WaterasEcosystemBaseHandoutMelindaKassen101806

• Title: Water As Ecosystem Base 31st Gunnison Water Workshop
• Date: 7/25/2006
• Author: Melinda Kassen
• Interbasin CC - Doc Type: General Resources

. Increased risk of stranding, predation and disease
. Decreased available spawning and rearing habitat

3. What is the impact on water's ecolo2:ical value of havin2: a fullv developed water
resource at the same time we face continuaIlv increasin2: demands for water?

Having a fully developed water resource creates a zero sum game with regard to
changing water uses. In large part because ecosystem protection was recognized as a
beneficial use only late in the life of the prior appropriation system, and then only in a
limited way, the CUlTent allocation of the water pie has resulted in unsustainable
depletions and alterations of western rivers, including many in Colorado. Thus,
restoration of a critical mass of rivers is difficult indeed. The constraints of a largely
over-appropriated situation on moving water to ecosystem protection are, simply put,
formidable. Not only are there significant costs of transfers, but philosophical resistance
remains in many corners of the water establishment to the notion that the use of water to
sustain ecosystems should be on a par with traditional, diversionary water uses.

Still, there are a surprising number of entities who are at least willing to, and in some
cases affirmatively engaged in, shifting some water back to ecosystem protection.
Interestingly, these entities have quite varied interests in such work:

. Federal agencies with obligations to protect threatened and endangered species;
. State and local government agencies, along with affected water users, who want to
avoid additional species' listings or mitigate the effect of such listings on water users;
. Agricultural producers who have discovered that recreation based on healthy stream
flows can provide an important income stream; and
. TU, other conservation organizations (including those focused primarily on land use
preservation) and state water trusts.

Because most western state legal systems severely limit the availability of market-based
water transactions for moving water to ecosystem protection, these entities resort to other
means, some of which are more popular than others. Given the reality that the bulk of the
region's water development occUlTed before anyone thought much about the importance
of the value of ecosystems (or the value of water to ecosystems), there are often three
components to this approach: conserve what's still functioning, protect streams at risk
and restore enough degraded rivers to sustain a functioning ecosystem. Colorado
conservation organizations have nicknamed this River CPR. See, Facing Our Future
(2005), available at a booth outside or on-line at www.cotrout.org; the relevant section of
this report is reprinted in the attached Appendix.)

Regional examples of creative means for restoring stream flow include:

. Re-operations of federal facilities to restore fisheries, as occUlTed on the South Fork
of the Snake River using Bureau of Reclamation facilities
. V oluntary agreements to forego diversions during drought to protect minimum
fishery flows, as the Blackfoot Challenge accomplished in Montana;