The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Public meeting on Tuesday
Water law is complex in Colorado. Lucky for fish, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has developed a new series of complex water management schemes for the Wayne Aspinall series of dams on the Gunnison River, in order to protect several species of endangered fish that live within and downstream of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.
A draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for the Aspinall Unit Re-operations plan was released for review on February 13, initiating a 70-day public comment period that ends on April 24. The DEIS contains several different management alternatives that each involve storing and releasing water in the three dams in a different way, along with more than 600 pages of information and data.
Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District (UGRWCD) attorney John McClow says the DEIS up for public review isn’t much different from an earlier draft that water officials saw last fall.
He said the UGRWCD will be making some comments on the DEIS, but “I don’t have any heartburn with it. It covers all the bases.”
High Country Citizens’ Alliance (HCCA) is also reviewing the document and may make comments, according to HCCA’s water director Steve Glazer.
There are five alternatives included in the DEIS. As usual in federal environmental reviews, the bureau has included a “no action” alternative that would continue to employ current water management practices in the Aspinall dam series.
Alternative B is the bureau’s preferred alternative, and manages water for a series of spring flushing flows at different levels, along with downstream flow targets at varying points during the year. The minimum flow would be 300 cubic feet per second (cfs), and the maximum would be the 2,150 cfs capacity of the Crystal Dam hydroelectric power plant.
In a March 17 written report to the UGRWCD board, McClow said one downside of the preferred alternative was it could result in a reduction of hydropower generation among the Aspinall dam series in all but the wettest years.
During the UGRWCD’s regular meeting on March 23, McClow said he had a chance to speak with a representative of the Colorado River District and they were in support of the preferred alternative. “It looks like that will be the consensus of most of the Western Slope participants,” he said.
Alternative A presents a management plan intended to create strong spring peak flows with an over-abundance of water in the Aspinall Unit, but could pose a risk of spill at the Crystal Dam.
Alternative C includes longer “ramping up” periods for the flow targets, while Alternative D presents sharp jumps in flow levels.
All of the alternatives would be managed to meet the requirements of a decreed federal reserved water right for the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. After years of negotiations between water users, interest groups and the state and federal government, Gunnison water court judge Steven Patrick signed the decree into law on December 31, 2008, shortly before the DEIS was released.
According to the DEIS, “the secretary of the interior’s “exercise of the federal reserved water right for Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park will be coordinated with the implementation of any of the Aspinall action alternatives. To the extent practicable, this water right shall be exercised to achieve a single peak flow, subject to all Aspinall Unit authorized purposes.”
McClow says once the comment period ends and the bureau has time to make a final revision, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will issue a record of decision.
But perhaps more important for water users in the Gunnison Basin, once a Record of Decision is posted, the UGRWCD is hoping that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will issue a document called a programmatic biological opinion (PBO), in response to the new Aspinall operations scheme.
McClow says the PBO would basically be a declaration from the Fish and Wildlife Service that the new Aspinall operation plan would not put the endangered fish populations in jeopardy.
McClow says if a PBO is not issued, then any new water development projects in the Gunnison Basin will have to undergo a separate consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service—including Gunnison County Electric Association’s potential hydropower project at the Taylor Dam, and the UGRWCD’s stake in changing the dam structure of Lake San Cristobal near Lake City.
McClow says the bureau included a biological assessment of its own in the DEIS, but the Fish and Wildlife Service does not have to follow it. But, “Hopefully the Service will see it the same way,” McClow says.
The DEIS of the Aspinall Re-Operations can be downloaded from crestedbuttenews.com, by clicking on the link at the bottom of the online story.
There will be public meeting to discuss the Aspinall DEIS at the multipurpose building of the Gunnison rodeo grounds on April 7 from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Comments can be sent to: Steve McCall, Bureau of Reclamation, Western Colorado Area Office, 2764 Compass Drive, Suite 106, Grand Junction, CO 81506.
