Citizen's Guide to Colorado's Environmental Era

• Year: 2005
• Title: Citizen's Guide to Colorado's Environmental Era
• Author: Colorado Foundation for Water Education
• Publications - Doc Type: Other

needed to regulate the runoff.
So the Bureau looked upstream and
found a big (mostly) empty mountain park
narrowing down to a canyon on the Taylor
River above Gunnison. In the mid -1930s
the Bureau built the 200 -foot dam at the
head of the Taylor River canyon, and for
the next 40 years the Taylor ceased to be
a river; most of the year it was just a canal
for conveying water on demand for the
Uncompahgre valley irrigators. A few small
Fossil Range tributaries downstream from
the dam usually kept a little water in the
Taylor, but an Environmental Assessment
of the river in the 1970s showed that the
winter flow of the Taylor below the dam
was sometimes zero cubic feet per second.
Rough on fish and river aesthetics —which
of course weren't beneficial uses anyway.
According to Dick Bratton, a Gunnison
water lawyer (and fisherman) who became
deeply involved with the Taylor, "When
the river was operated for irrigation only,
it was bad for the fish when there was low
flow, and bad for the fishermen when there
was high flow"
Ironically, what enabled the resurrection
of the Taylor from a waterworks to a river
again was not the removal of a dam, but the
addition of more dams downstream.
Before and during World War II, the
once wild Lower Colorado River (below
the Grand Canyon) had been reconstructed
as the most massive manmade waterworks
in the world. After World War II, the
four states of the Upper Colorado River
(above the Grand Canyon), under the lead-
ership of Western Colorado Congressman
Wayne Aspinall, decided it was their turn.
In 1956, Aspinall and the Western water
establishment managed to push a Colorado
River Storage Project Act (CRSP) through
Congress, a plan for turning the Upper
Colorado into a waterworks at least as
impressive as the Lower Colorado.
A big part of CRSP was a series of three
power - generating dams in the canyon
region of the Gunnison River, above the
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National
Monument (elevated to Park status in
1999). These three dams, known col-
lectively as the Aspinall Unit, were built
on the Gunnison beginning in the early
1960s —Blue Mesa, a big storage reservoir
(940,800 acre -feet) with an 87- megawatt
power plant; then Morrow Point Dam,
with a narrow fjord -like 117,000 acre -feet
reservoir and a 120 - megawatt power plant;
and finally Crystal Dam, completed in
1976, a small 26,000 acre -feet regulating
reservoir for evening out the flow below
the dam complex, also equipped with a
small power plant.
The waters of these reservoirs covered
some of the best fishing streams in the West,
if not the world, according to long -time
Gunnison residents. A local "Gunnison
Navy" spent many weekends on those river
reaches in homemade kayak -type boats —a
brass -heavy organization because everyone
who spilled became a "Rear Admiral." But
that stretch of the river was also lined with
little "river resorts" that attracted the rich
and famous for its fabulous fishing. Bob
Hope, golfer Ben Hogan, Denver news-
paper magnate Palmer Hoyt and other
celebrities came to fish the Gunnison and
float with the Gunnison Navy. In 1943, the
Army made an apple -pie "morale booster"
film about the Gunnison Navy and that
stretch of the Gunnison for the troops
overseas. A further measure of the quality
of that stretch of the Gunnison River is seen
in the fact that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service —a brother agency of the Bureau in
the Department of Interior —filed formal
objections against the dams the Bureau
the Colorado River Storage Project Act which
included a series of three power - generating
dams in the canyon region of the Gunnison
River. These three dams, known collectively as
the Aspinall Unit, were built on the Gunnison
River beginning in the early 1960s.
The canyon region of the Gunnison River comprised some of the best fishing streams in the West,
according to long -time Gunnison residents. A local "Gunnison Navy "spentmany weekends on those
river reaches in homemade kayak-type boats. Bob Hope (left), golfer Ben Hogan, Denver newspaper
magnate Palmer Hoyt and other celebrities often came to fish on the Gunnison -area streams before
major dam construction in the 1960s changed the character of the river.
planned for the Aspinall Unit.
If the loss of the river gave Gunnisonites
second thoughts about the whole concept
of "beneficial uses," they weren't alone.
About halfway through the construction
of the Aspinall Unit dams, in the mid -
1960s, a sea - change in American political
and economic ideology about the West
kicked in. Many people began to see the
West not just as the place from which to
CITIZENS GUIDE TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL ERA 1 17