The Runoff | The future of the Shoshone water right comes into focus

Welcome to The Runoff, where Aspen Journalism’s Water Desk provides 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. 

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– Heather Sackett
Water Desk Editor and Reporter

State water board to hear testimony on Shoshone water rights

This week the Colorado Water Conservation Board could make a consequential decision for water users on the Western Slope. The board is scheduled to hear almost 13 hours of testimony on Wednesday and Thursday about whether to add an instream flow water right to the hydropower water right associated with the Shoshone plant in Glenwood Canyon. 

The CWCB may make a decision on Thursday, but after a Tuesday notice from the River District granting a two-month extension, the board now has until its November meeting to decide. The River District says the extra time will allow the board to consider information presented at this week’s hearing and provide additional opportunities for the parties to pursue a negotiated resolution of the contested issues.

But the issue the board will be voting on – whether the water rights will benefit the environment – is not contested. Everyone, even the four big Front Range water providers, agrees that the environment would benefit from the water. At issue is whether the River District’s preliminary estimate of the plant’s historical use – a number on which a future limit for the instream flow right would be based – is too high and would cause injury to Front Range water providers. 

River District officials and others have argued this issue is best left to a water court and not the CWCB, but hearing officer Jackie Calicchio in the prehearing conference said she would let each side present their arguments as they see fit and then advise the board on what should be within their purview. 

If the board votes yes, it will clear the way for the water court case that will make the instream flow right official, securing the water for downstream cities, agriculture and recreation, in addition to the environment. 

Aspen Journalism will be covering the hearing in Durango. Check out our previous coverage here.

Adult zebra mussels found in Colorado River

Zebra mussels continue to spread in the Colorado River and adjacent water bodies. On Sept. 15, Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced that they found adult zebra mussels and the larval mussels, known as veligers, in East Lake and West Lake in Grand Junction. Adult zebra mussels were also found in a channel that connects the lakes to the Colorado River, as well as the river itself where the channel flows into it. 

The lakes are part of the James M. Robb Colorado River State Park and owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Fishing from the shore is allowed in the lakes, but boating and swimming is not. The Colorado River is now considered “infested” from the 32 Road bridge downstream to the Colorado-Utah border. This is the first time adult zebra mussels have been detected in the river. 

Earlier this summer, CPW announced they found the presumed source of the mussels in a privately owned body of water adjacent to the Colorado River in Eagle County, which it treated using copper-based EarthTec QZ. CPW said in a press release that they do not intend to treat the mainstem of the Colorado River due to the risk to native fish populations, critical habitat, length of potential treatment area and complexity of canals and ditches that are fed by the river. The stretch of river where the mussels were found is known as the 15-mile reach, home to endangered species of fish and chronically low flows.

Colorado River experts call for immediate conservation

Some of the best minds in Colorado River policy and academia released a report last week calling for an immediate reduction in water use in both the Upper and Lower basins. They say that if the seven basin states can’t take such a short-term action, then the Department of the Interior must act. 

Jack Schmidt, Anne Castle, John Fleck, Eric Kuhn, Kathryn Sorensen and Katherine Tara say that if next year is a repeat of this year and water uses remain the same, consumptive use will exceed river flows by at least 3.6 million acre-feet. The states are currently negotiating new guidelines that will lay out how shortages are shared and reservoirs operated after 2026, but the experts say the basin doesn’t have that long to wait. 

“If we wait to see if 2026 is dry, the actions needed to save the system will be far more unpleasant than if we act prudently now,” they write. 

Instead of basing estimates on deadpool, which inflates the amount of water available, the report focuses on what they call “realistically accessible storage,” which is the amount of water in the nation’s two largest reservoirs that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has identified as critical for safe operations of the dams.

“Lake Mead is 31% full,” Kuhn said. “That’s really misleading because that assumes (Reclamation) will take the reservoir down to deadpool. And they’ve said in Records of Decision that they’re not going to do that.”

Two opposers in City of Aspen’s water court case

Two entities — the Basalt Water Conservancy District and the Colorado Water Conservation Board — are opposing Aspen’s plans to move their conditional water storage rights. 

In late May, the city reaffirmed its plans to build reservoirs to store water from Castle and Maroon creeks, but exactly where has not yet been decided. The city has identified five potential locations for reservoirs: on land the city owns in Woody Creek; Vagneur Gravel Quarry; and three underground sites — the Aspen Golf Course, Cozy Point Ranch and Zoline Open Space. 

The CWCB is the only entity in the state allowed to hold instream flow water rights, which are designed to preserve the environment to a reasonable degree. In its statement of opposition, the CWCB says Aspen’s application to change the location of its storage rights should not be granted because it holds instream flow rights that could be injured. The CWCB has instream flow rights on Woody Creek, East Maroon Creek, West Maroon Creek, Maroon Creek, Castle Creek and the Roaring Fork River.

It’s fairly typical for the CWCB to oppose water court applications that involve waterways where it has instream flow rights. 

“These are usually filed to ensure that any eventual decree includes the appropriate terms and conditions to prevent injury to the CWCB’s instream flow rights,” CWCB staff said in an email.

Attorney for Basalt Water Conservancy District Chris Geiger declined to comment on the record about the district’s statement of opposition. In its statement of opposition, the district says it owns water rights and interests in the Roaring Fork River and Colorado River basins that may be injured by the application.

Roan Creek fish barrier breaks ground

On Aug. 5, workers broke ground on the Roan Creek fish barrier, which is designed to protect a rare genetic strain of Colorado cutthroat trout by keeping out non-native fish like brook and rainbow trout. The concrete structure will act as a barrier to fish and also reconstruct dated irrigation infrastructure. The roughly $1 million project is overseen by the Middle Colorado Watershed Council. It was years in the making and is funded or supported by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the Colorado River District, Colorado Parks and Wildlife  and the Trout and Salmon Foundation. 

Conservation conversation continues

The theme of the August Colorado Water Congress summer conference in Steamboat Springs was all things conservation. With some type of water conservation program looking more and more likely for the Upper Colorado River basin states, panels and speakers focused on this topic. 

One of the most interesting panels happened on Tuesday morning and featured agricultural water users (including Carbondale’s Bill Fales) who have participated in conservation projects and programs. Carbondale hydrologist Seth Mason, who is studying irrigators’ willingness to participate in conservation programs summed up the inherent contradiction at the heart of these discussions: 

“We are not speaking about conservation with any kind of unified voice,” he said. “As a state, we are often saying, ‘This isn’t our problem. This is the Lower Basin’s problem.’ And as a set of Western Slope water users, I think we have a tendency to say, ‘This is Denver and Colorado Springs’ problem, it’s not our problem.’ So until we have a kind of coherent, cohesive vision on what our collective role is, it’s going to be hard to drive the sense of individual responsibility to really move the needle on participation.”