Stream Management Plans around the State
Stream Management Plans in Detail
Upper Gunnison Basin Watershed Assessment and Management Planning
The Upper Gunnison Watershed Assessment and Stream Management Plan is intended to improve water security for all water uses in the Upper Gunnison Basin, by protecting existing uses, meeting user shortages, and maintaining healthy riverine ecosystems in the face of future demands and climate uncertainty, as laid out in the Gunnison Basin Roundtable Implementation Plan (GBIP) and the Colorado Water Plan (CWP). Baseline and future needs assessment information will be compiled from the eight sub-basins, resulting in a comprehensive watershed management plan for the Basin that recognizes the complex interactions between environmental, agricultural, municipal, and recreational uses of water.
The long-term goal of this effort is to enhance resilience of agricultural, municipal, and
recreational water uses and improve stream ecosystems in the Upper Gunnison Basin. The Upper Gunnison Basin watershed planning process.
You can read more about the plan here.
Grand County Stream Management Plan
The purpose of this Stream Management Plan is to provide the frame work for maintaining a healthy stream system in Grand County, Colorado through the protection and enhancement of aquatic habitat, while at the same time protecting local water uses, and retaining flexibility for future water operations.The ultimate measure of success will be the presence of a self-sustaining aquatic ecosystem and fishery resource while meeting water user's needs.
You can read the stream management plan and annual reports here.
The Irrigators in the area of Kremmling have benefitted significantly from stream restoration. Read more about their proejct here.
San Miguel River Stream Management Plan
While developing its Basin Implementation Plan (“BIP”), the Southwest Basin Roundtable (“SWBRT”) identified a significant gap in information necessary to identify environmental and recreational (“E&R”) water needs.SWBRT voted to support the concept of a pilot project on the San Miguel River todevelop E&R water needs information in a manner that could provide a model forconducting cost-effective watershed-scale evaluations of E&R needs and implementingstream management planning efforts in other sub-basins of the Southwest Basin.
Crystal River Stream Management Plan
The Crystal River Management Plan utilizes a science-based and stakeholder-centered approach to consider complex interactions between the physical components driving watershed structure; the biological components of riverine ecosystems; the social context of competing perspectives, needs, and values; and the existing legal and administrative frameworks governing water use in an effort to identify and evaluate management and structural alternatives that honor local agricultural heritage, preserve existing water uses, and enhance the ecological integrity of the river.
City of Streamboat Springs Stream Management Plan
The City of Steamboat Springs is leading the development of a plan to improve the health and resiliency of the Yampa River during times of drought and in the face of changing future climatic conditions and water use demands. Key objectives of the project are to identify target flows needed to support river health and community needs and to prioritize actions and projects to achieve measurable progress toward these targets.
You can read the scope of work here
You can read more about the plan, project reports, tasks, and timeline.
Upper Roaring Fork River Management Plan
Develop a River Management Plan that seeks to restore and maintain the health of the Roaring Fork River as it flows through Aspen. Specifically, to: (1) Understand current conditions of the Upper Roaring Fork, from its headwaters to a point just above the confluence with Brush Creek (2) Understand the needs and priorities of water users and other stakeholders on the River, both consumptive and non‐consumptive (3) Study and evaluate potential operational, management and physical options for improving the health of the river while ensuring existing rights, interests, and legal and administrative realities are respected and protected.
Upper Uncompahgre Cooperative Stream Management Plan
The goal of this stream management plan is to identify sources of water, and projects both immediate and future, to fulfill the reasonably expected needs of water for all users in Ouray County, including municipal, industrial, agricultural, for the present and the future.
St. Vrain & Left Hand Stream Management Plan
The St. Vrain Creek watershed is critical to maintaining the health, biodiversity, character, and economy of communities within the region including Lyons and Longmont. The creek is also home to a diverse population of native fish, provides recreational uses, has its headwaters in Rocky Mountain National Park and the Indian Peaks Wilderness, and its confluence in a county that is the largest agricultural economic producing county in Colorado. With such a wide range of uses and intense focus of study, the St. Vrain poses an excellent opportunity to balance river health with water users’ needs through completion of a stream management plan.
You can read more about the plan on their website
Rio Grande, Conejos River, and Saguache Creek Stream Management Plan
The project will capitalize on the community’s momentum toward the effort to create stream
management plans (SMPs) for portions of the Rio Grande, Conejos River, and Saguache Creek. The SMPs will utilize existing data regarding the physical condition of reaches and data collected through targeted sampling. The collection, summary, and application of the data will be completed with ongoing stakeholder participation. The goals identified in the SMPs will further the efforts of the communities of the San Luis Valley to improve flows and physical conditions of priority streams for environmental, recreational, and community benefits.
Upper San Juan River Basin Stream Management Plan
Mountain Studies Institute (MSI) and Trout Unlimited (TU) propose convening a steering
committee and stakeholder group to facilitate a community-led process to assess water needs and develop a Stream Management Plan (SMP) for the Upper San Juan River Basin. The Southwest Basin Roundtable’s (SWBRT) Basin Implementation Plan (BIP) identifies a significant gap in information necessary to understand and protect environmental and recreational (E&R) water needs. This project will address the identified information gap by tackling the first critical step in the process: community engagement, the development of a stakeholder group and a review of existing data and information.
You can read the scope of work here
Middle Colorado Integrated Water Management Plan
The long-term goal of the IWMP project is to improve security for all water uses in
the planning area by understanding and protecting existing uses, meeting shortages, and maintaining healthy riverine ecosystems in the face of increased future demand and climate uncertainty. The planning and implementation effort will be conducted in a series of phases as stakeholder interest and funding allows. The first phase initiates a process of identifying water needs for environmental and recreational uses, determining if gaps exist and, if so, finding voluntary-based solutions for filling the gaps in conjunction with the needs of agricultural, domestic and industrial water users.
You can read the scope of work here
Eagle River Integrated Water Management Plan
The Eagle River Integrated Water Management Plan (ER-IWMP) will be developed through a stakeholder process with local conservation organizations, state and federal agencies, recreational users, ERMOU partners, commercial fishing/rafting guides, local municipalities, agricultural, and other local stakeholders to develop strategies that can respond to these
changes in a way that helps meet municipal demands, while maintaining and improving ecological attributes in the Eagle River watershed.
South Fork Republican Restoration Coalition: Stream Management and Restoration Planning
The South Fork Restoration Coalition (“the Coalition”) consists of: Yuma County, Republican River Water Conservation District (“RRWCD”), Colorado Parks and Wildlife (“CPW”), Three River Alliance, and The Nature Conservancy (“the Conservancy”). The Coalition is founded on a shared desire to sustain vibrant natural and agricultural communities in the South Fork Republican River watershed. We seek to create a plan for restoring the river channel, improving instream surface flows and wildlife habitat, and creating future recreation-based economic opportunities on the South Fork Republican from Flagler to the state line, with a focus area consisting of the river reach from Highway 385 to the Bonny Dam.
North Fork Environmental and Recreational Needs Assessment and Irrigation Management Plan
Environmental and Recreational Needs Assessment
This assessment has been designed with several key purposes in mind: (1)To synthesize all relevant and pre-existing information, inventories, and assessments of the North
Fork of the Gunnison River (North Fork); (2) To assess current stakeholder concerns regarding environmental and recreation needs; and (3) To recommend priorities for addressing those needs according to newly developed plannin segments that have divided the river into eight distinct reaches.
You can read the assessment here
Irrigation Management Plan
The purpose of this irrigation management plan is twofold. The primary objective is to identify the near river infrastructure needs of agricultural users who divert water directly from the North Fork and provide recommendations for moving forward with improvements within the river corridor that have multiple benefits. Secondarily, this plan seeks to educate the agricultural water users of their strong position on the river, and to bring them into the process of stream management planning and emphasize the following ideas: (1) Non-consumptive beneficial uses may also be realized without damage to existing agricultural water rights (2) Beneficial and meaningful infrastructure improvements may be achieved by working with non-consumptive water use interests on the river. (3) Infrastructure improvements are a means of protecting agricultural water rights.