{"id":2451677,"date":"2019-11-28T20:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-29T03:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/colorado-basin-roundtable-oks-grant-to-study-crystal-river-backup-water-supply\/"},"modified":"2019-11-28T20:40:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-29T03:40:00","slug":"colorado-basin-roundtable-oks-grant-to-study-crystal-river-backup-water-supply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/colorado-basin-roundtable-oks-grant-to-study-crystal-river-backup-water-supply\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Basin Roundtable OKs grant to study Crystal River backup water supply"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
The Colorado River Water Conservation District and the West Divide Conservancy District gave up their conditional water rights in 2011 that could have allowed for a reservoir on the Crystal River at Placita. A proposed back-up water supply study has some groups worried that the idea of dams on the Crystal could be resurrected.<\/strong>
Brent Gardner-Smith\/Aspen Journalism<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The fight over damming the Crystal River has been resurrected, this time before there are even any dam projects to fight over.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Basin Roundtable voted Monday to recommend the state give $25,000 toward a water study in the Crystal River basin, despite calls from some to deny the Water Supply Reserve Fund request because of concerns that a study might conclude there is a need for water storage.<\/p>\n

The Colorado River Water Conservation District and the West Divide Water Conservancy District brought the grant request to the roundtable in Glenwood Springs in an effort to solve a long-acknowledged problem on the Crystal: In dry years, there may not be enough water for both irrigators and some residential subdivisions.<\/p>\n

On Nov. 18, the Gunnison Basin Roundtable gave its unanimous support to the grant application, even though its support was not necessary. Although the Crystal is in the Colorado River basin, its headwaters are in Gunnison County, and so the Gunnison roundtable decided to voice its support.<\/p>\n

The feasibility study would look at water demands and options for creating a basinwide backup water supply plan, known as an augmentation plan. The study will look at small storage alternatives, probably off the main stem of the Crystal. Until the study is completed, it\u2019s unclear how much water is needed for a basinwide backup supply.<\/p>\n

But some fear that the plan could include dams and reservoirs on the free-flowing Crystal, and they opposed the grant unless storage was off the table.<\/p>\n

Pitkin County Commissioner Kelly McNicholas Kury requested two amendments to the grant application: that any reservoir would be off the main stem of the river and would only be located downstream of the Sweet Jessup Canal diversion (about 2 miles downstream of Avalanche Creek) to preserve the possibility of designating 39 miles of the Crystal River as Wild and Scenic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not going to support this application as it\u2019s currently written,\u201d McNicholas Kury told roundtable members Monday. \u201cThe county continues to support Wild and Scenic designation on the Crystal.\u201d<\/p>\n

McNicholas Kury and two other roundtable members voted against the funding: recreation representative Ken Ransford and Eagle County representative Chuck Ogliby, who owns the Avalanche Ranch Cabins & Hot Springs in the Crystal River Valley.<\/p>\n

The Crystal River Caucus, which doesn\u2019t have a seat on the roundtable, also objected to the grant application and passed a resolution at its Nov. 14 meeting to that effect. In a letter to the roundtable, the caucus said it does not support the grant and urged voting roundtable members to deny the request. The caucus would, however, support a study and augmentation plan that evaluates options other than storage.<\/p>\n

But others downplayed the threat of dams, insisting they won\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not going to see a dam on the main stem of the Crystal,\u201d said Colorado River District President Dave Merritt. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to happen. The river district is not predisposed to dams. There is a need for a small amount of augmentation water up there. We are talking tens of acre-feet, probably.\u201d<\/p>\n

No backup water supply<\/p>\n

During the historic drought of late summer of 2018, the Ella Ditch, which irrigates agricultural land south of Carbondale, placed a call on the river for the first time ever. This means, in theory, that junior-rights holders upstream have to stop taking water so that the Ella Ditch, which has water rights dating to 1885, can receive its full decreed amount.<\/p>\n

Most junior-rights holders have what\u2019s known as an augmentation plan, which lets them continue using water during a call by replacing the called-for water with water from another source, such as a reservoir or exchange. The problem on the Crystal is that several residential subdivisions don\u2019t have augmentation plans.<\/p>\n

Without an augmentation plan, these entities \u2014 which are the town of Carbondale, the Marble Water Company, Chair Mountain Ranch, Crystal River Resort, Crystal View Heights and Seven Oaks Commons \u2014 could be fined for every day they are out of priority and could potentially have their water shut off, if there is a call on the river.<\/p>\n

Colorado Division of Water Resources Division 5 engineer Alan Martellaro said instead of each subdivision coming up with its own augmentation plan, a basinwide approach makes more sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think it would save everyone money if we had a reasonable regional solution,\u201d he said. \u201cIt looks a lot to us that a call from the Ella Ditch is going to be more common in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contentious history<\/p>\n

To understand why some groups are opposed to even just a study whether storage is an option, it helps to review the contentious history of water development in the Crystal River Valley.<\/p>\n

In 2011, the West Divide district and the Colorado River District abandoned their conditional water rights for nearly 200,000 acre-feet of water storage on the Crystal River after local groups \u2014 Crystal River Caucus, Pitkin County and Crystal Valley Environmental Protection Association \u2014 opposed the reservoirs tied to the conditional rights. Known as the West Divide project, the now-defunct conditional water rights were tied to a dam on the Crystal just downstream from Redstone, which would have created Osgood Reservoir, and a dam on the Crystal at Placita, which is at the bottom of McClure Pass.<\/p>\n

To try to prevent the specter of dams coming back to haunt the Crystal in the future, Pitkin County and other local groups have pushed for a federal designation under the Wild and Scenic River Act of 1968, which requires rivers to be free-flowing. The Colorado River District opposes the designation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith our challenging history with both the river district and West Divide \u2026 this is why we are very nervous whenever we hear discussion of any dams on the Crystal River,\u201d said Bill Jochems, Redstone resident and member of the Pitkin County Healthy Rivers board.<\/p>\n

In the end, the roundtable approved the grant request. A motion to amend the request with a no-storage requirement failed.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, storage is not the first choice,\u201d said Ken Neubecker, the roundtable\u2019s environmental representative and Colorado project director for environmental organization American Rivers. \u201cBut you have to look at all the options, including storage, or you\u2019re just not being responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two conservation districts plan to ask for a $50,000 grant from the Colorado Water Plan grant fund in early 2020 to fund the roughly $100,000 project. West Divide plans to contribute $15,000 and the Colorado River District $10,000.<\/p>\n

Aspen Journalism collaborates with The Aspen Times and other Swift Communications newspapers on coverage of water and rivers. For more, go to aspenjournalism.org.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Colorado River Water Conservation District and the West Divide Conservancy District gave up their conditional water rights in 2011 that could have allowed for a reservoir on the Crystal River at Placita. A proposed back-up water supply study has some groups worried that the idea of dams on the Crystal could be resurrected.Brent Gardner-Smith\/Aspen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2451677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 04:28:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2451677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2451677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2451677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2451677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}