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Eye on the Eagle River
Are we taking good enough care of the Eagle River — and is there enough water to go around?
ENLARGE
Mike Giesler pulls a brown trout out of the Eagle River while fly fishing in Eagle-Vail. While challenged in some areas, other parts of the Eagle are excellent for trout fishing.
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ENLARGE
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Here's a look at the Watershed Projects in the Eagle River Valley.
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ENLARGE
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The Eagle River, flowing here through Eagle, is considered "over-appropriated," meaning there are more claims on the water than actual gallons of it.
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EAGLE COUNTY — It’s about 77 miles from the headwaters of the Eagle River high atop Tennessee Pass to the river’s confluence with the Colorado River near Dotsero. That may not be far as the crow flies or the SUV trundles, but contained within those 77 miles is the Eagle River watershed — and a vibrant community that depends on the river for most of its water.
Think of a curled-up leaf with a main vein running down the center and smaller veins running to it from the edges. The leaf is our watershed, the center vein is the Eagle River, and those smaller conduits full of water are the many tributaries that flow into the main body of water.
There are other leafs nearby — Summit County with its Blue River watershed; the Roaring Fork — but they’re entirely different watersheds serving different communities. The Basalt area may technically be part of Eagle County, but the fact that it’s in another watershed makes it another place entirely — a notion driven home by the recent attempt to establish home rule for the county and thus greater representation for that different watershed.
Think of a curled-up leaf with a main vein running down the center and smaller veins running to it from the edges. The leaf is our watershed, the center vein is the Eagle River, and those smaller conduits full of water are the many tributaries that flow into the main body of water.
There are other leafs nearby — Summit County with its Blue River watershed; the Roaring Fork — but they’re entirely different watersheds serving different communities. The Basalt area may technically be part of Eagle County, but the fact that it’s in another watershed makes it another place entirely — a notion driven home by the recent attempt to establish home rule for the county and thus greater representation for that different watershed.
We may not think much about the Eagle as we drive parallel to it at 70 mph, but its influence looms large. Developers, sanitation districts and state and local governments wrangle constantly over the river’s water.
Whose water is it, anyway? How much can be taken out without damaging the habitat for fish and other wildlife? Is there enough for all the new development either on the books or anticipated over the coming decades?
In water-lawyer language, the Eagle River is “over-appropriated.” Every drop is owned by someone, and over-appropriated simply means there are more owners than drops. In non-drought years, this isn’t typically a big deal, but when supplies dip, those with water rights “senior” to others can exert those claims and make things hard on those with more junior rights.
One way those with more junior rights can still get their share is to replace (or “augment”) what they take out of the Eagle with water from elsewhere. The Eagle River Water and Sanitation District, along with Vail Resorts and the Upper Eagle Regional Water Authority developed the Eagle Park Reservoir near Fremont Pass for just this purpose. The Eagle Park has 2,000 acre feet available for three consecutive dry or drought years.
All that works fine most of the time, until droughts come along or the topic of “out-of-basin” augmentation comes up. Legally, an entity like the Eagle Park Reservoir can preserve some of its content by replacing water taken from the Eagle with water purchased from another place - namely, Green Mountain Reservoir over in Summit County. But that water doesn’t go back into the Eagle; it goes into the Colorado, meaning a net loss of water out of the Eagle.
Whose water is it, anyway? How much can be taken out without damaging the habitat for fish and other wildlife? Is there enough for all the new development either on the books or anticipated over the coming decades?
In water-lawyer language, the Eagle River is “over-appropriated.” Every drop is owned by someone, and over-appropriated simply means there are more owners than drops. In non-drought years, this isn’t typically a big deal, but when supplies dip, those with water rights “senior” to others can exert those claims and make things hard on those with more junior rights.
One way those with more junior rights can still get their share is to replace (or “augment”) what they take out of the Eagle with water from elsewhere. The Eagle River Water and Sanitation District, along with Vail Resorts and the Upper Eagle Regional Water Authority developed the Eagle Park Reservoir near Fremont Pass for just this purpose. The Eagle Park has 2,000 acre feet available for three consecutive dry or drought years.
All that works fine most of the time, until droughts come along or the topic of “out-of-basin” augmentation comes up. Legally, an entity like the Eagle Park Reservoir can preserve some of its content by replacing water taken from the Eagle with water purchased from another place - namely, Green Mountain Reservoir over in Summit County. But that water doesn’t go back into the Eagle; it goes into the Colorado, meaning a net loss of water out of the Eagle.
Water terms
• Acre foot: A measure of water equal to the amount it takes to cover an acre one-foot deep; about 326,000 gallons and considered enough to supply a family of four for a year.
• Augmentation: The practice of replacing water taken from one source with water from another source. |
What’s realistic
The more various developers and other water users employ this out-of-basin augmentation strategy, the more water is being lost out of the Eagle River. Recognizing the potential problem, the county’s planning commission earlier this year discussed making it a condition of development approval that water taken from the Eagle be replaced in the Eagle.
The Eagle River Watershed Council tries to protect the river, so to executive director Caroline Bradford, the notion of taking water out and not replacing it harms the river. But, she acknowledges, even large projects the Watershed Council has undertaken, such as cleaning up tons of toxic mine waste, is child’s play compared to tussling with water lawyers and their powerful clients.
“There’s going to be an issue over whether it’s realistic or not,” Bradford said, referring to making sure water taken from the Eagle is replaced in the Eagle. “The cumulative impact of growth and development on the amount of water in the river is really important … but people haven’t been able to get their arms around what it means. It gets into a battle of the experts.”
For Bill Heicher, though, the issue appears simple: There’s not enough water to go around in the face of continued development in the county.
Heicher, a longtime Eagle resident who also serves as Eagle's open space coordinator, addressed a letter to the planning commission saying serious issues of water availability are at stake. He called the out-of-basin augmentation a “poor practice” because it negatively impacts the Eagle River’s integrity and runs counter to a recommendation in the Eagle River Watershed Plan.
But Eagle County Commissioner Tom Stone said the planning commission doesn’t have the power to pass a 100-percent in-basin augmentation ordinance - only the county commissioners can do that. Stone said that, while the other two county commissioners have discussed such an ordinance, they’ve backed off in the face of reality.
“As they learn more about water and gain a higher level of understanding, they realize we really can’t do this,” Stone said. “It’s not in our best interest.”
What’s a watershed?
“… that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community.”
-John Wesley Powell |
Is there enough?
Even if questions like augmentation seem relevant only to experts, the reality is those decisions have relevance to all the living things that rely on the river - be they human, animal or plant.
Taking care of the Eagle
A number of projects are being considered or undertaken to clean up or otherwise improve different sections of the Eagle River — mostly under the direction of the Eagle River Watershed Council. Here’s a list of some of the major ones:
• Camp Hale Restoration: The site of a training area for World War II winter combat troops, the area near the headwaters of the Eagle River contains some leftover toxic materials that need to be cleaned up. Since the Army diverted the river from its original course in that area, the Watershed Council would like to one day see it restored – but that’s not going to happen for some time. • Belden Cribbings: Perched above the Eagle near the old mining town of Belden are tons of mine tailings being held back by rotting timbers. The Environmental Protection Agency is poised to deal with the problem sometime in the next year. • Eagle Mine: Site of a sustained cleanup under the Federal Superfund program, much of the worst of the toxic waste from the old zinc mine has been cleaned up. The Watershed Council is still pushing for more to be done while also having concerns about the proposed construction of a golf course by the Ginn Company on top of the consolidated waste pile from the cleanup. • Vail Pass “Basin of Last Resort”: The Watershed Council is working with the Forest Service and Town of Vail to build a sediment basin in Black Gore Creek to capture sand and remove it before it flows all the way into Gore Creek in Vail. • Avon: Efforts are underway to create better access to the river, especially for boaters looking to put-in near the new Confluence development site. Bridge piling removal: Remnants of an old bridge that need to be taken out. The Town of Avon is pursuing a variety of things to make the river safer for boaters. • Edwards: The Watershed Council is vying for millions in grant money to do riverbank restoration downstream from the old B&B property to the sewer plant. Years of cattle grazing have defoliated the banks, so the aim is to restore trees and bushes which will reduce erosion into the river and eliminate habitat for the worm that contributes to whirling disease in fish. Also in the works are improvements to the area near the sewer plant. Better parking, a real boat-launch area, a toddler park, path construction and revegetation along the banks are planned. • Wolcott: Some tributaries through agricultural land have significant erosion as a result of cattle operations over the years. A fix for the problem has not yet been identified, and the situation could be changed if a reservoir goes in at Wolcott. • Gypsum ponds: The state wildlife area is on the list to some day get some attention, including extensive noxious weed removal and bank stabilization. • Dotsero: Tamarisk removal. An ongoing effort to rid the riverbanks of invasive weeds was finally completed by Eagle County in early November. Monitoring will still be ongoing. |
If the Eagle River is the water lifeline of a county whose population is predicted to roughly double in the next 30 years, the simple question is whether water experts think there will be enough water to sustain that growth.
Stone said he relies on the experts who provide the water, and that they say we’ve got enough.
One of those experts is Rick Sackbauer, a former board member of the Water and Sanitation District and board chairman of the Eagle Park Reservoir Company. His answer to the question is simple: “Yes.”
Sackbauer refers to a document known as the Eagle River Assembly Report, a master plan for local water use begun about a decade ago that included all local water entities as well as related players, such as the cities of Colorado Springs and Aurora. The plan, recently updated, is still viable, Sackbauer said.
“We have enough water, we have a plan for enough water,” he said. “We don’t see any differences (in the plan).”
Even so, the fish and bugs that live in and around the Eagle may not always agree. In drier times of year when water use is still high, the level of the river can drop to where fish have barely enough water to swim.
That can trigger the Colorado River Water Conservation Board to exercise its “minimum instream flow” water right to protect the river. That’s only happened once in recent memory, but as demand on the river grows, so too could the effects on the river’s aquatic life.
Stone said he relies on the experts who provide the water, and that they say we’ve got enough.
One of those experts is Rick Sackbauer, a former board member of the Water and Sanitation District and board chairman of the Eagle Park Reservoir Company. His answer to the question is simple: “Yes.”
Sackbauer refers to a document known as the Eagle River Assembly Report, a master plan for local water use begun about a decade ago that included all local water entities as well as related players, such as the cities of Colorado Springs and Aurora. The plan, recently updated, is still viable, Sackbauer said.
“We have enough water, we have a plan for enough water,” he said. “We don’t see any differences (in the plan).”
Even so, the fish and bugs that live in and around the Eagle may not always agree. In drier times of year when water use is still high, the level of the river can drop to where fish have barely enough water to swim.
That can trigger the Colorado River Water Conservation Board to exercise its “minimum instream flow” water right to protect the river. That’s only happened once in recent memory, but as demand on the river grows, so too could the effects on the river’s aquatic life.
Stewardship
As someone who spends a lot of time thinking on these types of questions, Caroline Bradford acknowledges that, compared to many rivers, the Eagle is almost pristine. That doesn’t mean it’s without its problems, though. From traction sand from I-70 making its way into the river to the ongoing cleanup and monitoring of the Eagle Mine site to noxious weed cleanups and riverbank restoration projects, the Watershed Council has its hands full.
Bradford recalls going to a conference of watershed leaders a few years back, where she heard of horrendous pollution problems confronting other groups such as hers. Thinking about the problem of traction sand compared to what others were confronting, she said, made her feel almost embarrassed.
“But they said to me, ‘No, you have to do what you can on the issue right in front of you. You can’t compare what’s worse for you to what’s worse for someone else,’” she said. “We’re protecting Gore Creek and the Eagle river from what is pretty minor pollution on a global scale.”
With some pretty good success stories to tell, the Watershed Council nonetheless keeps putting pressure where they think it’s needed. Millions have been spent cleaning the Eagle Mine, but as Bradford says, it’s not done yet.
“It may sound greedy to want more, but that’s my job,” she said. “It’s not clean; they’re not finished. And just because we never thought we could get it this clean doesn’t mean we should be satisfied.”
Alex Miller can be reached at 748-2931, or amiller@vaildaily.com.
Vail Daily, Vail, Colorado
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