Aspen Journalism (July 12, 2024)—When Euro-American settlers first started using the water in the Roaring Fork and Crystal river valleys 140 years ago, the concept of leaving enough for the sake of a healthy environment didn’t exist. Water that ran downstream without being put to beneficial use either growing crops or growing cities was considered wasted.
Sparked by the shifting values of the environmental movement, in the 1970s the Colorado Water Conservation Board began accumulating instream flow water rights, which are designed to protect the environment to a reasonable degree and set a minimum flow needed for a healthy ecosystem. The problem is that by the 1970s, there wasn’t much unused water left to protect. Under Colorado’s water law system known as prior appropriation, the oldest water users — ranchers and cities — get first use of the river. And on many streams, these first users take close to the river’s entire flow.
But over the past two-plus decades, environmentalists have developed tools that allow them to purchase water to put back in rivers. The nonprofit Colorado Water Trust has projects across the state, most of which pay water users to voluntarily and temporarily stop using their water and loan it back to the stream, restoring a bit of the natural flow.
The city of Aspen and a Carbondale rancher, with water rights dating to 1889 and 1903, respectively, are among a relatively small number of water users across the state who have entered into these types of water-sharing agreements. In both cases, they have non-diversion agreements with the Water Trust to leave some of their water in the river.
“When it starts to dry out during the summer, we said how about we partner up with senior users who have water and find ways we can use their water to protect the environment,” said Kate Ryan, executive director of the Colorado Water Trust.
On July 10 and 11, staff from the Water Trust, along with local water managers, toured two of these projects on chronically water-short sections of the valley’s rivers: Cold Mountain Ranch on the Crystal and Aspen’s Wheeler Ditch on the Roaring Fork. When streamflows dwindle to a set trigger amount, the agreements kick in and water users stop diverting water in an effort to boost flows in the river.
In 2022, Cold Mountain Ranch owners Bill Fales and Marj Perry inked a six-year deal with the Water Trust to voluntarily reduce diversions from the Helms Ditch in order to leave water in the Crystal during critical periods in late summer and early fall when the river needs it most. In return, Fales and Perry are paid $250 a day up to 20 days for each cubic foot per second they leave in the river, up to 6 cfs, according to the 2022 agreement.
The project only makes sense in years that are dry, but not too dry. It took place in 2022 for 10 days, but 2023’s big snowpack resulted in high streamflows that meant the project wasn’t necessary. According to the Water Trust website, enacting the project in 2022 meant that 119 acre-feet of water was restored to a chronically dry section of the Crystal.
Fales said he thinks they will probably enact the agreement again this year. He carefully tracks the stream gauge at Thomas Road Bridge, which showed that despite a spike from a rainstorm in early July, streamflows have fallen to less than half of what they were 10 days ago. The agreement can be enacted once streamflows fall to 40 cfs. Fales said that on Wednesday, the gauge maintained by Roaring Fork Conservancy had the river running at about 450.
By leaving more water in the Crystal, Fales may end up with a little less hay at the end of the season, but a little more money in his pocket — a willing tradeoff to see more water in the Crystal.
“It’s a zero-sum game,” he said. “How you value water is a complex issue and there are trade-offs.”
Transmountain diversions that take nearly 40% of the water from the Roaring Fork’s headwaters to the Front Range plus the Aspen area’s two major diversions from the upper Roaring Fork — the Wheeler and Salvation ditches — often turn the river through Aspen into a trickle in dry years. In an attempt to remedy that, in 2016, the city of Aspen entered into a 10-year non-diversion agreement (which can be enacted in 5 out of the 10 years) with the Water Trust.
When streamflows on the Roaring Fork fall below 32 cfs at the Stillwater gauge, the city dials back its diversions from the Wheeler Ditch. The city ratchets down its diversions by 1 cfs for every 1 cfs the river falls under 32 cfs, but doesn’t stop diversions completely; the city continues to divert 1 cfs to refresh the water in the ditch, which feeds Glory Hole Park, and the fountains and ditches on Cooper and Hyman avenues’ pedestrian malls.
According to the Water Trust website, the Wheeler Ditch project has so far restored 1,464 acre-feet of water to the Roaring Fork.
Justin Forman, Aspen’s utilities director, said just because the city’s water right says they are entitled to take 10 cfs, doesn’t mean they actually need to take 10 cfs all the time.
“Especially in these dry years, every cfs counts,” he said. “We want to be good stewards of this finite resource no matter what our decree says.”
The city does not get paid by the Water Trust under the current agreement for the Wheeler Ditch project. Water Trust Stewardship Manager Tony LaGreca said the project probably won’t take place this year because work on Grizzly Reservoir will boost flows enough on the Roaring Fork.
Cold Mountain Ranch and Aspen are protected from abandonment, Colorado’s “use-it-or-lose it” principle, by 2013’s Senate Bill 19, which provides protection if the water rights are enrolled in an approved conservation program, such as the agreements with the Water Trust.
A similar legal tool, 2020’s House Bill 1157, lets water users loan their water to the state’s instream flow program in 5 out of 10 years, which was an increase from the original 3 out of 10 years. Slightly different than the non-diversion agreements used by Cold Mountain Ranch and Aspen, it still allows water users to get paid for leaving their water in the river. When Aspen’s current agreement with the Water Trust expires in 2026, Forman said they may use this instream flow loan program in the future instead.
According to the organization’s website, Water Trust projects have restored 73,242 acre-feet of water to 612 miles of Colorado’s rivers since its founding in 2001. That may seem like a small amount of water given the scale of the problem (by comparison, Ruedi Reservoir on the Fryingpan River holds about 100,000 acre-feet). The environment does not have equal standing to other uses under Colorado’s current water law, and relentless demand and climate change continue to rob rivers of their flows, ensuring a drier future. And these projects are still only being done by a handful of water users statewide. But sometimes restoring even small amounts of water can make a big difference.
“Anything helps keep that river alive,” LaGreca said. “The crucial thing from our perspective is a willing water user to think outside the box to protect the health of the stream.”
Editor’s note: In April 2024 Aspen Journalism co-presented an event with the Colorado Water Trust featuring a panel of experts discussing how to balance competing needs for water. Aspen Journalism is also supported by a grant from the city of Aspen’s community nonprofit grant program, and is solely responsible for its own editorial content.
Aspen Journalism
Author: Heather Sackett
Read the original article here.