A community-driven effort to protect the Crystal River from dams and out-of-basin water diversions has gained new traction with the release of a report evaluating the feasibility of a Wild and Scenic designation from the federal government.
The report — issued by the Crystal River Wild and Scenic and Other Alternatives Steering Committee — comes decades after the designation was first explored for the river, which, in its upper stretch remains one of Colorado’s “last remaining free-flowing rivers,” according to Michael Gorman, committee member and the campaign director for Wilderness Workshop.
“Upper Crystal remains free of jams and major diversions, so it’s still connected to its natural flood regime, and that has all sorts of ecological benefits for a river system,” Gorman said. “Too many of our rivers in the West no longer have that connection; so it’s a really special and rare thing to have that here in Western Colorado where nearly every river is dammed and completely controlled in terms of how much water and when it’s flowing downstream.”
Wild and Scenic is a federal protection offered under a 1968 act with the same name and was created to preserve rivers with outstanding natural, cultural and recreational values in a free-flowing condition.
While the protections are afforded to over 13,400 miles of rivers and streams across the country, only one river in Colorado carries the designation: 76 miles of the Cache la Poudre River in the Roosevelt National Forest northwest of Fort Collins. This stretch was designated in 1986.
The Crystal River has been listed as eligible for Wild and Scenic status since 1982 by the U.S. Forest Service, making it one of five waterways in the White River National Forest that meet the standard. Cross Creek in the Holy Cross Wilderness, the South Fork of the White River, Deep Creek and a portion of the Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon are among the other eligible stretches.
In 2012, the community last attempted to grant the status to the eligible 39-mile stretch of the Crystal south of Carbondale, from its headwaters to the Sweet-Jessup Ditch headgate just below Avalanche Creek.
“For a few decades, the community has been really passionate about protecting the river and has been talking about Wild and Scenic for a long time; and that’s been somewhat in the abstract,” Gorman said, adding that this passion has been both in support and opposition to granting it Wild and Scenic status.
The report, which does not advocate for or against the designation but rather serves as a decision support tool, represents an attempt from the steering committee and stakeholders to move out of the realm of vague ideas and dive into the communities’ shared values, concerns and questions about what it would mean for the valley, he said.
Among the most notable shared values is that all members want to preserve the river’s free-flowing state and prevent mainstem dams and out-of-basin diversions. The community last fought a proposal for two dams on the Crystal a decade ago.
“Even though there’s not an active threat now, we don’t know what the future holds, and as we all know, water is just becoming more and more precious and sought after, and there is still some water in the Crystal,” Gorman said. “The community values that and wants to proactively protect it, so that they don’t have to go through another fight like they did before trying to fight off these dam proposals. Once there’s money and an idea behind it, it becomes a lot harder to push back on those threats.”
The stakeholders and report concluded that the Wild and Scenic designation represents the “strongest and most durable” protection offered to waterways in the country as it requires an act of Congress to implement, and thus to remove or weaken.
It’s not a slam dunk solution, however, as the report notes that questions remain about how the designation can be “tailored to meet the specific needs and flexibility” of the local community, including water rights, private property rights, local control, agriculture, recreation and river management.
According to the report, concerns around how the designation — which would require creation of a management plan by the federal government — could establish a level of federal oversight on public and private lands. How this could impact local control and property rights are “closely tied to trust in the federal government and remains one of the threshold issues regarding Wild and Scenic designation for some participants,” it states.
Gorman said the report highlights that there is no “standard or stock designation.”
“The report really identifies some of the tools that we could use if we develop a specific Wild and Scenic proposal for the Crystal, and it answered a bunch of questions about how a proposal could be tailored specifically to what communities on the Crystal want,” he said.
With these tools identified, he said the next steps would be to work with the wider community to put together a specific plan and proposal that could form a “tangible legislative package to look at.”
“A takeaway for me is that the Wild and Scenic is really meant to put a pin in time and keep the river the way it is today,” he added. “That includes the way it’s being used today, the character of communities along the river and the uses, like we are using for ag, which is important to the community.”
The report does not stand alone as a solution to protect the river, however. The Wild and Scenic designation is one of three that the steering committee was formed in 2024 to evaluate. Two other subcommittees were formed to look at how an intergovernmental agreement between Gunnison and Pitkin counties, as well as a state-held instream flow right, could maintain the river’s status quo.
In May, an intergovernmental agreement was signed between the two counties, the Colorado River Conservation District, the town of Marble and the West Divide Water Conservancy District, solidifying their commitment to oppose any new on-channel reservoirs and any transbasin diversions. A proposal for an instream flow agreement — a water right that can only be held by the Colorado Water Conservation Board and helps ensure water remains in the river — is also in the works.
“Together, these form a really comprehensive protection strategy, and it’s important to have those protections at the local, state and federal level,” Gorman said. “Each one provides a certain protection that the other one doesn’t. So, combine it, and it really does provide the best possible protection throughout the future and any uncertainties as pressures keep evolving on the river.”
