Colorado ranchers who own some of the state’s most scenic landscapes are joining new research efforts to better understand emerging water quality issues in the Yampa and Gunnison basins, among others.
Pressured by rising stream temperatures and shrinking flows due to climate change, rivers and lakes across the state are showing signs of distress, including algae blooms, some of which are toxic.
At the same time, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and Colorado State University are analyzing water quality and testing how voluntary best management practices, rather than strict regulations, can protect these hallmark water bodies.
Philip Rossi grows hay and runs a cattle operation in the Upper Yampa River Basin above Stagecoach Reservoir. He is among the first ranchers to agree to allow scientists to monitor the water quality, and soon the temperature, of the irrigation water that runs off from his hay meadows.
So far the news has been good, Rossi said. Little if any of the fertilizer he applies to his hay reaches the stream and in the years he’s been working with the CSU researchers, the use of nonfertilized grass strips along the creek that runs through his property has reduced that number even further.
“What I learned is that I wasn’t wasting money. The fertilizer I was putting on was being used, and just as important I wasn’t affecting the stream.”
With results from the first three-year study officially out, another even broader effort involving more ranches is underway. It will add the monitoring of stream temperatures to the analysis.
Erik Wardle, director of Colorado State University’s Agricultural Water Quality Program, said there was little water quality data available in remote regions such as the Yampa Basin. “We wanted some real world data on what’s happening on our ranches and our cow-calf operations.”
As word of the research has spread, more ranchers have come forward to participate, despite skepticism and worry about government efforts to monitor what they’re doing. “Early on I was doing a lot of cold calling, asking ranchers to participate. And a lot of them said, ‘Are you crazy?’ But now I would say 85% of what we’re doing is being driven by these producers. These ranchers have put themselves out there,” Wardle said.
Even in these pristine areas of Colorado, no one expects water quality worries to subside in the warmer future. In response, water agencies in the area are looking for ways to change the way they operate to help streams.
“Water quality on the West Slope has always been assumed to be great,” said Andy Rossi, general manager of the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, which owns Stagecoach Reservoir. He is not related to Philip Rossi, the rancher.
“Here we are in snowpack-dominated basins with pristine wilderness areas driving our water supply. But 10 years ago we started seeing changes, like toxic algae blooms in Stagecoach Reservoir and Steamboat Lake.”
Since then, the water district has shifted into high gear to understand what’s happening and why, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a water quality modeling and monitoring program.
Nothing that has been uncovered yet has exceeded a state standard, Rossi said, “yet we still have potentially toxic algae blooms. The assumption has always been that ag is the source of our troubles. But we felt it was unfair to jump to that conclusion without doing the strict science to figure it out.”
Can best practices be shared between ranches?
With early research results in hand, Tyson Ingels, a veteran water quality regulator at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said the state hopes to avoid a strict regulatory approach for these remote high country lakes and streams, relying on voluntary efforts instead.
“This is a very positive study,” he said. “For mountain hay we didn’t have the best data on how best management practices could impact nutrient levels. This was an area that needed to be better understood.”
Looking ahead, Ingels said the state wants to take a measured approach to these regional water quality issues. That the best management practices that are being used on the Rossi Ranch and elsewhere are working well indicates that water quality goals can likely be achieved without a heavy-handed regulatory effort.
Philip Rossi said he’s feeling optimistic, in part because of all the scientific groundwork that is being laid, as well as the early encouraging results of the studies.
He believes that the temperature studies of the water that is returning to the streams, will also show minimal impact.
The rationale, he said, is that water used to flood irrigate fields seeps into the groundwater, flowing to the stream later, when it has cooled down. This was the belief held by his father and grandfather, and Rossi believes the new studies will uphold those beliefs. “The researchers are going to find out the things that my dad told me and that my grandpa used to say” are true, he said.
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