Basalt Whitewater Park: more about water rights than kayaking

Onlookers watch a girl with her Boogie Board jump into the Roaring Fork River at the Basalt Whitewater Park on Thursday afternoon.

Basalt Whitewater Park has obvious recreational benefits. Since it came into being in 2017, the Roaring Fork River attraction has been popular with rafters and kayakers alike — and has even helped to create some better fishing holes.

But there is more to the whitewater stretch — a project undertaken and managed by Pitkin County and its Healthy Rivers program — than fun in the summer sun and cool water. County officials have said the recreational benefits of the whitewater park are only secondary to the real goal, which was securing water rights.

The whitewater park was not completed on schedule or under budget. Pitkin County first tagged the project at $770,000 in 2015, though the expenditures have since grown to over $3.5 million. The project was meant to be completed in 2017, but it has since undergone three rounds of instream modifications, the last of which was completed this past winter.

And, it has been criticized for being dangerous. At one point in 2019, the artificial waves built into the park created what one Basalt Town Council member called a “death hole,” flipping three rafts in one incident that year and requiring Roaring Fork Fire Rescue to initiate a swiftwater rescue operation.

The county has said such difficulties are typical for whitewater parks. Durango’s attraction, for instance, has required several modifications since it was initially constructed in the early 1990s. Pitkin County and its contractor, engineering firm River Restoration, have worked to resolve structural issues with the Basalt park’s artificial waves, and there have been no major emergency situations in the last few years.

Basalt Whitewater Park, located on the river across from Basalt’s Elk Run subdivision, includes two artificial structures called “play waves” within a designated stretch of roughly 1,000 feet of river. Kayakers, rafters, stand-up paddlers and boogie boarders can “surf” the waves, or simply run through them like rapids. Residents can enjoy sitting by the waves, and anglers can fish in pools created by the structures.

County officials say the water right associated with the whitewater park, which a Colorado judge decreed as absolute in 2020, allows the county to protect water in the Roaring Fork River from future attempts by cities or farms outside the watershed that might want to divert it for their own uses.

At a time when climate change and population growth are increasing competition for Colorado’s water resources, Assistant County Attorney Laura Makar said the park is a “creative” way to keep water in the Roaring Fork River. It’s one component in the county’s larger effort to “to ensure the health of our [river] system,” she noted. In the last 20 years, Pitkin County has fought several legal battles with water providers on the Front Range to keep more water flowing in the Roaring Fork.

The park also protects flows in the upper Roaring Fork River for ecological benefits as well. Constructing the waves allowed the county to obtain a special kind of water right called “Recreational In-Channel Diversion,” or RICD. Where most water rights allow users to divert water out of rivers, this kind of right allows the county to actively keep water in the river to the benefit of its ecosystems.

“It's kind of a weird way to go about protecting water rights in the river, but there aren’t very many opportunities to get a water right to leave water in the river,” said Andre Wille, a member of Pitkin County’s Healthy Rivers Board.

Wille said low flows in mid-to-late summer can stress local fish populations, and the Basalt project is designed to mitigate that stress.

While recent droughts have depleted river flows across the West, population growth in Colorado is creating more demand for the Roaring Fork’s limited water resources. Already, Front Range water users divert an average of around 40,000 acre-feet, or roughly 35%, of the upper Roaring Fork’s annual flow per year, according to the Roaring Fork Conservancy in Basalt.

This diversion is operated by the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company, which takes Roaring Fork water from a collection area near Independence Pass and runs it under the Continental Divide through a tunnel. The water then primarily supplies the city of Colorado Springs, with some water also going to Pueblo, Pueblo West and Aurora.

The RICD protects between 240 cubic feet per second and 1,350 cfs of water during the spring and summer months, when the river is running highest. This “peak flow” water is the last unclaimed water in the river, according to Wille, and the RICD is designed to keep it in the river.

When the county applied for the RICD associated with the whitewater park, it faced legal opposition from Front Range water providers, including the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company. Makar said this opposition demonstrates the demand for the peak flow water that the RICD will protect.

Makar said even though RICD right is relatively new — it has a priority date of 2010, which means it receives low priority under Colorado water law — its location above the Roaring Fork’s confluence with the Fryingpan River allows the county to legally challenge any new upstream diversions, even if those diversions use an existing higher-priority water right. That’s because any new diverters wouldn’t be able to use water from Ruedi Reservoir to replace the water they take away from the whitewater park, which would likely be required if they create a new diversion on Independence Pass.

“This is a mechanism that requires that water to come downstream, all the way to … the midvalley,” Makar said.

Wille said those protected flows throughout the upper Roaring Fork are the real goal of the whitewater park. These flows, he said, will help oxygenate water for fish from the headwaters of the river near Independence Pass all the way down to Basalt.

“I think the ecological benefits of the park are probably the most important thing related to the recreational in-channel diversion that the county obtained,” Wille said.

Nonetheless, some residents are still unaware of this goal for the whitewater park. Two Basalt locals who sometimes fish around the attraction, who asked that their names not be published, said they are generally unhappy with the way it has been constructed.

The anglers criticized the location and wave design and argued that the process of building the park may have been harmful to local ecosystems.

When asked if they knew about the water rights attached to the park — along with the benefits those rights could bring for the Roaring Fork River — both shook their heads. Was the water right a component in anglers’ discussions about the whitewater park? “Not at all,” one said.

One of the anglers also was skeptical about the idea that the water right would help keep water in the river. However, both conceded that some good fishing holes were created by the park.

Wille agreed. “I was fishing down there myself the other day,” he said.

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