People love Colorado. Our iconic mountains, rivers, minerals, plains, communities, forests, snow, wildlife, and wilderness have drawn people by the millions to our centennial state. Our population has ballooned from 1 million in 1930 to over 5 million today, and could nearly double by 2060. Sustaining this growth requires water. With this projected pace of growth, how do we preserve what we love about our state?  Colorado’s Water Plan has answers.

Colorado Water Plan Website

Since 2000, the Colorado River Basin has experienced historic drought and dry conditions. Currently, the combined storage in Lakes Powell and Mead are at their lowest levels since Lake Powell initially began filling in the 1960s. In order to plan for the future of the river in the face of these challenges, the seven Colorado River basin states (Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming) and the US Bureau of Reclamation are working on Drought Contingency Plans (DCPs). The goal of these plans is to provide additional water management tools that will reduce the chances of large and unpredictable water shortages.

An important solution within the DCPs for the Upper Colorado River Basin is called demand management: the voluntary, temporary and compensated reduction of water use to keep more water in the river to help maintain critical elevations in Lake Powel and ensure compliance with the Colorado River Compact.

On February 6, 2019, the Department of the Interior published a notice in the Federal Register, 84 Fed. Reg. 2244, requesting input from the Governors, or designated Governors representatives, of the Colorado River Basin States regarding recommendations for potential actions by the Department of the Interior that: (a) would be appropriate to take to reduce the risks the Colorado River Basin is facing, and (b) could be adopted prior to the August 2019 determinations of operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead in 2020, in the event that the Drought Contingency Plans (DCPs) could not be completed and promptly adopted.

On March 19, 2019, the Governor’s representatives of the seven Colorado River Basin States and key water districts formally submitted Drought Contingency Plans to Congress for immediate implementation. The Department of the Interior commends the Basin States and key water contractors on this important milestone. Given their successful efforts to reach consensus on the DCPs, the Department, by this statement, terminates its request for input from the Colorado River Basin States, as the immediate completion and implementation of the DCPs demonstrates the best path forward to: a) reduce the risks the Colorado River Basin is facing, and that b) can be adopted prior to the August 2019 determinations of operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead in 2020.

For more information go to: https://www.usbr.gov/dcp/index.html

What is a Stream Management Plan?

Stream management plans (SMP) are data-driven assessments of river health that help communities prioritize how to protect or enhance environmental and recreational assets in their watershed. A well-developed SMP uses biological, hydrological, geomorphological and other data to assess the flows, water quality parameters, and other physical conditions that are needed to support collaboratively-identified environmental and/or recreational values. This table identifies common SMP goals and possible key questions.

Using this assessment, stakeholders can identify and prioritize management actions to maintain or improve flow regimes and other stream conditions at a reach scale. SMPs are not regulatory, and participation is not required; therefore, community involvement and buy-in is necessary. SMPs are meant to be collaborative efforts; thus, goals in these plans are informed by stakeholder concerns and priorities. SMP efforts can be combined with consumptive water use planning efforts, thereby approaching water management and planning in a more integrated manner (for more information, visit this section of the Resource Library).

Where did Stream Management Plans come from?

In 2015, the State of Colorado adopted Colorado’s Water Plan, a water management roadmap to achieve a thriving economy, vibrant and sustainable cities, productive agriculture, a healthy environment, and a robust recreation industry. The Water Plan sets forth objectives, goals, and actions to keep Colorado on track to meet future water needs while preserving the things that Coloradans love about our state—all while adapting to changes like a growing population and warming climate.

There are several goals around the environment, watershed health, and recreation. This guide is focused on Colorado’s Water Plan goal that 80 percent of locally prioritized rivers be covered by stream management plans (SMP) by 2030. This objective builds on years of conversation, research, and some action to devise a methodology to develop data-driven water management and physical project recommendations capable of protecting or enhancing environmental conditions and recreational opportunities on streams and rivers.

Stream management plans are one way for communities to assess and address watershed health. A watershed is an area of land in which all water drains to a common stream or river. Watershed health is a measure of ecosystem structure and function for that area—gauging watershed health means assessing aquatic life diversity, stream channel and riparian area conditions, water flows, nutrient cycling, floodplain land uses, and other elements. Healthy watersheds are beneficial not only to ecological processes, but also for local and state economies, community building, and quality of life. Healthy watersheds provide ecosystem services including flow regulation, flood control, water purification, dilution of contaminants, erosion control, and habitat protection.

Many communities have an economic interest in maintaining healthy watersheds and rivers, but few have developed voluntary strategies to comprehensively protect river health and their flows for ecological and recreational uses. At the same time, there is insufficient data in many places to identify needed actions. SMPs provide a process to fill this gap, collect relevant data, and plan to meet the needs of water users while maintaining healthy aquatic ecosystems and fisheries.

The Water Plan’s SMP objective is a measurable way for Colorado to work toward its goals around environmental and recreational projects (Chapter 6.6 of the water plan) and watershed health and management (Chapter 7.1 of the water plan).

Environmental and recreational goals described in Colorado’s Water Plan include:

• Promoting restoration, recovery, sustainability, and resiliency of endangered, threatened, and imperiled aquatic- and riparian-dependent species and plant communities.
• Protecting and enhancing economic values to local and statewide economies that rely on environmental and recreational water uses, such as fishing, boating, waterfowl hunting, wildlife watching, camping, and hiking.
• Supporting the development of multipurpose projects and methods that benefit environmental and recreational water needs as well as water needs for communities or agriculture.
• Understanding, protecting, maintaining, and improving conditions of streams, lakes, wetlands, and riparian areas to promote self-sustaining fisheries and functional riparian and wetland habitat to promote long-term sustainability and resiliency.
• Maintaining watershed health by protecting or restoring watersheds that could affect critical infrastructure and/or environmental and recreational areas.
• For more in-depth information on Stream Management, visit the Stream Management Plan Resource Library at:  https://www.coloradosmp.org/

The Statewide Water Supply Initiative (SWSI) projects that Colorado’s population will nearly double by 2050, reaching between 8.6 million and 10.5 million people. According to the Interbasin Compact Committee (IBCC), population growth coupled with agricultural demand and potential oil shale production could force Colorado to face a water supply gap of between 200,000 and 600,000 acre-feet. That’s as many as 456,000 football fields covered in one foot of water—water that Colorado would need but wouldn’t have on hand. But the IBCC, created by the 2005 Water for the 21st Century Act, is determined to change the nature of the fight, turning disagreement into cooperative discussion. In a December report to then-Governor Ritter and Governor-elect Hickenlooper, the IBCC outlined a four-part approach to creating a statewide framework for solving Colorado’s water gap.