{"id":757172,"date":"2026-07-11T18:42:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T18:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/757172\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T18:42:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T18:42:18","slug":"how-one-organization-is-working-to-help-keep-water-in-rivers-during-extreme-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/757172\/","title":{"rendered":"How one organization is working to help keep water in rivers during extreme drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colorado is known as the headwaters state<\/a>, meaning that nearly all of its water supply originates inside the state\u2019s borders as precipitation, primarily mountain snowpack. In a year like this, where the winter\u2019s dismal snowpack led streamflows to reach unprecedented lows, some organizations are actively working to keep water in the rivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Water Education Colorado hosted an online discussion on Thursday, July 9, with experts from the Upper Yampa Valley Water Conservancy District and Colorado Water Trust to answer: \u201cWhy is there water in this river, but not that one?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom my opinion, sometimes it\u2019s geography, sometimes it\u2019s water right seniority and availability, and other times it\u2019s a little bit of luck,\u201d said Danielle Snyder, a water resources specialist for Colorado Water Trust based in Durango. \u201cMore often than not, though, it\u2019s the people in the communities we work with that make it happen. A reservoir operator is going to make a release. A project partner is willing to lease us water. And (Colorado Parks and Wildlife) is willing to go into the river to evaluate conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado Water Trust is a nonprofit organization that started in 2001 and has negotiated agreements that have returned over 32 billion gallons of water to streams, according to Kate Ryan, a Boulder-based water lawyer and Colorado Water Trust\u2019s executive director. The success relies on tools and systems like instream flow agreements, reservoirs, leases and water rights acquisitions to keep rivers flowing.<\/p>\n

Ryan said that in some of the state\u2019s larger rivers \u2014 including the Yampa and Colorado rivers \u2014 \u201cnearly half of our water is added back into those streams\u201d through the efforts of the organization and its partners.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Colorado water rights complicate flows\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"The Roaring Fork River flows on June 27, 2026, at Basalt River Park. Austin Colbert\/The Aspen Times archive<\/p>\n

The challenge of keeping water in rivers tracks back to Colorado\u2019s prior appropriation doctrine in the state constitution, which established a \u201cfirst in time, first in right\u201d approach when it comes to water.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single drop of water, if you go out in a stream today, is headed to somebody downstream,\u201d Ryan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most senior water rights belong to those users who were first to get their water rights recognized, but this does not mean that senior water rights always get all they are entitled to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a year like this, we have water rights as senior as the 1900s that are not getting water this year because the drought is so severe,\u201d Ryan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Colorado didn\u2019t recognize certain uses as rights initially, meaning that some rights \u2014 including municipal, industrial and environmental water rights \u2014 didn\u2019t come until later. It wasn\u2019t until the 1970s that the state authorized the Colorado Water Conservation Board to appropriate water rights for instream flow, requiring water to stay in rivers to benefit the environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen stream flow starts to drop low, the junior water users are cut off first,\u201d Ryan said. \u201cIf you think about it, those 1970s water rights are very, very junior. In a year like this, it\u2019s very unlikely that they are going to be satisfied.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instream flow water rights\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the Colorado Water Trust, the state\u2019s instream flow program<\/a> represents a vital way to keep rivers flowing. Since 1973, the Colorado Water Conservation Board has established instream water rights on nearly 1,700 stream segments covering more than 9,700 miles of stream, and natural lake level water rights on 480 natural lakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t have those kinds of water rights in a year like this, there may be rivers that are going completely dry,\u201d Ryan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One strategy for the organization is to acquire or change senior water rights so they can be used for instream flow, Ryan said. When changed from the original right \u2014 whether it was used for agriculture, mining, municipal or some other water use \u2014 it retains its seniority, but requires that the flow remain in the river and cannot be diverted for consumptive uses. The organization put out a call<\/a> in April to ask agriculture partners to consider temporarily sharing water from their rights to keep rivers flowing.<\/p>\n

Reservoir storage and leasing water\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"The south side of Stagecoach Reservoir in Routt County is pictured on Friday, July 10, 2026.Trevor Ballantyne\/Steamboat Pilot & Today<\/p>\n

Reservoirs serve as another mechanism to keep rivers flowing. The Colorado Water Trust holds an instream flow agreement with the Colorado Water Conservation Board to lease water from Stagecoach Reservoir and deliver that water to a 5.4-mile reach of the Yampa River.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Holly Kirkpatrick, the public affairs manager for the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, which owns and operates Stagecoach, said that the Yampa River basin follows a \u201cvery natural hydrograph,\u201d with limited storage coming from its reservoirs located high in the basin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see big spikes during peak runoff from April to June, typically,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then, every year, even in a wet year, our base flows are going to drop in the late summer months. This year, we are seeing much lower flows, historical inflows, and that\u2019s having some impacts.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even beyond the reach of the Yampa where the water trust holds the instream flow agreement, \u201coftentimes, the releases from Stagecoach will account for more than half of the river flow,\u201d Kirkpatrick said.<\/p>\n

Kirkpatrick said that the Colorado Water Trust has held the most stored water in Stagecoach Reservoir since 2022, with smaller contracts for agricultural, industrial and municipal use.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn an extreme drought year like this, every acre-foot counts, and we\u2019re making our best attempt to hold storage pools at the moment as long as possible,\u201d Snyder said. \u201cWe turn down releases when we see rain might be coming, and we adjust for other events as well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, this week, Snyder said they increased the Stagecoach release slightly due to the extremely hot temperatures expected to hit Colorado this weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another example is in the Colorado River basin, where the Colorado Water Trust leases water from the town of Palisade and QB Energy, an oil and natural gas company, from their rights in Ruedi Reservoir. The reservoir, located in the Upper Frying Pan Valley upstream of Basalt, was constructed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to \u201ccompensate Colorado River basin water users for those transmountain diversions,\u201d Snyder said.<\/p>\n

The water it leases flows downstream through 150 miles of river and supports a large number of fisheries, including those for trout in the Frying Pan and Roaring Fork rivers, and native species like bluehead suckers, roundtail chubs, racerback suckers and Colorado pikeminnows<\/a> in the Colorado River\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially in drought years like this, flows on all three of these rivers drop to levels that stress fish out. Our leased water helps provide things like thermal refuge, aquatic food base and fish passage through the corridor to help keep these fish populations alive and hopefully thriving \u2014 but this year, it\u2019s mostly just alive,\u201d Snyder said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The organization has yet to utilize its releases there this year, Snyder said, adding that these require approval.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Ruedi releases water in the Frying Pan (River), it doesn\u2019t just flow as a free-for-all downriver in unlimited quantities. There\u2019s constraints on how much water the river can handle, and we\u2019re not the only ones making requests to release water out of the river,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, adding some water to the streams and rivers struggling this year can have a big impact, transforming them \u201cfrom a dry riverbed to a healthy, flowing ecosystem,\u201d Ryan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colorado is known as the headwaters state, meaning that nearly all of its water supply originates inside the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-757172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}