RBC I As anyone who has lived in the West for even a short period of time knows, water is an important and ever challenging topic. Water rights have been fought and killed for, litigated and argued about for a century in Colorado and are once again coming to the forefront in Rio Blanco County.
On Sept. 15 the Rio Blanco County Commissioners hosted a presentation by Jeff Baessler of the Colorado Water Conservation Board and Roy Smith of the Bureau of Land Management regarding the Colorado Instream Flow and Natural Lake Level Program 2014 Recommendations for Rio Blanco County.
The program, which began in 1973, calls for a need of balance between industry, including oil and gas development and agriculture, and the natural environment. The Colorado Water Conservation Board (or CWCB) attempts to meet this goal by developing “instream flow water rights” which creates minimum flows between specific points in a stream or levels in a lake. The appropriation process for these waters is a three-year period in which data is gathered by both the BLM and CWCB, recommendations are developed and the public is notified. All water rights granted by the board in the program are considered junior rights and are secondary to those already possessing senior water rights.
In Rio Blanco County the streams with flow modifications being recommended by the BLM are East Douglass Creek, Soldier Creek, Piceance Creek and Yellow Creek. The data in both Piceance and Yellow Creek was collected in 2006 and Douglass and Soldier Creek in 2013. Instream water flow is measured by cubic foot per second (or cfs) and varies by season.
East Douglass Creek is broken into the upper and lower segments. The upper segment is mainly located in Garfield County and is a tributary to Brush Creek. The current instream water flow rights on this section of Douglass Creek are 1.0 cfs year round. However the BLM is recommending that the CWCB increase the minimum amount of water held back for instream flow to 3.1 cfs from May-July and 1.5 cfs from July-October.
The lower segment of East Douglass Creek, which is located in Rio Blanco County, currently has a minimum requirement of 1.5 cfs year round, but is recommended to have an increase to 2.0 cfs from May- October.
Soldier Creek, which is a fork of East Douglass, currently has a minimum level of 1.5 cfs. The recommended increase will be to 3.1 cfs from May-September.
Piceance and Yellow Creek are both areas that are highly used by the oil and gas industry and also have the largest amount of data collection, going back as far as 50 years. Neither creek currently has an instream water right. In Piceance Creek the recommendation will be 4.0 cfs year round. The BLM has concerns that Piceance Creek levels have slowly and steady decreased as energy production in the area has increased. Roy Smith of the BLM stated that they are “trying to prevent a train wreck in the future.”
Yellow Creek (which is unique in that it is partially spring-fed) is also broken into upper and lower segments. The upper segment has a recommended cfs of 1.5 March-June 15 and .65 June 16- Feb. 28. The lower segment has a higher recommended cfs of 2.25 from March-June 15 and 1.05 from June 16-Feb. 28.
The BLM is seeking to increase the minimum instream water levels in these areas in order to protect a variety of fish species found in the creeks. However, according to Jeff Baessler of the CWCB, these recommended levels will not be enough to please the environmentalist groups who argue that more water must be held back in order to protect the fish in all life stages.
While environmentalist groups may wish to see a larger amount of water held back many local oil and gas companies and ranchers view the problem as too much water being required to stay in stream. Most industry members currently hold senior water rights on these creeks, but if oil and gas exploration were to increase more water would be needed.
The new increased levels of water required to stay in stream may hinder the industry from being able to draw the water they need for future use.
Meeker rancher Jerry Oldland expressed concern at the meeting at the unreliability of statistical models and the data gathered. He also argued that the decrease in flow in Piceance Creek is not from energy development, but from 15 years of drought. County Commissioner Shawn Bolton also articulated worries about the recommendations. Bolton said that after dealing with numerous water issues he felt that the “state is looking for water which raises concerns and starts to get a little alarming.”
The CWCB and BLM will hold another presentation in November to get further input from local stakeholders. After that the recommendations will be presented to the Colorado Water Conservation Board in January who will hear public input and then decide if the new recommendations should become junior water rights.
If the old saying that a negotiation is successful when both parties leave unhappy is correct, then the new instream flow water right recommendations would certainly qualify as a success with environmentalists concerned that enough water will not be held back and local industry equally worried about the impact on future development.
