Quantity/Quality/Wildlife Meeting January 5 1995

• Description: Quantity/Quality/Wildlife Meeting January 5 1995
• State: CO
• Date: 1/5/1995
• Title: Quantity/Quality/Wildlife Meeting January 5 1995
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Meeting

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of these uses. In addition to monitoring key chemical and
physical indicators of Colorado water quality, in recent years
the WQCD has shifted a portion of its resources toward biological
monitoring efforts. This monitoring includes an assessment of
fish communities and habitats, as well as benthic organisms, at
selected locations. Much of this monitoring has been conducted
in close cooperation with DOW, and historical fishery assessment
information available from that agency has been relied upon
extensively.
Over the past several years, the federal Environmental Protection
Agency has strongly encouraged states to supplement existing
chemical water quality standards by the adoption of biological
criteria, or "biocriteria ". Biocriteria would consist of
narrative or numerical criteria or standards applied to
identified water bodies, based on a comparison with biological or
ecological indicators (e.g. species diversity, numbers, etc.)
from "healthy" reference streams. As the result of a 1992
rulemaking hearing to consider the adoption of biocriteria in
Colorado, the WQCC concluded that while "biological assessments
are a useful evaluative tool and that available public and
private resources should be directed toward developing a
consistent biological data base to help guide future water
quality management decisions, the adoption of enforceable
biological criteria would be premature at this time."
Since that time, the WQCD, in cooperation with DOW, has
undertaken significant biological monitoring in two of Colorado's
river basins (the Rio Grande and the Arkansas). Although EPA has
taken no further regulatory action regarding biocriteria to date,
it now appears very likely that reauthorization of the Clean
Water Act, currently under consideration in Congress, may result
in a new mandate that states develop such criteria. To assure
that any such criteria are necessary and appropriate for
Colorado, continuation of the current biological monitoring
initiatives is important. However, present resource limitations
may disrupt ongoing WQCD efforts to achieve monitoring coverage
for all of the state's major river basins.
Identification of limiting factors:
To protect existing native species and other important aquatic
life resources, it is important not only to inventory the
location and extent of such resources, but also to identify the
principal threats to the sustainability of those resources. The
biological and chemical monitoring undertaken by the WQCD and
others is important for helping to determine those instances in
which water quality may be a limiting factor. In addition, more
extensive studies to determine the maximum acceptable pollution
loads to critical segments of concern are also necessary in some
instances to assure adequate protection of the resource.
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