It’s a crude method, but if you want a ballpark idea of how the snowpack is doing, ask a skier how the season has been. And I’d say this season so far has been … fine. Not terrible, but could be better. The powder days have been good but few and far between, and the warm and dry stretches have led me to temporarily hang up my downhill gear in favor of Nordic skiing. When compared to last winter’s record-setting snowfall, this year seems especially anemic, but really, it’s closer to average. I guess they can’t all be banner years.
In this edition of The Runoff, find insider news and water-related updates you won’t read anywhere else under The Briefing and additional context and updates on the most recent reporting from our water desk under The Recap. Once again, we are taking the place of the normal edition of The Roundup, which will return next week.
Thanks for going deeper with us and for supporting our nonprofit, in-depth, investigative reporting.
–Heather Sackett
Water Desk Editor and Reporter
CREDIT: Ecoflight. Credit: EcoFlight
Snowpack is close to normal
Snowpack data backs up the fine, not terrible nature of this skier’s assessment. Snowpack as measured by SNOTEL sites in the Roaring Fork basin is around 103% of median as of Sunday, Feb. 11. Other basin snowpacks are also close to normal with 103% of median for Gunnison, 97% for Yampa-White-Little Snake, 100% for the Colorado headwaters basin, and 100% of median for the Miguel-Dolores-Animas-San Juan basin. On Sunday, Lake Powell was 34.6% full, slightly down from last week’s 34.8%.
Ruedi Reservoir, on the Fryingpan River, should have 86% of average inflow this year according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation hydrologist Tim Miller. Estimates from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center and National Resources Conservation Service were a bit higher at 90% of average. According to Miller, the reservoir is in a really good position right now because of last year’s carryover storage; it’s about 11,000 acre-feet more full than last year at this time. Miller said the reservoir is expected to fill this summer.
According to the February Water Supply Outlook Report from the NRCS, statewide streamflows are currently projected to be below normal this year, with only 14% of streamflow measuring points expected to have above-normal runoff volumes. A dry fall can probably be blamed for the reduced runoff due to soil moisture deficits. And El Nino conditions have not resulted in excessive precipitation in Colorado. But it’s only mid-winter and there’s still time for this trend to turn around. “With two months left of the typical accumulation season, there is still some optimism that a more favorable storm track could develop and bring much-needed moisture to the state,” the report reads.
One small bright spot for the Colorado River basin as a whole: Due in part to last year’s great snowpack, the U.S. Department of the Interior has said the chance of Lake Powell falling below critical elevations — a threat that sent water managers scrambling for much of 2021 and 2022 — has been reduced to just 8% through 2026. Looks like crisis averted (for now).
CREDIT: Melissa Trammell Credit: Melissa Trammell
Reclamation announcements
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released two reports last week, which upper basin officials had been waiting on. The first is an accounting of evaporation and system losses in the lower basin (California, Nevada and Arizona), which Reclamation puts at an average of about 1.3 million acre-feet a year. Lower basin evaporation and transit losses are currently not accounted for, something the upper basin states (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico) have long said must change. Lower basin officials said publicly in December that they will own the “structural deficit,” which includes these losses to evaporation and transit.
Colorado River expert, author and former general manager of the River District Eric Kuhn said the 1.3 million figure is based on the best available science, but it’s hardly news. Early studies on the Colorado River had figured out a ballpark number close to 1.3 million acre-feet, Kuhn said. And a 2022 analysis by Southern Nevada Water Authority officials estimated this number at 1.5 million acre-feet.
“I think from a public standpoint, it strengthens the upper basin’s standpoint that these losses are real,” Kuhn said. “But the number itself has been around for 100 years.”
A second report from Reclamation, a draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, analyzes how the timing of releases from Glen Canyon Dam can disrupt the establishment below the dam of non-native fish, especially smallmouth bass, which love warmer water and prey on native endangered fish. Aspen Journalism reported on this problem in 2022. The SEIS lays out a range of potential options for reservoir operations, including flow spikes designed to cool river temperatures to below 60 degrees Fahrenheit, which would disrupt smallmouth bass spawning. Reclamation will host three virtual public meetings to answer questions and will accept public comment on the SEIS until March 25.
Reclamation funding
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced this week that six projects, five of which are in western Colorado, will receive a total of nearly $21 million for salinity control. As lands are irrigated, the water picks up and dissolves salt from the ground, resulting in increased salinity for the Colorado River as those irrigation flows re-enter waterways. The projects all involve improvements to irrigation systems like piping or lining ditches and upgrades to headgates and siphons. The entities that received funding are: the Hartland Ditch Company in Delta County; the North Delta Irrigation Company; Fire Mountain Canal and Reservoir Company; the Grand Valley Irrigation Company and Montrose-based Bostwick Park Water Conservancy District.
New River District board members
The Colorado River Water Conservation District, which spans 15 Westerns Slope counties, has two new board members, from Gunnison and Ouray counties. Sonia Chavez, the general manager of the Upper Gunnison Conservancy District, is the new representative from Gunnison County. She is a former River District employee, working as a water resource specialist. She replaces Kathleen Curry, a Tomichi Creek rancher and former state house rep. Cary Denison is the new representative from Ouray County. He has served on the Gunnison Roundtable, is a former water commissioner and former project coordinator for Trout Unlimited. He replaces Marti Whitmore, a Ouray attorney who had served as the first female president of the River District. River District board members are appointed by their boards of county commissioners and serve three-year terms.
Conditional water rights
Another project involving conditional water rights is making its way through water court and has at least one opposer. Middle Park Conservancy District is seeking to maintain conditional water rights it has for the proposed 20,116-acre-foot Haypark Reservoir and associated infrastructure on East Fork Troublesome Creek, a tributary of the Colorado River, northeast of Kremmling in Grand County. The water rights date to 1959.
Fort Collins-based environmental group Save the World’s Rivers (formerly Save the Colorado) finds the Troublesome Project, well, troublesome. Save the World’s Rivers says the conservancy district has failed to prove the reservoir can and will be completed within a reasonable time, and that water for the reservoir is not legally and physically available and is less likely to be available in the future because of climate change. The organization is the only entity to file a statement of opposition so far.
Three Aspen Journalism stories over the past month have reported on projects that involve conditional water rights. Conditional water rights allow a would-be water user to reserve their place in the priority system based on when they applied for the right — not when they put water to use — while they work toward developing the water. To maintain a conditional right, an applicant must every six years file what’s known as a diligence application with the water court, proving that they still have a need for the water, that they have taken substantial steps toward putting the water to use and that they “can and will” eventually use the water. The bar for maintaining these conditional rights is low as water court judges are reluctant to abandon these rights, even if they have been languishing for years without being developed.
Aspen Journalism will continue covering these projects with decades-old conditional water rights, whose diligence applications often fly under the radar.
Thompson Creek water rights on KDNK
Thanks to KDNK and the Sopris Sun, two Carbondale-based, nonprofit news providers, for having me on their radio show Everything Under the Sun on Feb. 1. I talk about the conditional water rights tied to a proposed reservoir on Thompson Creek. The company has since dropped its application to maintain these rights.
Since the last edition of The Runoff, Aspen Journalism’s Water Desk has reported the following stories. If you are not already, subscribe to The Roundup to get our weekly rundown of new news and insights.
Colorado Springs agrees to give up water rights for Summit County reservoirs
On Jan. 16, the River District board approved the settlement agreement, which includes a commitment from Colorado Springs that the utility will support the River District’s efforts at securing the Shoshone water right.
Presentation details Lincoln Creek contamination but solutions unclear
Panelists addressed the potential human health impacts from the contaminated water in the creek and at Grizzly Reservoir, a popular spot for summer camping, hiking and fishing.
Bill limiting nonfunctional turf planting clears Colorado Senate
“If we don’t have to start watering that turf in the first place, we never have to replace it in the future,” state Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco, a co-sponsor, said in making the case for the proposed new state standard. Thanks to Allen Best and Big Pivots for covering this story in collaboration with our water desk.
Company drops bid for Thompson Creek reservoir water rights
Companies have been able to hang onto these conditional water rights in some cases for over 50 years without using them because Colorado water law allows a would-be water user to reserve their place in the priority system based on when they applied for the right — not when they put water to use — while they work toward developing the water.
Company with oil and gas interests seeking to keep rights alive for reservoir on Thompson Creek
The reason Puckett has been able to hold on to water rights that are nearly 60 years old without putting them to beneficial use lies in a quirk of Colorado water law that at least one scholar says needs to be reformed.
Climate report projects continued warming and declining streamflows for Colorado
This warming, which scientists are very confident will come to pass, will drive the other water system changes that Colorado can expect to see.
