The two men insist there's something different about a town through which a river runs. "They have more character," Clark says. "Towns that don't, always seem dry and dusty...the people don't seem to care as much. But if you got a river, you can sit and watch it, and the hassles of the day will float away. I can sit on my deck at night, and though the river's two blocks away, I can hear it...it soothes me."
"Anytime there's a trout stream," Gierach adds, "there's a fishing subculture. I can't get a cup of coffee in town without some ol' goober asking me, 'How come you ain't fishing?' I feel comfortable around people who ask each other questions like that."
Tim Carney: In March, snowpack measurements brought good news.
Steve Jackson
Tim Carney: In March, snowpack measurements brought good news.
Related Content
More About
"Yeah," Clark says and laughs. "I mean, what do they ask each other in Hugo: 'How come you ain't out killin' jackrabbits?'"
But even in a river town, not every resident views the water the same way. Unlike many of their neighbors, Gierach and Clark oppose more growth -- especially with the town's water-storage problems unresolved.
They've witnessed the decline of the West's rivers. Clark's voice goes hard as he describes fountains in Phoenix that spray water from the Colorado River a hundred feet into the air, with little falling back to the ground (the rest has evaporated in the 115 degree heat). "I've seen the Colorado in Yuma," he says. "Hardly a trickle. A big, brackish swamp."
On this day, the home waters are running swift and deep down the North Fork of the St. Vrain on the outskirts of town. Gierach eyes the stream, but with the water up, the fish are lying low; it's not worth getting his line wet until the runoff is over. So instead, he plans to go after bass in a pond "out east."
As a fisherman, Gierach likes it when the spring snowmelt that feeds the trout streams comes and ends quickly. He hates to be kept waiting through a long, slow runoff like the one in 1999, when cool temperatures and unusually high precipitation extended the duration.
But Gierach also realizes that what's happening this year is not good. It's too much, too soon. This water will run off downstream, and there'll be little to replace it later in the summer.
When the St. Vrain leaves Lyons, it also loses most of its charm. Three-fourths of the water disappears into ditches. What's left when the water is reclaimed is filled with agricultural pollution. "Sucker water," Clark says.
"Once it passes beneath the Highway 36 bridge, it's not our river anymore."
But whose river is it? Over the past year, the Colorado Division of Water Resources, which oversees the river commissioners, has aggressively pursued private landowners, small businesses located on the St. Vrain, even the town of Ward on the upper reaches of the Lefthand Creek watershed, for illegally taking water without replacing the "injury" done to senior rights-holders farther downstream.
The practice of dipping into the river on a small, private basis has been going on for generations. In each instance, the amount is not large -- but taken together, it adds up.
Water is so important in Colorado that the state supreme court has ruled that "even a drop" is "injury." So with water costs going through the roof and practically every drop promised to a rights holder, the division decided to put a stop to pilfering.
The division sent workers into the upper reaches of the St. Vrain, asking landowners how they got their water and sending notices to stop if they were getting it illegally. Meetings quickly degenerated into shouting matches, with the water thieves vilifying the division. (According to some rumors, a few landowners came armed to those meetings.) Outraged citizens could not understand how they could live at the highest point on the watershed and not have a right to the water.
The landowners and the town of Ward were not without recourse. The Colorado Legislature has deemed that when no other water is available, historical users must be accommodated. The restrictions on this provision are very tight, however. For example, a homeowner given the okay to use water inside the house can have that right taken away if he waters his lawn.
Finally the division worked out a deal with the Lefthand Ditch Company and the St. Vrain Water Conservancy District to provide water to replace any injury caused by the 140 "water diverters" and Ward, for a small annual fee. The agreement was similar to one worked out recently with private water users in the Big Thompson watershed; the division next plans to take on the private diversions in Boulder Creek.
But the division could soon get much busier.
The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District recently completed a Regional Water Demand Study, designed "to compile future land use and growth plans and projections, and to estimate associated future water demands." The district covers the watersheds from Boxelder Creek in the north to Cache la Poudre River in the south, as well as the Big Thompson River, the St. Vrain and Boulder and Coal creeks. It follows those drainages into the South Platte all the way to the Nebraska border.
