A new dashboard offering easy access to location-specific historical, current, and forecasted data for the Yampa River region is now available at YourYampaRiver.org.

“There is a lot of information there, we are hoping that it will be a great tool for the public, and water-quality data nerds, to use and access,” said Emily Lowell, the engineer for the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District.

Presenting to Routt County Commissioners earlier this month, Lowell explained how the dashboard provides a centralized online data source that combines information from 10 different sources including the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment and the U.S. Geological Survey.

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By scrolling over an interactive map, users of the dashboard can view and filter location specific data points showing the river’s flow rate, temperature and soil moisture along with information on water quality and precipitation levels.

Users of the river conditions tool can also view historical data points by year and arrange comparisons to current conditions by specific categories.

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Based on user feedback, Lowell said options could be explored to build out additional components of the tool, adding that the goal of the current dashboard, “is really to be kind of an ongoing work in progress.”

“It is meant to be a dynamic tool, this effort is completed at this point in time, but we want people to use it over the next 6-12 months and give us feedback,” she added.

The dashboard was developed through a $139,000 project that began in 2022, according to Lowell, and funding for the work was primarily provided through $95,000 from state’s Water Supply Reserve Fund, $31,000 contributed from the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District and another $10,000 from the city of Steamboat Springs.

“It is cool to see all of this stuff in one place, rather than chasing around to different data sources which most of us don’t have the patience to do,” said County Commissioner Tim Corrigan after Lowell’s presentation.

Later in the meeting, Corrigan offered additional user feedback when he admitted to being somewhat distracted from the conversation as he poured over the new river data dashboard.

“I am kind of having fun with it,” said Corrigan. “I am just looking at the Bear River and it is fascinating, you are seeing it is running well below average this year, and running around 5 (cubic feet per-second) until on the 11^th, it shot up to 25 (cubic feet per second) and that dropped right back down hours later, just interesting to track that stuff and see what might cause those kinds of things.”

“Like which one of my upstream neighbors are grabbing water when they shouldn’t be,” added Corrigan with a laugh.

Funds sought for Stagecoach Reservoir monitoring

The unveiling of the dashboard was not the only business from the Yampa Valley Water Conservancy District in front of the county commissioners this month.

A day after Lowell presented the new technology at their working group meeting Dec. 16, the county commissioners unanimously approved a letter of support for a proposed water quality model project to study the upper-Yampa watershed and the Stagecoach Reservoir.

“The goal of both of those projects is to identify nutrient sources and the loading that is coming into the watershed into the tributaries and then into the reservoir to be able to think of mitigation projects and strategies to include water quality both in the watershed and in the reservoir,” said Lowell.

According to a 2024 Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment water quality assessment, Stagecoach Reservoir is considered a “Category 4” impaired water body in the state, as are at least four surrounding tributaries including the mainstem section of the Yampa River from the confluence of the Bear River and Phillips Creek to the Stagecoach Reservoir and the nearby Catamount Lake.

“Category 4” impaired water bodies are designated when water quality tests do not support a standard for one or more of the water body’s uses.

Routt County Commissioner Sonja Macys said she supported the Yampa Valley Water Conservancy District’s effort to perform the water quality model projects, especially given proposed development in the Stagecoach Area.

“We have been talking quite a bit about the nutrient loading in stagecoach and how much is historical and how much is a result of how it was constructed and when it was constructed, some of those types of things and how much the current uses may be impacting it,” said Macys.

“It is good to have a baseline of what is happening now so that if there are triggers to change use over time … we understand where those triggers are coming from,” she added.