By Jeremy Heiman
Organizers of a recent series of public meetings soliciting input for the Roaring Fork Watershed Plan say those meetings were successful.
    “It’s really been valuable to get the input of people who haven’t been immersed in this for years,” said Mark Fuller, director of the Ruedi Water and Power Authority, the main sponsor of the watershed plan.
    Geographer Sharon Clarke, a staff member of the Roaring Fork Conservancy, the lead consultant on the watershed plan, agreed that the effort was a success. Clarke is lead author of a huge research document, “State of the Roaring Fork Watershed Report,” published late last year.
    “We got quite a bit of good feedback,” Clarke said.
    Fuller said attendance and participation was pretty consistent up and down the valley. He said people who showed up for the meetings have shown a lot of concern about the impacts of development, and especially about the health of the fishery in the river and its tributaries.
    The fishery is an important economic asset. The Roaring Fork River offers the longest continuous stretch of river designated “Gold Medal” water in the state of Colorado, extending from Ruedi Dam to Glenwood Springs. Gold Medal water is defined as holding 60 pounds of quality trout per acre.
According to the “State of the Roaring Fork Watershed Report,” fishing generates about $17 million in revenue for local economies.
    The watershed report is the result of countless hours of work by a team of specialists. In particular, biologist Delia Malone and ecologist John Emerick walked 185 miles of streams gathering data on the river and its tributaries. Fuller said such studies done on the riparian (stream bank) habitat of the river system have brought to light much important data.
    “There’s surprisingly little excellent riparian habitat up and down the valley,” Fuller said. “The loss of that has been a real eye opener.”
    Participation was good in the two meetings nearest to Carbondale. At the Crystal River meeting on Sept. 10, one subject brought up by participants was the condition of Coal Creek, which flows into the Crystal at Redstone. During the years when MidContinent Resources was operating mines in Coal Basin, Coal Creek sometimes ran black with sediment. Now it is sometimes brown, but still carries considerable sediment into the river.
    Coal Creek, Clarke said, has probably always carried sediment, because the Coal Basin area is geologically unstable. But with the construction of Highway 133 came the destruction of wetlands at Coal Creek’s confluence with the Crystal, wetlands that once filtered much of the sediment out of the creek before it made its way into the river.
    The effect of agricultural irrigation on stream flows was also a topic of conversation at the Crystal River meeting. Clarke said that water diverted for irrigation actually prevents a sharp drop in water levels in the fall.
    “There’s been stream modeling data that shows stream flows increase in fall,” she said. Lower stream flows are seen in August and September due to diversion of water from the river, but irrigation water gradually passes through soil and returns to the river in October and November, enhancing flows during the season when streams are lowest.
    Another public meeting addressed conditions in the lower Roaring Fork sub-watershed, which extends from the confluence of the Crystal to the Roaring Fork’s confluence with the Colorado River. The Oct. 1 gathering in Glenwood Springs, where water quality was found to be poor, turned up the following suggested methods to improve water quality:
• Provide incentives for development to be more sustainable;
• Increase engagement between water managers and the public;
• Calculate and publicize the economic value of a healthy watershed;
• Educate the public on how to dispose of hazardous household materials.    Another topic discussed in the lower Roaring Fork meeting was the difficulty of rehabilitating degraded instream habitat. Participants suggested that local jurisdictions monitor fish populations and use public outreach and land conservation to preserve or improve both instream and riparian habitat. Land conservation might come into play where large ranches are on the real estate market — purchase of conservation easements or outright ownership by a conservation agency could prevent development that might degrade the habitat quality.
    One area where that would be useful is on upper Cattle Creek, a tributary that joins the lower Roaring Fork just north of Carbondale. Though riparian habitat on the lower reaches of Cattle Creek is severely degraded, according to the watershed report, the stream’s headwaters are in good condition, and harbor two populations of Colorado River cutthroat trout.
     Fuller said the team behind the watershed plan will scrutinize the new information from the public meetings for the next week or two before passing it along to a technical group that can take the ideas and flesh them out as a set of recommendations.
    “It’s going to take awhile to organize all that input into a set of logical, feasible, defensible recommendations,” he said.

The Watershed Plan: What is it?

The Roaring Fork Watershed Plan is “an opportunity for interested stakeholders to help set the direction for long-term management of the Roaring Fork Watershed’s water resources,” states a document associated with the plan.
The “State of the Roaring Fork Watershed Report,” represents Phase I of the two-part effort. It examines regional water management; surface and groundwater quantity; water quality; the quality of riparian and instream habitat; the potential effects of climate change; and the effects of diversion of Western Slope water to Front Range cities.
Phase II of the project entails the drafting and distribution of the watershed plan itself, including public meetings on the issues facing the subwatersheds of the Roaring Fork.
The creation of a plan to direct the management of water in the Roaring Fork drainage dovetails with an initiative begun in 2002 by the Colorado Water Conservation Board to conduct a basin-by-basin study of the state’s water supply and demand over the coming 30 years. Colorado’s population was 4.3 million in 2000. It is expected to balloon to 7.1 million by 2030.
When it is complete, the Roaring Fork Watershed Plan will be integrated by authorities representing the Colorado River basin into an assessment of the water needs for the entire basin. It will have the ability to influence how the state manages water in the region until 2030.

Next Steps

If you missed the public meeting in your area, you can still comment on the Roaring Fork Watershed Plan, its objectives and its recommendations by visiting Roaring Fork Conservancy’s Web site at watershedplan.blogspot.com.