WSP10317

• File Number: 8200.760
• Description: Yampa River General
• State: CO
• Basin: Yampa/White
• Water Division: 6
• Date: 12/5/1976
• Author: USGS
• Title: Surface-Water Quality in the Yampa River Basin - Colorado and Wyoming - An Area of Accelerated Coal Development
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

002858

Table 1.--Maximum likely ambient aonaentrations of ahemiaal aonstituents
in streams in the Yampa River basin--Continued

-

Constituent

Number
of an- x + 2s
alyses
73 15
72 33
40 7.0
40 14
40 51
40 19
40 15,000
40 260
40 .073
40 17

(

Dissolved zinc, ~g/L---------------------------------------
Total zinc, ~g/L-------------------------------------------
Bottom antimony, ~g/g (micrograms per gram)----------------
Bottom arsenic, ~g/g---------------------------------------
Bottom chromium, ~g/g--------------------------------------

Bottom copper, ~g/g----------------------------------------
Bottom iron, ~g/g------------------------------------------
Bottom lead, ~g/g------------------------------------------
Bottom mercury, ~g/g---------------------------------------
Bottom nickel, ~g/g----------------------------------------

lAII values were <10 ~g/L.
2AIl values were <100 ~g/L.
3Total vanadium is not analyzed by the U.S. Geological Survey.

,

consumption. Environmental impacts for each alternative combination of the
above uses will differ considerably. Aided by the application of plant-proc-
ess and environmental models (Steele and others, 1976b; I. C. James II and
others, written commun., 1976), ramifications of these direct environmental
impacts are being ~va1uated. As part of this evaluation, residuals-management
alternatives of coal-mining and coal-conversion processes will be analyzed in
the context of amounts and nature of discharged residuals and water-use re-
quirements. Secondary impacts of increased population and related economic
growth are being studied (Udis and Hess, 1976) through the use of regional
economic input-output analyses. Projections to the year 1990 will relate
economic growth with empirically derived coefficients to determine residuals
loadings (Udis and others, 1973).

For the most part, the surface waters of the Yampa River basin currently
are unregulated. Only four reservoirs have active storage capacities exceed-
ing 5,000 acre-feet (6,200,000 m3); and the total content of the 31 existing
reservoirs having individual capacities greater than 100 acre-feet (120,000 m3)
is less than 57,000 acre-feet (73,000,000 m3) (Colorado State Engineer, writ-
ten commun., 1975). However, a number of major reservoirs have been proposed
in the basin. The aggregate storage capacities of these reservoirs total
nearly 2.3 million acre-feet (2.9 billion m3), or about 1~ times the long-term
mean annual streamflow discharged from the entire basin. The implications of
construction of selected major proposed reservoirs are being studied with con-
sideration of possible changes in seasonal streamflow patterns and downstream
water-quality changes, as well as in regard to storage characteristics and
proposed operating rules. Modeling techniques used for these studies will be
comparable to those described by Adams (1975) and Ribbens (1975).

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