Solid B- for the Yampa River
07/10/2024 07:10AM ● By Amelia Davis
Steamboat Springs, CO - The Steamboat Springs segment of the Yampa River is the focus of the latest results released from the Yampa River Scorecard Project. The grade? B-. But the meaning of the score and information may be lost in the technicalities – so we asked Jenny Frithsen, the environmental program manager at Friends of the Yampa, to break it down.
“The Yampa River Scorecard Project is an ongoing river health assessment of the Yampa River from its headwaters,” Jenny explains. It begins at Bright Blue Stillwater Reservoir and goes to the confluence with the Little Snake River, where the river enters Dinosaur National Monument. This is the third year of implementing the project. “It's not really feasible to do it in one year,” Jenny says. “So the project design is such that the river is divided into five segments, and we focus on one segment for the health assessment each year. And at the end of five years, we will have done the whole river, and the cycle will begin again.”
Because each segment of the river varies in the degree of urban or rural placement, the score can vary between each segment, which is why it’s important to look at each stretch of river individually.
Two sets of scores have been released and the project is currently looking at the Upper Yampa. In 2022, the Middle Yampa overall earned a B. Jenny insists that in looking at rivers across the state, this is a good score. “It’s really healthy. We're super lucky in large part due to our remoteness and the agricultural landscape that our river has remained so healthy,” she says. “But I think the really interesting part is looking beyond the overall score, because no river is perfect, and our river has opportunities for improvement. And if you look at some of the sub-indicators, you can find those opportunities.”
The scorecard project provides information that the road to action and improvement is decided upon. The partner initiative to the Yampa scorecard program is the Yampa River Stewardship Program, which will launch later this year, likely in the fall. The stewardship program will convene stakeholders throughout the community and gather input from these groups, as well as from scientists and a technical committee, to establish what the desired future conditions are for the state of the river. Its function will less so be doing the river work itself, and instead aiming to connect people who want river work done on their property or the property they manage with funding and with practitioner groups, and then to deal with the problem in a way that is least harmful or most beneficial to the river.
This stewardship project is based on the knowledge that the health of the river depends on working with the needs of the people living around it.
“I would say the Yampa itself only runs through cities in just a few spots, right?” Jenny asks. “Generally, the Yampa flows through a very, very rural area, Northwest Colorado. But the Yampa coexists with a human landscape. So I don't know that we would be even aiming for an A+, necessarily, because there's a give and take between human uses of the river and a river's ability to function optimally. What we do want to see is that upward trajectory. So maybe from a B- to a B to a B+, in some areas to an A-. But I think that, in the big picture, what the river needs more than anything is – it needs room to move,” Jenny says. “And the recent Routt County zoning regulations that were just passed are doing some work to help that happen by providing larger setbacks for development along the river's edge. So I think that's really important. Allow the river to be dynamic, to change channels, to spread out, to move.”
“The Yampa River Scorecard Project is an ongoing river health assessment of the Yampa River from its headwaters,” Jenny explains. It begins at Bright Blue Stillwater Reservoir and goes to the confluence with the Little Snake River, where the river enters Dinosaur National Monument. This is the third year of implementing the project. “It's not really feasible to do it in one year,” Jenny says. “So the project design is such that the river is divided into five segments, and we focus on one segment for the health assessment each year. And at the end of five years, we will have done the whole river, and the cycle will begin again.”
Because each segment of the river varies in the degree of urban or rural placement, the score can vary between each segment, which is why it’s important to look at each stretch of river individually.
Two sets of scores have been released and the project is currently looking at the Upper Yampa. In 2022, the Middle Yampa overall earned a B. Jenny insists that in looking at rivers across the state, this is a good score. “It’s really healthy. We're super lucky in large part due to our remoteness and the agricultural landscape that our river has remained so healthy,” she says. “But I think the really interesting part is looking beyond the overall score, because no river is perfect, and our river has opportunities for improvement. And if you look at some of the sub-indicators, you can find those opportunities.”
The scorecard project provides information that the road to action and improvement is decided upon. The partner initiative to the Yampa scorecard program is the Yampa River Stewardship Program, which will launch later this year, likely in the fall. The stewardship program will convene stakeholders throughout the community and gather input from these groups, as well as from scientists and a technical committee, to establish what the desired future conditions are for the state of the river. Its function will less so be doing the river work itself, and instead aiming to connect people who want river work done on their property or the property they manage with funding and with practitioner groups, and then to deal with the problem in a way that is least harmful or most beneficial to the river.
This stewardship project is based on the knowledge that the health of the river depends on working with the needs of the people living around it.
“I would say the Yampa itself only runs through cities in just a few spots, right?” Jenny asks. “Generally, the Yampa flows through a very, very rural area, Northwest Colorado. But the Yampa coexists with a human landscape. So I don't know that we would be even aiming for an A+, necessarily, because there's a give and take between human uses of the river and a river's ability to function optimally. What we do want to see is that upward trajectory. So maybe from a B- to a B to a B+, in some areas to an A-. But I think that, in the big picture, what the river needs more than anything is – it needs room to move,” Jenny says. “And the recent Routt County zoning regulations that were just passed are doing some work to help that happen by providing larger setbacks for development along the river's edge. So I think that's really important. Allow the river to be dynamic, to change channels, to spread out, to move.”