Roaring Fork Watershed Summit Group Reports- June 10, 2010

General Notes:

• Growth continues, diversions continues, dewatering, inconsistent planning throughout the watershed… need to continue to have dialogue and work together toward finding long term solutions to bring more continuity toward a healthy watershed.
• This type of gathering is critically important.
• State legislation may not be the best answer – it needs to be a grass roots effort, we must work together toward planning and development with the intent of creating a healthy watershed
• Should continue meeting.

Ken Randsford

• Education – how important it is to education public here and on eastern slope – need a message that we can give to the public that is not wonkish. Super complex topic… need an easy message to share. Then need funding.
• Consider real use of water – agriculture or outdoor shrubs and lawns.
• Are we willing to allow our stream and rivers to become unhealthy and crash in order to have lawns and shrubs in subdivisions?
• Starting in CO River Basin – demand future development to treat this climate like Tucson and not like Kentucky – a lot more xericscaping.
• Shoshone call importance to CO River basin. Need to spread awareness of how important the Shoshone call is.

Jim Pokrandt

• Conditional rights issue – concern is about water being taken via the transmountain diversions – Fry-Ark and Twin Lakes

Sharon Clarke

• Connecting riparian lands with upland lands; connectivity of the channel. Groundwater issues were discussed.
• Need to continue to have similar style events and broaden the audience to include landowners
• Watershed muse – having people who are familiar with riparian areas do site visits with land owners. Offer them suggestions for stream banks.

Mark Fuller

• Connection between utility service and land owners. Land development is approved without full coordination and communication with utility services to their ability to serve and the availability of water supply.
• Top down solution is probably not very likely because CO is a home rule state when it comes to land use. Need to think locally especially when thinking about incentives for private land owners.
• Increasing water yield – potential for increasing water yield. Looking at land from a landscape scale and improving watersheds to the point so they can produce and preserve more water. Need legal mechanism to recognize the increased yield and make use of it locally. There is a bureaucratic disconnect between increasing water supply and the ability to protect the existing water supply.
• Transbasin Diversion – conditional water rights are liable to be developed in the future. Only effective way to protect that water is to do a lot of legal saber rattling and provide incentives to those who perfect the water rights to mitigate future transbasin diversions more effectively than previous trans basin diversions.
  Gunnison Basin Example: war chest that was set aside to fight future transbasin diversions and it has been effective in getting the attention of future diverters and giving them disincentive to enter into that battle. We should consider doing the same thing in this valley as well if we’re going to protect the water we have left.

Shelley Kaup

• Needs for all municipalities to work together on common land use codes that protect our flood planes. Need to make sure to maintain low water flows and able to accommodate high water flows and natural hydrograph. Flooding enhances riparian environments as well as fish and wildlife.
• Cities individually can protect riparian habitats from stormwater and old septic tank systems. Need to inventory septic systems and update them to make sure they are working properly.

Peter Nichols

• Increasing threat of transbasin diversions. Need to negotiate a cap for the amount of water that goes to the Front Range to make sure to protect the water we have on the west slope and specifically in the Roaring Fork Valley

Rachel Richards

• Local codes for home building fire mitigation using ponds vs underground cisterns allow for a lot of evaporation. This use of water does dewater local streams.
• Our way of growing and developing. Need to strengthen our business industry so that we’re not completely dependent on construction and 2nd home industry and tourism industry that constantly wants to grow with new businesses, restaurants and shops to attract that dollar. Need to work together as a united business community we could have more political clout, clout to protect our resources more locally and have cleaner industries that would be possible with the technology of today. Is there a different way of being, a different way of our valley being, so that we can lead by example: xericscaping, not having the constant mentality of needing to grow 4%/year or we’re failing as a society mentality.

Moss Driscoll

• Local budgetary concerns, cooperation between 4 different counties, water groups (conservancy districts, conservation districts, boards, etc.) – challenges of working together with institutional differences. There are many opportunities to work together.
• We have a community that cares about water. We have a lot of tools that we might not be using. This does not end today. We’re all talking to each other now. We’re creating a unified voice.

Mark Fuller

• RF Watershed Plan
• Need local support. Every municipality has passed a resolution in support of the Roaring Fork Watershed Plan.

Rachel Richards final comments

• Nothing more important than a meeting of the minds and a consensus behind action for addressing our water issues going forward as a community and as a watershed.
• Water is a generational issue. They have been thinking about buying water for years, generationally. We must start to think in this way.
• Greatest concern – it is invisible and it is incremental, the threat is invisibility, and it is incremental when there is one more take of water here and there, one more loss of pre 1922 rights. To motivate people on something that is invisible and incremental is our toughest challenge. People react to a crisis. They will not react the same to a slow moving train wreck that is drought, climate change, future transmountain diversions from our valley.
• Solutions – we have the tools we need.
• Local successful example of working regionally and being successful with RFTA – many municipalities supported transport program. So successful there were 3 taxation causes that passed.
• Your choice – your water practices choices in your house, your lawn, your water features, landscaping, how you dispose of waste, doing things right.
• Your neighborhood’s choice – HOA, pesticides, manual weed removal,
• Your town council, to regional management groups, to the state level.
• We have so many tools to use. They all add up to vision and an ethic that we can rally around if our efforts are concerted, purposeful and unified. We make this a visible issue. One people can see and feel and understand and how it affects their property, environmental, recreational values and future generations.
• This meeting is a tremendous kick off for these efforts.
• Watershed plan is a guiding document
• We’re going to protect our watershed