Collaboration on the Colorado River with Rob Billerbeck

Behind the Scenery

"This is the drier southwest, so it's not surprising this is the place where the effects of climate change are first really coming to a head. Do we pull together as a team? Do we figure out how to adapt? How to be able to balance water use between cities and agriculture, between different states? Or do we fail?"

Rob Billerbeck is the Colorado River Coordinator for the National Park Service. Rob highlights the challenges facing the Colorado River and why he still has hope for the future.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Ceili: Hi, I'm Ceili, coming to you from the Phantom Ranger station at the bottom of Grand Canyon. What do Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Curecanti National Recreation Area, Dinosaur National Monument, Canyon Lands National Park, Arches National Park, Rainbow Bridge National Monument, Lake Mead National Recreation area and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area have in common with Grand Canyon and with each other? These places are in three different States and look vastly different, but are inextricably connected by nearly 1000 miles of the Colorado River and its major tributaries. They're also all managed by the National Park Service. In 2022, they welcomed more than 17,000,000 visitors and contributed more than $1.8 billion of visitor spending to local and regional economies. The Colorado River is contentious. Managing 277 miles of it through Grand Canyon between two of the biggest dams in the country is complex. There are hydropower needs, sediment loads, threatened and endangered fish recreation groups, and many other aspects of river management. But because the river flows through such a huge swath of the dry desert southwest, it needs to be managed as a bigger whole system, making it even more complex. Complex enough that coordinating the needs of these Park Service units as they relate to management of the Colorado River is someone's whole job. Rob Billerbeck is the National Park Service’s Colorado River coordinator and I got to talk to him when he was visiting Lees ferry, Arizona, the launch point for river trips through Grand Canyon. The places he works to protect now, the places through which the Colorado River flows, are what first brought him to his home in Denver, CO. Rob: The reason I live here is because of my very first trip west when I was 20. You know, I saw Rocky Mountain National Park. And on that trip, I also met, you know, the woman who would later be my wife because she had a flat tire driving between national parks like I was. And so those were the two big loves of my life, Rocky Mountain National Park and my wife. So that brought me West. Now that I've been in this role, you know, even though I have had some incredible experiences in Dinosaur, I love Black Canyon of the Gunnison, I have spent nights in Canyonlands where you get up in the middle of the night and you can see by the light of the Milky Way, I still would have to say, you know, the Grand Canyon is a place for me that just prompts a really deep spiritual feeling. You know, when you are down at the bottom of the Canyon looking up, you really do feel like you are one tiny piece of a great, huge, amazing natural place and you know for me that experience, that feeling of spirituality in the Canyon makes me have to say Grand Canyon is my favorite spot along the Colorado River. I'm Rob Billerbeck and I'm the Colorado River Coordinator for the Park Service. Ceili: I had not even realized that the Colorado River had its own Park Service Coordinator, and I wondered if any other rivers had their own coordinators. Rob: There are some other river coordinators. There's one for the Mississippi and the Missouri because that's a really huge river as well. That's the only other one that I know that's specific to a river. There are other folks, of course, in our water resources division who cover a lot of different rivers. There's been a lot of work done on the Rio Grande but that doesn't have a specific coordinator. So, for the Colorado River the reason my job exists and has since the year 2000 is because Colorado River is just incredibly complicated, legally, politically. It's been quoted by many as the most complicated river in the US. That's really because it's providing water in the southwest. The dry Southwestern United States. So indeed, it is, you know, water is for fighting over. So, you know, in this arid landscape, the river corridor is incredibly important for wildlife. Even though the riparian areas, you know, make up maybe 1% of the landscape. For wildlife in these arid landscapes, 80% of the species have some critical part of their life cycle that occurs in that river corridor. So, you know, water is life. So, for the Park Service, it's incredibly important for us to interact on these river issues. In fact, you know many of our most iconic and most visited park units are here in the southwest. So of course, the Grand Canyon that we, you know, we'll be looking down towards when we're at Lees Ferry. But you know Glen Canyon National Recreation Area where Lake Powell is has incredibly high visitation. Further downstream, we have Lake Mead and then up on the tributaries upstream of us, you know, we have places like Dinosaur National Monument, Black Canyon of the Gunnison and way up at the headwaters, Rocky Mountain National Park. So for the Park Service, that's a pretty heavily vested interest given the importance of the water to our resources, given how many people want to come and have that visitor experience, then it's very important. And because it's so legally and politically complicated, what was found in the year 2000 was we really had to coordinate between the park units to determine what it is we wanted to ask for, what our positions were. So we had to make sure literally we were all rowing in the same direction within the Park Service. And then needed a coordinator to really interface with all of the partners. So, if you want to do anything on the Colorado River, you have to meet with seven states with a large number of tribes. If you're looking at the whole river, you know that can be as many as 30 tribes. And if you, you know, are talking about doing anything that would alter the flows, then you really have to talk with the Bureau of Reclamation, Western Area Power, about the dam operations. And then talk with many of the users and interest groups on the river, whether those be hydropower, interest groups, fishing groups or, you know, boating, rafting groups. So, a lot of partners to meet with because so many people use or receive this water. Really the water in one way or another gets to 40 million people and produces billions of dollars' worth of, you know, business and enterprise all along the river. Ceili: So many people rely on and care a lot about the Colorado River. Because Rob's role is about coordinating the National Parks on the Colorado River and communicating with the many management partners he often travels to various locations on the river for meetings. On this day, we both found ourselves just upstream from Grand Canyon National Park. Rob: We're at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area headquarters and I traveled here from the Denver Regional Office of the Park Service where I work now to here to meet with some of the park staff and some tribal representatives, and we're going to talk about a set of vegetation projects that we do below the Glen Canyon Dam and the vegetation projects really mitigate the effects of the Glen Canyon Dam on the river corridor. So we were able to get money starting in 2016 for that vegetation project really through the Bureau of Reclamation and the Adaptive Management program that was formed below the dam to comply with the Grand Canyon Protection Act. So, because of that law, we were able to get money to mitigate those effects, like I said, and do this big vegetation project that involves removing invasive plants, replanting native plants, doing some great restoration work, and keeping the campsites along the river, viable by clearing away vegetation from them by working with partners to grow native plants. So, we're really excited to meet with tribes today, talk a little bit more about the project. You know, we're a few years into it, and I've been partnering with them, but this is a good opportunity to walk around, show them some of the work that's happened, some prescribed burning, some replanting. Ceili: It is not always vegetation that projects are focused on. Rob needs to be familiar with all of the many aspects of the Colorado River. Rob: So, you know what has occupied most of my time is has changed over the 12 years I've been in this role. You know, in the past I worked a lot on Glen Canyon Dam operations and what was called the LTEMP the long term experimental and management plan. And you know, that looked at ways to do some occasional high flows out of the dam to rebuild beaches and sand bars that are part of the habitat, part of what protects the cultural resources by keeping them covered, and provides a way to simulate what used to be the natural spring flooding in the Canyon. And that maintains nice sandy beaches that, as people do their lifetime experience, you know, rafting through the Grand Canyon, they can camp on those nice sandy beaches. So, I spent many years on that, have spent many years since then, you know, balancing between working on some Grand Canyon and Glen Canyon issues and some of the operations in the Upper Basin. So how flaming Gorge Dam is operated, that dam is right above Dinosaur National Monument, so that affects, you know, the river corridor, the Green River that goes through Dinosaur and then down into Canyonlands. The Yampa, which is one of the he most free flowing rivers left, that's a major tributary of the Colorado, it meets the green within Dinosaur. So, it's a unique place, kind of a living laboratory in a way because we have this managed river, you know the upper Green coming together with a much more natural, free flowing river and then they flow down together in a semi-managed, semi-wild state down through Canyonlands. So, you know there and on the Gunnison, where we have the Aspinall Unit, a series of dams, you know, between Curecanti and Black Canyon of the Gunnison, we've worked a lot there, you know, particularly our water resources division folks like Mark Wansel, have really worked on trying to maintain those water regimes in a way that's as close to natural that maintains most of the river dynamics there. So, what we try and do at those places is push a lot for big spring peak flows. And that runs counter to some other stakeholders, so, it takes a lot of work, but it's really what's best for the fish, best for maintaining the river channel, the habitat overtime for fish and others, it maintains a wider channel which is better in terms of flooding issues than a narrow densely vegetated channel. So that's what that's what we've been working for in the Upper Basin and working closely with the endangered Fish Recovery program up there. In the last two years since we've had this really major change in hydrology and big drops in the amount of water that's really tied to hotter temperatures, more evaporation and drier soils. And that has meant that even when we're getting close to normal levels of precipitation in the form of snowpack, which is where most of the water comes from for the Colorado River, we aren't getting the normal amount of stream flow because the soils have turned into kind of a giant sponge. They're so dry that when the snow melts, it runs back into the soil instead of super saturating and running off into the streams. So, with that water level drop, Lake Power level has dropped significantly and as that has dropped, it's creating a fish problem for the Grand Canyon and that problem is because there's a lot of non-native fish in Lake Powell. There aren't a lot of non-native fish below the dam in Grand Canyon. So, in fact, that stretch of river below the dam has been the longest stretch of the Colorado River without a lot of nonnatives. So, the natives have been doing really well, especially the federally threatened humpback chub. So, what has happened is as Lake Powell has dropped, there's a top warm layer where the fish, the non-native fish, are now starting to pass through the dam in large numbers down into the Grand Canyon. And that is bad. Especially because it's also passing warmer water. So as that top warm layer is dropping down it's reaching the main outlet for the dam, where the pen stocks are the turbines that generate hydropower. And that water is passing through passing the fish, and then they're now able to breed below the dam. So, we are really worried as the Park Service about what that's going to do to the whole aquatic community that's been pretty protected in the Grand Canyon. Will we be able to prevent those non-natives from establishing a large population and start really impacting those native fish? We're not sure. We're doing some actions, but we really need some other agencies to do actions you know as well and together we hope that combination of actions will be enough. We’re at the early stages of invasion, so I'm excited and hopeful that we can change the course of this. But it really will take a lot of action in these next few years. So that's occupying a great deal of my time right now. I feel like that is the biggest resource change on the river that I have seen, you know, during my career. And so, I am really focused on that with the hope that we can turn that ship around, make a difference there and protect those natives. Ceili: It sounds like things are changing fast in the Colorado River. What should we know about these changes? Rob: The Bureau of Reclamation, you know, is the federal government agency that really, you know, decides how to operate the dams. They've got to work within the law of the river, so, the compendium of different laws, starting with the Colorado River Compact and many other laws that modify that. What is clear is over the last 22 years there has been a greater amount of water used than we have received into the system. So, supply and demand has not balanced for 22 years and that has taken Lake Powell and Lake Mead from almost all the way full, about 95% full in the year 2000, down to where they are now which is about 25% full. So, they're hovering just above the place where they can still continue to produce hydropower. So that overuse is a really big concern. And so, for the public, I think that's something they really need to know and participate in. Right now. There's a Bureau of Reclamation planning process that's evaluating ways to address that supply and demand issue. And I think you know, that's a very important, it's the supplementary EIS for the 2007 guidelines. So, it's a mouthful. But you know if the public really looks at that process and Reclamation is doing a great job of explaining that to the public, then they will understand that for the future, if we want to keep both lakes above power pool, keep them where they can provide recreation, and you know, currently they provide recreational impact in the billions between Glen Canyon, Grand Canyon and Lake Mead. We really need to balance supply and demand. And you know, it's important for folks living in cities to consider how they use water and do water conservation on things like lawns and golf courses and things like that. But the even larger component of this is agriculture, and that's what I think the public doesn't understand, maybe, is how much water in the Southwest goes to irrigated agriculture. And so there are some big, difficult, complicated choices associated with that and would really encourage the public to interact on that planning process and try and understand the full implications of all of those decisions and participate in them, because this is the critical crux moment for the whole system, where either we may fall below these levels at which we can operate the water system well, or we figure out how to balance supply and demand, make some tough choices and really maintain the water system and our national parks for the future. So, I think that's really what public needs to understand. The other thing I would add to that is just the press often reports this as the result of a drought in the West. And based on, you know, the science that we understand as the Park Service we understand this not as a temporary drought but as the result of climate change, increasing temperatures and evaporation, and so a more permanent process called aridification, rather than drought. Drought is are really a temporary reduction in precipitation and that's not really what we're experiencing in the West. So, I think that's another important thing for the public to understand is this isn't going to return to normal. We're on a one-way trend and we need to plan for that. So that we can have water for people and water for beautiful natural places as well. Ceili: Rob spends so much time thinking about the well-being of the national parks and the communities along the Colorado River, and I wondered how it felt for him to see how climate change is affecting them. Rob: Climate change weighs heavily on me, really understanding how this works, and it can start feeling a little pessimistic. So, when I feel that way, of course, what do I do? You know, I go recreate in a National Park. I was feeling kind of at a low point with climate change concerns, you know, last fall. I had to take a day off of work and go take an 11-mile hike up steep hill in Rocky Mountain National Park and just remember that you know the size, the scope of these natural areas is large, and Mother Nature is resilient. You know, many of the things that will be first affected by climate change are human structures, our cities on the coast, things like that. But Mother Nature is, life is resilient. Natural places are large, and I think that helps me feel more optimistic. And the other thing is just, you know in my personal life, like I got solar panels a couple of years ago, I just got, you know, a heat pump for my house so I can stop using so much natural gas. And I feel like the solutions are out there for how we make changes to how we do things that have created this. We have now an electric car, well, a plug-in hybrid. So those combinations of things are available to everyone now. So again, when I feel pessimistic then, you know, it makes me feel just a little bit more in control to know that I can start doing things and maybe be an example to others of how we can change to adapt to where we are now. I think there is a way to turn the big boat around too. Ceili: The future of the Colorado River remains uncertain, but Rob Billerbeck has hope. Rob: I think I mentioned how the Colorado River provides water to 40 million people, that's 1/8th of the United States. This is just a historic time that people will look back on where we made decisions that will greatly impact the future of the Southwest and will even affect the food supply for our country and others. And so, I would really encourage the public to really try and read beyond just the headlines, read beyond just a few news articles and try and really understand what's going on, because this is very significant. We have to figure it out here. This is a harbinger of the future for, you know, the whole rest of the country. This is the drier southwest. So, it's not surprising this is the place where the effects of climate change are first really coming to a head. But how we deal with it here, you know, will be a good case study. Do we pull together as a team? Do we figure out how to adapt? How to be able to balance water use between, you know, cities and agriculture, between different states to get kind of out of our corners and work together? Or do we fail? Because the time scale of this is so rapid. Many of the old ways of doing things where we take 5 or 10 years to figure out a solution just aren't going to work. So, I think we're entering a new time and we're smart creatures. We've got big brains. We can build suspension bridges and sing gospel music together. So, we have the capability of doing this, but we really have to think about it in a new way and think about it on the time scale that matters. That's what I would leave it with is it’s an important time where I hope we become the case study of successful adaptation to climate change. Ceili: What's around the bend for the Colorado River in the face of a changing climate? What's in store for the communities that we all live in? Think of a time your community has pulled together as a team to adapt to a change and take care of each other. These are the stories that will help us move forward together. Jesse: The Behind the Scenery Podcast is brought to you by the interpretation team at Grand Canyon National Park. We gratefully acknowledge the Native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who make their home here today.