From Steamboat Today (Mike Lawrence):
The Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District has been permitting and planning to raise the South Routt County reservoir for about five years. The expansion will add about 3,185 acre-feet to the reservoir, which currently holds about 33,275 acre-feet and supplies water to local municipalities, agricultural users and Tri-State Generation and Transmission’s Craig Station power plant. District General Manager Kevin McBride said the expansion now has the go-ahead from numerous federal, state and local entities, with the remaining negotiations — including those with owners of reservoir water — nearing their final stages…
“After the middle of July, we’ll start releasing (water) — I think it’ll be most noticeable in August, when flows are typically down,” McBride said. “We could be up to 7 feet down by Labor Day.” The release of water will send flows of 100 cubic feet per second or greater down the river from mid-July through mid-September, McBride said…
Structural work on the dam and its 60-foot-wide spillway, where water flows out of the reservoir and into the river, will begin after Labor Day, McBride said. That work will require a separate contract with a contractor qualified for the specialized work. Tearing out the spillway’s crest and replacing it with a new crest that is 4 feet higher will result in the reservoir’s expanded capacity. Wind and other factors funnel water to the dam and its spillway on the reservoir’s northeast side. “The (water’s) elevation gets controlled by the lowest point in the bucket,” McBride said.
More Yampa River Basin coverage here.