Streams hit record lows as early melt slows flows

“It’s not very favorable”

This year’s warm spring has continued to set records—and not the kind that water experts like to see. Ohio Creek and Tomichi Creek both set records for low flow last week, with Ohio Creek breaking a 74-year-old record when it hit 3.2 cubic feet per second (cfs).
Ohio Creek has since bounced back up to 12 cfs, but Frank Kugel, general manager for the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, says that’s still well below normal. A more typical flow at this time of year would be around 160 cfs, and the low stream flows have water and agriculture experts concerned.

“Irrigators have been calling to get the outlook for water supply conditions, and it’s not looking very good. The few SNOTELs that are still up and running are not showing much snowpack… so we are telling people to [irrigate] early because irrigation water may not be there by mid-summer,” Kugel said.
Water calls are a real possibility this year, he continued, the most ominous of which is a possible call from the Gunnison Tunnel, the longest irrigation tunnel in the world, diverting water from the Gunnison River in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison to the arid Uncompahgre Valley around Montrose. That could have a dramatic impact on crop yields for ranchers—Kugel says that typically, three-quarters of a rancher’s water rights are junior to the Gunnison Tunnel. If a call were to come through, as it did during the drought years of 2002 and 2003, much of their irrigation water would be cut off.
“We’re concerned that we’re going into another dry period such as 2002 and 2003,” Kugel said. “We hopefully have a little more storage going into it, at least in Taylor Park, but it’s cause for concern.”
Storage in Taylor Park Reservoir will be carefully managed as a result. Kugel said the Local User Group is recommending that Taylor River flow be maintained at its current level of 75 cfs until the middle of May and then increased to a flow of 250 cfs from Memorial Day Weekend through August 15. That’s well below the typical peak of 350 to 450 cfs, but it aims to balance river recreation with water storage. Based on current projects, the reservoir would fill to about 80 percent of normal.
“People will have to deal with less water in the streams, but we’ll hopefully have a decent hay crop and good recreation,” Kugel said.
The Bureau of Reclamation, the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users and the Colorado River Water Conservancy District still need to approve the plan, but Kugel expects the measure to go into effect.
Paul Davidson, a hydrologist with the Bureau of Reclamation, echoed Kugel’s concern. Davidson thought he’d seen the driest summer of his career in 2002; he even felt bad for any future hydrologist who had to use it for comparison.
“Now I’m looking at 2002 as a pattern year for this runoff, which is not very favorable,” Davidson said. He added that the latest projections from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center show an inflow into Blue Mesa Reservoir at 47 percent of average. “That puts us into the bottom four years of record since they closed the gates in 1969.”
As a result, Davidson projects, Blue Mesa will fill to about the 645,000 acre-feet mark this summer, or 78 percent of normal. That’s significant, but not too far from earlier projections. And Davidson pointed out that conditions in 2002 were much drier as far as volume runoff in the reservoir. “For people who don’t have storage rights that’s going to be a hard summer,” Davidson said. “If they have storage rights, they’re going to be okay.”