Western Winter 2015 Issue 3

Natural resource science and management in the west

WATER Irrigation Efficiencies Reduce Return Flows A New Hydrologic Model Will Peer into the Future Recharging Aquifers to Sustain Water Supplies

A publication of the Ruckelshaus Institute, a division of the University of Wyoming’s Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources Western Confluence Emilene Ostlind, Editor Charlie Reinertsen, Editorial Fellow Tana Stith, Graphic Designer Jessica Perry, Web Designer Advisory Board Anne MacKinnon Chris Madson editor’s note Randy Teeuwen Ruckelshaus Institute Water and humans: two powerful forces shaping our landscapes. Take a flight from Denver or Billings into Indy Burke, Haub School Director some small western farming town to see the extent. From a few thousand feet up, one creek tendril builds around it Jo Albers, Knobloch Chair in a whole draw, and the draw makes up just one fringe in a frost-crystal fractal pattern of hills for miles across, say, the Conservation Economics west edge of the Powder River Basin. From glaciated mountains to the driest desert basins, water leaves its mark in Maggie Bourque, canyon scribbles, river bottom brush strokes, and pencil-line gullies. Student Advising Coordinator Courtney Carlson, And the airborne passenger can’t Academic Programs Director miss the tidy grids of highways and gravel Jessica Clement, roads, the reservoir dams, or the straight- Collaboration Program Director sided crop fields stippled over the land. Kit Freedman, Research Scientist From above, the marks of water and Mandy Gifford, Administrative Associate humans are sometimes indistinguishable, Nancy Hoffer, and always knitted together. Perhaps the Accountant and Office Manager most emblematic sign of the intersection Nicole Korfanta, between people and water is the perfect Ruckelshaus Institute Director circles of center pivots. A delicately woven Melanie Matthews, Academic Advisor tapestry or a message spelled out in code? Maureen Morrison, Administrative Associate Painter Virginia Moore’s landscapes Emilene Ostlind, bring these aerial views to ground level. Communications Coordinator Her pieces reconfigure our planet’s shapes Steve Smutko, Spicer Chair in and colors into bright abstractions. They Collaborative Practice also reveal our landscapes as they really Supporting partners are, not sentimentalized or pristine, but This issue ofWestern Confluence is supported by grants from the Walton shaped by eons of water following gravity Family Foundation and the G.O. as well as decades of planning, labor, and Forward Fund of the Saint Paul construction. These images remind us of Foundation. our power to alter the places we dwell, Twice a year, Western Confluence and of the smallness and fragility of our magazine brings you on-the-ground, science-based stories about the research presence on this vast and ever-changing planet. and policies shaping natural resource Starting with Virginia’s view from above, this issue of Western Confluence examines a few of our many management and decisions in the West. Western Confluence tells clear, relevant relationships to water. The articles look at how we use, rely on, and manipulate water, from the simplest dirt stories of interdisciplinary, collaborative irrigation ditches to elaborate tunneling-pumping-piping-trading-filtering-recycling systems. And they question solutions to our toughest natural how sustainable our use of water is. You’ll read about western cities trying to hold onto and make the most of resource challenges. a finite and infinitely valuable resource, as well as people who want to bring once-wild rivers back to life. It’s westernconfluence.org impossible for one issue of a magazine to give comprehensive treatment to everything water means to us. Instead, Western Confluence is published by the I hope this collection of stories will provide a thought-provoking glimpse at how water shapes our landscapes and Ruckelshaus Institute, a division of the Haub School of Environment and lives in order to trigger ongoing conversation. Natural Resources at the University of And as you read through, flip back to the cover image from time to time. Virginia is a young artist who lives in Wyoming. The Ruckelshaus Institute Lander, Wyoming. Her fresh and honest interpretation of the place we all call home puts these stories into the right supports stakeholder-driven solutions to environmental challenges by perspective. Water is everywhere, essential, and evasive. communicating relevant research and promoting collaborative decision- Emilene Ostlind, Editor making. uwyo.edu/haub/ruckelshaus-institute On the cover: The painting Gathering shows an isolated western town nestled into the surrounding topography. “The Western Confluence Ruckelshaus Institute confluence of two rivers creates a valley sanctuary where we can raise cattle and crops and seek refuge in the shade of University of Wyoming riparian trees,” writes painter Virginia Moore. 804 E Fremont St Laramie, WY 82072 This page: Northeast Colorado crop circles cover a landscape kept productive by pumped groundwater in Virginia Moore’s (307) 766-2604 painting Cultivation Time. “The soft, earthy colors reveal the pride and hope of feeding a growing population,” she [email protected] writes. “As an unsustainable practice, those fields will someday fade, and the image of crop circles will be remembered as ‘the good old days.’” Both images printed with permission from the artist. See more of Virginia Moore’s work at virginiamooreart.com. contents

photo essay 02 The West’s Water Charlie Reinertsen

water today water in the f u t re 10 Supercomputer-Powered Model Improves Water Planning A Hi-Resolution Hydrologic Model Peers into the Future of Western Water Stephanie Ogburn Dust on Snow One Irrigator’s Waste is 14 Dirty Mountain Snow Pack Affects Communities 04 Downstream Another’s Supply Efficiency Means Less Water For Downstream Kristen Pope Users in Nebraska’s Panhandle Aquifer Recharge Ariana Brocious, Platte Basin Timelapse 16 Underground Storage Could Help Cities Measuring Return Flows Sustain Water Supplies 08 Emilene Ostlind Beatrice Gordon The Great Water Transfer 20 Diverting Water from Basin to Basin Erin Jones field notes

22 No-Name Asking Big Questions About Hydrology in One Little Watershed 26 The Wyoming Conservation Elizabeth Nysson Exchange New Marketplace Will Reward Wyoming 24 Finding Teton Glacier 25 Beaver Dreams Ranchers for Conserving Sage Grouse The Rancher Who Wished Habitat Manasseh Franklin For a Beaver Sara Brodnax, Kristi Hansen, Jen Lamb, and Erin Jones Melanie Purcell

science in brief solutions downstream 28 Sagebrush Recovers at 29 Healing Sick Rivers 33 Essay Oil and Gas Wells Encampment River Case Study Ba’a – Water is Life Other Species Do Not Charlie Reinertsen Baptiste Weed Emilene Ostlind

Western Confluence 1 The West’s Water

Words and photographs by Charlie Reinertsen Humans, by contrast, have not had time to adapt to the Wyoming Water, or perhaps the absence of water, defines the Wyoming climate. Instead, we sculpt the landscape to make it habitable. We build landscape and shapes the species that live on it. Big sagebrush (Artemesia dams, diversions, levies, and irrigation systems to control, store, distribute, tridentata) is one species particularly well adapted to Wyoming’s arid and use water. Our success is measured in our towns and agricultural climate. The shrub has two root systems. Shallow lateral roots absorb production. As the human population increases and the effects of climate snowmelt and spring rain. A single long taproot extends straight change continue, demand for water will increase, placing more stress on underground to access deep water in late summer and fall. The plant’s the systems we have created. The changes are great and the time frame is ephemeral leaves grow in the wet spring. In the dry summer months, these short. We are in the middle of a massive experiment, and we are not sure leaves fall off to conserve water. The smaller evergreen leaves stay on year what the outcome will be. How far will our technology carry us as water round to turn sunlight into food for the plant without letting go of too supplies change? As water resources are stretched thinner, can we mimic much water. Thousands of years of adaptation help sagebrush make the the sagebrush’s strategy for making a livelihood in a spare environment? most of scarce water in this arid landscape.

2 Western Confluence The West’s Water

Western Confluence 3 Water Today

water today

One Irrigator’s Waste is Another’s Supply Upstream Efficiencies Mean Less Water For Downstream Users in Nebraska’s Panhandle

By Ariana Brocious, Platte Basin When Busch first started to started going up,” Busch said. Timelapse irrigate, he said, it was pretty crude. Water seeping through porous On a warm summer morning in Back then, there weren’t even tubes to canals and ditches has always been western Nebraska, 77-year-old farmer siphon the water, just cuts in the side an issue for irrigators, so districts and Bob Busch stood next to a sugar beet of a dirt ditch. Pointing back to the farmers alike have lined or sealed the field in a worn denim shirt, black ditch at his feet, Busch described how waterways to reduce loss. “We can’t suspenders and a mesh hat. At his feet, thirty-some years ago this canal “was afford to lose a whole lot of water out water coursed past in a concrete-lined all sod. It was a nightmare to irrigate of the canal,” Busch said, but “sealing a irrigation ditch. A series of slender, out of.” Concrete was available, so canal is a catch-22 because that water curved pieces of aluminum pipe Busch started cementing his ditches. that comes out of them canals does siphoned the water out of the ditch Technically, Busch retired seven replenish our groundwater system.” he first started with the district 20 and onto the field. years ago. But he still works every day, years ago, Preston said nearly all of the This is one style of flood helping his son take care of roughly district’s 55,000 acres used gravity flow, irrigation, a method that has been 1,000 acres of sugar beets, dry beans, On a dusty road on the outskirts or flood, irrigation, including those in use since the late 1800s when corn, and alfalfa, and irrigating from of Gering, Nebraska, not far from owned by Busch. Now he estimates enterprising settlers began to divert May through September. Through the local sugar beet processing plant, about half the district has converted water from the North Platte River many decades of farming, he and sits the main office of the Gering-Ft. to sprinkler systems including center to irrigate croplands and build an farmers like him have struggled to Laramie Irrigation District. Inside, pivots, which deliver precise amounts agricultural economy in western make the most of a limited supply of manager Rick Preston’s office is a small of water to the crops instead of flooding Nebraska. Busch lives in a jagged patch water. Busch has seen, and contributed museum to the history of irrigation. them. Through the years his district has of verdant farmland on the western to, dramatic changes in irrigation Big, detailed maps cover the tables put about half of its laterals—smaller edge of the arid Nebraska panhandle, technology and efficiency. Sealing and a bookshelf full of old surveying ditches that divert water from the main about 10 miles west of where the canals with concrete is just one of and irrigation equipment lines the canal to fields—into pipe. North Platte River flows through those changes. back wall. Numerous factors have Scottsbluff. His farm, like many in “I’ve seen a tremendous impact This is one of several irrigation motivated irrigators to become more the green patchwork around him, is of going from sod ditches, dirt ditches districts in the Nebraska panhandle efficient in getting water from the completely dependent on irrigation to concrete ditches to gated pipe to that deliver water diverted from the river to their fields. In the late 1950s from the North Platte River. plastic ditch. And then the pivots North Platte River to farmers. When

4 Western Confluence Water Today Peter Stegen, Platte Valley Timelapse

Bob Busch is a third-generation farmer in the Nebraska panhandle.

and ’60s, the government lent money whereas center pivots can be operated ditches all the more valuable and Nebraska state line. Walking alongside to finance lining ditches and putting by the push of a button. worth trying to hold onto. it on a sunny afternoon just before laterals into pipes to reduce seepage. And there are other reasons “From the late ’60s to present the end of irrigation season, Adams More recently, finding and keeping to convert to sprinklers. Pivots day we more than doubled the ability pointed to the water gurgling under good workers on the fields has reduce the need for tilling and help to deliver water to the farm,” Preston a bridge, and said the district loses become difficult, and center pivots with erosion. Changing climate said. Now, much of the water that used about one-third of that water into the require far less manual labor than and weather patterns also play a to seep into the ground makes it to the aquifer through seepage, about 1,000 flood irrigation. role, because so much depends on fields, delivered through piped laterals acre feet per day. “In agriculture it’s a seven day how much moisture arrives in the or concrete ditches like the one on But the water that seeps out of a week job from when it’s time to mountain headwaters of the North Busch’s farm. canals and ditches doesn’t disappear plant, up until it’s time to harvest. A Platte River and in the panhandle Kevin Adams, general manager for good. lot of individuals today do not want region itself, translating to soil, of the nearby Farmers Irrigation “We lose it and it shows up in to have to give up their summers and river and groundwater recharge. District, is familiar with the system of the creeks, in the river and going weekends to do this type of work,” Drought, particularly during the last water loss through unlined canals. His downstream,” Adams said. “We supply Preston said, “so the work force has decade, often leads to irrigation water district’s main earthen canal stretches the aquifers in western Nebraska.” dwindled tremendously.” Siphon tubes shortages, and makes the water that 75 miles from the Tri-State Diversion have to be moved by hand every day, seeps away from unlined canals and Dam, just east of the Wyoming-

Western Confluence 5 Steven Speicher, Platte Basin Timelapse

downstream weeks, months, or even years later. “We operate this system on return flows,” Preston said. His district, designed around the older system of flood irrigation, depends on that return water, particularly during years of water shortage. In fact, farmers and water managers in the Nebraska panhandle are fond of saying that their water is used seven times before it meets the Missouri River on the state’s eastern border. Adams cited this maxim too, Irrigation canals divert water from the North Platte River to soak crops in Nebraska’s panhandle. but said things started to change in the early 1990s. He’s worked for the Farmers Irrigation District for the past Nick Lapaseotes is a tall man, The water that On one field, he cut his water 35 years and has seen an even greater and his Greek heritage shows in the use by 20 percent using subsurface seeps out of canals conversion from furrow irrigation to olive tone of his skin and bright eyes drip irrigation, which feeds water to pivot than Preston has—nearly 70 above the salt-and-pepper stubble and ditches doesn’t plant roots through perforated plastic percent of the district’s 65,000 acres across his chin. Over the years, he has tubes laid under the dirt. That method disappear for good. are now under pivots. adopted all the highest-tech solutions has become more popular in recent “When we were gravity flow for getting water to his crops on his “We lose it and it years as farmers seek to make even irrigating our system we would get 10,000-acre farm. But he’s still affected more of the water they get, especially percolation return flows,” Preston said, by diminishing water supplies, in his shows up in the creeks, in dry years when water supplies are but the use of pivots has reduced that case, groundwater. in the river and going curtailed. Soil moisture probes on by about 50 percent. As he strode out to one of his about a quarter of his fields measure Like many irrigators in the sugar beet fields outside of Bridgeport, downstream. We supply precisely how much water crops need, panhandle, Lapaseotes runs most of Nebraska, thirty miles down the and Lapaseotes can review the data his pivots on groundwater. In the last North Platte River from Gering, he the aquifers in western from an iPad in the cab of his truck or explained that until three years ago, Nebraska.” miles away back in his office. Ariana Brocious, Platte Valley Timelapse he irrigated this field by gravity flow, Kevin Adams, It might sound like all this new using water pumped up from the general manager, water delivery efficiency—concrete- aquifer. Now a long stretch of silver Farmers Irrigation District lined ditches, piped laterals, sprinklers, pipes spanned the field, sprinkling drip irrigation—is helping irrigators water down in a fine mist to the broad, make diminishing water supplies green leaves of the beets below. That’s family land after school, they followed go further, but the truth is more been the case on many of his fields as in their father’s entrepreneurial complicated. As farmers use water Lapaseotes has converted more and footsteps, updating irrigation more precisely, there’s less flooding on more of his acreage to pivots. operations with the latest technology. fields, reducing what water users call Lapaseotes knows a lot about He walked over to the pivot “return flows.” Return flows describe center pivots. The technology was control box on the side of the field and water that flows off a field back into refined in Nebraska, which remains showed off the panel inside. “We got a an irrigation ditch, or goes back into their leading producer today. His lot of these computerized panels now creeks, streams, and the river where father began investing in pivots and so we can control ’em from the office,” it is ready for use by other irrigators putting them on land he owned Lapaseotes said. He demonstrated an downstream. Some of it even seeps starting in the late 1960s, expanding hour later back in his office, turning through leaky ditches, canals and year after year, Lapaseotes said. When the same pivot on and off with the fields back to the groundwater table, Siphon tubes pull water from a concrete- he and his brother returned to the click of a mouse. where it may contribute to river levels lined irrigation ditch.

6 Western Confluence WATER TODAY

half-century, farmers have increasingly new irrigation wells in the district. groundwater pumping, or other There are three ways to reduce turned to groundwater to supplement The district is also working on a factors—affect water supplies beyond consumptive use, Berge said: provide surface water supplies. Adams said groundwater recharge project— the panhandle itself. Return flows from less irrigation water to farmers, that adds another layer of complexity leasing surface water off a parcel of the panhandle that eventually make reduce the number of farmed acres, or to the return flows equation. land and putting it into a pit to seep it back to the North Platte River flow convert to less thirsty crops like wheat. Groundwater levels in Nebraska back into the ground. downstream to Lake McConaughy. While none of these is popular, it’s a declined an unprecedented 2.5 feet “We’re regulating the Central Nebraska Public Power and matter of figuring out what strategy on average from 2012 to 2013. A groundwater pretty heavily,” Berge Irrigation District, which runs the works best, Berge said. For example, statewide report attributed the drop said. A 2004 law required NRDs in reservoir and supplies irrigation water some current irrigated lands could to increased groundwater pumping “over or fully appropriated” river to 223,000 acres in the center of the instead be used for wildlife habitat, and decreased precipitation recharge, basins to cut back on irrigated acreage state, sees decreased return flows hunting, or ranching. His district both exacerbated by drought in 2012. and groundwater use. In response, affecting its water supply. Lake inflows is looking at all these options to try Excessive groundwater pumping can the North Platte NRD limited dropped by more than 30 percent to avoid “draconian measures” like draw the underground water table acreage expansion and put limits on between 1943 and 2013, which Central further restrictions on irrigation water below the levels of streams and rivers, groundwater use from existing wells in attributes to the 100-fold increase in use, Berge said. further hampering the system of return the over-allocated part of the district. groundwater wells in the panhandle He’s in a tricky spot, because even flows that many users depend upon. Most of Lapaseotes’s groundwater during that time period. as farmers in his district and those “Twenty-five years ago, you could wells are subject to limits and have Berge is aware of Central’s upstream find new ways to maximize pump unfettered if you wanted to,” been for the last decade. assertion. “The overarching piece crop production from limited water said John Berge, general manager of Diminishing return flows—be is simply that we have far too much supplies, they are further limiting the North Platte Natural Resources it from more efficient measures on consumptive use in this district,” water supplies. District. “We don’t allow that farms and irrigation districts, less snow Berge said, referring to water that gets “We hear about efficiency all the anymore.” and rain in the mountains and plains, used by plants and never makes it back time,” Berge said. And when it comes cropping practices, drought, increased into the system. to water resources and quantity, “you

In 1972, Nebraska put American Heritage Center groundwater management in the hands of locally elected boards organized by river basins. The 23 Natural Resources Districts (NRDs), as they’re called, work with surface water districts, municipalities, local and state government to monitor and regulate groundwater use and quality. The North Platte Natural Resources District covers about five and a half counties from the Wyoming state line down to the western end of Lake McConaughy, a huge reservoir built for irrigation and power generation in central Nebraska. “We’re one of a few NRDs in the state designated as over-appropriated,” said Berge. As a result, his district monitors pumping on all existing groundwater wells to understand what that usage has done to static water levels. In 2002, the North Platte NRD put a moratorium on any Water spreads to produce abundant grass where very little grew before in this 1941 University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension photo.

Western Confluence 7 Peter Stegen, Platte Valley Timelapse Measuring Return Flows

By Beatrice Gordon As a child in northeastern Wyoming, I remember my summers as irrigation season. May meant the ceremonial ditch cleaning and the Sisyphean task of replacing broken gates along the lines of PVC pipe that delivered water to the fields. I spent June mornings setting orange tarps only to find that by evening the corners so carefully tucked in to the dirt had come loose. The irrigation ritual was predictable and comforting. Yet for all Flood irrigation on a field outside Gering, Nebraska. that is known about irrigation in Wyoming, critical pieces of the picture remain unexplored. Although agriculture currently accounts for 90 percent want to make sure that that water is Adams of the Farmers Irrigation of total water withdrawn from streams and aquifers in our used as efficiently and effectively as District. “And over-appropriated, of state, the proportion of water actually consumed by crops possible.” But “the inefficiencies in the course.” remains uncertain. Water managers have an increasing interest surface water system can be helpful to “With the increased demand for in quantifying “return flow” or the portion of irrigation water the groundwater system,” Berge said. the produce, the increased demand that seeps through the ground and returns to local streams With farmers becoming more for the livestock feeds, the increased and aquifers. Now, as a graduate student at the University of efficient, “the ultimate change is amount for water, it’s going to continue Wyoming, I’m part of a team exploring new, more accurate that we no longer have the recharge to get worse and more demanding as ways to track and measure those return flows. getting into our aquifer, which slows time goes on,” Preston said. Flood irrigation delivers water to a field or a section of a the timing back to the river, which Perhaps it’s natural to feel field via pipes or ditches, saturating the upper portion of the diminishes the stream flow in the disheartened after a career of such soil profile. In Wyoming, the State Engineer’s Office generally river, which is a significant part of our challenges. But John Berge, who’s assumes that about half of flood irrigation water returns to problem out here,” Berge said. relatively new to the North Platte a given stream. In reality, the amount and timing of return NRD, takes a different angle. flow varies significantly depending on the soils, geology, and “You look at this ... and you can hydrology of a particular system. As irrigators switch from get really depressed and you can say, By mid-September, early beet flood to more conservative irrigation methods like sprinklers, ‘Oh my God, we’re never gonna be harvest was already underway in managers need to understand the role return flows play in able to fix this.’ [But] ultimately, it’s a Scottsbluff. Sugar beets piled in giant recharging local streams and aquifers. pretty cool opportunity,” Berge said. mounds under the tall white silos of That’s why I spent the summer of 2014 installing We’re at a new point in our Western Sugar’s plant, looking like hydrologic and geophysical instruments in irrigated fields and agricultural history, he said. For huge piles of dirt from a distance. The along a stream in western Wyoming. Together with University decades, the overall policy was to plant air around the sugar processing plant of Wyoming professors Scott Miller and Ginger Paige, I am as much as you possibly can, Berge smelled sour as harvesters and loaders part of a research team studying water movement on a section said. “Now we’re kind of pulling back worked late into the night. Irrigation of irrigated meadow managed by the Wyoming Game and Fish and saying, let’s do this the smart way.” season had just ended, and farmers Department. Bear Creek, the targeted stream, lies between the picked up pipe and turned off pivots. Wiggins Fork and East Fork of the Wind River on the Spence Ariana Brocious is lead reporter for There’s no easy answer to Moriarty Wildlife Habitat Management Area, an elk feeding Platte Basin Timelapse, a multimedia the paradox of competing and ground southeast of Dubois. Over the course of several years, documentary project that aims to complementary surface and our goal is to use geophysics in concert with more traditional groundwater supplies. increase understanding about water “You know, we’re not different resources and build community than any part of the state. The throughout a watershed. Videos, population’s growing. Municipalities. interactive graphics, and more stories at Factories. Water’s being used,” said plattebasintimelapse.com.

8 Western Confluence WATER TODAY

Measuring Return Flows Beatrice Gordon hydrological methods to get a handle on the timing and amount of return flow contributions to Bear Creek. Only one other published return flow study has ever been completed in Wyoming, back in 1989. We aim to broaden understanding of the role return flows play in a range of systems and to give managers across the state more tools to oversee water resources. We are using a “water budget” approach to account for the various ways water enters and leaves the system. This approach will help us track the amount of water that returns to Bear Creek following irrigation. We are using several different hydrological, geophysical, and climatological instruments to establish the water budget. The short irrigation season from May until early August gives us a narrow timeframe to place our instruments and collect data. Much of this first year, we focused on installing instruments and developing and testing new field methods. First, we installed seven submerged pressure transducers (SPTs) in Bear Creek and the nearby Fosher Ditch. SPTs are small cylindrical sensors that we submerge in stilling wells, PVC pipes set in the bank to dampen immediate fluctuations in water level while capturing water level rises and falls in the main channel. The SPTs record the stream’s Survey equipment and stilling well at site along Bear Creek. water level every 15 minutes. We also manually measured flow at several permanent monitoring locations along Bear Creek. These measurements underground or returned to Bear Creek. This first year of hydrological allowed us to determine the volume of water flowing through each data were further enhanced by preliminary geophysical experiments monitoring section in Bear Creek at that specific moment. We put exploring subsurface hydrologic characteristics. Electrical Resistance together the data from both the transducers and the flow measurements Tomography uses a series of electrodes stuck into the ground across to create a rating curve, an equation that approximates streamflow the field to monitor how soil conductivity, an indication of soil water, volume over the course of the season. changes over time. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance measures magnetic We also collected weather data from a small, extraterrestrial- fields to detect water molecules underground, which shows us how looking meteorological station, which was of particular interest to the much water is in the soil and how deep it is. Coupling these two local elk and moose who ultimately pushed it over with the help of approaches, we hope to discover the timing and amount of return flows November snows. The “met” station recorded temperature, wind speed making it back to Bear Creek. and direction, net solar radiation, net long wave radiation, and albedo Our study is in its early stages. With additional summers of field throughout the summer. We use these measurements to calculate potential work and data collection ahead of us, we have yet to determine how or if evapotranspiration. That lets us approximate how much water the return flows work in this system. We do hope that isolating components vegetation in the irrigated meadow consumes over the course of a day. of the water budget and tracking subsurface water movement with In the traditional water budget approach, the water that enters the geophysical methods will allow us to quantify and describe return flow system as precipitation should equal the water that leaves the system processes in Bear Creek. If we can refine return flow estimates in this as streamflow, subsurface storage, return flows, and evapotranspiration system, it may help us improve understanding of return flow’s larger role by vegetation. By analyzing our calculated values for streamflow in the state. and evapotranspiration along with precipitation data, we are able to determine how much water is neither consumed nor converted Beatrice Gordon is a Wyoming native and a first-year master of science to surface runoff. That is the water that we expect is either stored student in water resources at the University of Wyoming.

Western Confluence 9 supercomputer- powered model Improves Water Planning

A Hi-Resolution Hydrologic Model Peers into the Future of Western Water

By Stephanie Paige Ogburn Inside the University of Wyoming’s 3-D visualization cave, winter is coming. Through special glasses, a viewer watches winter snow pile up in the Wind River Mountains. The simulation shifts. Spring comes, and the snowpack begins to melt, waning gradually with warmth. Underfoot, the ground becomes translucent. Water accumulates and moves around, resurfacing as it feeds tributaries of the Green River, at times evaporating and returning further down the mountains as rainfall. This holodeck-like experience of a year in water is just a glimpse into an incredibly detailed hydrologic model created by University of Wyoming engineering and environment and natural resources professor Fred Ogden. Called ADHydro, the model harnesses the power of supercomputing to create high-resolution, physics-based simulations of how water moves through very large watersheds. The project takes advantage of computing power at the new Cheyenne-based supercomputer facility the University of Wyoming shares with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “Right now we are simulating the Upper Green River basin in Wyoming,” said Ogden, who has been working on the project for the last two years. As climate change alters the way water falls on and flows through western landscapes, Ogden hopes his model can help water managers better understand how those changes play out, despite the uncertainties the future holds. Looking to the past to estimate the future The importance of the Colorado River is often summed up with the following facts: The river’s basin touches seven Western states before reaching Mexico. It supplies life-giving water to 40 million people. It can generate 4,200 megawatts of hydroelectric power, and its water slakes the thirst of 5.5 million agricultural acres. The Colorado is probably one of the most oft-studied and worried-over rivers in the country. Yet despite decades of efforts measuring and tracking the river’s flows, every year when mountain snowpack begins to roll off rocky slopes, water managers still wrestle with many unknowns: How fast will the snow will melt? How much will get used up by trees? How much will evaporate before it gets into a stream? Until fairly recently, managers looked to weather from the past hundred years to try and find analogs that would help them plan for how the snow would behave. “We really relied pretty dominantly on the historical records,” said Jim Prairie, a hydrologic engineer with the Bureau of Reclamation’s Upper Colorado Regional Office. In the 2000s, though, as drought spread across the West, scientists and water managers realized they might need to look further back in time to understand was happening to the river. They turned

10 Western Confluence WATER in the future UW Photo

Wearing special goggles, a man interacts with a model in UW’s 3-D visualization cave. to tree rings, which tell a story of not look like the last 100, or even the Of the two, changes in future difficult to answer. Most researchers bigger floods and longer droughts in last 1,200. temperatures are more predictable. The think wet areas, like the tropics, will centuries past. “The past is no longer indicative physics underlying what happens when tend to get wetter, and dry areas, like “That allowed us to get a much of the future,” said Nowak. carbon dioxide concentrations increase, the desert Southwest, drier. The future broader picture of how hydrology may That’s where models come in. To as they have been since the Industrial of many places in between, like the be changing in the future,” said Prairie. start, water managers get results from a Age, are pretty simple: add more CO2, Rocky Mountain region, is basically a “What we have seen in the last 1,200 set of climate model projections called the atmosphere heats up. While the toss-up at this point. years is we could have higher and the Coupled Model Intercomparison amount of warming won’t be the same The coupled models run under lower flows [than in the past 100].” Project. These coupled models everywhere, the models show that the a range of scenarios. One keeps the This knowledge gave water combine representations of the Rocky Mountains of the future will be world on a high-emissions path, where managers a better sense of what the atmosphere and the oceans, as well warmer than they are now. carbon dioxide levels continue to snowpack, and the river, was capable as the ice sheets, sea ice, and the land Precipitation is more fickle. increase rapidly. Others take a middle of. Climate change, though, adds surface, painting a fuller picture of the Scientists know a warmer earth will road. There is also a low-emissions another wrinkle. The challenge, Earth’s climate. For the purposes of hold more moisture in its atmosphere. option, to include the possibility of said Ken Nowak, the Bureau of predicting the future of Western water But since there is not a direct global action to drastically reduce Reclamation hydrologic engineer for supplies, such models produce two relationship between temperature, emissions or capture carbon dioxide the river’s lower half, is that climate key pieces of information: projected CO2, and precipitation, the question from the atmosphere. Each scenario change means the next 100 years may future temperatures and precipitation. of where that moisture will go is more results in different futures, some a

Western Confluence 11 UW Photo

power is needed to run such models, about storing and releasing water. this approach is more efficient. In the Management scenarios could include mountains, where a lot is going on information about a city’s rights to in a small space, the model has tiny Colorado River diversions and its triangles, 50 meters on a side. It can projections of future metropolitan represent processes like snowmelt, soil growth. Such inputs allow researchers moisture, and groundwater recharge and policymakers to play around with on a very detailed scale, where even different configurations of water use in subtle changes can have big effects the future. Say Las Vegas cuts its water downstream. use still further, but demand from a When a river gets to the plains, rapidly growing Phoenix jumps. where not a lot is changing, that high Hansen is excited about the resolution becomes superfluous. The model’s improved resolution over ADHydro model then can bump its existing ones, saying when there are triangle mesh size up to 500 meters shortfalls on the Colorado River, “the on a side, saving valuable computing finer scale has the potential to tell us resources for the areas that truly need more about who is affected and by it. Even with a supercomputer running how much…a better, more detailed the model, such high resolution uses a understanding of the hydrology can lot of processing power, so Ogden has help us to make good decisions in the tried to make it as efficient as possible. future.” The model also represents processes in Ogden imagines a case in three dimensions, but saves resources Wyoming where the state might need by being “quasi-3-D,” said Ogden. to make a decision on a new pipeline “The models that we are trying to take water from the Green River to improve upon … tend to run at to Colorado’s Front Range. The State lower resolution. And because of that Engineer’s Office could use his model Inside the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Wyoming they don’t really simulate feedbacks to find out what granting approval for Supercomputing Center. properly, particularly between the withdrawal would mean. groundwater and surface water,” he “They [the engineers] could pull said. open the Web browser, say we are degree or two warmer, others many of Ogden’s now used by the Army In contrast, the ADHydro model going to divert this amount under degrees warmer, with corresponding Corps of Engineers, use what’s called a includes real world processes such as these rules, and then select a future changes to rain and snowfall regimes. square mesh to represent a watershed. the effect of wind on sublimation, or climate scenario and maybe a future To get to the localized impacts Essentially, the landscape and snow evaporation. Other models can’t land use scenario, and then click ‘run.’ of these climate changes on water, processes are divided up into small represent this, so they do something And then sometime later they would researchers plug the results of the squares representing a given area. This called parameterization, “a fancy word get an e-mail back with a report telling climate models into hydrologic gives you a standard resolution across for fudging it,” said Ogden. And, in them what the effect of that was on, models representing all kinds of the entire watershed. addition to simulating water, air, and say, the water level of Lake Powell in natural physical processes: Snowpack, That works well for smaller soil, the new model includes layers the future.” how that water gets taken up by watersheds, said Ogden, but he’s like tree cover. Since trees use a lot of By summer 2015, the model trees, whether it evaporates or soaks trying to represent something water, whether they are alive or dead, will be running simulations on the into soils, how fast it makes its way much larger—first, the Green River growing or not, can have a big impact National Center for Atmospheric downstream. watershed, and later the entire on water availability. Research supercomputer, using output Colorado River basin. So ADHydro Hi-resolution hydro Kristi Hansen, a water economist from coupled global climate models to uses a different approach. at the University of Wyoming, has model water behavior in large western Ogden’s ADHydro effort “We are using an unstructured been working with Ogden to create a watersheds, said Ogden. represents a significant improvement mesh, triangles, and they can change layer for his model that will represent over existing hydrologic models. size,” he said. decisions water managers make Many past models, including one Since a whole lot of computing

12 Western Confluence WATER in the future

From models to “They help us play out ‘if’ scenarios. If this because of our higher resolution,” action Ogden said. happens, in the future, then this is what it could Denver Water’s Kaatz agrees. No matter how good your “Advancements in modeling are model, moving from improvements in mean to the water system.” Even though models really important. Because it helps us research models into improvements have uncertainty and do not predict the future, it’s better understand the system that we in the actual operation of a complex are trying to manage.” system of dams, diversions, and cities still “really valuable information. If we didn’t have As snow coats mountaintops in the arid West is a monumental task. these than we would just be making assumptions this winter, water users and water As a hydrologic model gets layered on managers have begun their anxious different climate model outputs, each about what the future could be.” watch, tallying inches and snow water with its own assumptions, the view of Laurna Kaatz, equivalent, checking weather stations the future actually becomes fuzzier, climate policy analyst, Denver Water and SNOtel sites. No one knows what said Jeff Lukas, a senior research this winter, or the next, or the one associate with the Western Water 30 years from now, will bring. With Assessment. That’s because whenever models like ADHydro though, we multiple modeling steps are used, the at least some ability to prepare for an the future of the Colorado River that may at least be better prepared for that range of possible outcomes broadens. event you haven’t seen before.” painted a “pretty dire picture” of future uncertain future. “The uncertainty increases Ogden acknowledges that exactly Colorado River water availability. because you have made these choices predicting future flows “is almost ADHydro could be used in similar Stephanie Paige Ogburn reports on along the way,” said Lukas. impossible.” But he says ADHydro sorts of research. science and environment in the West from Lukas points to local and regional is an improvement over current “What we hope to do would to be Denver, Colorado. Find more of her work efforts by utilities like Denver Water options. He notes a 2012 effort from able to improve on those because we at stephaniepaigeogburn.com. and others. With information from the Bureau of Reclamation looking at are including more feedback processes climate and hydrologic models, they are improving their flexibility to react to various circumstances, preparing for whatever the future brings. Laurna Kaatz, the climate policy analyst for Denver Water, which serves a quarter of the state’s population, thinks a lot about the future. She said climate models and hydrologic models give managers insights into how the region might change. “They help us play out ‘if’ scenarios. If this happens, in the future, then this is what it could mean to the water system.” Even though models have uncertainty and do not predict the future, it’s still “really valuable information,” she said. “If we didn’t have these than we would just be making assumptions about what the future could be.” Lukas agrees this is where models come in handy. “Really, the important thing is not to be surprised,” he said. “To have

Western Confluence 13 Jeffrey Deems

Dust on Snow A Dirty Mountain Snow Pack Affects Communities Downstream

By Kristen Pope the sun’s energy as the darker snow that observed in earlier years, they are newest work examines extreme dust Some 40 million people rely absorbs more solar radiation, leading trying to understand exactly where conditions observed in 2009 and on the Colorado River, and much to faster snow melt and a shorter the dust comes from and to predict 2010. They are analyzing data from of its water comes from snowmelt. runoff season. This can cause trouble what kinds of dust events we might those years to help predict what future So when something big changes in for farms and cities that rely on a see in the coming years and decades. snowmelt seasons might look like if the watershed, like the timing of the steady flow of water through the Finding solutions to the dust-on-snow climate change and other factors make spring melt, water managers and summer. Most of the dust that falls on problem will require sound science dust deposition worse. water users get nervous. Everyone has snowfields feeding the Colorado River and continuing research. To better understand how dust been hearing that warmer weather is stirred up by human activities like Dr. Jeff Deems, Research affects snowmelt, Deems and his is leading to earlier spring runoff, construction, ATV use, and ranching Scientist at the Cooperative Institute colleagues skied for miles out to but now researchers are studying in the desert southwest. for Research in the Environmental research sites high in the Colorado another factor that has an even bigger Researchers are quantifying the Sciences at the University of Colorado, Rockies—above 13,000 feet in effect than temperature on snowmelt effects of dust on snow. And, following Boulder, set out to study the dust-on- elevation—to measure the solar timing: dust. the spring of 2009, which brought an snow problem with colleagues. Earlier radiation the snow pack absorbs under A dirty Rocky Mountain snow order of magnitude increase in dust research indicated that dust-on- different dust conditions. They faced pack is more than just an eyesore. deposition to the mountains of the snow was disrupting normal runoff challenging conditions, as they often Dust-covered snow concentrates Upper Colorado River Basin over cycles. Deems’ and his colleagues’ skied in late spring on a fast-melting

14 Western Confluence WATER in the future Jeffrey Deems snow pack, hauling packs full of runoff means all the water that would the more dust it sends into the air. research equipment and constantly have been stored in the snow pack Recent droughts and wind events are assessing avalanche danger and into summer instead rushes down the worsening erosion. weather conditions. rivers too soon. Controlling this problem They conducted their research Reservoirs in the Upper would require stabilizing soils in near meteorological instrumentation Colorado River Basin, the part of the southwestern deserts. “Keeping towers at several research sites, basin upstream from Lake Powell, [off-road vehicle] speed down helps including one site in Colorado’s San can only hold so much water. Earlier immensely,” said Dr. Jayne Belnap, Juan Mountains called the Senator runoff can mean they have to release Research Ecologist for the U.S. Beck Basin Study Area, maintained by excess water early and there may not Geological Survey Moab office. “We the Center for Snow and Avalanche be enough water stored for later in the need to really start thinking about Studies. “These towers do something season. Earlier melt also exposes bare dust production when we do certain that’s unique,” Deems said. “They ground up in the mountains where activities. We need to be smarter about measure the complete snow surface water is lost to evaporation and plant what disturbance happens—where, energy balance, that is, all incoming transpiration. That means less water when, and how much.” and outgoing energy affecting the makes it into the rivers overall, which Many current policies focus snow pack, including solar radiation, exacerbates shortages in already over- only on replacing vegetation after a longwave radiation, air temperature, allocated rivers downstream. disturbance instead of evaluating soil wind speed, and evaporation.” By Agriculture, which uses 70-80 stability as a whole. conducting their field observations percent of the surface water runoff Researchers found that reducing next to these stations, the researchers throughout the western U.S., will feel dust outputs could be an important were able to put their measurements in the brunt of these shortages. As water part of climate adaption strategies in the context of the meteorological and becomes scarcer and more valuable, the region. Though a few government energy data collected by the towers. there will be increasing pressure agencies and communities are taking The towers automatically send to divert it away from agriculture steps to address these problems, dust their data to the Center for Snow and to cities. Wildlife could also suffer, erosion is likely to get worse. Avalanche Studies office in Silverton, including pikas and other alpine The best remedy is prevention, Colorado. Deems and his colleagues species that rely on a substantial snow according to Belnap. “We need to try dug snow pits to reveal the layers of pack. Fluctuating river volume and hard to not disturb it in the first place, dust sandwiched in the snow pack. water temperatures could affect fish because we don’t have very good ways And they used data from the towers to survival. White water recreationists to recover,” Belnap said. “Recovery calculate the fraction of light reflected and the businesses that rely on these Researchers collect dust samples in is not quick, so if we don’t disturb it from the snow. Normally, fresh snow rafters and kayakers could also face a Senator Beck Basin. in the first place, we don’t even have reflects about 90 percent of incoming shorter season. The diminished snow to go down this path. That’s the real This biological crust, which energy. Springtime snow typically pack and shortened runoff could also moral to this story.” includes colonies of moss, lichen, reflects 70 percent, as snow crystals lead to longer and more damaging fire and cyanobacteria, makes the land naturally become coarser due to seasons. Kristen Pope is a freelance writer and resistant to wind erosion. However, freeze-thaw cycles. However, dust on The dust settling on the snowy editor who specializes in science and grazing, oil and gas development, the snow can reduce this percentage landscapes of Colorado and beyond conservation topics and lives in Jackson, dry land farming, motorized and dramatically, and measurements have comes from a variety of sources, and Wyoming. Find more of her work at non-motorized recreation, and other shown that dusty snow can reflect as has increased significantly since the kepope.com. disturbances over that last 165 years little as 30 percent of incoming energy, westward expansion of the U.S. in the have damaged the crust, making it which is close to the reflectivity of mid-1800s. Much of the dust that falls susceptible to erosion. plain old dirt. in the Rocky Mountains comes from Further reading Abandoned croplands and Deems and his colleagues have the desert southwest. “Dust shows cleared construction sites add to the Deems, J. S., T. H. Painter, J. J. Barsugli, J. determined that dusty snow melts up on the front edge of the storm Belnap, and B. Udall. 2013. “Combined dilemma, as they are often colonized three to seven weeks earlier than clean and in most cases is immediately impacts of current and future dust by annual weeds that do not germinate snow. Since snow pack provides the buried by fresh snow fall,” Deems deposition and regional warming on in droughts, leaving the soil bare. Dirt western U.S. with 80 percent of its said. The southwest deserts are not Colorado River Basin snow dynamics and roads also contribute. Southeastern water supply, the faster melting of the naturally dusty, as long as the naturally hydrology.” Hydrology and Earth System Utah alone has over 6,000 miles of snow and the shorter runoff season is occurring crust that anchors the soil Sciences 17: 4401-4413. doi:10.5194/hess- ATV tracks. The faster a vehicle drives, 17-4401-2013. a critical problem. Earlier and faster is intact.

Western Confluence 15 Underground Storage By Emilene Ostlind In 2009 Lytle Water Solutions, a third of the groundwater that goes Even as these water caches drain away, Once built reservoirs collect silt, LLC, a geology consulting firm, to irrigation in the US, plus water for water managers race to secure water slowly filling from the bottom up. constructed a small, rectangular basin homes, cities, and other uses. But it, supplies for the future. Strategies And reservoirs’ large surface areas in a groundwater well field outside like many aquifers around the country include diversifying sources of water, evaporate off huge amounts of water. of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Over the and world, is in trouble. For the last recycling wastewater, incentivizing Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in following six months nearly 110 half century, water withdrawal from water conservation, and storing water the United States, evaporates 6 to 8 acre feet of water—that’s enough the aquifer has exceeded the amount on the surface and underground. feet of water per year, which adds up to fill about 54 Olympic swimming of “recharge,” or rainfall and seepage Storage usually refers to building new to hundreds of thousands of acre-feet pools, or enough to supply about from streams and canals that flows reservoirs and expanding existing over the nearly 70-mile-long surface 193 Cheyenne homes for one year— back into the aquifer. Cheyenne has ones. But reservoirs have their of the reservoir. ASR can avoid some quietly flowed into the straight-edged seen groundwater production from shortcomings. They can only be placed of these problems. It has potential to dirt pit and sank into the ground. its wells decline as the aquifer water in certain areas, namely constricted offer a more sustainable alternative This was a test commissioned by table has fallen. If current trends in canyons or valleys with a supply of to reservoirs for future water storage. the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities agricultural expansion, population water. Water managers are tackling projects in partnership with the Wyoming growth, and drought continue, “Permitting reservoirs is really to test, study, and implement this Water Development Commission farms over parts of the aquifer will tough in Colorado these days,” says technology. to evaluate the potential for “aquifer start to lose access to groundwater Bill Hahn, a professional geologist storage and recovery,” known as all together, and water use from the who has worked on several aquifer ASR. Cheyenne sits over the edge aquifer will be unsustainable. recharge projects and a proposed Several conditions need to line up of the Ogallala Aquifer, a massive The Ogallala is not alone. Cities Two Forks Reservoir. “They worked for ASR to work. The process requires groundwater reservoir that stretches from Gillette to Juarez have had to on permitting for 10 years and clean surplus water, an underground from central Texas to southern South drill deeper and deeper wells to draw spent millions and it got killed. New aquifer with space in it, and a nearby Dakota. The Ogallala supplies almost water from declining water tables. reservoirs are few and far between.” community in need of the water. Each

16 Western Confluence Recharge Underground Storage Could Help Cities Sustain water Supplies

project is different based on the source groundwater requires extensive Daniel B. Stephens and Associates, water down the injection well into the of the water, type and location of treatment. Most states require any Inc., an Albuquerque-based company aquifer. Sometimes gravity of water aquifer, and other factors. injected water be cleaned enough specializing in ASR. Spreading basins falling down the pipe creates enough The first requirement, excess that it won’t contaminate the aquifer, efficiently deliver water to the aquifer, pressure for injection. Wells used to water available for storage, could usually to potable drinking water eliminating the long-term evaporative pump water out of aquifers can be come from spring floodwaters, standards. Then the clean water has to losses associated with traditional retrofitted to work as injection wells. briny groundwater pumped up and be piped to the aquifer. surface reservoirs. In fact, some injection systems use the cleaned, storm water runoff from The two main methods for putting Infiltration works best for exact same wells to put excess water cities, recycled municipal water, water into an aquifer are infiltration and shallow aquifers. Infiltration basins into the aquifer in the spring as they desalinated seawater, or other sources. injection. The Arizona Water Banking are relatively low-tech, and thus less do to withdraw the water later in the In Cheyenne’s case, the city proposed Authority uses spreading basins to expensive and easier to maintain than summer. Injection wells disturb only a using excess surface water available infiltrate water into aquifers. These some other methods. In addition, small surface area. They can be placed in its reservoirs during spring runoff. are big shallow ponds with permeable they clean the water as it soaks down anywhere, even in the middle of a city. El Paso, Texas, recharges its aquifer floors the water can soak through. The through the soil layers. Chemicals They can also put water into aquifers with treated storm water and city basins let a couple of feet of water per in the water affix to minerals in the too deep for infiltration basins. wastewater. The Arizona Water day filter into the aquifer. That water ground as the water seeps toward the A third option is vadose zone Banking Authority diverts water can be pumped out days, months, aquifer. In some places, untreated river wells, sometimes called dry wells. The through canals from the Colorado or even years later. These spreading or canal water can safely be infiltrated “vadose zone” is the area between River to store in aquifers near Phoenix basins do lose a small amount of water into aquifers. the top of the aquifer and the ground and Tucson. to evaporation, about 1 percent of the The other method for aquifer surface. Hydrologists might dig The water has to be clean total volume placed in aquifer storage recharge uses injection wells, similar a vertical tunnel partway to the enough to mix into a drinking water according to Bob Marley, technical to wells that pump water out of aquifer, insert a perforated pipe, and aquifer. Storm water runoff or saline specialist and hydrogeologist for aquifers. A motorized pump forces fill around the pipe with something

Western Confluence 17 permeable, like sand. Water will flow basin approach. The water soaked down the well and then soak the rest into the ground like it was supposed of the way to the aquifer. Vadose zone to, but a 15-foot-thick layer of clay wells can collect surges of surface about 45 feet underground blocked water, such as during a storm or flood, the water from reaching the aquifer. and ensure that water unable to soak Nearby monitoring wells did not down from the surface on its own detect any water increases in the reaches an aquifer. They also clean aquifer. LWS suggested a vadose zone the water on the way, though not as well penetrating the clay layer could thoroughly as infiltration basins. solve the problem while letting the “An above ground tank could water infiltrate the remaining 75 or so store 5 million gallons. Aquifer feet to the aquifer. But the Wyoming recharge systems can put that much Department of Environmental Quality in the ground every day,” says Marley. denied the necessary permits because “If you have the right geology an the agency feared a vadose zone well aquifer can store water on the scale would let contaminants into the of a small reservoir. Not Lake Mead, aquifer. but a midsize reservoir range—500 Following the infiltration basin to 10,000 acre feet per year of water study, LWS also tested an injection storage, up to 50,000 to 100,000 acre well. They retrofitted an existing feet per year in other places.” municipal well so it could pump water both into and out of the aquifer. Over nearly three months LWS intermittently injected 93 acre-feet In order for ASR to be viable for of water into the aquifer and pumped a community, the city needs a nearby water back out to clean the well and aquifer with available space for added test recovery. LWS determined that water, as well as a reliable surplus of injecting water into Cheyenne’s clean water to infiltrate or inject into aquifer could be effective. However, the aquifer. There must be sufficient the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities water demand now or in the forecast was concerned about tracking the to justify the cost of the studies and water’s movement. They were not tests leading up to the ASR project confident they would be able to and to develop the infrastructure and recover their injected water. Following oversee the implementation, a process recent wet years, the city has not that can take years. Finally, the city pursued the project any further. needs to be sure it can control and effectively recover the water it puts 1980s, the commission investigated In the 2000s, the state began into the aquifer. the potential for capturing spring to look into ASR in the Green River Wyoming’s governor appoints Cheyenne, Wyoming, is not the floodwater to recharge a groundwater Basin in western Wyoming. The individuals to the Wyoming Water quintessence of an ASR-ready town, aquifer being depleted by irrigation. geologists on the study determined Development Commission to develop but the community does have the Floods were damaging roads and the groundwater quality was too water projects funded by severance tax necessary surplus water, depleted other infrastructure along the lower marginal for drinking or irrigation money. The group has explored several aquifer, and thirsty population. The reaches of Crow Creek, downstream and the local aquifers lacked available potential applications for ASR over city’s “Managed Aquifer Recharge, from Cheyenne. The report suggested space for injection. However, an idea the years. Usually the commission Storage, and Recovery Project” installing spreader dikes in the stream arose to divert spring floodwaters into hires one consulting firm or another studied ASR’s potential. to slow the floodwaters and let them ponds near the river for infiltration. to conduct analyses and tests. Reports Geologists at Lytle Water soak into the aquifer, but more study Then irrigators could either pump on these projects are posted to the Solutions (LWS), the Colorado- was needed and the project was never the water out of wells, or take it from Wyoming Water Resources Data based company that conducted the carried out. In the early 2000s Laramie the river as it soaked back to the main System website. study, found feasible test sites at two County also looked into recharging channel later in the summer. “Water Many ASR studies in Wyoming groundwater well fields west of the aquifers in the Lodgepole Creek Basin banking via off-channel recharge could focused on the southeast corner of city. They first tested an infiltration to help irrigators, but found it would prove to be a valuable and effective the state near Cheyenne. In the late be too expensive.

18 Western Confluence WATER in the future

method of reducing or eliminating Because half of that effluent was from Alongside their infrastructure agrees that Wyoming needs to find late season water shortages for several water Aurora brought into the South projects, these Colorado communities sound methods for storing water reaches in the Upper Green River Platte River Basin from elsewhere, the have also emphasized water into the future, our situation as a Basin during dry years,” the report city still had a right to use it. conservation. Most conservation low-population headwaters state concluded in 2001. The Prairie Waters Project, which measures focus on altering means we are not desperate enough In the northeast corner of the began delivering water in 2010, diverts landscaping. Lawn care and other for water storage at this time to invest state, the city of Gillette has also water from the South Platte River outdoor water uses account for more the resources ASR requires. “We have looked into groundwater storage. downstream of the Aurora wastewater than half of all domestic water use. some proactive studies, but nothing is Gillette gets most of its drinking water treatment plant and sends it through Conservation measures in Aurora off the ground,” says Boyce. from groundwater aquifers under underground aquifers to both clean reduced per capita daily water Water storage will remain a the city and at the edge of the Black and temporarily store the water. consumption from 175 gallons to primary concern for Wyoming water Hills near Devil’s Tower 42 miles to The filtration provided by the sand around 135, a nearly 25 percent managers over the coming decades. the northeast. The city has had to and aquifer substrates underground decrease, which saves millions of Now that the state has tentatively deepen its in-town wells, from 400 removes pharmaceuticals and other gallons per year the city would explored aquifer recharge and found feet in the 1970s to 700 feet in the contaminants. The city then uses wells otherwise have to secure, treat, and some promising ideas, when the time 1980s. Then, in the late 90s, a coalbed to pump the cleaned water back out of transport. is right ASR will likely resurface. methane boom started producing the ground and pipes it 34 miles back Storing water in an aquifer, massive amounts of water of various to the city. The system added 10,000 “extends the life of the resource,” Note: While this story was in production, qualities. In 2001 the city asked acre feet of water to the Aurora City says Marley, the hydrogeologist in the Laramie County Commissioners the Wyoming Water Development water system, about 20 percent of the Albuquerque. “As a city, as soon as hired the Ruckelshaus Institute, publisher Commission to help it look into city’s supply, and will expand up to you discharge the water, there are no of this magazine, to facilitate meetings injecting produced coalbed methane 50,000 acre feet by 2030. further benefits. If you can collect it, of a newly formed steering committee water into the city’s aquifer. This The city of Denver and its utility, treat it, recycle it a few times, you get tasked with solving the aquifer depletion study found that the water was of too Denver Water, has historically relied more bang for your buck.” problem for irrigators downstream of poor quality to use for drinking water. almost entirely on surface water and Colorado’s large and thirsty Cheyenne, Wyoming. Furthermore, the city of Gillette had now is investigating the potential to human population, diminishing trouble coordinating with the coalbed store water in a deep aquifer under aquifers, and lack of space for new Resources methane producers to transfer the the city limits. This would likely entail reservoirs all converge to make ASR a water. Finally, the only parts of the recharging excess surface water during viable option there. Unlike Colorado, Find links to these reports at aquifer viable for ASR were too small spring runoff season and withdrawing Wyoming does have space for new westernconfluence.org to warrant the infrastructure required that water later in the year during reservoirs, but they also face hurdles Bouwer, Herman, David Pyne, to bring the water to the city. times of greater need. The Centennial related to environmental permitting, Jess Brown, Daniel St. Germain, Water and Sanitation District, which evaporative losses, and siltation. Tom Morris, Christopher Brown, serves Highlands Ranch, Colorado, Meanwhile, Cheyenne’s Aquifer Peter Dillon, and Mitchell Rycus. injects excess surface water that has Recharge, Storage, and Recovery Wyoming has yet to find a Design, Operation, and Maintenance been treated to drinking water quality Project is currently on hold. suitable application for ASR, but some for Sustainable Underground Storage through 19 wells into its aquifer to “I think the technology has densely populated, thirsty Colorado Facilities. Denver, CO: Awwa Research slow aquifer depletion. And Castle matured enough now that we have cities are already recharging aquifers as Foundation, 2008. Rock south of Denver has historically plenty of examples,” says Marley of a way to clean and store water for the City of Cheyenne Board of Public relied exclusively on groundwater ASR. “It’s now more common as future. Utilities. 2013 Cheyenne Water and from several Denver Basin Aquifers, a potential solution. But a project One of the most advanced ASR Wastewater Master Plans: Volume which do not naturally recharge from can stall out. The governing bodies projects in Colorado is the Prairie 3 – Source Water Supply and Delivery. snowmelt or rain water. As the aquifer and teams working on it have to be Waters Project. The city of Aurora, a Prepared by HDR Engineering, declines, the city is now lifting water committed. They have to stay with Denver suburb, created Prairie Waters AMEC Earth and Environmental, from depths of as much as 1,400 feet, it. It doesn’t take as long as to build to reclaim the city’s effluent water. and AVI Professional Corporation, which requires heavy-duty pumps. a reservoir, but it will be a multiyear Prior to 2010, Aurora brought half of November 27, 2013. In addition to diversifying its water event.” its water in from distant water basins supply with renewable surface water Kevin Boyce, project manager Lytle Water Solutions, LLC. Final to the south and west. The other half sources, the city is investigating at the Wyoming Water Development Report: Managed Aquifer Recharge, originated in the South Platte River potential to recharge its aquifer. In Commission, has worked on Storage, and Recovery Project. Prepared Basin. Aurora was discharging treated 2014 the city retrofitted some existing several ASR tests and studies across for the Cheyenne Board of Public water from its wastewater treatment wells to test ASR. Wyoming over the years. While he Utilities, January 2011. plant into the South Platte River.

Western Confluence 19 The Great Water Transfer Diverting Water from Basin to Basin By Erin Jones judges ruled in favor of the Left Hand Divide the state’s mountains collect starts as snowmelt at the crest of In the summer of 1860, farmers farmers. The court found that the snow through the winter. While the Rockies near Aspen. Its water in central Colorado found Left Hand Left Hand farmers had “priority of most of the Colorado’s water is serves surrounding communities Creek dry.1 They started looking for appropriation,” meaning the water west of the divide, 90 percent of the and ecosystems in the Colorado 2 replacement water. Just over the ridge, belonged to them because they were state’s population plus most farms River headwaters. About fifty years South St. Vrain Creek flowed wet, so the first people to move it and put it to and industry are on the eastern ago construction crews burrowed they dug a ditch to divert its water use, regardless of who owned the land foothills and plains. In the early under the Continental Divide to back to Left Hand Creek. This solved adjacent to the waterway. part of the twentieth century, cities build the Boustead Tunnel, which their problem, but later in the summer Thus began water diversion in and counties on the Eastern Slope pipes Frying Pan water to Turquoise 3 St. Vrain Creek dried up downstream Colorado. Colorado’s biggest cities began to commission pipelines and Lake near Leadville. Shaped like a from the diversion. To take back their are built on water that’s been moved ditches to bring them water from the horseshoe, the tunnel has a ten-and- water, St. Vrain farmers ripped out from one side of the mountains to the Western Slope. And, because of legal a-half foot diameter, big enough to part of the Left Hand Ditch. other. As western communities plan precedent from the Left Hand case drive a truck through. It would take The Left Hand farmers sued the for future growth, they may look for and others, the Eastern Slope has the strong headlights: the tunnel winds St. Vrain farmers for destroying their more opportunities to divert water right to Western Slope water. Today, more than five miles under some of diversion. When the case eventually from wet, low-population water basins most Front Range reservoirs hold to drier areas with more people. Western Slope water, piped in through reached the Colorado Supreme Court, 2 Brent Gardner-Smith, “Pitkin County Colorado’s geography is ideal transbasin diversions. fighting city of Aurora over Fryingpan water,” 1 Caitlin Coleman, “Citizen’s Guide to for water diversions. The Continental One example is Turquoise Lake, Aspen Journalism, January 25, 2013. Colorado’s Transbasin Diversions,” Colorado Divide twists along Colorado’s middle part of the Frying Pan-Arkansas 3 US Department of the Interior Bureau of Foundation for Water Education, 2014. like a spine. West of the Continental Project. The Frying Pan River Reclamation, “Frying Pan-Arkansas Project,” 2013.

20 Western Confluence WATER in the future

the tallest mountains in the West. by the Federal Energy Regulatory and salmon, dry up wetlands, spread gets roughly 1.04 million acre-feet, Boustead can carry 684,603 acre-feet Commission in 2012 because it cheatgrass, and otherwise damage the about 250,000 of which are currently per year. It’s part of a larger network of didn’t specify how he planned to gain ecosystem. Also, they’re concerned that not being used. As water supplies ditches and tunnels called the Frying approval for building across federal, decreasing Flaming Gorge Reservoir’s become more strained in the west, Pan-Arkansas Project.4 Eventually, state, county, local, and private lands.6 water level could affect the local someone will figure out how store, Frying Pan River water flows out of More recently, Governor Matt recreation economy and potentially use, or divert that water. Turquoise Lake and makes it to the Mead explored transbasin diversion force the government to spend money Despite the failure of Arkansas River Basin where it serves as a potential component of a water on construction of new recreation recent Wyoming transbasin Colorado Springs and Pueblo. strategy for Wyoming.7 He suggested infrastructure.8 diversion proposals, it’s likely that The Boustead Tunnel is just one Wyoming begin planning a pipeline Meanwhile, if towns in businesspeople and water managers of Colorado’s 44 transbasin diversions, to carry water from the Upper Green Wyoming’s North Platte River Basin will continue to explore them. As 27 of which cross the Continental River to the North Platte River Basin grow at all in the future, they will water becomes scarcer and people Divide. Water that crosses the Divide near Cheyenne. However, following be looking for more water. Like more plentiful in Wyoming, the effectively disappears from its original the public comment period for the in Colorado, most of Wyoming’s tug-of-war over water will become basin. strategy, this diversion was cut from snowfall and major rivers are west more pronounced, and the population Colorado may be the poster child the water strategy. of the Continental Divide, while the centers, like Casper and Cheyenne of water diversions, but such projects Some citizens in Wyoming, Utah, human population and agriculture is in Wyoming, may look west of the exist in other western states as well. and Colorado strongly opposed these east of the divide. By some analyses, Continental Divide in their search for Wyoming currently has one major diversion proposals due to concerns Wyoming is already using all the water water. Transbasin diversions could transbasin diversion that moves water about the ramifications to people and it has a right to in the North Platte reappear on Wyoming’s water horizon from the Little Snake River Basin ecosystems in the water’s original River, while there still remains unused in the future. west of the Continental Divide to basins. They worried that taking water water in Wyoming’s allocation of the North Platte River Basin on the out of the Green River would hurt trout the Green River, which is a tributary Erin Jones is pursuing a master of fine east. This is a complicated, multi-step of the Colorado River. The 1922 arts in creative nonfiction writing and diversion. The city of Cheyenne owns Colorado River Compact allocated environment and natural resources at the 6 Hannah Northey, “FERC rejects major Wyo.- a water right in the Little Snake River, Colo. pipeline proposal,” Environment and each of the states in the Colorado University of Wyoming. which it diverts over a mountain range Energy Publishing (February 28, 2012). River Basin a certain amount of water. Find links to the resources cited in this to Hog Park Reservoir. From there, the 7 Wyoming Governor’s Office, “Wyoming Depending on conditions, Wyoming water flows out of the reservoir, down Water Strategy Public Input Sessions story at westernconfluence.org Possible Initiatives Executive Summary,” Hog Park Creek, and into the North 2014. 8 It’s Our Dam Water, “The Facts,” 2014. Platte River. In exchange for dumping its Little Snake River water into the North Platte, Cheyenne pipes water from another North Platte tributary, Shannon Glendenning (UW Haub School) and Colorado Division of Water Resources Douglas Creek, 75 miles from the Medicine Bow Mountains to the city. On average, this diversion moves 10,664 acre-feet of water every year. Other diversions could one day join Cheyenne’s elaborate system of trades and pipelines in Wyoming. In 2006, Fort Collins businessman Aaron Million proposed a 500-mile transbasin diversion from Flaming Gorge, in southwestern Wyoming, along I-80 to Cheyenne, and then south all the way to Pueblo, Colorado.5 His goal was to move 250,000 acre- feet of water a year. Million’s permit Blue arrows show application was most recently rejected the 44 transbasin diversions in Colorado. Black 4 Fryingpan Valley, “Fryingpan Valley and Ruedi Reservoir: A Visitor’s Guide.” lines show 5 Shannon Love, “The Green River and boundaries Colorado’s Water Future,” University of between major Denver Water Law Review, August 27, 2013. river watersheds.

Western Confluence 21 Elizabeth Nysson field notes

No-Name Asking Big Questions About Hydrology in One Little Watershed

By Elizabeth Nysson research in the No-Name Watershed Square solar panels congregate on to learn how water moves through weathered tree stumps in a small open mountain environments. Growing area in the Medicine Bow National demands on water throughout the Forest. Filaments of sunlight stream West mean it is increasingly important through the dense pines and reflect off to understand how water moves from the photovoltaics. Under one tree sits high subalpine areas into the rivers a white metal rectangular box with a and streams that support communities cable running from its base through hundreds of miles downstream. But the clearing. With trees entwined by no single research discipline has all electrical cords, the scene would likely the tools needed to fully analyze puzzle any hiker who stumbled across subalpine hydrology. The only way to this remote mountain area. really comprehend the processes that This is a study site in the No- control water in this system is through Name Watershed, a little 300-acre interdisciplinary collaboration, an idea (about half a square mile) drainage that’s a bit out-of-the-box for most in the Medicine Bow Mountains of university academics. Crouched behind the solar panels Drew Thayer gets ready to place a distributed temperature sensor cable into No-Name south central Wyoming. No-Name Creek. Creek starts as snow melt and trickles in late June, geology and geophysics downhill for about one kilometer graduate student Drew Thayer is In 2007, UW ecosystem scientists accurately answer questions about to Libby Creek, which eventually setting the controls on a fiber-optic Ginger Paige and Scott Miller set how and where water moves through meets the Little Laramie River. Steep Distributed Temperature Sensor. out to look for a small watershed the environment. These answers slopes cloaked in subalpine fir and After he finishes, he and his research to use as a research site. After some will inform understanding of larger Engelmann spruce characterize the team unroll a thin black fiber-optic investigation near the Snowy Range, watersheds. No-Name Watershed, and a limestone cable through the forest to No-Name Paige and Miller found this nameless In 2012, five years after Miller, escarpment marks one edge of this Creek. Small boulders and bright little drainage at about 9,500 feet Paige and a few other colleagues rugged area. On maps of the mountain green moss line the swift, narrow of elevation. A stream monitoring installed baseline hydrologic range, it’s just a tiny nameless current. The team members weave gauge had been installed in Libby instrumentation and began to measure thumbprint, but this little pocket of the cable under fallen trees and limbs Creek where the waters converge. At components of the water balance, forest could hold answers to some of that crisscross the stream. The cable, an appropriate size and with some No-Name research suddenly increased the most cutting-edge questions about which connects to a solar-powered historical data already available, the with an infusion of funds from the subalpine hydrology. computer housed inside the metal team decided No-Name would meet National Science Foundation through The futuristic collection of box back in the clearing, will collect their needs. Wyoming’s Experimental Program to equipment tucked into this clearing water temperatures. These data will be Concentrating research in a Stimulate Competitive Research. This is part of an ambitious, multi-year, paired with air and soil temperatures small watershed is by design. “As you award, for which Miller is a principle interdisciplinary research project collected by other researchers to go out to a larger watershed you can investor, created the Wyoming being conducted by scientists and start to describe the watershed in no longer adequately describe how Center for Environmental Hydrology graduate students from the University minute, scientific detail. Like the little point-scale processes like snow melt and Geophysics (WyCEHG), a of Wyoming. Roughly twenty mountain creek flowing through this and rainfall result in stream flow and multidisciplinary research center at researchers and students from seven study site, the research here started as groundwater recharge without a lot of the University of Wyoming. departments are concentrating their a trickle, and now rushes like spring uncertainty,” says Miller. Focusing on One of the first students to snow melt. No-Name allows researchers to more develop a long-term project at No-

22 Western Confluence Elizabeth Nysson Name with WyCEHG funding was better understand snowmelt. There is Alan Klatt, a field hydrology graduate an array of studies related to surface student under Miller. Starting in water conditions in which teams the spring of 2012, he installed ten are investigating surface water flow, gauging stations to monitor water flow analyzing how water flows through in No-Name Creek and has managed soils, and understanding the chemistry two meteorological stations that of water. Klatt explains, “The water measure precipitation entering the cycle has many complex components watershed. and requires an interdisciplinary Over the next two years, research group of experts working together to in No-Name Watershed quadrupled. understand the whole system.” A team of plant physiologists led by Even without a name, researchers Professor Brent Ewers is measuring hope this little watershed will lead evapotranspiration to account for to big discoveries. As the project the water that escapes from trees and continues, WyCEHG researchers will understory plants. Other researchers piece together the most thorough are calculating how trees take up water, picture of subalpine hydrology ever modeling future forest conditions, produced by science. This research mapping vegetation, and surveying will not only build knowledge within trees killed by bark beetles. A group the scientific community, but also of geophysics students and faculty are inform managers in the West and using electrical resistivity to generate give students like Klatt and Thayer a two-dimensional image of water experience to be leaders in water- underground. Still more studies are science fields in the future. looking at weather and atmospheric conditions, such as air temperature Elizabeth Nysson is the education, and humidity. During the winter, outreach, and diversity coordinator Assistant Professor Noriaki Ohara is for Wyoming’s Experimental Program modeling snow pack dynamics and to Stimulate Competitive Research joining other researchers working to (EPSCoR) at the University of Wyoming. Instruments measure surface water characteristics. Elizabeth Nysson

Alan Klatt wades into Libby Creek.

Western Confluence 23 field notes Manasseh Franklin

Finding Teton Glacier By Manasseh Franklin I am a writer and a scientifically My partner Matt and I left the curious person. I’m drawn to glaciers Lupine Meadows parking lot in Grand because I feel most alive in hard, cold Teton National Park at sunrise, his spaces, and have a fierce desire to long stride covering miles quickly, tell a story not often told. Much of my short stride moving fast to keep what the public knows about glaciers up. We paused at Amphitheater Lake comes through media stories about for handfuls of trail mix and then, at climate change, rising sea levels, or the direction of the park ranger we’d how glaciated regions of the world spoken to the evening before, began are melting fast. But there is more to Matt approaches Teton Glacier. to hunt for a faint trail that would lead glaciers. Their decline shifts climate. us up the ridge east of the high alpine Their decline changes ecosystems. pillar and an amphitheater opened sheets that once stretched across the lake. In the basin beyond that ridge, And their decline also means the loss before us. continent. As the climate shifted over we’d been told, sat a glacier. of incredibly bizarre and inspiring I stopped and put my hand on the last 12,000 years, the ice sheets We found the path in a cluster of spaces on earth that few humans will Matt’s arm. The glacier sat tightly shrunk to glaciers and left mountain boulders and followed it away from ever experience first hand. My goal nestled against the lower reaches of peaks and valleys in their wake. Some the lake. The steep incline required is to share the story—the ecological, the Grand Teton, Mount Owen, and of the remaining glaciers still grow, scrambling with all fours past scrubby climactic, and personal story—of Mount Teewinot. It filled a small most are declining, and some, like the pine trees. When we finally reached these places. corner of the amphitheater and spread Teton Glacier maintain their small the ridge, we were disappointed: there Which is how I ended up picking 2000 feet or so to where we stood. Its mass thanks to northerly aspects, and was no glacier in sight. my way down the steep slope into the bergschrund—a wide seam that forms protective cirque walls. Instead we saw piles of house- valley alongside Matt, searching for where moving ice has pulled away from I come to these places to and car-sized boulders strewn along one of the few glaciers still standing rock wall—sat high above the rest of experience the earth as it was and a valley floor. Beyond towered a in the Teton range. We reached the the ice, a large slit pressed against the to experience it as it is. Glaciers— horseshoe-shaped wall of debris. boulder field and worked our way rock behind. The seam gave way to a especially these hidden ones burrowed Rocks, silt, and boulders once carried across it, pressing our feet and hands miniature icefall, and to the right of the in the Rocky Mountain West— by a glacier and then left behind, this between car-sized granite chunks and icefall, a small band of crevasses etched illustrate the ever-changing nature moraine offered a clue. Maybe behind scattered shreds of malachite. Water into dirty snow like ribs. of these landscapes. They are a living it we would find what we were looking gurgled beneath us, unseen, hidden by The glacier had all of the form history, and someday—perhaps for. a cluttered rock mess. and texture of a typical glacier, but in sooner than later—their presence and I was searching for Teton Glacier The boulder field steepened. miniature. current shapes will exist only in text just as I’d been searching for glaciers Boulders gave way to sandy scree and Down slope from the icefall and and photos on the pages of books. All all summer to gather material for my rocks. The fluted moraine glittered in the cracks, water trickled through we will know and experience of them master of fine arts writing thesis at the pale sunlight that cut through clouds soft ice studded with multicolored is what they leave behind. University of Wyoming. My journey above. We tipped our heads back to rock and punctuated the air with I smiled at Matt and squeezed his began in Alaska where I’d traveled see the top of it 100 feet above us, muffled, steady rhythms. The water hand. He smiled back. We turned back by foot, floatplane, pack raft, and ski hunched our shoulders and continued slid beneath the debris horseshoe toward the moraine and slowly began to glaciers in the Southeast and the climbing. Rocks shifted beneath our that stretched across the opening the climb out. Kenai Range. Next Matt and I visited a boots with each slow, steady step. of the amphitheater, and far down series of glaciers that became notably Occasionally we slid back as far as we’d slope, met a creek that gurgled and Manasseh Franklin is pursuing a smaller as we moved south through moved forward. splashed through Glacier Gulch to the master of fine arts in creative nonfiction Alberta, British Columbia, Montana, Once atop the moraine ridge, we glittering, rich turquoise surface of writing and environment and natural and, finally, Wyoming. I traveled to still couldn’t see the glacier, but we Delta Lake. resources at the University of Wyoming. the glaciers not to measure them or stood where it had once been. Before I gazed up at the glacier and down She has reported for magazines including to mourn the loss of ice, but simply us a steep loose pitch slanted down to to the lake and imagined ice filling Afar, Rock and Ice, Trail Runner, and to experience them and to record that a large snow patch. We glissaded down the space as it did during the last Ice others. experience for others. the moraine and followed the snow Age. This glacier, along with others in to a sheer rock pillar. We rounded the North America, is a remnant of the ice

24 Western Confluence Western Confluence 24 Beaver Dreams The Rancher Who Wished for a Beaver

By Erin Jones water quality by slowing down the “They’re really beneficial, to get flow and filtering the water, Long the shrubs in, get the water up.” says. That helps establish willows and Clyde Woolery, a rancher near other shrubs, which are good habitat Kinnear, Wyoming, wishes he had and browsing for animals including more beavers. In 2011, he called the livestock. Wyoming Game and Fish Department After all, “it’s been said many and asked if they could live trap a times before, they’re nature’s beaver and transplant it to his ranch. engineer.” He says wetlands benefit Many landowners fight with ecosystem health and even boost beavers. Like humans, beavers biodiversity. “They’re doing good manufacture a landscape to suit things. Whether it be for cutthroat their needs. Take this scenario, for trout or for cattle, they’re good for the example. A rancher installs a culvert system.” under a road leading to a pasture. A When a landowner has a problem beaver dams the culvert to make a beaver, Long’s group live traps it pond, flooding the road. The rancher and moves it to public land, usually dynamites the dam. The beaver national forests. Wyoming Wetlands rebuilds. And so on. Many ranchers Society has been moving dozens of see a beaver as a headache, but for beavers each year since 2004. Game landowners like Woolery who have no and Fish reacts to isolated phone calls, beavers, that sentiment is changing. also moving troublesome beavers to Since beavers reached near public and sometimes private lands. extinction around the turn of the And, meanwhile, ranchers like twentieth century, trapping limits have Clyde Woolery wish for a beaver. In a helped beaver populations recover, but state looking for ways to store water not to the levels they used to exist in in an arid landscape, beavers could Wyoming. That’s why organizations help. A program for landowners to like Wyoming Wetlands Society, with request beavers could be one step cooperation from the Wyoming Game toward healthier wetlands for people, and Fish Department, have been livestock, fish, and ecosystems. moving live beavers to places they Woolery believes he’s not alone won’t come into conflict with human in his dreams of bringing beavers structures, and educating landowners back to his ranch. If Game and Fish about the benefits beavers provide. streamlined a way for landowners to Bill Long, the program director get on a beaver request list, Woolery of Wyoming Wetlands Society, thinks there would be demand. He says that beavers can establish new says Game and Fish agreed to bring wetlands and make existing wetlands him a beaver once he could get willow work better. “Cleaner, colder water established closer to his creek. “The comes out of beaver dams,” he says. coyotes get them, if they have to go “They’re a keystone species.” Beaver too far for willow,” Woolery explains. dams raise the water table and increase He’s on beaver hold until then.

Western Confluence 25 Defense Fund teamed up to support landowners in their efforts to develop the Upper Green River Conservation Exchange. Together, this group began designing a marketplace that would establish an economic value for healthy, intact wildlife habitat and water resources on private lands.

The basic idea of the conservation exchange is that ranchers who conserve good habitat and other natural resources can sell those values, in the form of credits, to energy companies or other developers seeking to offset unavoidable impacts Wyoming Conservation Exchange of development. For example, if an energy company plans to drill a well in sage grouse habitat in one part of New Marketplace Will Reward Wyoming Ranchers the Green River Basin, it would first try to avoid or minimize impacts to for Conserving Sage Grouse Habitat grouse to the fullest extent possible, such as by modifying the projec. By Sara Brodnax, Kristi Hansen, and others are racing against the public-private partnership of ranchers, To offset unavoidable impacts, the Jen Lamb, and Melanie Purcell clock to get regulatory structures and agencies, universities, non-profit energy company could then buy credits from a rancher who voluntarily The Upper Green River Basin of on-the-ground conservation in place. groups, and businesses launched by agrees to maintain and enhance sage Wyoming, at the headwaters of the Their hope is to convince the Service the Natural Resources Conservation grouse habitat nearby in the basin. Colorado River, is laced with clear that the sage grouse can thrive under Service, found that more than 80 The amount of habitat protected running streams and fosters abundant current management and does not percent of these essential wet habitats should more than offset the direct habitat and some of the most robust need the additional protection that are on private lands. So while sage and indirect impacts on the bird greater sage grouse, mule deer, and would come with being listed as a grouse conservation on state and and its habitat. This would help the pronghorn populations in the world. threatened or endangered species. A federal lands is very important, private energy company protect wildlife, and With steady projected population listing could impede some activities land conservation cannot be ignored. reward the landowner for providing growth for Pinedale, the seat of in sage grouse habitat including Wyoming, home to nearly half sage grouse habitat. In addition to Sublette County in the heart of the agriculture and energy development. of the greater sage grouse’s remaining benefitting both landowners and basin, and some of the country’s most Many sage grouse conservation habitat, is critical to the species’ developers, the exchange would significant natural gas fields, the area efforts have focused on breeding areas recovery. A full 40 percent of the bird’s support the wildlife and open needs solutions that keep working known as leks, most often found in habitat in Wyoming is on private landscapes that characterize the basin. lands productive while protecting dry upland areas, 80 percent of which lands, so ranchers and other private Conservation investors interested in at-risk habitats. That’s where a are on public land. However, after landowners are looking for ways to supporting sage grouse habitat, such as “conservation exchange” comes in. breeding, sage grouse move to wetter conserve these habitats. sportsmen or non-profits, could also One at-risk species in the basin is areas to raise their broods through A few years back, landowners purchase credits in the exchange. the greater sage grouse. The U.S. Fish the summer. Private lands in the in the Upper Green River Basin in In early 2014, the participants in and Wildlife Service (the Service) West are often found along rivers and Wyoming stepped up to find ways to the Upper Green River Conservation must decide whether the greater sage streams, as homesteaders put down put a value on the benefits provided by Exchange recognized the opportunity grouse warrants listing under the stakes where they had ready access to their lands. To this end, the Sublette to scale up to a statewide Wyoming Endangered Species Act. Across the water. These areas are also critically County Conservation District, the Conservation Exchange to generate West, land management agencies, important to wildlife. A recent study University of Wyoming, The Nature additional conservation for greater wildlife agencies, private landowners, by the Sage Grouse Initiative, a Conservancy, and the Environmental sage grouse. Critically, a statewide

26 Western Confluence field notes

exchange would allow landowners state and federal efforts to protect survival. In its recent “Greater Sage- Jen Lamb is the Southwest Wyoming throughout the state to participate in sage grouse. For example, Wyoming’s Grouse Range-Wide Mitigation Program Director for The Nature mitigation efforts in close proximity “Core Area Strategy” supports Framework,” the Service emphasized Conservancy in Wyoming. She works to proposed land disturbances. As grouse protection on key habitat how important it is for states to with landowners, agencies and other this effort has evolved to a statewide areas and concentrates development develop robust mitigation programs partners to conserve healthy working platform, it has attracted additional elsewhere. And the Bureau of Land that provide for no net loss and landscapes. involvement and support from Management is incorporating sage even net gain of sage grouse habitat. Melanie Purcell is Wildlife and Habitat stakeholders like the Wyoming grouse regulatory mechanisms in its In the Mitigation Framework, the Program Manager and Payment for Stock Growers Association and revised Resource Management Plans. Service specifically recognized how Ecosystem Services Specialist for the the Wyoming Association of The Wyoming Conservation Exchange conservation exchanges can help Sublette County Conservation District. Conservation Districts. will complement these strategies by address these needs. Her local knowledge of biology and socio- The tools and standards of the rewarding landowners for bolstering The Service, along with the economics helps to inform ecosystem Wyoming Conservation Exchange habitat on private lands. The Exchange Wyoming Department of Game service opportunities. are modeled after conservation can also be used to complement and Fish, Wyoming Office of State banking, which is used to protect the measures required by the Core Lands, Wyoming Department of lands and offset adverse impacts to Areas Strategy and the Resource Environmental Quality, Bureau of Further reading threatened or endangered species. Management Plans by offsetting any Land Management, and Natural Wyoming Conservation Exchange – The exchange will have programmatic unavoidable impacts that remain Resources Conservation Service, is wyomingconservationexchange.org features and standards like a Habitat after onsite mitigation efforts. currently reviewing the Wyoming Quantification Tool used to measure Because offsetting or “compensatory Conservation Exchange proposal. Habitat Exchanges – and assess sage grouse habitat, mitigation” generally requires that If the application is approved, the thehabitatexchange.org placing the highest value on healthy, offsite habitat improvements are Service and any other approving Find links to the following reports at unfragmented habitat. Eventually, the greater in value than the onsite agencies will formally recognize westernconfluence.org: Wyoming Conservation Exchange habitat destruction, the Wyoming sage grouse habitat conservation Donnelly, Patrick, “Private Lands can expand to protect more than Conservation Exchange in theory has undertaken through the Exchange. Vital to Conserving Wet Areas for just sage grouse habitat. Tools are in the potential to actually increase the “By using tools that encourage Sage Grouse Summer Habitat.” Sage development for mule deer habitat overall extent of sage grouse habitat. collaboration and forward thinking Grouse Initiative. Science to Solutions, and hydrologic services as well. The As the Service reviews whether like conservation exchanges, Series Number 4 (2014). Habitat Quantification Tool uses a to list the sage grouse as a threatened everyone—including the greater sage set of measurements and methods to or endangered species, it will be grouse—wins,” says Eric Peterson, EcoMetrix Solutions Group and evaluate vegetation and environmental evaluating whether states have the District Manager of the Sublette Environmental Defense Fund, conditions related to habitat quality adopted regulatory mechanisms County Conservation District. “That’s “Greater Sage-Grouse Habitat and quantity. Energy companies and adequate to ensure the grouse’s a great outcome for ranchers, industry, Quantification Tool: A Multi- other developers that need to mitigate and Wyoming.” Scaled Approach for Assessing the unavoidable impacts of their Impacts and Benefits to Greater Sage projects can use the tool to calculate Sara Brodnax, the Habitat Markets Grouse Habitat. Scientific Methods pre- and post-conditions on both Manager for the Environmental Defense Document, Version 1.” 2014. development sites (debits) and habitat Fund, works to develop incentives for Governor Matt Mead, State of improvement sites (credits). conservation and stewardship of working Wyoming Executive Department In the coming months, the farms and ranches. She is based out of Executive Order. “Wyoming Greater Exchange partners will hire an Washington, DC, and spent summer and Sage-Grouse Core Area Protection. Exchange Administrator and establish fall 2014 in Wyoming. Executive Order 2011-5.” June 2, pilot projects. Much work is need to Kristi Hansen is Assistant Professor and 2011. get the program off the ground, but if Extension Water Resource Economist U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. all goes as planned, a pilot version of in the Department of Agricultural and “Greater Sage-Grouse Range-Wide the Wyoming Conservation Exchange Applied Economics at the University of Mitigation Framework, Version 1.0.” will open for business in 2015. Wyoming. Her research focus includes September 3, 2014. environmental markets and payment for ecosystem services programs. The Wyoming Conservation Exchange will complement ongoing

Western Confluence 27 science brief

Sagebrush Recovers at Oil and Gas Wells Other Species Do Not

By Emilene Ostlind connect it to information stored in the This last part was unexpected. “The most important questions Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Forbs include wildflowers and other have to do with the long-term Commission database. small leafy, flowering, non-woody behavior of systems,” says Indy Burke, The wells were abandoned plants. Even though forbs don’t University of Wyoming ecologist. between 1923 and 1980 and showed account for a very high percentage The system she’s talking about, in no sign of reclamation. They averaged of vegetation in these sagebrush this case, is western landscapes. And about 40 yards in diameter. All were landscapes, they account for the most their behavior has to do with how situated in a landscape dominated species and are a critical part of the the sagebrush and other vegetation by Wyoming big sagebrush, with ecosystem. Sage grouse, for example, recovers after disturbance. She, other shrubs, grasses, and wildflowers need at least 10 percent forb cover for botanist Bill Lauenroth, and their present. At each well pad site, the shelter and forage. graduate students have a paper coming researchers measured the sagebrush “If you’re patient the sagebrush out in the journal Ecosphere. The height, cover, and density. They also will come back,” says Burke. “The paper describes their study designed recorded cover and density of three forbs will take much longer.” to learn how sagebrush grows back at other categories of vegetation: non- Because this research was abandoned oil and gas wells, but the sagebrush shrubs, grasses, and forbs. designed to ask questions about most surprising finding was about In addition, they recorded the same sagebrush and the finding about another family of vegetation. information for adjacent areas never wildflowers was incidental, Burke and The researchers used a disturbed by oil and gas development. her team are now returning to the well “chronosequence” to look at well Sagebrush once covered an sites to survey individual forb species. pad sites 30, 60, and even 90 years estimated 232,000 square miles across They will also look for seeds in the soil after abandonment. History is part of western North America, an area to begin to understand whether forbs their experimental design. Instead of almost two and half times the size of have trouble because their seeds don’t setting up a study and waiting for the Wyoming. Today, as much as half of persist on abandoned well pads or if site to age three to nine decades, they that ecosystem has been lost due to something else, like soil disturbance went to the Wyoming Oil and Gas invasive weeds and land use changes. and compaction, is preventing their Conservation Commission records Several iconic western species such recovery. The results could help and found oil and gas wells that had as mule deer, pronghorn, Rocky improve reclamation requirements to been abandoned 30 to 90 years ago. Mountain elk, and pygmy rabbits, as return old energy development sites to “We had difficulty getting these well as birds including sage grouse, suitable habitat. papers published,” Burke says. The sage thrasher, and sage sparrow reviewers wanted to see controls depend on sagebrush for habitat. Emilene Ostlind edits Western and an experiment that could be Energy development is one of the Confluence magazine. primary causes of land disturbance replicated. “We don’t have any of that.” Indy Burke directs the Haub School of A controlled study would have required in the sagebrush ecosystem, so understanding the long-term effects Environment and Natural Resources at clearing a well pad, abandoning it, and the University of Wyoming, home to the monitoring it and the surrounding area of such activities on the vegetation matters as we try to manage for those Ruckelshaus Institute, which publishes for 90 years to see what happened. this magazine. Instead, the team identified 29 sagebrush-dependent species. old, abandoned oil and gas wells in The findings from the study Further Reading startled the researchers. “Sagebrush two areas of south central Wyoming. Otgonsuren Avirmed, William recovers but it takes 60-80 years,” says When they visited the sites, they Lauenroth, Indy Burke, and Megan Burke. “Grasses recover fully very found metal posts at the center of Mobley. “Natural recovery of a quickly,” she adds. But the forbs did each pad bearing information that sagebrush plant community: Results not recover even after 90 years. allowed them to identify the well and from 30 to 88-year-old disturbed sites.” Ecosphere, in press.

28 Western Confluence solutions

Healing Sick Rivers Encampment River Case Study

By Charlie Reinertsen smile and a firm handshake at the Bear A front loader picks up massive Trap Restaurant, where I climbed into boulders as if they are pebbles. A her pickup truck. Barrineau restores bulldozer shoves rocks into a mound. and enhances watersheds throughout High-pitched beeps ebb and flow as Wyoming, and has most recently been the machinery works back and forth. overseeing work on the Encampment Everything about this construction River. As we drove to the first site, site is typical, with one exception: Barrineau told me the river’s story. the equipment is in the middle of the Like many western rivers, the Encampment River. The front loader Encampment is, in Barrineau’s words, bucket dips into the water, scrapes “well-used.” During construction of along the riverbed, and scoops up the transcontinental railroad in the cobbles and sediment. Water streams nineteenth century, workers harvested over the edges as the bucket lifts and trees along the upper Encampment swivels towards the stream bank. River, cut them into railroad ties, and With one deft movement, the heavy floated them down the river. The ties machinery dumps the cobbles and filled the entire channel, scouring sediment. The rocks crash and boom the bottom of the river. In 1897, to the riverbank. River reconstruction prospectors built a diversion dam is under way. in the Encampment River to supply A front loader moves sediment out of the Encampment River. Many rivers today are not the water to a copper smelter. Sediment same wild waterways they once built up above the diversion dam, and while others threw rocks, trees, and channels. A healthy river runs wild. were. Throughout human history, downstream water from the smelter car bodies in the water to break up The Encampment River running civilizations have struggled to rushed out of a pipeline and degraded and slow the powerful current. These through Riverside does not paint the transport, store, use, and control water, the stream banks. structures have not held up. Over picture of a healthy river. The channel and these actions have restructured Diversions for agriculture also time, they have fallen apart while is shallow and wide. Native vegetation our watersheds. In some cases, damaged the river. Cobble push- erosion has put private property at is missing from large stretches of the manipulation has resulted in sick up dams, built to force water into risk and the river channel sprawls banks, and the banks crumble into rivers—straightened, widened, and irrigation ditches, restricted the river’s and becomes shallower. Barrineau’s the water. Undercut banks loom degraded until they no longer provide flow and prevented fish from moving description of the river as “well-used” over the river, waiting to fall and add critical ecosystem services such as upstream. The push-up dams couldn’t is an understatement. more sediment to the already shallow efficiently moving sediment and water. withstand spring floods, so every As the truck approached the channel. Levies, dams, irrigation Across the West, conservation groups, year workers bulldozed the riverbed first construction site, Barrineau ditches, and droughts prevent spring private landowners, federal and state back up. Another agricultural use, explained that a river has two roles: floods from sweeping the river clean. agencies, and construction companies cattle grazing, has reduced streamside to move water and to move sediment. Without regular floods, the river are working together to enhance river vegetation, leading to bank erosion. A “healthy” river has deep channels cannot carve deeper channels or function. The combined historic uses of with fast-moving current broken up move sediment from the streambed To see an example of river the watershed have created a stream by eddies and pools. The channels to the flood plain. This shallow, wide, enhancement, I drove to Riverside, unable to heal itself. In one section of meander and even shift paths or eroding river is not just “well-used”; it Wyoming, to meet Christina the river, the bank eroded forty feet directions over time. Intact riparian is painfully sick. Barrineau, an aquatic habitat biologist in one year, cutting into an adjacent habitat, the vegetation on the banks In an attempt to tame with the Wyoming Game and Fish pasture. Private landowners along of a river, filters run-off and provides rambunctious waters, humans Department. Wearing hiking boots, the Encampment River have tried stability to the riverbanks. Spring have removed many rivers’ ability a fleece pullover, and large black to reduce bank erosion to save their floods move sediment through to heal themselves, requiring even sunglasses, she greeted me with a property. One landowner cabled hundreds of tires to the riverbank, the system, maintaining the deep more management to engineer river

Western Confluence 29 Charlie Reinertsen

of the river), pattern (the extent of meandering), and profile (the slope) of a river. Natural Channel Design includes a classification system that can be used to describe different types of rivers. Restoration work on an impaired river is then modeled after an unimpaired river of the same classification. After classifying a river, a Natural Channel Design project would involve measuring bank erosion rates and other factors to describe the river impairment. After that, the next step is to define the objectives of the project, which may include improving A rock cross-van diverts water to an irrigation ditch while allowing fish to move upstream. fisheries or aesthetic appearance, reducing land loss and erosion, or recovery. Early “hard” engineering Design methods. The work doesn’t nearly 6,000 feet at the cost of roughly increasing sediment transport. On methods disregarded a river’s natural come for free. This enhancement $200 per liner foot, or $1.2 million. the Encampment River, the primary function and ecology. These engineers project is a collaborative effort When Barrineau’s truck pulls objectives were to transport sediment straightened and widened streams to between the Wyoming Wildlife and up, the bulldozer and front loader are and reduce land loss from erosion, gain complete control over the waters. Natural Resource Trust, the Wyoming working in the river, beeping as they and a secondary goal was fishery A shift in river management occurred Game and Fish Department, the move cobbles from the streambed improvement. The last step is for in the 1950s when hard engineering Saratoga-Encampment-Rawlins to the bank, repairing structures workers to reconstruct a channel gave way to fluvial geomorphology, or Conservation District, Trout damaged by unusually high spring by selecting structures to create the the study of a river’s natural function Unlimited, the Natural Resource floods. A curve of massive boulders in dimension, pattern, and profile to to inform ecological restoration. Conservation Service, the US Fish and the riverbed extends upstream from meet the objectives. One fluvial geomorphologist, Wildlife Service, the US Forest Service one bank and curls around to the The J-hook we’re looking at Dave Rosgen, has heavily influenced Resource Advisory Committee, the opposite bank, creating rapids and a was one of the first structures built river enhancement throughout the Wyoming Governor’s Big Game deep channel downstream. Barrineau here. Barrineau is critical of her early country. Rosgen recieved a PhD in License Coalition, the Wyoming explains it is a J-hook designed to work, warning me, “Don’t take notes geomorphology and hydrology and Landscape Conservation Initiative, centralize flows and keep the river here. You will see better examples started his career as a hydrologist for private landowners, the Encampment from gnawing at the banks. later today.” River enhancement the Forest Service. After working for School, and volunteers. Together, Rosgen designed structures such projects are a “learning process,” she the Forest Service, Rosgen started these groups have been restoring two as the J-hook to help maintain or create says. She explains that this particular a river restoration consulting firm contiguous river segments spanning the dimension (the depth and width structure is too prominent and creates and developed a straightforward a large drop-off downriver. Further river enhancement method called downstream newer J-hooks are built Natural Channel Design. Natural lower in the water to create a more Channel Design studies unimpaired gradual grade. rivers and applies ideas from fluvial Even though the structure is geomorphology to restore function to not up to Barrineau’s standards, impaired rivers. Over the past twenty- the J-hook is centralizing the flow, five years, Rosgen has honed Natural reducing bank erosion, and creating a Channel Design by developing and deep trout pool. And new structures testing the techniques on hundreds have benefited from the lessons of river restoration projects. He also learned here. As we walk upstream, developed a four-part course and Barrineau points out another Natural certification program, and has taught Channel Design structure called toe over 17,000 people Natural Channel wood. From the edge of the river, we Design theory and methodology. can see stacks of dead cottonwoods On the Encampment River, since buried in cobble on the outside bank 2011 Barrineau has been overseeing of a curve. In a shift from earlier contractors trained in Natural Channel river engineering, which relied on Design plan for a J-hook from a Wildland Hydrology manual. cement or other durable, unnatural

30 Western Confluence solutions

substances, Natural Channel Design Charlie Reinertsen result of a collaboration with the local builds out of local, native materials. landowner. An irrigation ditch runs The logs are layered on top of one from the river to a nearby property. another with their tops stuck into the To direct the river into the ditch, the riverbank and the roots jutting out rancher maintained a push-up dam, into the river to create a rough edge which required annual maintenance that breaks up the water’s energy. after flooding. As a replacement for Layers of cobbles hold the trees five the push-up dam, Barrineau’s team feet or more underwater, providing built a rock cross-vane, which diverts structure and stability to help the bank water to the ditch even in low-flows resist erosion. The submerged wood while allowing fish to move upstream. will not rot, and properly installed toe Although Natural Channel Design wood will provide bank stability until focuses on restoring the natural natural vegetation is reestablished. In function of a stream, it also takes into addition, an untrained eye would not account human uses of the water. even know the toe wood is there. The future of the Encampment Natural Channel Design goes River is promising. Barrineau and beyond engineering to include her team have assessed fifteen miles ecology. Structures are one of the river, and identified several component, but Rosgen argues Vegetation transplanted into cobbles will eventually stabilize the bank and reduce projects with potential to improve that without restoring streamside erosion. stability, fish habitat, and water vegetation, the river will not function. delivery in the system. Barrineau transplanted willow clumps, and the in hydrology. But critics argue the Barrineau smiles as she points out hopes to continue enhancement sculpted riverbanks. What seemed program has oversimplified extremely an army of blue and green tubes work on the Encampment, but she like a perfectly natural landscape is complex systems. Especially when sticking out of the cobble. Inside each recognizes the challenges. “We have actually carefully constructed. I begin people take only the first of the four one is a native shrub or tree—river huge plans. But you just have to get to understand something Barrineau certification courses or when they hawthorn, water birch, thinleaf alder, people to sign up and say, ‘Yeah, mentioned in the beginning of our lack a comprehensive understanding redosier dogwood, chokecherry, come out, come do this,’ because tour: “Every little elevation out of the philosophy, foundations, and woods rose, golden current, and four the funding is not a limiting factor here is designed for some purpose.” implementation of Natural Channel willow species—all painstakingly anymore.” The Wyoming Wildlife and With these reconstruction projects Design, yet they launch into practice. planted in the cobble riverbank. The Natural Resource Trust and other complete, Barrineau will oversee This can lead to ineffective work. tubes protect the young plants from organizations are eager to help fund monitoring to measure how these Perhaps the more unsettling criticism browsing and trap heat to help them enhancement projects as long as structures perform over time. of Natural Channel Design is that grow. The toe wood and in-stream landowners agree to participate. Natural Channel Design includes peer-reviewed studies have not been structures help guide the flow of the As Barrineau’s truck pulls away before and after monitoring to able to measure its effectiveness against stream today, but healthy riparian from the last construction site, I quantify how rivers improve. Despite other methods. Even after decades habitat will maintain the future of the can’t shake the feeling that putting such thoroughness, not everyone is of implementation, scientists have stream indefinitely. bulldozers and front loaders in rivers onboard with these methods. In fact, not confirmed that the work restores Further up the river, two front is exactly how we created sick rivers the dispute over this program has river ecology. Still, river restoration loaders are digging out the middle of in the first place. These enhancement become so vehement as to earn the projects are in high demand, and the river to create a berm channel. This and restoration projects claim to be title the “Rosgen Wars.” On one side many have accepted Natural Channel will deepen the river to help move reviving our watersheds, and many are Rosgen and other proponents of Design as the best available option. sediment during spring run-off. Berm believe in their power. Such projects Natural Channel Design who claim Until river engineers, hydrologists, channels, combined with cross-vane may be healing sick waterways, but that after restoration, rivers move and ecologists determine a better structures such as J-hooks, temporarily Rosgen warns, stream reconstruction water and sediment more efficiently. way to restore natural function to our fix the stream profile, pattern, and is not the best option. Instead, On the other side are academic and rivers or develop a new certification dimension while the vegetation we need better water and land scientific experts who argue that process, perhaps a nationwide standard grows back. Barrineau explains these management practices to avoid the Natural Channel Design courses are informed by the latest science, in-stream structures buy time for the damage in the first place. If we graze inadequate preparation for effective restoration projects will continue to plants to establish. Once the riparian livestock differently or manage stream stream restoration and that Rosgen’s turn to Natural Channel Design. ecosystem is restored, the river will flow differently, rivers will take care ideas are easily misused. Around the next bend we come no longer need human intervention to of themselves. Perhaps preventing Natural Channel Design’s to a structure we haven’t seen before. remain healthy. As we walk, I begin to the degradation, rather than elaborate popularity comes from its simple It resembles a modified J-hook. see structures before Barrineau points reconstruction, will be the future for 40-step certification program, much Barrineau tells me this project, in the them out: toe wood, berm channels, river restoration and enhancement. easier to learn and apply than a PhD making since the early 2000’s, is the

Western Confluence 31 currents

Public Opinion on Natural Resource Conservation in Wyoming News from the Ruckelshaus Institute By Kit Freedman We’re Hiring A recent statewide poll of Wyoming voters documented a strong interest in The University of Wyoming Haub School of conservation and support for dedicating additional state funds to protect land, air, Environment and Natural Resources, home to the water, wildlife habitat, and ranchlands in the state. As part of its Wyoming Open Ruckelsahus Institute, invites applications for a tenure- Spaces Initiative at the University of Wyoming, the William D. Ruckelshaus Institute track assistant professor position with expertise in natural partnered with the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, the Wyoming Stock resources science, management, and policy to teach and Growers Land Trust, and The Nature Conservancy in Wyoming to commission the conduct research in our interdisciplinary program. We poll. The groups contracted a bipartisan research team from two independent polling seek candidates with a PhD in natural resources science firms to conduct 500 telephone interviews with randomly-selected registered voters or environmental science, physical science, or a similar across Wyoming. discipline, and experience with the interface between Among the questions presented, pollsters read a list of seventeen issues facing natural resources science and management/policy. Details Wyoming and asked respondents to identify them as extremely serious, very serious, at uwyo.edu/haub. somewhat serious, or not a problem. The issues ranged from lack of health insurance coverage and dependence on foreign oil to loss of habitat for fish and wildlife and the Support Our Mission impact of oil and gas drilling on land, air, and water. Respondents were also asked whether Through publications likeWestern Confluence they would favor or oppose a small increase in local taxes to obtain matching funds to magazine and the Wyoming Open Spaces Initiative, the protect water, wildlife habitat, and ranchlands, as well as other questions about willingness Ruckelshaus Institute advances the understanding and to dedicate additional state funding to conservation. resolution of complex environmental and natural resources Overall, the poll found that Wyoming voters: challenges. The institute supports stakeholder-driven · View the loss of family farms and ranches, availability of water for farming solutions to environmental challenges by conducting and ranching, and the decline in numbers of big game animals as the top and communicating relevant research and promoting three most serious conservation issues facing the state. collaborative decision making. · Support state funding of many conservation projects, including protecting A significant portion of our budget comes from water resources, agriculture, tourism, family farms, and ranches. individual contributions from people who believe in our · Support dedicating existing revenues to conservation, including fully mission. There are three easy ways to support our work funding the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resources Trust at the to advance informed, collaborative decision making for maximum level of $200 million. natural resource issues in the West: · Favor setting aside more state money to protect land, air, water, wildlife Give online through UW’s secure platform: habitat, and ranchlands, and half favor a small increase in local taxes to uwyo.edu/giveonline obtain matching state funds to protect these resources in their communities. View the full report on the poll at uwyo.edu/haub/ruckelshaus-institute. Send your contribution in the mail: University of Wyoming Foundation 222 S 22nd St Laramie, WY 82070 Call during normal business hours: (307) 766-6300 or (888) 831-7795 Please specify whether you would like your gift to support Western Confluence in particular, the Ruckelshaus Institute, or the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources. Your gift is tax deductible as provided by law. Thank you for your support.

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32 Western Confluence downstream

Ba’a — Water is Life

By Baptiste Weed subject to government boarding The thirsty cottonwoods, used as water stretches the boundaries of this I was fortunate to grow up on the schools and lived through the the center pole in a round Sun Dance arid region. Limited only by dollars to banks of Trout Creek, one of the many Depression, spoke Shoshone as their lodge, symbolize extending the gift construct new irrigation infrastructure streams winding its way out of the first language. It was told to them by of life, of water. Many of the religions and laws governing the use of the Wind River Mountains onto mile-high their elders and relayed to me, my practiced today by the Shoshone, water, the arid land produces. We take flatlands and eventually to the lower siblings and our children on cool Arapaho, and other tribes in the for granted our water, much less the elevations of the Big Wind River, if you summer or cold winter nights over surrounding states share in common fact that we owe our existence to it. We consider 4,000 to 5,000 feet to be low. hot cups of coffee. My parents’ stories water as their focal point. The Sun consider any water service disruption This part of the country, about 200 gave me a glimpse of what life may Dance participants, after days of fasting, or overabundance an inconvenience. miles south of Yellowstone National have been like centuries ago. Listening gain a whole new respect for water. At Whether you believe that global Park, shares the same mountain range, to them, I gathered that surviving day the culmination of this ceremony, water warming is human caused or not, local wildlife, climate, biology, and ecology to day was not easy when existence is blessed and praised for its life-giving droughts are intensifying. How do we with that famous area. The Wind River depended on the abundance or lack qualities. The sweat lodge, a purification plan for more intense and frequent Indian Reservation even has one or two of wildlife, berries, vegetables, and rite, depends on the scorching steam erratic weather and rising global thermal hot springs. plants—all totally dependent on the produced by water poured over hot temperatures? The impact on the Trout Creek starts as a brook a life-giving element of water. rocks. The Native American church local climate will be anyone’s guess. foot wide, high up in the Wind Rivers, I often imagined, while ceremonies also end with praises, With such uncertainty, our attitudes but as it reaches the Little Wind River roaming or fishing this lush riparian blessings, and reverences to the life- will have to follow those of the early (tributary to the Big Wind River) it area and encountering the many giving qualities of water. With water as inhabitants who instilled in their widens to 20 feet or more thanks to the crawly critters—fowl to moose and the focal point, these ceremonies are ceremonies the idea that water is not a many underground springs that flow everything in between—what life performed in concert and orientation right that should be taken for granted. to it. These springs make for vibrant for my Shoshone ancestors was like with an equally important element: the Instead, it is a precious gift given and trout habitat. The subsurface springs decades or even eons ago. This region sun. At sunrise, a woman brings water received with humble gratitude and no feeding the creek always fascinated me where the sagebrush plains begin and in to be blessed. She and the water guarantees for how long it will remain. as a youth, because they expanded the water-dependent vegetation ends is are both bearers of life, as is the sun. life-sustaining source of water beyond clearly distinct. Looking out to the These are not random acts, but there Baptiste Weed was born and raised the stream and its aquatic inhabitants dusty plains from the lush foothills is a purpose and meaning rooted over on the Wind River Indian Reservation, to reach into the riparian areas and with their shrubs, berries and water- the many hundreds of years in each where he has worked on water issues wetlands and their inhabitants. guzzling cottonwoods, one thing was ceremony. for twenty-five years. He is currently the My parents, both of whom were always apparent: water is essential for Today the agricultural use of Deputy Tribal Water Engineer. all life to exist.

Western Confluence 33 Ruckelshaus Institute Bim Kendall House 804 E Fremont St Laramie, WY 82072

Charlie Reinertsen

34 Western Confluence