News Story - Idaho State Journal

Competing demands

Craig Denton sees the Bear River as a stage on which all of the issues play out pertaining to the greatest challenge facing the West.

With water in great demand but short supply in this arid region of the country, Denton foresees balancing competing demands for the vital resource will become increasingly difficult as the population continues to grow.

Denton is a professor of communication and photo journalism at the University of Utah, where a photographic exhibit related to his new book, ''Bear River: Last Chance to Change Course,'' is also on display at the Utah Museum of Natural History.

''I'm just convinced that water will be the primary social and economic issue of the 21st century for the Intermountain West,'' Denton said. ''All of the issues dealing with water ... in some way or another, the Bear River exemplifies it, whether or not it's pollution or taking out water for irrigation.''

The book, released about three months ago, is the culmination of a six-year project on the Bear, which required four months of basic research in Utah State University libraries. His interest in water started several years ago when he was working on a documentary called ''People of the West Desert.'' While researching the documentary, he heard reports of dam proposals on the Bear.

''It's a river of multiple personalities,'' Denton said. ''You talk about what it's like in the headwaters, it's remarkably clear cascades and waterfalls and high-mountain lakes. In the lower stretches, it's muddy and polluted.''

Farms leach phosphorus, nitrogen and pesticides into the Bear. Denton said coliform bacteria is also prevalent in the Bear due to the many packing plants along its banks. City stormwater systems carry additional pollutants into the river.

But he also notes there are a considerable number of efforts aimed at rehabilitating its troubled waters. In Evanston, Wyo., for example, he's pleased with an ongoing municipal project to remove cars, tires and debris from the river and restore meanders, pools and riffles.

''In certain stretches, we're starting to see pollution go down, and it's a slow process,'' Denton said. ''At the same time, we're seeing all of these things happening, you have people who want 20-acre ranchettes. Subdivisions are encroaching the river banks.''

Water in the Bear River, named because of the many bears trapper Michel Bourdon encountered along its banks during an 1818 expedition, is apportioned in Idaho, Wyoming and Utah by the Bear River Commission. The commission was established in 1958 by the Bear River Compact.

But concerns about the scarcity of the Bear's volume were voiced as far back as 1878, when Major John Wesley Powell asked Congress for laws governing priorities and beneficial use of water to be included in the homestead laws. Congress took no action.

Powell proposed rules governing water use in the system - partially in response to a plan to divert a substantial amount of water from the Bear where it leaves Cache Valley - once again in 1889 when he made the plea: ''In times of scarcity, who is to apportion this water? What protection do present users enjoy against the stronger and richer canal companies?''

Today, communities along the Bear in all three states where it flows rely on the river for irrigation water, hydropower, boating and angling opportunities and wildlife habitat. And Denton sees a new growing threat posed by the conversion of agricultural land into new neighborhoods.

''The biggest challenge to the Bear River is what would happen if all of this water was taken out and used for human consumption? You're taking water out of the rivers and out of the Great Salt Lake, and if history is any pattern, you're going to use that water to irrigate Kentucky bluegrass in these new suburbs,'' Denton said. ''The big question is, 'Is that how you want to use your last drop of water?''

Denton argues the water in just about every river is currently over-appropriated. As the nation's population grows and the water supply is stretched increasingly thin, Denton says priorities and practices will have to change.

''We need to reserve a certain amount of water for agriculture. We have to eat. How about just leaving water for the creatures? We don't even have a concept of that in our law,'' Denton said. ''We're faced here with a finite resource of water but an expanding population. Unless we make some significant changes in how we use water, we're not going to make it. We simply have to move to a conservation ethic, and it has to be with us every moment of the day.''

Grace

The final remnant of the Cove Dam is a slender, concrete column protruding from a 30-foot cliff.

Wading in waist-deep water at the base of PacifiCorp Energy's former hydroelectric dam, Warren Colyer cast a streamer into a still pool. He stripped his fly line a few times and felt the powerful jerk of a 17-inch brown trout.

The trout peeled line from Colyer's reel as it torpedoed into faster water.

''This one's a hog!'' Colyer shouted when the hulking trout's dark snout finally broke the water's surface.

After examining the specimen for a few moments, Colyer, a biologist who heads Trout Unlimited's Bear River Project, gently released it back into the pool.

With the dam's removal about a year ago, an insurmountable obstacle to native Bonneville cutthroat restoration in the stretch of the Bear near Grace has also disappeared.

Colyer, researchers with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and a fledgling land trust have wasted no time in advancing a host of projects to protect that stretch from Oneida Narrows Reservoir to Grace Dam, called the Thatcher Reach.

The long-term goal is to restore the native Bonneville cutthroat as the primary game fish in the reach, where anglers are accustomed to landing browns and hatchery rainbows.

During that morning of fishing in mid-October, Colyer got to examine a few so-called cutbows, rainbows with the trademark orange slashes below the jaw that distinguish cutthroat. He also studied one trout that appeared to be a pure-blood Bonneville.

''The reason this (dam removal) is so good for Bonneville cutthroat is upstream you have Black Canyon, which is excellent main-stem habitat with deep pools,'' Colyer said. ''With this dam gone, there are several good spring tributaries downstream.''

The Cove has been inactive since a flume failed in 2002. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission required PacifiCorp to first devise a plan to prevent future failures before it would allow the dam to be brought back on line.

In negotiating its 2003 relicensing agreement, PacifiCorp faced the choice of repairing the malfunctioning flume or simply demolishing the Cove.

By John O'Connell

This document was originally published online on Sunday, November 11, 2007

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