Letter: Thank you from water conservancy district
The Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District Board of Directors would like to thank those who worked so diligently to keep the Yampa River flowing during this year’s hot and dry summer months.
The coordination of reservoir releases is complex and requires a significant amount of collaboration. There are multiple agencies and entities that work tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure these releases are coordinated in a timely manner that assist flows in the river when the river needs it most.
As of Sept. 30 of the 2020 water year, approximately 17,593 acre feet of water was released from local reservoirs into the Yampa River system. In a drought year such as this one, can you imagine what the river may have looked like without releases from water storage?
Water releases, coordinated through the efforts of the Colorado Water Trust, city of Steamboat Springs, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Tri-State Generation & Transmission, the Colorado River District and the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, helped maintain flows when temperatures were rising and water levels were dropping. Funding for a portion of these releases came from the Yampa River Fund.
Local water releases are monitored by the Colorado Division of Water Resources, Division 6 Engineer’s Office. When necessary, as was the case this year, the Division 6 Engineer protects released water to ensure it reaches its intended destination. The maintenance or bolstering of river flows would not be possible without all these collaborative efforts.
The Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District Board and staff would like to recognize the many organizations and individuals who came together to fund, coordinate and protect the water releases that kept your Yampa River flowing this summer, and we invite all of you to join us in our appreciation of their hard work and collaboration.
Holly Kirkpatrick
On behalf of the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District Board of Directors Ken Brenner, Lyn Halliday, Jim Haskins, Webster Jones, Doug Monger, Ron Murphy, John Redmond, Tom Sharp, Bob Woodmansee
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