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water to be stored in Blue Mesa Reservoir. This meant that water could be continu- ally released from the Taylor Park reservoir for further storage in Blue Mesa — thereby enabling the Taylor River below Taylor Dam to be operated as a river again, not an on -again off -again irrigation canal. Jennings, Bratton and the Uncompahgre Users worked out and signed a com- plex agreement to that effect in 1975 — an agreement that, alone, would more or less have rendered Taylor Dam and Reservoir irrelevant. But Bratton and the Conservancy pushed the process farther into relatively uncharted territory: Taylor Reservoir's capacity was 110,000 acre -feet, but the annual flow through the res- ervoir averaged about 150,000 acre - feet, and considerably more in heavy snow years. So, since the Taylor Park reservoir was now being drawn down essentially to keep the Taylor River running, the Upper Gunnison Conservancy filed for enough water for a second filling of the 110,000 acre -foot reservoir, for the beneficial uses legitimized by the 1968 Act — fish and recreation as cash crops in the Taylor River. The Historically, remember, the only "beneficial uses" recognized under Colorado water law were those that diverted water out of a stream; but over the past quarter century the law has loosened up to include rights for water "diverted, stored, or otherwise captured, possessed, and controlled" for some beneficial use. The refill claim depended on the fact that all Taylor River water had to come through the dam first, and was therefore clearly "stored... and controlled." But that "second refill" water was also clearly not going to be diverted; it was basically an application for an in- stream right. Colorado had led the way in 1973, in creating state -owned water rights for minimum in- stream flows for "environmental purposes," to keep streams from being completely dried up by legal users. But the Taylor "second refill" claim, filed in 1986, was revolutionary in Western water in that it was an in- stream right nei- ther state -owned nor for a mere 'minimum in- stream flow" The Division Four Water Court heard the Upper Gunnison Conservancy's "sec- ond refill" claim, and in 1990 granted that claim —an innovative decision made more significant because it effectively undercut a proposal for a huge pumped- storage project above Taylor Park to divert water to Denver suburbs. "When you're smaller," Bratton has said, "you've got to be smarter." Thus it was that those two paper transac- tions —the 1975 storage exchange agreement and the 1990 second - refill right —were all it took to resurrect the Taylor River from a river no more. But is it really a river again? It is very much a "man -made river" in some respects. The day -to -day opera- tion of the Taylor River is controlled by the Bureau of Reclamation, with formal input from the "Four Parties" to the 1975 agreement: the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, the Uncompaghre Valley Water Users will probably see more frequently through- out the West as ever more users confront a finite supply of water. The river's fishery is also mostly man- made. According to a local Colorado Division of Wildlife official, there are still some wild cutthroat trout left in the river, but below a short public catch - and - release area at the foot of the dam and the five - mile private stretch, the Taylor is stocked throughout the summer season with exotic rainbow "catchables." To drive up the Taylor Canyon today, below the Taylor Reservoir, is to pass through a spectacularly beautiful place with only a handful of the increasingly ubiquitous lovely homes disrupting he sense of being in a thoroughly atural place. Yet to look beneath that surface appearance is to see hat might be considered the ulti- ate human illusion: a thoroughly ontrolled waterworks that has been ade to look as natural as nature could make it. So how should we think of this iver? Is this a restoration of the nat- al? Or is it the ultimate industrial 16, repackaging of nature for human purposes? Is it maybe both in a kind of codependency? But down on the rocks at the edge of the Taylor, maybe flipping a fly over the water to the far side pool, another question might arise: Are those questions even worth wor- rying about? If, after the expenditure of vast quantities of money to control and manipulate the waters, we can manipulate them just a little farther so that their origi- nal beauty and "utility to nature" are there again, and yet they are still fulfilling the human purposes on which we depend —is this not a good thing? Take your rod up the Taylor and decide for yourself. ❑ some of the largest rainbow trout in Colorado. This area is less than a half -mile long, and is visited by many anglers throughout the year. Association, the Colorado River Water Conservation District, and the United States Bureau of Reclamation. The "Four Parties" in turn consult with a "local users" advisory group made up of representatives from the reservoir conces- sionaires above the dam, the irrigators between the Taylor and Aspinall Dams, the local anglers group, the companies that run commercial rafts on the river, and a group of wealthy people who own and fence off most of the first five miles of river below the dam. These local users have some con- flicting desires. Rafters, for example, would usually like a higher flow than the fisher- men want; the concessionaires above the dam would like the reservoir kept as high as possible (meaning minimum releases); the irrigators want to take out water at certain times on their own schedule, et cetera. 'But,they work out their differences in a very "grassroots" process, now being devel- oped more formally in other situations as "adaptive management ": an ongoing pro- cess of modifying management on the basis of continual feedback. It is a process we About the Author: George Sibley is a writer living in the Upper Gunnison River valley for most of the past 40 years. Since 1988 he has taught journalism and regional studies at Western State College. As a writer, he has two published essay collections, Part of a Winter (1977) and Dragons in Paradise (2004). His essays and articles have appeared in Harper's Magazine, The High Country News, Mountain Gazette, New Age Journal, Colorado Central, Technology Illustrated, Crested Butte Magazine, and other local and regional publications. CITIZEN' S G U I D E TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL ERA 1 19