Improving #GunnisonRiver basin water resources one project at a time — The Gunnison Country Times

Milkweed, sweet peas, and a plethora of other flora billow from Farmer’s Ditch in the North Fork Valley of western Colorado. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

Click the link to read the article on the Gunnison Country Times website (Beverly Richards). Here’s an excerpt:

April 2, 2025

“I was standing there looking at a trickle running down a very large ditch thinking, ‘Man, it’s going to be hard to irrigate with that,’” said Jesse Kruthaupt of Trout Unlimited. “It was the summer of 2012, and I was visiting with a ranch manager about options to improve his irrigation system and water delivery, while also improving flows in Ohio Creek. As many remember, the snowpack that winter was pretty lean, and by the middle of June, there wasn’t much water left in many streams or ditches in western Colorado.”

It is situations like the one above that are at the core of the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District’s grant program. Since 2009, the program has provided funds to address many of the issues facing basin water users, including drought resiliency. The district’s board of directors initiated the program in 2009 with a budget of $100,000. That year, only two grant applications were awarded for a total of $45,000. Since it was brand new and many of our constituents didn’t have a good grasp of what the program was all about, we were pretty excited to see the two applications then and happy to fund a pond lining project and ditch rehabilitation project. Since then, thanks to the success of many projects we have funded, the great outreach efforts of Jesse Kruthaupt and other consultants and the district’s education efforts, triple the amount of funding is available. The grant program continues to be hugely supportive of a variety of water projects. I am pleased to see that a number of projects have been dipping into available technology to achieve the best possible results and better water management. The number of applications and the requested funding amounts have grown steadily over the past 15 years. In 2025, we received 14 applications with a whopping $470,420 in requests, and $1.94 million in total project costs (applicants are required to contribute matching funds).

Map of the Gunnison River drainage basin in Colorado, USA. Made using public domain USGS data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69257550

Comment period open for proposed $2 billion pumped-hydro energy project southeast of #Craig — Steamboat Pilot & Today #YampaRiver

The $2 billion pumped hydroelectric project proposed on private land located some 7 miles southeast of Craig would include an upper reservoir at Buck Peak. This view from the peak shows Craig Station visible in the distance. rPlus Hydro/Courtesy photo

Click the link to read the article on the Steamboat Pilot & Today website (Suzie Romig). Here’s an excerpt:

April 3, 2025

Agency leaders and stakeholders have until May 26 to submit comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, regarding the “pre-application document” for a proposed $2 billion pumped-hydro-storage clean energy project that could be built southeast of Craig.

On March 27, around 40 people attended or listened remotely to a meeting hosted at Colorado Northwestern Community College that provided updated information on the project proposed by Salt Lake City-based rPlus Hydro. The presentation at the joint agency meeting included an overview of the project and operations and a review of information in the FERC pre-application document. The meeting outlined proposed studies to be conducted by rPlus Hydro for the FERC licensing process and provided agency representatives and stakeholders the opportunity to give feedback. A smaller group attended an afternoon tour at the proposed site…

Shapiro said water use from the Yampa River would not be extensive at 4,000 acre-feet of initial fill for the project’s lower reservoir, plus some 600 acre-feet of water annually to account for evaporation and seepage from two new reservoirs on 170 acres. The goal would be to use a portion of the water rights already owned by the coal-fired power plants, Shapiro said…

The majority of the pumped-hydro system would be located underground, including a below-ground powerhouse with three pump-turbine units with generation capacity of 200 megawatts each. The project would consist of one upper and one lower reservoir joined by 2.5 miles of underground water tunnels, an above-ground switchyard, access tunnel, tailrace surge chamber and accessary facilities.

An electric transmission line from the project would run either 11 miles to Craig or less than 2 miles to a Western Area Power Administration line, Shapiro said. Target completion of the licensing process is estimated for 2028, with construction from 2029 to 2033, Shapiro said.