of wilderness river. A reasonable substitute is to drive down the long, bumpy road from the monument’s visitor center to Echo Park on the Green River, several hundred yards below the confluence with the Yampa. It’s not unheard of to sit in the campground in the early evening and watch a small band of desert bighorn ewes and lambs walk casually between the picnic tables on their way to water. The solitude of such a moment is harder to conjure on a summer day in

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Kent Vertrees

“Everyone needs to get out and enjoy the river. That’s what’s going to save rivers” –Peter Van De Carr Steamboat, where a short reach of the Yampa receives most of the pressure from human recreation. “This little 6-mile stretch might see more recreation than all the others combined,” says Kent Vertrees, manager of a local whitewater rafting company. “It’s because of the resort. It’s the most attractive infrastructure that we have— it’s also a natural environment. Who takes care of it? We have to.” It’s in Steamboat that kayakers from around the region come in late May and early June, when the river crests above 3,500 cubic feet per second, to practice their stunts in standing waves created for their amusement as part of a special water decree obtained by the city in 2003. The recreational in-channel diversion water right, or RICD, could someday help the city ensure adequate summer flows for boating. Although the required flow meter was installed at the Thirteenth Street Bridge by the summer of 2008, the RICD has yet to be invoked. Both 2008 and 2009 were good years on the river, so there was no need to curtail junior users. In this town stretch, kayak features spin off eddies where trout hold in the seams between currents, attracting anglers intent on presenting a hand-tied fly with just the right drift to entice a strike from a memorable fish. Into these same trout lies come hundreds of tubers, laughing, splashing and shouting to one another, innocently and unknowingly inhibiting the successful catching of fish. Some find this frustrating, but Peter Van De Carr, a retailer of kayak and rafting equipment and one of the larger commercial tubing outfitters in Steamboat, feels strongly that the river is for everyone to use. He organizes semi-annual river cleanup events and has pushed the “Respect the Yampa Campaign.” “Everyone needs to get out and enjoy the river. That’s what’s going to save rivers,” he says.

Rafting and fishing the hydrograph Van De Carr is probably one of a handful of people who have paddled the entire length of the Yampa River. He has traveled by kayak from the Town of Yampa

in South Routt County all the way to the confluence with the Green River. “The river is unbelievably diverse, from high-mountain meadows, through urban Steamboat, to the high plains of the Hayden and Craig area to the canyons,” he says. Given a choice, Van De Carr would spend his quality river time paddling through the challenging rapids on Cross Mountain Canyon on the river’s receding hydrograph. “Cross Mountain is an incredible whitewater run,” Van De Carr explains. “It can get as big as 20,000 cfs [when it is virtually un-runnable]. We’re talking about a 5-mile stretch that can be as big and technical as anything in the world. It’s a monster at that level.” The perfect paddling situation, Van De Carr says, is to catch the river while it drops from its peak in late June, a time when water temperatures are more comfortable than they are when the river is on the rise. “Anything over 5,000 cfs is class five,” he says. “I’m 54, and I’ll never run it at that level again. I think it’s ideal from 2,000 to 4,000 cfs. It’s Grand Canyon size down there, but it’s more technical.” Veteran angler and Steamboat resident Scott Ford has been fishing the Yampa since the 1960s. He says he no longer furrows his brow over all the competing recreational interests on the river where it flows through his hometown. “If you want to fish the river, go in the morning before the tube hatch takes place,” Ford says with a wry smile. “I can’t fish all of the spots I want to fish in a summer, and every year I find new water within an hour of town.” Ford, an active member of the Yampa Valley Fly Fishers, has enjoyed an enduring romance with the White River, in part, because it affords relative solitude. “I fish the White more than I do the Yampa,” he says. “It has a lot to do with access.” With fewer anglers and the availability of more public water, the trout in the White see less pressure, resulting in a highquality fishing experience, Ford explains. Not coincidentally, Ford has concluded the intact hydrographs of the White and Yampa rivers are a big part of what sets them apart from many other popular H e a d w at e r s | W i n t e r 2 0 1 0

trout streams in Colorado. “The Yampa and White are special because the rivers still have their original flow characteristics,” he says. For trout fishermen, that translates into a river where the fish still feed on a buffet of naturally-occurring aquatic insects and annelids, or worms, throughout the seasons. And that makes them less picky eaters, and easier to catch, than trout living in the cold tailwaters that flow from the bases of dams on other rivers, Ford says. “The fish [in the White and Yampa] are not nearly so selective,” Ford explains. “You look at tailwaters, and they’re feeding exclusively on tiny insects.”

The future of recreation How long will the recreational opportunities on the White and Yampa remain at such a high-quality level? The local roundtable formed by the Colorado Water for the 21st Century Act is working to answer that question. Like other roundtables around the state, members of the Yampa/White/ Green Basin Roundtable are launching an effort to ascertain the streamflows needed on specific, high-value stretches of mainstem rivers and tributaries to ensure non-consumptive uses of the river will remain available into the future. By documenting flow levels needed to preserve existing recreational and environmental values on key stretches of the Yampa, the White, and their tributaries, Vertrees says the roundtable’s study will prepare the basin to answer the ultimate question: “Does the Yampa contain enough water to permit some of its flows to be diverted to other basins?” Says Vertrees, “You have to be really careful with a river like the Yampa that is the last one of its kind.” After all of his years spent guiding rafting customers on western rivers, Vertrees says he still gets a thrill from rowing his own family on a short float down the Yampa. “I like to take the kids in a raft and float through downtown to Charlie’s Hole. That standing wave is a little scary, and you can’t sneak [past] it, but that’s what makes it worthwhile.” q 19

An Ecological Lifeline

By Wendy Worrall Redal

nlike other tributaries of the Colorado River, the Yampa is a master sculptor. During the spring and summer floods, when melting snows turn the Yampa into a roaring torrent of chocolate-brown rapids, the river is constantly creating new habitat as it destroys the old. Unimpeded by any major dams, the Yampa is one of the few remaining rivers in the West that still functions as it has for millennia. Despite several diversions that feed small reservoirs on the Yampa’s upper reaches, its natural hydrograph—the river’s historic seasonal flow pattern—persists, sustaining a host of distinctive ecological features. Among them are globally rare cottonwood gallery forests, four federally endangered fish species, state-listed fish, and a wide range of wildlife. John Sanderson, senior freshwater ecologist with The Nature Conservancy of Colorado, says the Yampa is really central to the ecology of the entire Upper Colorado River system. With relatively few depletions from its annual flow of about 1.6 million acre feet, the Yampa plays a disproportionately large role in sustaining flows into the Green River and eventually the Colorado. “That contribution is really critical for the overall maintenance of the endangered species habitat.” Key to the Yampa’s ecological function is its flood pattern. The river swells each year between late April and the end of June. Boulder water attorney David Harrison, senior advisor to The Nature Conservancy’s Global Freshwater Team and Colorado Water Trust board member, calls these periodic large flows, laden with silt, “the most dramatic feature of a naturally functioning river.” “A big flood reshapes the river,” Harrison explains. “Sometimes it alters a meander, chopping away at the old outside bend, planting trees on the new inside bend.” 20

Mid-sized floods are also important. Every time the Yampa rises out of its banks it re-nurtures the hay meadows and marshes. Such a connection with the flood plain, an increasingly rare feature of most rivers, is “key to the whole food chain,” says Harrison. By “resetting primary productivity for the river,” floods prompt zooplankton to flourish in the wetlands and provide sustenance for native fish, including the four federally endangered species: razorback sucker, bonytail, humpback chub and Colorado pikeminnow. Sanderson elaborates on this dimension: “Riparian vegetation helps form the basis of the food chain—the leaves and branches that drop into the river become organic material for small bugs, which work their way up the food chain for fish and other aquatic species to eat.” The riparian forests are also crucial for terrestrial and avian species. One of the watershed’s best examples of such dynamic habitat is at Carpenter Ranch near Hayden. The 910-acre working cattle ranch lies adjacent to The Nature Conservancy’s 329-acre Yampa River Preserve and is a living laboratory for exploring how ranching can coexist alongside sensitive riverine habitat. Narrowleaf cottonwoods, box elders, red-osier dogwood and native grasses provide lush shelter for many declining species, according to project director and ranch manager Geoff Blakeslee. Living here are river otter, leopard frogs, greater sandhill cranes, bald eagles, as well as deer, elk and beaver. More than 100 different migratory neotropical birds nest here during the summer, leading the Audobon Society to designate it an Important Bird Area. “It’s a very prolific and highly sustained wildlife area,” says Blakeslee. Without the spring floods, such riparian forests would cease to exist. The big flush provided by the Yampa’s spring peak serves

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Taylor Hawes Pictured from the air in the summer of 2009, the Yampa River winds through the 910-acre Carpenter Ranch, owned by The Nature Conservancy and protected permanently under a conservation easement.

another critical function, says Tom Chart, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fisheries biologist who directs the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program: it provides cues for endangered and native fish that are essential to their spawning behavior. The fish sense when the flows are rising and water temperatures warming, prompting them to head for their traditional spawning grounds. “That natural hydrograph is something we have really tried to promote with our recovery program,” Chart says. The endemic Colorado pikeminnow, which co-existed with dinosaurs millions of years ago, uses the high flows to migrate toward very discrete spawning areas in the upper basin, says Chart. The fish journey more than 200 miles to the riffles and gravel bars of the Yampa Canyon and the middle Green River, just below the Yampa convergence. Here, they commence spawning as soon as the flows start to drop off and the river begins to warm, conditions that would be compromised with any large-scale future diversions on the Yampa, says Harrison.

Recovery program intervention At one time, healthy populations of Colorado pikeminnow lived 50 or more years, growing to 6 feet and weighing up to 80 pounds. According to Chart, the feisty fish, valued for food and sport by early settlers, is starting to rebound on the Green. Chart attributes some of its recovery to his program’s efforts to remove non-native fish from its habitat and to better manage flows entering the Green. But he added that the population may wane again as it responds to environmental conditions, including flow rates and water temperatures. “The Yampa is still reeling from the drought that occurred in the early 2000s,” says Chart. “The whole fish community

“Riparian vegetation helps form the basis of the food chain—the leaves and branches that drop into the river become organic material for small bugs, which work their way up the food chain for fish and other aquatic species to eat.” —John Sanderson

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Courtesy of The Nature Conservancy (3)

The Yampa River (left) approaches its confluence with the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument, which was established in 1915.

Taylor Hawes

One of the watershed’s best examples of dynamic habitat is Carpenter Ranch (above) near Hayden.

went through a devastating blow during that time.” State-listed native fish like the bluehead sucker and flannelmouth sucker, identified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as at-risk but not yet threatened or endangered, took an even greater hit than the federally-listed endangered species. The low flows were a boon, however, for non-native smallmouth bass, northern pike and channel catfish, introduced sport fish that are a big threat to the indigenous species on which they prey. These species, which are native to the Mississippi Basin, flourish in steady, warmer water, and began to displace native species adapted to the Yampa’s unique temperature, flow and sediment regimes. Nonetheless, Harrison notes that, “The Yampa is the last remnant habitat of the best populations of the Upper Colorado River endangered fish.” Chart’s program is proactively reducing numbers of nonnative game fish, especially the prolific smallmouth bass. During the spring, crews contracted with Colorado State University use laborious electrofishing methods to remove unwanted fish along 160 miles of the Yampa’s mainstem between Hayden and its confluence with the Green. A force field is created, fish within it are stunned and netted, identified in the boat, and, if they are native species, returned. If an endangered fish is captured, it is measured, weighed and tagged. Non-native species under 10 inches are euthanized, while larger specimens are relocated for sport fishing. This transfer to off-channel fisheries has helped appease opposition from some anglers to the nonnative removal process, says Chart. Maintaining river habitat conducive to the endangered fish is a critical part of managing the Yampa. Ironically, a 2007 expansion of Elkhead Reservoir, which diverts from Elkhead Creek, a Yampa tributary upstream of Craig, has been important to those efforts. As part of a multi-party agreement to double the reservoir’s storage capacity to provide more water for the city of Craig and allow pursuit of future dams on Yampa and Colorado tributaries, the arrangement ensured that 5,000 acre feet of water is permanently reserved for endangered fish. While Chart says it was a difficult trade, expanding Elkhead has allowed them to make supplemental releases of water in late summer, when base flows are very low. Previously, when the river would be heavily tapped by ranchers flooding

Geoff Blakeslee has managed Carpenter Ranch for The Nature Conservancy since 1996.

harvested hay fields to generate fall pasture for livestock, the lower Yampa turned into “a series of connected pools that smallmouth bass just loved,” says Chart. “We’re still trying to figure out exactly what the right flows are during that time of year, but it’s got to be more than zero.”

The roundtable’s role Figuring out the “right flows” to sustain native fish is one part of a wider assessment of the Yampa’s non-consumptive uses— environmental or recreational—that is currently underway. The Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable is directly engaged with this non-consumptive needs assessment, which began in 2006. The first part of the assessment involved bringing together a diverse group of residents representing ranching, energy, recreation and environmental interests who worked together to identify and map non-consumptive attributes. On the Yampa, such features include habitat sustaining native fish, especially the four endangered species; the rare riparian forest; and recreational uses including boating, whitewater rafting and fishing. Agreement on these attributes, reached in April 2009, was achieved through “a very difficult process,” says Blakeslee, who serves on the roundtable’s non-consumptive needs assessment subcommittee. Blakeslee has a unique background, affording him credibility with multiple stakeholders. Not only is he the roundtable’s environmental representative, but he has also ranched in the valley for nearly 40 years. The key to gaining consensus, Blakeslee believes, is “maintaining open dialogue, being receptive and understanding each entity’s point of view and concerns.” Landowners have helped identify stream segments where the non-consumptive attributes prioritized by the group are present. The next step—Phase II—is quantification, says Blakeslee. “How much water does it take to sustain a riparian plant community, or to keep four endangered fish species alive? What level of drought or consumptive use would be tolerable and still allow those attributes to survive?” Although some roundtable members have been wary that identifying and quantifying non-consumptive needs will threaten the region’s ability to provide water for municipal and industrial uses, Blakeslee says they’ve developed trust. “The concern is still there,” he says, “but our intent is to use this information to work together to understand the full impact of future water developments.”

John Sanderson says the Yampa is central to the ecology of the entire Upper Colorado River system.

Sanderson notes that future planning would also have to factor in climate change and energy-related water development, both of which would put added pressure on the Yampa. The non-consumptive needs assessment should be complete this summer. Meanwhile, the Yampa is protected in part by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Programmatic Biological Opinion, or PBO. The PBO currently allows for 50,000 acre feet of future development on the Yampa without hurting fish recovery efforts. “We believe that if depletions are kept within the allowances described within the PBO, the fish will be fine,” says Sanderson. But the fish’s fate is also “contingent on us reducing the threat of non-native fish out there,” says Chart. One thing, however, is certain about the Yampa: pressure on its lavish flows will only increase. Some of the pressure comes from the Front Range as it locates more water for its growing population. The proposed Yampa River pumpback project would store water in a new 500,000 acre-foot reservoir near Maybell before pumping it across the Continental Divide. The reservoir’s dam would lie directly within critical habitat for endangered fish, which Chart says begins 60 miles upstream from Maybell, at Craig. Sanderson finds a degree of reassurance in the protection inherent in the Endangered Species Act and the critical function the Yampa plays in supporting endangered fish, as well as the Yampa’s role in helping Colorado meet its interstate compact delivery requirements on the Colorado River. “Large water developments on the Yampa have big challenges ahead,” he says. “The level of ecological analysis to which they must be held is very, very high. The Yampa is too critical to let a cursory level of analysis suffice.” q The Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program Who:

Partnership of public and private organizations, led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

What:

Restoring populations of endangered Colorado pikeminnow, razorback sucker, humpback chub and bonytail

Where: Throughout the Upper Colorado River system When: Beginning in 1988 Why: Dam installation and introduction of non-native fish affected these endemic fish species that once flourished in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

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Pumped Up The Debate Over Future Transmountain Diversions Continues

By Joshua Zaffos

“We used to think we were a valley too far.” —Dan Birch

In October 2009, the Steamboat Springs City Council approved its largest annexation in decades. Known as Steamboat 700, the development along the city’s western edge will bring in about 2,000 new homes with 4,700 residents, plus another 380,000 square feet of commercial space. The new neighborhood represents a remarkable 45 percent increase in the population of Steamboat Springs, but the growth spurt is something of an aberration in northwestern Colorado. As the Front Range has transformed from open farmland into sprawling suburbs, residential expansion around Steamboat and along the Yampa and White rivers has been relatively tame. The region’s gradual growth partially explains why the Yampa and White are an exception in a state where most rivers have reached, or are near to reaching, maximum allocation. The mighty streamflows in the Yampa River—topped in-state only by the Colorado—aren’t just attractive to outdoor enthusiasts and freshwater ecologists; they have long been coveted as untapped water resources in Colorado and the West. Two recent proposals for substantial transmountain diversions are now following decades-old attempts to dam and divert water from both the Yampa and Green rivers. Private entrepreneur Aaron Million is pursuing the construction of a pipeline to take up to 250,000 acre feet of water annually from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Green River in Wyoming—upstream of the river’s brief run through Colorado— to meet projected Front Range water needs. And the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District has put forth an alternate idea: tap the Yampa and pump as much as 300,000 acre feet annually across the Rockies. Either project would equal an enormous expansion in Colorado water delivery, and northwestern water interests remain wary. “The river is one of the great amenities of the [Yampa] valley, and people

here are protective of our water,” says Paul Strong, a former Steamboat Springs City Council president who now serves as secretary of the Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable, “so any threat is a great concern.” Although the projects are receiving much attention, few water managers across the region or the state have openly embraced either pumpback proposal—so far.

Water for growth The Yampa Basin is miles away, both geographically and demographically, from the Front Range. River recreation and agriculture are the dominant land and water uses, according to the regional roundtable. The two largest cities, Steamboat Springs and Craig, have fewer than 20,000 residents combined. Even with a world-class ski resort and growth in and around Steamboat, municipal and industrial water use remains relatively insignificant. “Domestic uses of water in the Yampa are really a drop in the bucket,” says Dan Birch, deputy general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and roundtable member. Despite Colorado Water Conservation Board forecasts that the region will grow more rapidly than any other river basin statewide, potentially tripling in population over the next 40 years, the resulting municipal water demands are still rather modest. Says Jeff Devere, a roundtable member representing the Rio Blanco Water Conservancy District, “Many see these astonishing numbers for growth—5 percent—but when you’ve only got 6,000 people [as in Rio Blanco County], it doesn’t amount to much.” The CWCB projects the Yampa and White basins’ municipal and industrial water demands will increase by between 12,600 and 27,600 acre feet by 2050, depending on the rate the population grows. That demand could be met through existing water supplies and water

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rights tied to previously identified projects, according to the CWCB. Still, additional infrastructure would be required, and depending on who you talk to, the region is not necessarily prepared. The remaining flows that leave the state unused are beckoning Front Range water managers, who face a very different set of trends. Water in the South Platte and Arkansas basins is already over-appropriated, and the CWCB estimates that the basins will together need as much as 868,000 acre feet of additional water in 2050. “We used to think we were a valley too far,” Birch says. “Now, we’re looking at proposals where people are talking about pumping water hundreds of miles and, apparently, they think that could be costeffective compared to what other alternatives they might have for water supply.”

Opportunity knocks To some, the intense spring runoff in the Yampa Basin represents a lost opportunity. The river pulses as high as 20,000 cubic feet per second for several weeks each year, but the excess flows quickly travel out of state. “There’s a lot of water there, and the basin has very little storage,” says Carl Brouwer, project manager for the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy

District. Brouwer estimates that more than 1 million acre feet of good-quality water leaves Colorado each year through the Yampa. How much water Colorado users can legally divert isn’t entirely clear. The Colorado River Compact of 1922 and the associated 1948 Upper Colorado River Basin Compact split water use among the seven states of the entire Colorado River Basin. Colorado doesn’t fully use its share of Colorado River water, which is approximately 3 million to 3.88 million acre feet each year, but no one knows exactly how close the state is to using up its allocation. The Yampa River, like all of the other West Slope drainages that eventually reach the Colorado, is subject to the compact, with one unique specification: it must deliver an average annual minimum of 500,000 acre feet downstream through the Green River. In the meantime, both the Flaming Gorge and Yampa pumpback proposals signify ambitious diversions of Colorado River Basin water that would likely claim whatever last remaining water the state is allowed. Aaron Million’s 550-mile-long pipeline would siphon water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Green River in Wyoming—and possibly directly from the Green itself—and carry up to 250,000 acre feet a year to the Front Range. The pump-

and-pipe project would ship water along Interstate 80, across Wyoming and the Continental Divide, before turning south to fill reservoirs that could serve Front Range communities and farmers. Million says the piped-in flows could also augment rivers stressed by other diversions, seemingly making the project a municipal, agricultural and environmental silver bullet. Known as the Regional Watershed Supply Project, Million has estimated its costs at $2 billion to $3 billion. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suspended work on an environmental impact statement evaluating the project while it assesses a list of potential customers. At the Corps’ request, Million turned over the list on January 20, 2010, which includes the Central Colorado Water Conservancy District, Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District, City of Brighton, and Douglas County, among others. The Corps will scrutinize the interested parties’ stated water needs and other factors, says Rena Brand, regulatory specialist with the Corps. “Then we will determine whether to continue with the study.” Reluctance to work with the private entrepreneur has led water managers from the Parker Water and Sanitation District and the South Metro Water Supply Authority to consider developing their own version of the project, which

Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District Providing, protecting and planning for water resources in the Upper Yampa River Basin for over 40 years.

Water Supply • Agriculture • Industrial • Municipal • Augmentation – New Program! PO Box 880339 Steamboat Springs, CO 80488-0339 Ph: 970.871.1035 http://upperyampawater.com

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“We would not allow a Colorado permit to impact existing or future water rights in Wyoming.” –Harry LaBonde

could move forward if the Corps deems Million’s client base insufficient. In December 2006, just weeks after Million went public with his proposal, the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District unveiled the Multi-Basin Water Supply Project, otherwise referred to as the Yampa River pumpback. A study commissioned by the NCWCD suggests diverting up to 300,000 acre feet of water from the Yampa near Maybell, Colo., then pumping it back across—or under—the mountains. Like Million’s project, the Yampa pumpback would cost billions of dollars, but it would also alleviate pressure to dry up hundreds of thousands of irrigated acres in the South Platte Basin, says Brouwer. Since introducing the idea, the NCWCD hasn’t pursued its development. Members of the South Platte and Yampa/ White/Green basin roundtables met once in 2007 to tour the Yampa Basin and talk details, but the idea has not moved forward. Brouwer views the possibility of its fruition as a regional undertaking. “It’s a very long-term project, and a project that the state would have to get behind, at minimum,” Brouwer says. Million and the NCWCD have both claimed that there is no competition to tap the Yampa or Green first, however, only one of the two large projects would likely be developed as advertised due to compact constraints. And whether either is built could depend on proponents’ shrewd appeasement of water users in northwestern Colorado as well as mitigation of environmental damages.

Not so fast Of foremost concern among members of the Yampa/White/Green Basin Roundtable is that Million’s project might transport water contracted from the Bureau of Reclamation with a priority date from the late 1950s when the reservoir was built. That date is senior to many claims within the Yampa Basin. If there were ever a Colorado River Compact call from the states, such as California, along the Lower Colorado River, Yampa area water users could be forced to curtail their water use, even as Million kept pumping. And because 250,000 acre feet of water would be shifted out of the Colorado Basin to instead flow east

toward the Missouri River, that day could come sooner than previously expected. “It would greatly accelerate the day when the Lower Colorado Basin [states] would make a call,” says Tom Sharp, an attorney, board member of the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District and member of the roundtable. Sharp says Million pledged to surrender the senior priority date when he met with roundtable members a few years ago, but such a decision could be out of his hands and a matter of western water law. In 2007, Reclamation conducted a Flaming Gorge water availability study to determine the potential amount of water that could be contracted to Million without compromising the reservoir’s other uses. The “rough analysis” did not account for the effects of climate change or a potential settlement with the Ute Indians and still concluded that only 185,000 acre feet would be available in the short term. After 2060, assuming Wyoming would have fully developed its share of the Green River resource, that number would fall to 120,000 acre feet, less than half of what Million proposes to transport. Whatever the contracted amount, the state of Colorado would have to agree that the water is part of Colorado’s Colorado River apportionment, says Michael Loring, regional economist for Reclamation’s Upper Colorado Region. On top of that, the contract with Reclamation would be subject to renewal every 40 years. Million also filed a water right application in 2007 with the state of Wyoming, identifying several diversion points directly on the Green River there. According to Wyoming’s deputy state engineer, Harry LaBonde, if Million were granted the right to divert water to Colorado, Colorado would again have to agree to count it against its compact apportionment. And the Wyoming state engineer would most likely tack on a special permit condition giving Wyoming users precedence. Says LaBonde, “We would not allow a Colorado permit to impact existing or future water rights in Wyoming.” The Yampa pumpback could have more overt consequences for local water use in the Yampa Valley, since

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it would divert directly from the basin. Roundtable members worry about compromised water quality and reduced spring flood flows as a result of such a significant diversion, which would in turn impact agriculture, river recreation and endangered fish recovery. “They cannot upset our recovery plan assurances,” Sharp says, referring to protections from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Programmatic Biological Opinion to help endangered fish and, at the same time, allow the Yampa Basin to develop an additional 50,000 acre feet of water to meet future demands. Someone would have to file for new water rights for the pumpback, which would be junior to all existing claims. On the plus side, either project could include reservoirs and infrastructure to deliver and store water within the Yampa Basin. Brouwer says transmountain projects historically build compensatory storage first, which could help local farmers and developers move forward with plans for growth. Those potential benefits aren’t lost on water users in the Yampa Basin, but Sharp and other local stakeholders say their own future development shouldn’t be hamstrung. “Our first concern, from a municipal perspective, is to make sure there is enough water for our own needs,” says Strong, the secretary of the roundtable. Sharp adds, “We don’t want to find ourselves as the sacrificial lamb.”

Complicating factors In the final days of 2008, Shell Oil filed for a conditional water right that would account for 8 percent of the Yampa River’s peak springtime flows. The water would be used to fill a 45,000 acre-foot reservoir as part of the company’s plans for oil shale production. The considerable development, still under review, is one of those unmapped demands that didn’t factor into the CWCB’s initial needs assessment. NCWCD officials have suggested that Shell’s plans wouldn’t interfere with a major transmountain diversion out of the Yampa, but basin roundtable members believe that if the oil shale industry takes off, it could use up much of the basin’s—and state’s—unclaimed water, making talks of pipelines moot. Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is weighing Wild and Scenic River designations for stretches of the Yampa River and its lower tributaries. The federal protection often carries a water right to preserve flows in the river. Agency recommendations are expected sometime in 2010. Both local and Front Range water managers say Wild and Scenic designation could preclude any large diversion from the river system, but conservation and recreational groups support the idea. “Just because there aren’t major projects on the Yampa doesn’t mean it’s not providing services,” says Becky Long, water caucus coordinator for

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the Colorado Environmental Coalition. Preserving the river’s free-flowing character shouldn’t get lost in the rush to develop its resources, Long says, especially considering the Yampa’s potential to support fish recovery and avoid curtailment of Colorado’s junior water rights. If downstream states ever do make a compact call, the Yampa’s flows could be “a cushion,” Long says, to meet the call without turning off existing taps in the state. Until the results of various studies assessing water availability on the Colorado River and water demands into the future, which are being conducted by the CWCB and basin roundtables, are finalized, Dan Birch says plans for either a Green River or Yampa River pipeline are “a little premature.” Between development taking off around Steamboat, the fish recovery program, and Shell preparing to produce oil shale, there might not be much water to be claimed in northwestern Colorado, Birch says. While the pumpback proposals face formidable challenges, Birch believes the ideas are causing water interests in the Yampa Basin and along the Front Range to abandon their traditionally more provincial views and to think collaboratively about the future. Whether a solution can tap complementary, instead of competitive, intentions among water interests is still further down the pipe. q

2009

Many young Coloradans have found a new medium for exploring the natural and cultural history of the place they live through the annual River of Words poetry contest. The poems, submitted by K-12 students throughout Colorado and the nation, are specifically crafted in discovery of watersheds and environment. They are first judged on a national level and then returned to Colorado Humanities to be judged within the state. Teachers or other instructors can access more information, including entry forms and â&#x20AC;&#x153;Teaching the Poetry of Riversâ&#x20AC;? lesson plans, prepared by the award-winning poet Kathryn Winograd and sponsored jointly by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education and Colorado Humanities, at www.coloradohumanities.org/content/river-words. Poems may be submitted throughout the year, but must be postmarked by Dec. 1, 2010, to be considered for 2011 awards. The Colorado Foundation for Water Education is pleased to share a selection of the 2009 winning poems, including two poems recognized as national finalists.

National Finalist Poems From Colorado The Days of Glory

My World

Something to write about. Something to sing about. Something to think about In the clouds above us In the night sky.

I stand on the moon Looking at the big, round, blue earth, And I am going to eat it Very, very slowly.

Over stars and past the moon, Past the days of glory.

Alexa Beaver River of Words National Finalist, Category II (Grades 3-6) 4th Grade, Caprock Academy, Grand Junction Susan Sharpe, Teacher

Madeline McGrigg River of Words National Finalist, Category I (Grades K-2) 2nd Grade, Polaris at Ebert Elementary, Denver Karin Johnson, Teacher

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Embroidery

Life a River

Rivers Painting their beautiful pictures Starting a journey wondering what life is like beyond this world cold and quiet not knowing where you’ll go next A last minute thought not yet decided A sailor with no compass

Life Ever changing Much as a river does Never the same Never again Each twist Each bend A new obstacle Just waiting Waiting To be overcome As life moves along You have but one chance To make a decision To go left or right Up or down You have those decisions to make But there is no Going back Only forward All paths must be carefully chosen Once you have chosen Your fate shall be sealed By that choice You will be judged Named And famed Will your currents be quick and harsh Or soft and calm Shall you nourish and care for others Or shall you snap their bones And destroy their homes As does a river One last thing One the matter of life Life is a river

Rivers Flowing aimlessly down the bank Embroidering every minute passing by Hearing the exquisite voices of the Earth the angelic melody, the music to our ears rising above the darkness telling a secret shedding another tear Rivers Interlacing the world like a needle weaving yarn Telling our stories Beholding every loving, hateful, jealous, sad, and angry thought the embroidery of our lives Taylor Naiman River of Words Category III (Grades 7-9), 1st Place 8th grade, Good Shepherd Catholic School, Denver Linda Keller, Teacher

Fishing Fishing silently on a lake. Trees rustle. No noise at all. Then a bird’s song and a frog’s croak. You catch a fish and release.

Caleb Lyson River of Words Category II (Grades 3-6), 1st Place 5th grade, Ponderosa Elementary, Aurora Rose Buck, Teacher

Madeline McGrigg River of Words Category I (Grades K-2), 1st Place 2nd grade, Polaris at Ebert Elementary, Denver Karin Johnson, Teacher

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1580 Logan St., Suite 410 • Denver, CO 80203

2010 President’s Award Reception

Russell George

Please join the Colorado Foundation for Water Education on Friday, April 9 in Denver for a reception honoring two individuals who have advanced Colorado’s understandEric Hecox ing of its water resources: Russell George and Eric Hecox. The Foundation will recognize Russell George, former director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources and current director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, with the 2010 President’s Award. This annual award is bestowed upon a Coloradan who has demonstrated commitment to the Foundation’s mission of providing balanced and accurate water

information and education. We are also delighted to present the Foundation’s first ever Emerging Leader Award to Eric Hecox, chief of the Water Supply Planning Section of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Together, George and Hecox created the framework for the Interbasin Compact Committee and the nine Basin Roundtables. This process has created an immense amount of technical information about Colorado’s water supply future, as well as fostered new and important conversations between historically divergent areas of the state. Tickets are available for a suggested donation of $100/person. Online registration will be available in March at cfwe.org.

The Foundation’s 2010 river basin tour will visit the Animas, Dolores, San Juan and more! We’ll meet in Durango from June 9-11. Look for a draft itinerary in early 2010 at cfwe.org. Registration will start in April. Last year’s tour sold out, so sign up early!

iStock.com

7th Annual CFWE River Basin Tour to Feature SW Colorado

Animas River

Join the Foundation on March 12, 2010, for a fun, interactive day learning about climate change research. The workshop includes an exclusive tour of the National Ice Core Laboratory in Lakewood and an optional afternoon for science teachers to gain water and climate curriculum ideas. Visit cfwe.org to register.

Ca ark le Yo nd u ar r !

Climate and Colorado’s Water Future Workshop

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C FWE . o r g