River Network’s Healthy Rivers Program team works closely with the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) to support communities’ and coalitions’ watershed planning efforts to meet Colorado’s Water Plan goal: that 80 percent of locally prioritized rivers be covered by stream management plans (SMP) by 2030. Stream management and integrated watershed management planning (SMP/IWMP), source water protection planning (SWAP), wildfire ready action plans (WRAP), and other watershed planning efforts help communities assess and address watershed health – gauging aquatic ecosystems, riparian area conditions, water flows, nutrient cycling, contaminant hazards, floodplain land uses, and other elements that impact water quality. Healthy watersheds provide ecosystem services such as flow regulation, flood control, water purification, dilution of contaminants, erosion control, and habitat protection that benefit not only ecological processes, but also local and state economies, community, and quality of life.
Communities across the country are facing a range of water-related climate change threats, from droughts to flooding and intense storms – all of which can negatively impact a community’s water supply. Even natural disasters that don’t directly involve water, such as wildfires, can contaminate source water by choking rivers with sediment, triggering algal blooms, damaging water intakes, or polluting water with chemicals. In 2021, the Dixie Fire of California burned over 963,000 acres in the northern portion of the state. Erosion and runoff into the Sierra watershed, including chemicals from the burned downtown of Greenville, were top concerns for state water officials that autumn. In 2020, the aftereffects of the East Troublesome Fire, which burned over 193,000 acres in northern Colorado, createding flash flooding and sedimentation in the Cache la Poudre River and, causing the city of Fort Collins to pause its use of the river as a source water. As climate impacts intensify, protecting source water is becoming more and more vital to ensuring people can have access to clean drinking water. Grant programs such as the Wildlife Ready Watersheds program, launched in Colorado in 2023, can support communities develop contingency plans to protect source water before disaster strikes.
