Water as Ecosystem Base Handout - Melinda Kass

• Title: Water as Ecosystem Base
• Date: 7/25/2006
• Author: Melinda Kassen
• Interbasin CC - Doc Type: Presentations

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

3. Wh at is the impact on water’s ecological value of having a fully developed water
resource at the same time we face continually increasing demands for water?

Having a fully developed water resource creates a zero sum game with regard to
changing water uses. In large part be cause 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 current allocation of the water pie has resulted in unsustainable
depletions and alterations of weste rn 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 s ignificant 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 surpr ising 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:

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Federal agencies with obligations to protect threatened and endangered species;
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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;
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Agricultural producers who have disco vered that recreation based on healthy stream
flows can provide an important income stream; and
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TU , other conservation organizations (including those focused primarily on land use
preservation) and state water trusts.

Because most western state legal syst ems 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 develo pment occurred 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 enou gh 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 ; t he relevant section of
this report is reprinted in the attached Appendix .)

Regional examples of creative means for restoring stream flow include:

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