In an effort to elevate the needs of the environment in water management, the state of Colorado is convening a new committee that is scheduled to begin meeting this summer.
The Colorado Water Conservation Board and Boulder-based nonprofit River Network are creating a pilot program known as the Environmental Flows Cohort, which will assess how much water is needed to maintain healthy streams and how to meet these flow recommendations. The cohort will include not just environmental advocates, but agricultural and municipal water users, who may initially feel threatened by environmental flow recommendations.
The goal of the program is to address the barriers that lead to these recommendations being excluded from local stream management plans. The cohort was one of the recommendations in a January 2023 analysis of SMPs by the River Network.
“The idea is how can the environmental and recreation side of things better partner with the agricultural users on trying to find win-win projects for keeping more water in the stream,” said Brian Murphy, director of the healthy rivers program at the River Network. “An emphasis on making sure stream management plans identify and prioritize projects that include environmental flows, that’s been kind of a shortfall.”
An objective of Colorado’s 2015 Water Plan was to create SMPs for most of the state’s important streams by 2030. SMPs are meant to focus on water for the environment and recreation, which are “nonconsumptive” needs where “using” the water means that it stays in streams. The idea is that these flow targets could then result in projects designed to get that agreed-upon amount of water in streams.
SMPs were originally intended as a tool to legitimize and enhance the role of environmental and recreation groups in water management, but a 2022 report by the River Network found that focusing on water to maintain a healthy environment was inconsistent, problematic and unpopular among the stakeholders who were creating the SMPs. Just 6% of project recommendations at the time focused on environmental flow targets and only 1% focused on recreation flow targets, even though SMPs were supposed to have been a tool specifically for the benefit of nonconsumptive water uses.
In some cases, the SMPs broadened in scope and morphed into Integrated Water Management Plans that included an agricultural water needs assessment and ditch inventories.
“One of the big challenges, it was found, was just a lot of perceived negativity regarding flow recommendations,” said Andrea Harbin Monahan, a watershed scientist with CWCB. “There’s a perceived animosity between the recreation community versus agriculture, for example. Figuring out a way to get all those people into one room and start those conversations early and build trust early in the process are hopefully the outcomes of this environmental cohort.”
Under the bedrock principle of Colorado water law, the oldest water rights, which belong to agriculture and cities, get first use of rivers and other user groups have historically had trouble making inroads. The actions of the biggest irrigators often have an influence on how much water is left flowing in the stream, and there are few ways to guarantee there is enough for ecosystems and wildlife. The CWCB holds instream flow water rights intended to “preserve the natural environment to a reasonable degree.” But the oldest of these date to the 1970s — about a century younger than the most powerful agricultural water rights, which limits their effectiveness.
As climate change squeezes water supply and creates shortages for all users, it also ratchets up the tension between groups that take water out of the river and groups that want to leave it in.
Eagle River Community Water Plan
The Eagle River Coalition is an organization dedicated to advocating for the health of the Eagle River. After five years of community meetings and technical work, the group recently released the Eagle River Community Water Plan. The plan provides an assessment of current conditions on the Eagle and its tributaries, and what conditions may look like with future risks such as climate change, more municipal water demands and new reservoir projects that take more water to the Front Range.
“The main takeaway to me is that we’re going to see low flows and less water in the river, so we as a community have to figure out how are we going to prioritize keeping our river flowing,” said James Dilzell, executive director of the Eagle River Coalition. “Figuring out how to have more water in the river is going to be absolutely critical.”
The plan is meant, in part, to provide an understanding of environmental and recreational needs gaps and how they are affected by high and low flows and increasing demands for water in Eagle County and on the Front Range.
But although the plan includes a section about environmental flow deficits, which is the amount of water that would be needed to meet the CWCB’s instream flow water right during a typical year, it — like most SMPs — does not set a target amount for flows.
Seth Mason, a hydrologist with Carbondale-based Lotic Hydrological, helped author the Eagle River plan and will be participating in the cohort. He said putting a number on exactly how much water the river needs at different times of year under different future climate and development scenarios is complicated. For example, it might be the case that the only way for a section of river to meet a certain flow target is to build a reservoir to control releases, but a new reservoir project could be at odds with what the community wants.
“What we didn’t do was develop a prescriptive flow regime,” Mason said. “And that, I think, is what a lot of people end up looking for. … I think providing the nuance necessary for people to do critical thinking about trade-offs is more valuable than drawing the perfect stream flow regime, which there is no such thing.”
Dilzell said he is interested in learning more about flow recommendations on the Eagle River and its tributaries, and the completion of the community water plan is just the first step in local watershed management.
Still, river flows can be a proxy for ecosystem health, and some say target recommendations are essential. Bart Miller, healthy rivers director with environmental group Western Resource Advocates, said stream flow recommendations are the bedrock for protecting the environment. WRA is helping to facilitate the cohort.
“Flow has an impact on water quality, temperature, habitat — everything from spawning cues for fish to just keeping them alive when flows are getting low at the end of the summer,” Miller said. “There’s a wide range of benefits from having a clear picture of what stream needs are and articulating recommendations on how to improve or protect what the flows look like.”
Although they are not required in order to get state funding for SMPs, CWCB officials would still like the groups that develop SMPs to come up with flow recommendations. Harbin Monahan said the cohort will be a way to work through barriers, understand the contentious nature of the topic and build trust among stakeholders so that more SMPS can have flow recommendations in the future.
“The entire idea behind stream management plans was to help support the environment and recreation community and help them meet the flow needs for specific uses,” she said. “It’s OK if stream management plans don’t come out with a flow recommendation. It’s not typically required, but it is a desired outcome.”
The River Network and CWCB are taking applications for the Environmental Flows Cohort and plan to choose 15 to 20 participants to begin meeting in July. The cohort plans to meet five times between July and next spring and will develop a training program for local watershed groups to follow when they create SMPs.
This story ran in the June 17 edition of The Aspen Times and the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent, the Craig Daily Press, the Steamboat Springs Pilot & Today and the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.