GREEN PARADE: GRAND COUNTY & FRONT RANGE COME TO WATERSHED AGREEMENT
By Cindy Kleh / Photos by Carter Photographics

FIGHTING FOR THE FRASER: Kirk Klancke, President of the Headwaters Chapter of Trout Unlimited (TU), and Scott Linn, Vice President of TU, believe that the Fraser River needs more water, especially flushing flows, to improve its health.

At first glance, one would never guess that the rivers, streams and lakes that make up the Headwaters of the Colorado River are endangered. The peaceful gurgling streams don’t reflect the long-standing war over an increasingly precious resource – fresh water.

The Fraser River begins in Grand County as pure-white snowflakes left by moisture-laden storms that lash the Continental Divide most of the year. They melt under spring sunshine, fusing with other snowflakes to begin their journey downhill as the clear, ice-cold mountain stream of beer commercials.

Magnesium chloride from highway snow removal soon enters the stream, settling on rocky bottoms as a slimy layer that prevents aquatic wildlife from laying eggs. An estimated 6,000 tons of traction sand is left by snowplows each year just on the west side of Berthoud Pass alone, filling up stream bottoms with sediment and creating less deep pools that absorb the sun’s heat.

Straws in the Headwaters
But it is transbasin water diversions that endanger the Fraser River the most. Sixty percent of this stream water will be sent to the Front Range, most of it sold to customers of Denver Water, a utility that services a quarter of the water customers in Colorado – 1.3 million thirsty people … and growing.

Water rights over the Colorado Headwaters were signed more than a century ago, and were designed to help agriculture bloom on the arid Eastern Slope. Grand County was close (as the crow flies) to farmlands that needed only the mountains’ seemingly endless supply of naturally purified water. But today, most of that water goes to urban sprawl. Currently, three quarters of Colorado’s precipitation falls west of the Divide while four-fifths of its population reside on the east side. According to state demographers, Colorado’s population of 5 million will likely double by 2050, and 85 percent of that growth will be on the Front Range.

Denver Water has proposed to meet its future water needs by more than doubling the height and storage capacity of the dam of Gross Reservoir near Boulder. An extra 18,000 acre feet of water would be taken every year from the Fraser and Williams Fork river systems. (An acre-foot of water is a one-foot-deep acre of water or about 325,851 gallons – enough for an average family of four’s usage for a year.)

The “Moffat Project” is named for the Moffat Tunnel at Winter Park Resort – a giant straw through which the proposed additional water from Grand County’s streams will travel downhill to Denver. Added to existing diversions, up to 85 percent of the Fraser River’s historical flow could be diverted eastward before even reaching its namesake town.

And what a historical flow it was! The Fraser River was a pristine coldwater fishery and the favorite fishing destination of our 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower … back in the 1950s when the Fraser consistently gushed cold, clear water – the perfect habitat for rainbows, browns and cutthroats, and all the other wildlife that depended on the river for survival.

The Fraser River Today
While the Colorado Department of Transportation is diligently trying to solve the sand-runoff problem on Berthoud Pass, the massive water diversions that began in the 1930s have taken their toll on the Fraser River.

NEGOTIATING FOR THE COUNTY: County Manager Lurline Underbrink-Curran, left, and County Commissioner James Newberry underwent five years of water negotiations that led to the Colorado River Cooperative Agreement.

“You don’t have to be a scientist to realize that the Fraser is in a state of decline,” says Scott Linn, Vice President of the Headwaters Chapter of Trout Unlimited. “There’s a high amount of sedimentation getting into the riffles, and the flushing flows are not adequate to break it up. After years of low flows, algal blooms are growing, and trout need a clean, rocky bottom to lay eggs.”

Linn names other facts that point to diminished water quality in the river: a decrease in the number of stoneflies, mayflies and other insects and small fish that trout eat; and increased water temperatures in the summer due to low flows. (Trout are a cold-water speciesand suffer from lack of oxygen in warmer waters.)

An End To Water Wars?
Animosity and distrust has built up over the years between east- and west-slope interests, pitting Denver’s growing population and absolute right to the water against the West Slope’s moral outrage over a dying riparian ecosystem.

Grand County girded its loins for battle by creating a million-dollar Stream Management Plan, a compilation of intricate biological data for 80 miles of the county’s rivers and tributaries. An additional $2 million has been spent on negotiations – five long years of private discussions that have resulted in a proposed sharing agreement between Denver Water; Grand, Summit and Eagle Counties; the Colorado River District; and 30 other partners.

The Colorado River Cooperative Agreement, still needing federal agencies’ approval, requires compromises on all sides, and like any deal of this magnitude, no side gets exactly what it wants. “Grand County and the Front Range are both looking for certainty in the future,” says County Commissioner James Newberry, who, with County Manager and lead negotiator, Lurline Underbrink-Curran, was instrumental in hammering out the water deal.

The entire 50-page proposal can be found on the River District’s website (crwcd.org), but the stipulations most important to Grand County include:
Grand County ceases all opposition to the Moffat Firming Project. This will save both sides the exorbitant costs of taking the battle to court.

The additional water will only be taken from the West Slope during spring runoff, and only during normal to wet years.

Denver Water will dedicate funds (by passing the cost onto its reuse water customers) to enhance aquatic habitat in the Colorado River Basin while providing protections for river flows and water quality.

Denver Water will be able to resell its treated wastewater to well-dependent southern suburbs, but cannot seek additional water from the Colorado Headwaters (nor can its reuse customers).

Denver Water will not undertake any future water development without the approval of Grand County and the Colorado River District.

A collaborative process, dubbed “Learning By Doing,” will be created to address possible future environmental issues due to the diversions. Denver Water, Grand County and other entities will use the flexibility in Denver Water’s system to input water where needed for the adaptive management of the county’s rivers.

Happily Ever After?
“The Fraser and Upper Colorado will get some help to maintain stream health, but the enhancement offer does not include flushing flows,” explains Kirk Klancke, President of the Headwaters Chapter of Trout Unlimited and manager of the Winter Park Ranch Water and Sanitation District. “Without out-of-bank flows (which occur during spring runoff), the river will slowly choke to death with sediment. Weedy rivers, diminished wildlife and lower flows will send our summer tourist dollars elsewhere.”

Klancke, a Fraser native and avid fly fisherman, has witnessed the Fraser’s deterioration over the course of his lifetime. He advocates more conservation on the Front Range – one point that was hardly mentioned in the agreement. “Denver had less than 13 inches of precipitation last year. 50 percent of the water diverted from this county went to grow Kentucky Bluegrass – a thirsty plant from a very wet environment.”

Kirk contends that the Front Range could be conserving water as well as other dry, western cities like Las Vegas, which reuses 80 percent of its water compared to 8 percent currently in Denver. In addition, the cost of water in Denver is cheap compared to other western cities (and dirt cheap compared to European and Scandinavian cities), and this fact does not compel Front Range customers to conserve or even consider replacing their green lawns with xeroscaping. (Las Vegas prohibits green lawns for new houses, has strict lawn-watering restrictions and high water prices.)

Conservation is the cheapest and fastest way to create more water, but less demand does not equal good business for water utilities. There are still many unanswered questions at this point, but one thing is for sure: the various demands for water in Colorado will only increase, and global warming trends will exasperate the shortages with earlier snowmelt and more evaporation.

The time has come for Coloradans to ask themselves what’s most precious: green lawns or live rivers? saving a few dollars a month on water bills or protecting an eight-billion-dollar-a-year tourism industry that depends on sparkling mountain ecosystems?

Similar negotiations will be playing out on the Upper Colorado River at Windy Gap, where the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District is planning a project of their own which will increase their diversion from the river by another 28,000 acre feet – 10,000 acre feet more than Denver is planning to take! Read more on the Windy Gap Firming Project in our next issue.

READ MORE STORIES FROM THIS ISSUE:
• Green Parade: Beetle-Kill Wood Gets Second Life in Mountain Cabin
• Green Parade: Practically Green Program Saves Energy & $$ for Grand County Government
• Green Parade: Winter Park Resort Takes Green to the Next Level
• Green Parade: Recycling Opportunities in Grand County
• Summer 2011 Articles