H2O Outdoors is a three-day, standards based, educational camp held at Keystone Science School in Keystone Colorado. The program, sponsored by Keystone Science School, Colorado River District, Aurora Water and Denver Water, is open to all Colorado high school students.

Join the Colorado Watershed Assembly, the Colorado Foundation for Water Education and the Colorado Riparian Association for the 6th Annual Sustaining Colorado Watersheds Conference!

The Swan River running along Tiger Road near Breckenridge has fought its way from free-flowing upper tributaries through gravel dredge piles to create a semblance of what the river likely looked like 150 years ago.

It’s the pre-mining appearance and functionality the Blue River Watershed Group, the Forest Service, the Town of Breckenridge, Summit County Government and two private landowners hope to restore.

The dredge piles range from several feet to almost 40 feet deep along the watershed — in some places, causing the river to flow underneath and reappear down valley, Forest Service district fisheries biologist Corey Lewellen said. The piles come from dredge boats, which removed the river bottom, turned it on end, and miners combed it for valuable minerals.

An altered river means an affected fish population. In this case, healthy streams flow into the main Swan River from the north, middle and south forks. But their confluence is cut off by about two miles of dredge piles. Colorado cutthroat trout have been out-competed by introduced brown trout, and those fish are inbreeding.

Because the Swan River is “a pretty good opportunity to restore a metapopulation of native Colorado cutthroat trout,” the Forest Service is tackling the project with its partners. Summit County and Breckenridge have been working on their Swan River properties since 2007, but with Forest Service technical support, they and the other partners aim to hire a project design firm and begin implementation as soon as possible — but there’s a long way to go. The idea is to re-introduce the cutthroat in different, but connected, habitats.

“We want them to mingle and mix and from a genetic perspective, that’s good,” Lewellen said, adding that part of the reintroduction effort includes relocating as many brown trout as possible and eliminating the rest to prevent them from again out-competing the cutthroat.

The project will likely be expensive, at several millions of dollars funded by grants and other revenue managed by the Blue River Watershed Group, but it will be worth it, Lewellen said.

“There are 17 miles of habitat we can reconnect if we fix this two miles of dredge,” he said, later adding, “We want to promote healthy fish populations on all our lands… We can’t do that without restoring this.”

But that’s just part of it. The Forest Service is involved in the stream project because it’s part of a broader look at the Swan River watershed — an area covering roughly 20,000 acres. It’s also associated with the agency’s revised mission to get “better bang for our buck,” Lewellen said, by focusing resources more directly instead of haphazardly across the national forest.

“We want to pick a watershed and do everything we can to restore it,” Lewellen said, adding that it’s a multi-year effort to do so. It includes timber management, attention to the bark beetle, wildlife habitat, road decommissioning, abandoned mine reclamation, sediment analysis and control and recreation management, to name a few.

“We can put resources into private property to benefit national forest lands,” he said.

The Swan River in the Dillon Ranger District is one of a handful of emphasis areas, which includes a 50,000-acre habitat restoration project in the Roaring Fork Valley.

 

 

The Swan River, which runs along Tiger Road near Breckenridge, used to be a combination of wetlands created by beaver dams and free-flowing water through forest streambeds. Now, it’s surrounded — and sometimes submerged — by dredge piles upturned from early mining. A contingent of nonprofits, federal and local officials and private landowners are teaming together to begin a several year, multi-million dollar watershed restoration in the Swan River drainage.

Blue river watershed group’s new role
Steve Swanson, director of the Blue River Watershed Group, said the Swan River Restoration Project is his nonprofit’s first foray into project facilitation.

It’s something he plans to continue, as part of the group’s mission to promote, protect and restore rivers. The group has historically been involved with water education, but when Swanson took over as director in 2010, he had his eye on adding project-driven work. 

 “As a nonprofit, we’re able to bring together stakeholders,” Swanson said, adding that the group can also act as fiscal coordinator. They can apply for grants, such as the $25,000 that was awarded to support as seed money for the Swan River project.

Headwater Hops Fest, August 18

By Janice Kurbjun
Summit Daily News

June 7, 2011

“The Science of Watershed Protection” is slated for 7-9 p.m. Thursday at the Summit County Community and Senior Center at County Commons in Frisco. A panel consisting of experts in the field will address how (and if) the limited U.S. Forest Service can allocate its budget to protect both water supplies and homes.

The panel aims to address questions of what watershed protection means and looks like, how to achieve a more resilient forest, how best to protect against catastrophic wildfire — and priorities for how to spend limited resources.

One panelist, Chuck Rhoades, is the resident expert research scientist with the Forest Service’s experimental forest in Grand County, said Howard Hallman of Our Future Summit. Hallman said Rhoades should help shed light on what watershed protection actually means, as it’s often a term used broadly. Other panelists include Don Kennedy of Denver Water, Eric Howell of Colorado Springs Utilities, Jeff Lucas of Western Water Assessment, and John Stedmick of Colorado State University.

“As federal, state and local budgets now stand, there’s not nearly enough money available to protect homes, communities and resorts from wildfire and at the same time, save watersheds and water supply infrastructure,” Hallman said. “What makes good sense is for water users to invest in long-term forest restoration projects to protect water sources, with the same degree of urgency as for building reservoirs, pipelines and treatment facilities.”

 Press Release

Details of the historic proposed Colorado River Cooperative Agreement between Summit County, 26 other West Slope entities and Denver Water will be discussed with the public at the Tuesday, May 3 Summit State of the River meeting set for 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Summit County Community and Senior Center.

Members of the Summit Board of County Commissioners and County Manager Gary Martinez will join Denver Water’s Chief Executive Officer Jim Lochhead and Colorado River District General Manager Eric Kuhn in a panel discussion of the proposed landmark water agreement.

The meeting is sponsored by the Colorado River District and the Blue River Watershed Group.

The proposed agreement, five years in the making, seeks to settle many long-standing water disputes in Summit County dating back to the 1940s when Denver Water first filed for water rights to build Dillon Reservoir. Once the agreement is signed, West Slope opposition will be cleared for Denver Water’s Moffat Collection System Project.  Summit County benefits are a big part of the proposal. They include new consumptive water supplies for local jurisdictions and snowmaking, keeping Dillon Reservoir nearly full during the summer recreation season, protection of minimum flows below Dillon Dam and financial support for environmental and wastewater treatment projects.

Denver Water is undergoing permitting for its Moffat Project in Grand County but part of the proposed agreement includes drawing to the Front Range some 4,800 acre feet of more water in an average water year from Denver Water’s Dillon-Robert’s Tunnel.

The Summit State of the River meeting will also provide information of snowpack and runoff predictions as well as reports on how Denver Water will operate Dillon Reservoir this year. The Bureau of Reclamation will report on its Green Mountain Reservoir operations.

Members of the public who cannot attend the May 3 meeting but want to know more about the proposed agreement can attend the Grand County State of the River meeting that takes place on Wednesday, May 4, 6:30-8:30 p.m., at Mountain Parks Electric , 321 West Agate, Granby. Grand County officials will be joining Denver Water and the Colorado River District in the panel discussion.

For more information, contact Jim Pokrandt, Colorado River District, 970-945-8522 or jpokrandt@crwcd.org.

 Jim Pokrandt