Steamboat Springs author and adventurer Eugene Buchanan has lived near the banks of the Yampa River long enough to notice its rhythms and moods are often mirrored by the residents in his northwest Colorado ski town.
“The river's pulse kind of matches your own,” he said Thursday. “You know, come springtime, you're jazzed up, and the rivers crankin’ and flooding, and the surf waves are in and people are rafting it and (stand up paddleboarding). Then it slows down to a trickle later in the summer and people are inner-tubing it. Fly fishing it. That's a little more of a tranquil time.”
But as Buchanann warns in the first chapter of his new book, Yampa Yearnings, “not all is hunky dory in Yampaland.”
Last summer marked the fourth time in history that there was a call on the Yampa due to drought conditions and upstream users were forced to cut back their intake.
And like other rivers across the west, Buchanan said the waterway faces growing threats from climate change and increased demands from water users.
Buchanan’s book is not all about hard times and drought on the river. In between his history lessons about the Yampa and the challenges it has faced, readers will also learn about the fate of Buchanan’s efforts to help a rancher get his lost cattle back across the raging waterway. There’s also a tale of his friend’s paddling adventure from Colorado to Utah to prove the waterway can facilitate ‘interstate commerce.’
KUNC water and environment reporter Scott Franz interviewed Buchanan about his book and the state of the Yampa. Answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Franz: What impact do you hope this book has for the Yampa River and its future?
Buchanan: It's hard to say how much impact a book like this will have. It's my hope that those who are familiar with the Yampa learn to appreciate it a little more. Maybe look at it with a different eye next time they see it. If people aren't familiar with the Yampa and they live somewhere else, maybe they'll look outside and see their backyard creek flowing through their town and just think about it a little more. Maybe they'll donate to a local nonprofit that's trying to help preserve it, or they'll pick up some trash or get involved. Or they'll vote appropriately, how they want to, perhaps preserve it.
This is a book that took you several years to write. Tell me about the writing process. What was it like to write about your hometown River?
I wanted it to be entertaining for people to read, because it's really easy to get dry, so to speak, when you're writing about water. When you're talking about water rights or access issues, a lot of people probably don't really care less about those. Water wonks do. Sure. And I wanted to be fair to them and cover the important stuff. But the same time, I wanted your average, you know, Joe Blow person who isn't involved in that stuff…to be entertained by it. So they could get through the whole thing read about, you know, all the issues facing it.
You say very early in the book that not everything is quite “hunky dory” in Yampa land. What are the biggest threats it's facing today?
I think, like a lot of rivers in the arid west today, it's lower flows. That’s the big one with climate change, especially if you look at this year. I mean, the whole state (of Colorado’s snowpack) is down in the 50-60% percentile and they’re calling it the lowest since 1987, the lowest they've seen since they started keeping accurate records.
So that's the biggie, along with the increasing demand for water from everywhere on the Front Range to downstream states in the Colorado Water Compact. And the Yampa feeds the Green (River), which feeds the Colorado, which feeds those downstream states. So all eyes are on it as a conduit of this important resource that we usher downstream.
Your book is landing at an interesting time. I’m sure you follow the big Colorado River negotiations that are happening. The next deadline is next month. Certainly, the Yampa is very much connected to the river basin. Are there any lessons or takeaways you think people involved and who have a stake in the future of this river system can take away from your book?
Everyone's clamoring for the Colorado River’s water, right? I mean, Colorado and the upper compact states are, and so are the downstream states, with California growing, Nevada, with Vegas growing. I mean, there's water demand all over the place, and that water has to come from somewhere. And the Colorado was already piped and tapped and funneled underneath the Continental Divide to the east slope, where it flows into a completely different drainage. But to satisfy these rights, why don't we kind of kill two birds with one stone and keep water in the Yampa and let the Yampa help satisfy those downstream water rights, while also retaining this important natural hydrograph and running free? You know, if it gets up to 20,000 CFS every spring, let's keep that water in there. Let's try not to tap it for these other uses or siphon it under the Continental Divide to the growing Front Range, and we have to supply that water downstream anyways. So let's keep it in the Yampa and let it do its work.
Like so many of our treasured outdoor spaces, the Yampa is seeing more traffic than ever. In Steamboat Springs last year, more than 21,000 people tubed the town stretch. In what ways have you seen the river change since you first laid eyes on it?
The first time I got on the Yampa was probably in fifth grade when my mom took our family down on a five-day river trip down Dinosaur National Monument, down Yampa Canyon. And of course, back then, I was a young kid, but it seemed just super wild and out there. And it still is, thankfully. Dinosaur National Monument is protected, and that zone is as wild as it's ever been.
The kind of more town-run stretches up here around Steamboat have seen increased use. The thing about the tubing hatch, as we call it, is in one sense, it's great, because you're getting these people out on the water and in a way we’re potentially creating future river stewards. You know, if these people get out and have a great experience on the water, on the river, and realize how much fun it is for their family…the next time they hear about an issue the Yampa is facing, or a pollution issue, or a water right or access issue or something, maybe they'll pay a little more attention.
Maybe they'll be inclined to vote, you know, with their hearts or whatever, about it, more so than they would have had they not experienced it. And conversely, though you can love a thing too much. You want to respect it. After a busy Fourth of July weekend, you can see the river just trashed with broken tubes on the side, lots of flip flops, that sort of thing. So people can take some responsibility at that same time. And try to leave it better than they found it.
This story is part of ongoing coverage of water in the West, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage. The Walton Family Foundation, which supports KUNC's Colorado River Coverage, was among the non-profits supporting the publication of Yampa Yearnings.
