7731 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

River within Dinosaur as high priority recovery and/or restoration site for the bonytail chub. The Little Snake River provides approximately 28 percent of the Yampa River's flow and 60 percent of the river's sediment supply. The sediment supply of the Little Snake is believed to be important to the maintenance of backwater nursery areas utilized by young Colorado squawfish in the Green River (Smith and Green 1991). Adult Colorado squawfish have recently been captured up the Little Snake River to near Baggs, Wyoming. Humpback chub have been captured in the lower 10 miles of the Little Snake River. 3.2.2 Recovery Actions Recovery actions in the Yampa River are focused on maintaining and legally ' protecting the natural flow regime required to recover the endangered fishes. To achieve this objective, the Recovery Program is attempting to purchase the Juniper dam water rights from the Colorado River Water Conservation District. The Juniper rights a-e conditional (undeveloped) water rights which could control approximately 75 percent of the flow of the river. The River District has expressed a willingness to consider sale of a portion of these and other Yampa basin rights it holds for conversion to instream flows if a plan to meet the long-term water needs in the Yampa River basin can be developed. If acquired, the Juniper water rights would be converted to instream #lows rights to benefit the endangered fishes. A decision to acquire the Juniper rights and/or enlarge Elkhead Reservoir is scheduled for September 1995. The Colorado Water Conservation Board will also file for junior instream flow water right for the Yampa River by December 1995, following completion of the administrative process set out in the Memorandum of Understanding for the Phase II study on the enlargement of Elkhead Reservoir. If this process is delayed, the Conservation Board will still proceed with this filing for a junior instream flow right. The amount of the filing will depend upon the Board's review and acceptance of the Service's flow recommendation for the Yampa River and the completion of a study to identify the physical and legal availability of water in the Yampa River. Plans also are under way to rehabilitate several low-height agriculture water diversion dams on the Yampa. River to provide for Colorado squawfish passage. Several of the current diversions are believed to be barriers to fish passage during low-flow periods (August-Octoberl. Feasibility studies will be conducted in 1994; X~~construction is scheduled ~to occur between 1995 and 1998. Several studies are planned to evaluate the importance of the Little Snake River. Initial flow recommendations will be developed and opportunities for improving late summer-early fall base flows will be evaluated in 1996. A detailed management plan will be developed for the Little Snake River in 1997-98. Inflows from the 15