Before the completion of McPhee Dam in 1984, the Dolores River was prized for its whitewater recreation. River advocates called the Dolores “a national treasure that ought to be preserved,” as Durango resident Preston Ellsworth, who ran river trips down the Dolores, told the Denver Post back in 1980.
The ample and reliable spring snowmelt that powered whitewater trips through some of the most thrilling river canyons in the western United States ended with the dam’s completion and closure of its gates. No longer did spring runoff that routinely provided boating flows of several thousand cubic feet per second, even hitting a peak of 8,000 cfs in the big snow year of 1984, flush through the canyon.
Ever since, the river’s channel downstream of the dam, from the Ponderosa Gorge at Bradfield Bridge all the way to the confluence with the San Miguel River 100 miles downriver, has relentlessly narrowed as dense thickets of willows crowd the banks. Once popular river campsites vanished into the thickets, and the river lost its ability to meander and overflow its banks to rejuvenate the riparian ecosystem.
These dramatic changes have spurred river advocacy groups such as American Rivers and America Whitewater to call on the Bureau of Reclamation to revisit its contracts for delivery of water, in particular, a so-called carriage contract, first signed almost 25 years ago, that took thousands of acre-feet of additional water and provided for its diversion using the features of the McPhee Project, beyond what the original project envisioned.
Now, with the expiration of the original carriage contract, supporters of a more natural river regime are urging the Bureau of Reclamation to undertake a thorough environmental analysis of the downstream consequences to the river ecosystem, native fisheries and recreation before simply rubber-stamping another decadeslong renewal. The Bureau has more than 20 years of new information about the degradation sustained by the river environment as a consequence of diminished flows.
The Dolores’ circumstances are further impacted by climate change that has resulted in the loss of as much as a third of historic runoff in the river’s basin. Prior environmental reviews, mostly predicated on flows observed in the 1970s and 1980s and earlier, no longer account for the situation experienced today.
While there is much ongoing discussion about protecting the landscape across the Dolores River Basin, either as a National Conservation Area or a National Monument, or both, those land designations do not address flows in the Dolores River, which are dictated by water rights and associated contracts.
River groups are asking for a robust assessment of the impacts of the operations of McPhee Reservoir before renewing the carriage contract. With the contract expiring next year, it is crucial to ensure future operations support original project intentions and address impacts.
Particularly important here, the trans-basin diversion of most of the flow from the Dolores River has resulted in devastating impacts to the Dolores River and the ecosystem services that it provides.
Back in 1980, river runners called the river “achingly beautiful” and lamented that it also was “a place no one knew,” and could suffer a similar fate as Glen Canyon when its beauty was little recognized before water resource development. While there is no turning back the clock, river advocates can at least ask for a better understanding of the true impacts from continued and expanded water diversions out of the Dolores basin.
To get those answers, the groups are requesting a robust Environmental Impact Statement that incorporates the relevant, and changed, environmental conditions surrounding the river. More details are available at https://www.americanwhitewater.org/.
Mark Pearson is Executive Director at San Juan Citizens Alliance. Reach him at mark@sanjuancitizens.org.
