Recreational Instream Flow Workshop Tanscription of Meeting Tape

Home Browse Search

land right along the river where it leaves the state and where people want to recreate. So if we choose to do anything in that environment we are probably under a more intense microscope than just about any other appropriator would be. And our perspective on recreational instream flows is that um, much of the discussion today in our mind focuses on just a part of recreational flows. Those having to do with rafting, I mean excuse me kayaking and specifically structures specifically built for that purpose. Where as BLM manages recreation on those rivers that I just mentioned mostly for non - structurally oriented recreation. Big time rafting numbers and big numbers for other types of recreation. We are seeing that use increase exponentially not arithmetically. In two or three years having demand increase by two or three hundred percent. And on some of the river systems in the state that we're trying to manage recreation on we are not seeing users days every seasons in the tens of thousands but exceeding a hundred thousand per year. So we are seeing this as huge demand from the public its becoming a big part of the economic engine of a lot of the small communities that we operate in. And a lot of companies and a lot of communities are making pretty big investments in this industry and they expressed to us that they feel like they need to have a way to protect that investment in terms of water flowing for recreational purposes. Our perspective is also that a, that recreational water rights are legitimate and they are something that a number of parties should be able to part take in. We have sort of a perspective that looks all over the western U.S. Because we manage lands all over the western U.S. and we see other states that have recreational water rights that have a what I would call an open system where multiple parties are ahle to file for recreational water rights and those states seem to deal with that pretty well. Both deal with it and administer it. And I would encourage you to look at other states like Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon and see what they have done. And what kind of problems they have had and haven't had before we conclude that we have a big problem here. Because it does seem like a western type water rights system can accommodate recreation flows. I suppose one of the big questions for me, as one of the only federal representatives speaking today is that that the federal government planning on filing for this kind of water rights. And the answer is, um I can only speak for the BLM but our answer right now is we are planning to in the immediate future. We have an operational approach that is very similar to State Parks in that we try to understand what is going on in a basin and we try work with the existing infrastructure and the existing water users in the basin to get the flows we need for recreational purposes. But we do have a lot of recreationists coming to us saying that they are seeing problems on the horizon and they are begging us to do something about it. And I will just give you a couple of examples. One is that we have had a very successful partnership on the Dolores River with the players on that system where we manage the flows from the McPhee project to a suit the needs during the recreational season. We try to ramp up flows at times when recreationists can use it. And we try to spread out the available water as long as we can so that the flows are boatable. But a the same people that are so please with that water management on the Dolores system are always uh also coming to us and saving that we are kind of concerned. Because we see the upstream water users coming up with plans to use potentially even more of the river then they are using now. Divert more of what's left of the river. And BL.%1 haven't you thought about filing for a recreational instream flow so that we can keep the water that's in the river now, flowing in that river so that no additional flows are taken out. So we have people coming to us and we have pressure on us to try and do something about these situations. So I think the fact that this issue has come up. For more than just water user reasons, the recreationists are getting concerned about v. - hat's happening as well. The other kind of situation that is happening to us in Colorado we have had a spade of new national conservation areas and national monuments. And Congress did not give us any reserve water rights with those new protected areas. But in most cases they said that the BLM is free to work within the state system using the state substitutive and procedures to claim water rights for purposes that would be in support of the new protected areas. And what comes to mind to us immediately is that we have lots of streams in these areas that because they are now national conservation areas or national monuments they are going to see a surge in recreation use. And they are not streams that are your typical streams that are protected by the CWCB. The } might have a really nice riparian area. but they don't have a cold water fishery and they may not even have a warm water fishery. So what we are seeing is a category of streams emerging that