We Are Rivers

In 2015, Colorado took a big first step towards protecting our rivers, heritage, and way of life with the completion of Colorado’s Water Plan. While there is still much to do, the plan creates a framework to help us understand the actions needed to achieve a balance between the water we have and the water we need. Colorado’s Water Plan set a new path towards a secure water future to protect our state’s rivers, secure clean, safe reliable drinking water for our communities, and preserve our agricultural heritage. Now, our water future depends on funding elements of the plan. Episode 6 of We are Rivers dives into the big picture of Colorado's Water Plan. Photo Credit: Russ Schnitzer

Glen Canyon Dam, and by extension the reservoir it creates with Lake Powell, has elicited plenty of opinion and controversy over its 50 years of existence about whether it should be removed, bypassed, or even supported as an integral part of public policy across the Colorado Basin. It’s history and future are central to Colorado River management, as well as healing the scars of environmental tragedy in Glen Canyon.

In Episode Five, we explore this issue from a trio of voices, including New York Times Bestselling Author Kevin Fedarko, Glen Canyon Institute President Eric Balken, and American Rivers’ Intermountain West Communications Director Sinjin Eberle.

The Grand Canyon is one of our greatest symbols of the values of wild nature. The canyon represents more than 1.7 billion years of geologic time and is home to wildlife from the bighorn sheep to the endangered humpback chub. Dozens of creeks, springs, and tributaries connect with the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, including the Little Colorado, Kanab Creek, Havasu Creek, and Bright Angel Creek.

However, the Grand Canyon is at risk. Threats to the canyon’s seeps, springs, and wildlife include legacy uranium mining claims, the substantial expansion of Tusayan a high desert village, increased air traffic at the lower end of the canyon, and the potential for a gondola shuttling nearly 10,000 people from the rim down to the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers. These threats against the canyon are hard to believe – and while the National Park status does protect it in many ways, substantial risks still exist to the cultural and biological relevance of the confluence, to each of the canyon’s towering rims, to the skies above, and the ancient groundwater below the very surface of the earth.

Listen to Episode 4: Beauty and Risk in the Grand Canyon of We Are Rivers today and take action ! Speak up to protect the Grand Canyon today against these and future threats at www.AmericanRivers.org/grandcanyon.

Photo Credit: Annemarie Lewis, Confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers

"Turning Towards Solutions" builds upon our previous episode, "Law of the River." Across the Colorado River Basin, collaboration, cooperation, and compromise between towns, districts, states, and basins is a common theme. "Turning Towards Solutions" explores how collaborative actions like the Drought Contingency Plan and Minute 319 (the pulse flow) are creating promise and opportunity for sustaining the Colorado River and the people and communities that depend on it. Tune in to hear about efforts to create a new pathway to preserve both this crucial resource, and the legacy of the entire southwest.

Photo Credit: Colorado River Pulse Flow | John Fleck

More than a century ago, populations across the west were booming. The seven states dependent on the Colorado River recognized the need to formally divide it, ensuring everyone received an appropriate amount of water. Ratified in 1922, the Colorado River Compact marked the beginning of how and why the Colorado River is managed as it is today.

But the Compact is only one thread in a much larger story. Because the whole basin’s demand for water is higher than what it can supply, the Colorado River has become both one of the most stringently managed, as well as aggressively disputed, rivers in the world. There are numerous other compacts, federal laws, court decisions, decrees, contracts, and guidelines that have been developed since the 1922 compact that dictate the challenging management of the Colorado River; these are collectively known as the "Law of the River.”

Photo Credit: Sinjin Eberle

“The Value of Rivers” explores the value rivers have on our environment, economy, and way of life. Rivers contribute so much more than just a beautiful backdrop, they are magnets for biodiversity and life. In the Southwest, 90% of the nation’s winter fruits and vegetables are grown with water diverted from the Colorado River. Additionally, the Colorado River is economically significant with it and its tributaries contributing $1.4 trillion dollar to our economy. This includes $26 billion dollars annually through recreation alone. Join us in this episode of “We Are Rivers,” exploring the incredible value of western rivers.

“We Are Rivers” explores how our rivers are managed, but, more importantly, describes the incredible hope and immense capacity of human innovation to protect and restore rivers. Through “We Are Rivers,” American Rivers, a national river conservation organization, explores stories of rivers, people, and policies so that we may all connect, empathize, understand, and work to save our nation's rivers.