Water concerns continue for Gunnison Basin as summer nears

Call on water averted, partially

They said it wouldn’t happen two years in a row. They reminded us of 2002 and 1972 and other drought years and said in the year following one dry winter, we’d be flush with water. But they were wrong.

“This year, coming on the heels of a dry 2012, bodes for another difficult water supply year for water users in this basin,” Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District manager Frank Kugel says. “The vast majority of our water supply comes through snow melt.”
According to Kugel, Blue Mesa Reservoir is just 41 percent full and Taylor Park Reservoir is 54 percent full, while the water content in the snowpack this year is around 60 percent of average. The depth of the snowpack in the upper Gunnison Basin and Taylor Park are just 65 percent and 66 percent of average, respectively, causing “grave concerns” among area water users about the availability of water for the upcoming growing and river season.
With the forecast for the months ahead showing hotter and drier weather than normal, water managers in the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District are securing the water needed to keep downstream water users happy and make the Gunnison Valley green this summer.
“In 2002-3, the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association placed an administrative call on our basin that curtailed water use up here to satisfy their senior demands downstream,” Kugel said. “To prepare for that possibility this year, and mitigate the impacts of a call, we entered into a deal with the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association to purchase water out of the Aspinall Unit.”
After some negotiating, the Water Conservancy District agreed to buy 4,500 acre-feet of water from the unit, comprised of Blue Mesa, Morrow Point and Crystal reservoirs.
The extra water will be sent downstream to the Uncompahgre Valley and, in return, they won’t place a call on upstream water use. The agreement will preserve water rights awarded in 1941 or before through this year, while many water rights decreed up until 1956 will be honored through the UGRWCD’s own storage program.
Kugel explained that the water decreed in 1941 was the result of a push by local ranchers who wanted an additional 3 cubic feet per second (CFS) flowing for each of their 40-acre hay meadows, along with the 1 CFS originally granted with the land.
“That is very important for the hay crop in our basin and that junior right was in jeopardy of being shut off, starting in late April and continuing through early to mid-May,” Kugel says. “We worked out an agreement with water users in the Uncompahgre Valley and they will call down to water rights that will curtail very junior water rights in our basin.”
The water rights being affected were granted after 1957 and Kugel says most are associated with ponds, domestic water uses or subdivision water storage. But most of those losses in the Gunnison Basin have also been mitigated by the UGRWCD, which is drawing water from the Meridian Lake Reservoir to take care of local needs.
But there’s a big difference between the amount of water people need and how much they want in a river valley economy heavily dependent on tourism. Kugel says five groups relying on the Taylor River for their summer business—whitewater rafting, wade fishing, private landowners, agriculture and flat water recreation—reached an agreement that will provide a peak of 250 CFS from the dam for the month of July this year.
The same amount of water flowed at peak periods from the Taylor dam last summer, although it was for a longer period of time than the peak flows expected this summer. And the change over just the last five years has been significant, falling from a peak flow of almost 1,200 CFS in the summer of 2008. As of April 1, just 40 CFS were flowing from the dam and the river reached 83 CFS at Almont.
Mark Schumacher, owner of Almont-based Three Rivers Resort, says it’s too early to tell how the summer fishing and rafting season will shake out, but adds, “The bad news is that there will be less water from August 1 through September, especially the last 15 days of August and September. [That] really hurts fishing, the rafting season will be over mid-August unless we get more moisture this spring. These flows were set on the March 1 forecast, and hopefully we picked up in March and these spring storms continue.”
In addition to the purchased water to avert a call, Kugel says the city of Gunnison is taking steps to conserve water this spring, agreeing at the request of the UGRWCD to keep the ditches running through town closed until May 20, leaving city residents looking for other means of irrigating their lawns and gardens. The agreement will deposit an additional 1,000 CFS into Blue Mesa for almost a month.
“So the city users in town will not have water flowing through ditches for those three weeks,” Kugel says.
Conservation measures and proactive water purchases may become the norm as winter weather threatens to become increasingly milder and as the population in the arid west continues to grow. And the fear of future water shortages has led to a shift in the local water management strategy.
“We’re continuing to seek storage opportunities in our basin. We feel storage is one of the best solutions available, especially in the face of climate change,” Kugel says. “We’re being told to expect run-off earlier and earlier yet we typically have higher demands later in the summer. So we’ll need to be able to capture water for our needs.”
Conversations about augmenting the amount of stored water in the upper Gunnison Valley have gotten renewed attention in Mt. Crested Butte as well, where the Town Council has batted around the idea of exploring storage opportunities, including one right behind town hall.
There’s also an effort to upgrade existing water storage facilities and reservoirs to capture every available drop of water. The biggest hurdle to augmenting area water storage, Kugel says, has been the lack of suitable places to put a new reservoir. That and a weather forecast that isn’t showing much rain.
“I would say the forecasts for the following week or two are encouraging, but the long-term forecast is warmer and drier. So we’re not given to optimism for the remainder of the spring and summer for precipitation,” Kugel says. “And the higher temperatures have a much bigger impact on the overall water supply.”