By Kate Ryan, Executive Director, Colorado Water Trust. Photo courtesy Tony LaGreca — Colorado Water Trust.
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June is supposed to be a good month for Colorado’s rivers. Snowmelt rushing off the high peaks, flows running full and cold, the kind of water that made this state’s rivers legendary.

Five years ago, if you’d told me that releases from Stagecoach Reservoir were needed to boost flows in April, and that Colorado Water Trust would be in emergency mode and actively purchasing and releasing water in mid-June, I wouldn’t have believed you.

We are living through a historic drought.

Across Colorado, our rivers are reflecting back to us a hard truth: the water we once counted on simply isn’t there the way it used to be. The snowpack came in thin. The spring came in warm and fast. And rivers that should still be running off the energy of winter are already gasping. Colorado Water Trust reached out in late April to water users across the state offering to help anyone who wants to keep their water in the river do exactly that, because this year, every drop counts.

Nowhere is that reality more visible to me than on the Yampa.

The low flows used to arrive in August. Now we’re watching temperatures spike and flows drop in June and July…and the Yampa is one of Colorado’s wildest, most storied rivers.

If it’s hurting this early, so is everything that depends on it: the trout holding in deep pools, the rafters and anglers who anchor Steamboat Springs’ summer tourism, the downstream irrigators who provide for our communities, and the people of this town whose identity is wrapped up in the idea of a living, moving river.

When the river struggles, so do we.

When recreational closures go up, local businesses lose income they can’t recover. When stream temperatures spike, fish such as trout and mountain whitefish can become overcrowded in deep pools and experience increased stress, which can lower their survival rate. When flows drop too low too early, the whole web of life that the river sustains starts to unravel.

This is not just a Yampa Valley problem. It is a Colorado problem. And if we don’t find new ways to respond together, it will only get harder.

But here is what gives me hope — and I mean genuine, grounded, earned hope, not wishful thinking.

Every year, the Yampa Valley shows up for its river. Our partners at the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, the City of Steamboat Springs, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, local businesses, ranchers, and donors like the Colorado Water Conservation Board, Niagara Cares, Yampa River Fund, Kettering Family Philanthropies, Colorado River District, and others come together to do something remarkable: we collectively release enough water from Stagecoach Reservoir to sometimes triple the flow of the Yampa River through downtown Steamboat Springs.

Triple it.

We have restored more than 31,000 acre-feet of water to the Upper Yampa since 2012 (over 10 billion gallons) and last year alone we put well over 2 billion gallons back into the Yampa River across its whole stretch when it desperately needed it.

That is not a small thing. That is a community deciding, year after year, that their river is worth fighting for.

What Colorado Water Trust does is make that fight possible. We negotiate water purchase contracts, navigate water law, participate in the weekly coordination calls with local stakeholders, follow Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s recommendations for fish protection, raise funds, and turn goodwill into actual water flowing in an actual river. It is complex, painstaking, creative work, and it works because so many people in this valley have decided that it matters. You get it. You care.

And that is the story I want the rest of Colorado to hear.

Because what the Yampa Valley is building is a model. A proof of concept that even in an era of diminished water (even in years like this one) communities can come together and keep a river alive. It takes collaboration across interests: water rights holders, cities and agricultural districts, environmentalists, state agencies, corporations, and local nonprofits. It takes legal creativity and operational flexibility. And it takes people who are willing to write a check and say: this river matters to me.

If you live in the Yampa Valley, know this: what you do for your river every year is being watched by the rest of this state. You are showing Colorado what is possible. Be proud of that. And keep going.
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Follow Colorado Water Trust at ColoradoWaterTrust.org. Support our work at coloradowatertrust.org/donate. If you hold water rights and want to explore how your water could help a river this summer, reach out to me directly at kryan@coloradowatertrust.org — this year, every drop of water matters and every dollar supports another drop.

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