Water Wrongs

On September 30, 2002, in a move that opened the way for irrigators and developers to desiccate trout streams all over the West, the Bush Administration abandoned a reserved federal water right to Colorado's Gunnison River, one of the best trophy wild trout fisheries in America. Along with the water and fish, Bush and company also abandoned the National Park System, the National Wilderness System and all Americans who love nature, including sportsmen, most of whom supported Bush in the last election.

"Sportsmen for Bush," read the bumper stickers. "I never understood [that] and still don't," comments sportsman Mike Pennington on FR&R's website bulletin board.

But in this case at least, sportsmen have an excuse for being ill informed. The giveaway of the water right held by the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park was conducted entirely in secret. Because the issue was being debated in Colorado's Water Court, the National Environmental Policy Act did not kick in. The federal government's decision required neither public hearings nor public comment. The Bush administration just ordained that a national park established around a river and its canyon "to protect the roar of the river" didn't need water.

The Clinton administration had sought to protect the public's water rights that the Bush administration is now ceding to Western states. For example, in January 2001, Clinton's Park Service filed an application for a natural-flow regime (including a base flow of 300 cubic feet per second) through 14-mile-long Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Western water rights are based on seniority, and the park—established in 1933 as a national monument and upgraded in 1999—had plenty of seniority. In 1978 that seniority and right were upheld by Colorado's Water Court, which found that the purpose of the park "is to conserve and maintain in an unimpaired condition the scenic, aesthetic, natural and historic objects of the monument, as well as the wildlife therein, in order that the monument might provide a source of recreation and enjoyment for all generations of citizens of the United States." With that, the court directed the federal government to apply for the amount of water the park needed "within five years of final decree." But since the court didn't get around to issuing a final decree, the five-year countdown never started, and the feds didn't come up with flow figures until President Clinton was about to leave office.

The park wanted to approximate the natural conditions that had existed in the river and its canyon before 1965. That was the year the Bureau of Reclamation shut the gates on its enormous Blue Mesa dam, which backs up a million-acre-foot reservoir for irrigation and power--the toilet tank of the three-dam Aspinall Unit, named for the crusty, dam-fixated, anti-environmental US congressman Wayne Aspinall, who funneled pork into the state from 1949 to 1973. The Park Service's mission, after all, is to protect and recreate natural processes, and, wherever practical, let them "proceed unimpeded." When it is serious about this mission, as it was under the leadership of former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, it takes the long view.

And the long view is this: For about 12 million years the Gunnison sliced down through soft volcanic and sedimentary rock. Then, two million years ago, it hit the much harder Precambrian gneiss of the Gunnison Uplift. Trapped in the canyon it had already excavated, the river began eating away this metamorphic layer at the approximate rate of the thickness of one human hair per year or one inch per century until, in places, it was 2,400 feet below the rim. When this ancient process was abruptly and unnaturally curtailed in 1965 bad things began to happen. An unnatural plant community sprang up along the bottom of the canyon, constricting the channel and quickening the flow. In the canyon and far downstream the annual production of large, woody debris, so critical for trout survival, ceased, and in its place came alien plants. Rubble, clay and sand—swept down from the side canyons by the flash floods of summer—began accumulating in the main channel. The spaces under cobbles and boulders—habitat for the salmonflies that comprise a huge part of the diet of Gunnison River trout—were cemented shut. Tubifex worms, which pass whirling disease to trout, proliferated in the sediments.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife has just finished an electro-fishing survey of a two-mile stretch of river just below the park. In the late 1980s, before whirling disease showed up, this stretch held 12,000 wild rainbows over six inches, 2,000 of them between 16 and 22 inches. In 2002 it held 87. Browns evolved in Europe with whirling disease, so they can usually tolerate the parasite. But because browns require structure and slower flows than rainbows, they've not filled the vacant niche.

Dr. Jack Stanford, professor of ecology at the University of Montana, grew up around the Black Canyon and has been studying its ecology since the mid 1970s. "The river hasn't flushed well in a long time," he told me. "Because peak flows have been so badly curtailed we have large accumulations of organic matter in backwaters. If these backwaters are flushed regularly, groundwater moves up through the gravel bars to produce a real healthy food web and very important rearing areas for trout. The terrestrial vegetation also clogs the river, creating habitat not conducive to trout. And the vegetation narrows the channel so sandbars don't form. When I was a kid the canyon had huge sandbars. Now they're gone or covered with plants."

The sandbars and backwaters that the Park Service had hoped to restore provided critical spawning and nursery habitat for four endangered fish that evolved with high spring flows--the humpback chub, razorback sucker, bonytail chub and Colorado pikeminnow (the new PC name for squawfish). Under the Endangered Species Act state and federal managers are mandated to protect the habitat of threatened and endangered species, but the Bush administration has decided to ignore its legal responsibilities.

After extensive research, park officials applied for a year-round minimum flow of 300 cubic feet per second (cfs), shoulder flows (an average in wet years) of 800 cfs for 80 days and a one-day scouring flow of between 2,000 and 12,000 cfs, depending on available water. The Colorado Water Conservation Board already had a right to a minimum flow of 300 cfs (except in droughts when it drops to 200 cfs), but that right is inadequate for trout protection because it was established in 1965 and therefore is junior to the right of the Aspinall Unit, which was established in 1956. The Water Conservation Board and Gunnison River trout could get nothing if the current drought continues and Aspinall water is allocated for other uses. Aspinall's right, however, is junior to the park's, which Colorado's Water Court says dates to 1933. So by announcing that it was going to protect Aspinall's yield, the Bush administration threw away the water right the Park Service had worked for, planned for, and gone to court for--a right owned by the American people.