Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism protecting wild places and wildlife, for their sake – and ours Summer 2018 A beaver pond on Maroon Creek, pictured above, could have been flooded by reservoirs as part of 1960’s-era water rights SUCCESS! for dams on Castle and Maroon Creeks. A recent agreement between WW and several WW signs agreement with Aspen to relocate water rights other groups with the City ensures that this special place will not be dammed. for dams out of Castle and Maroon Creeks t the end of May, we signed a set of stipulations with the City of Aspen that commits In this issue A the City to moving its water rights for reservoirs out of Castle and Maroon Creeks. The agreement ensures those two streams will remain un-dammed and free flowing hopefully A Fond Farewell 2 forever! This major success comes after two years of citizen pressure, legal work and col- laboration with the City. Crystal Trail 4 New Wilderness 6 HOW THE STORY UNFOLDED Defiende 8 When the City of Aspen moved to renew conditional water rights for reservoirs on Castle Hike Series 10 and Maroon Creeks in 2016, Wilderness Workshop raised questions about the wisdom and utility of keeping those proposed dams on the books. Our main concerns centered on the Summer Schedule 11 ecological impacts of potential dams, including significantly altering the stream ecology Berlaimont 12 and riparian habitat, flooding designated wilderness, and industrializing two ecologically im- Logging 13 portant and beloved valleys. While climate change and a growing population certainly pose National Monuments 14 significant challenges to the City’s water supply, our take is that there must be better options. With that in mind we joined nine other parties, including our partners at Western Oil and Gas Update 15 Resource Advocates (WRA), American Rivers, and Trout Unlimited, to object to the City’s Donor Hall of Fame 16 diligence filing in water court. As part of this process, we entered into a settlement period designed to encourage us to reach a fair resolution without litigation. Given the City’s com- mitment to the environment, we felt confident we could reach a settlement without going to court. And after nearly 18 months of dialogue, legal analysis, and studies by the City, we did just that. In May, WW and WRA and the City of Aspen agreed to a set of stipulations that, once finalized, ensures the City will not build dams on Castle and Maroon Creeks! As we CONTINUED ON PAGE 3 SUMMER SCHEDULE PG. 11 JUNE 2012 | Wild Works 1 A FOND FAREWELL It’s been a helluva run. In the 21 years I’ve been with this incredible organization, I fell in love, got married, started a family, got a mortgage, became bald and grey, all while building Aspen Wilderness Workshop from the all-volunteer organization it was to the professionally staffed Wilderness Workshop of today. Many ask, “what were your greatest accomplishments?” That’s hard to answer. The accomplishments aren’t mine to claim. WW is a team comprised of incredibly talented and dedicated staff, a bright and committed board, and you the community that’s taken the leap of faith giving us the moral, political, and financial support to work in your name. It sounds cliché but it’s true. I’ve only loosely held the wheel here, allowing the team’s values and instincts to guide them. And our accomplishments have been many, big and small, all of which add up to a keeping our air and water clean, and our landscapes wild and robust. When I took the reigns, the Aspen Wilderness Workshop’s membership was below 100 and declining, and the issues were getting too complex and rapid for an all-volunteer organization to effectively address. Our origin story is noble – passionate volunteers gathered around kitchen tables, mapping out ways to capitalize on the recently passed Wilderness Act to secure unprecedented protection for surrounding public lands. And they kicked ass - 500,000 acres were added to the National Wilderness Preservation System. But the work couldn’t stop there. Ecosystems extend beyond wilderness boundaries and, short of wilderness designation, conservation victories aren’t permanent. Historically a non-partisan issue, public lands have been sucked into our national partisan divide and are increasingly under threat. Growing population and resource consumption, compounded by the exploding popularity of public lands recreation, is multiplying pressure on the remaining wild spots on the map. Successful public lands conservation today requires broadly supported, technically impeccable, constantly applied pressure. With that in mind, I think the most significant, and hopefully most durable, accomplishment of my tenure has been to bring the Workshop out from around the kitchen tables and into the broader community. We’ve built WW into a professional, reliable, resourceful, effective, and accessible community institution ready to deploy a diverse toolbox of strategies to keep our precious public lands wild. I hope the solid and broad foundation we’ve built endows WW to give voice to the voiceless well into the future, as long as it’s needed. Wilderness Workshop’s Board of Directors hired our Conservation Director, Will Roush, to succeed me. I assure you that a national search couldn’t find someone more perfectly fit for this role. I am sticking around through the busy summer season to keep things on track and ensure a deliberate, thorough, and seamless transition. I officially step down in September but will continue with a couple of special projects and be ever available for consult. When I said “yes” to the job offer 21 years ago, I had no idea I was starting a career with such incredible organization and with what’s turned into an extension of my family. I’ve been deeply honored to do this work and by your partnership allowing us to make a difference for the wild things, human and not. See you on the trail, Sloan 2 Wild Works | JUNE 2012 2 Wild Works | Summer 2018 Summer 2018 | Wild Works 3 John Fielder SUCCESS! FROM PAGE 1 go to print, our partners American rights for reservoirs on Castle Rivers and Trout Unlimited are still and Maroon Creeks regardless of working out the final details of their whether they succeed in moving settlement, which we expect to be their water rights to other loca- finalized shortly. tions! The City deserves a lot of the Commits us to not opposing credit for finding a solution that both future diligence on these new creates options for future water sup- water rights for 20 years. plies and protects the health of criti- Becomes binding upon all par- cal riparian ecosystems on the door- ties once Aspen settles with the step of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass other opposing parties. wilderness. City staff have become What the settlement does not partners in this work and, along prevent us from doing is influencing with the council, have demonstrated or opposing the actual planning and leadership and innovation on this construction of reservoirs. While the complex issue. As Councilwoman alternative storage sites are certainly This Spring, WW and partners announced an agreement with Ann Mullins remarked before voting less ecologically damaging than the City of Aspen that ensures the City will not build dams on Castle and Maroon Creeks. The meadow pictured here will to approve the settlement, “because reservoirs in the Castle and Maroon remain as it is! of the questions and persistence of Creek Valleys, they are unlikely to the community, we have actually be without impact. Were these sites outdated water storage projects. come up with a much better plan.” to be developed, we would treat Colorado is home to a number of them like any other major project decades-old dam proposals that are DETAILS OF THE SETTLEMENT and analyze their ecological impacts still on the books and could be built In simplest terms. the settlement and seek to minimize or prevent in other largely pristine mountain does the following: those impacts. valleys. Our work has shown that Commits the City to move its “Healthy rivers and wildlife, and shifting from water supply strate- water rights for reservoirs out of the recreation opportunities they gies of the past to more modern the two valleys. provide, are at the foundation of options like off-channel reservoirs Identifies the locations of Aspen’s economy and community is possible. This work is also a great potential new reservoir sites, all values,” said Executive Director example of how WW uses a mix of of which would be ‘off channel’ Sloan Shoemaker. “Many thanks to strategies to achieve conservation meaning no streams would be Mayor Skadron, City Council, and outcomes. While we started off in a dammed. The new locations City staff for their collaboration in somewhat oppositional stance with are a newly purchased parcel setting a better course for the future the City, a mix of research, collabo- in Woody Creek, the adjacent of the Roaring Fork Valley. While the ration, partnership and legal work gravel pit, portions of the Aspen Castle and Maroon Creek Reservoirs led us to a win-win solution. It also Golf course, and Cozy Point may have seemed like a good idea launched us on future work with the Ranch. in 1967, we congratulate the City for City to enhance stream health and Reduces the amount of water the this win-win alternative that protects develop additional options for their City can store from nearly 14,000 our iconic landscape and provides water supply (more on that in the acre-feet to 8,500 acre-feet. for the City’s water needs.” coming months!) Most importantly, the settlement We’re also hopeful that this commits the City to giving up the work may lead to the end of other 3 2 Wild Works | Summer 2018 SummerJUNE 20122018 | Wild Works 3 John Fielder CRYSTAL TRAIL DRAFT PLAN RELEASED Off to a good start, but changes needed his spring, Pitkin County and wildlife, trails provide numerous from the highway (alignment B).