The small but mighty Yampa River supports many human uses while remaining wild and free.

What will happen as this river and the people that depend upon it face drought and have to adapt to new ways of life.

Back in earlier times, people were killed over water.

Without water, this valley would be virtually worthless.

Once the water is done, it's done.

Welcome to the mighty Yampa River.

Moffat County, Colorado.

The Living Peace Foundation is honored to provide funding support for Wild Rivers with Tillie supporting people and projects that creatively and courageously advance collaboration, compassion and living peace.

This series shares the passion that the Living Peace Foundation has for the health and connectedness of our planet and all who inhabit it.

The Yampa River, or the Yampa, as the locals like to say, is truly the jewel of the Colorado because she is wild and free.

She supports an amazing variety of life from the birds and the trees to the wildlife, to ranchers and coal miners and our power production.

We're all completely dependent on the source of life that flows through a little known part of the state of Colorado and Moffat County.

One of Colorado's hidden gems.

The Yampa River starts high in the west part of the state and flows through Dinosaur National Monument and the small town of Craig, Colorado, and the world class ski resort, Steamboat Springs.

Welcome to the mighty Yampa River.

Craig, Colorado.

Moffat County, Colorado.

The second largest exporter of water from the state of Colorado, only second to the Colorado River.

So normal flows here on the Yampa, or at least five or six times higher and an average much less in the high water years.

We could have as much as ten or 12 times as much water here.

And today we're running about 500 cubic feet per second, which is a lot less than we normally see.

It's a very fragile river system.

The river bottom here, the riparian area, is more natural than any other stream in the state of Colorado.

And preserving it, in my mind, is just a huge thing, something that we all should be considering as the crown jewel of what we have here.

And it's very amazing place.

So this is the site of the future water park here.

A few years from now, the kayakers will come, they'll be manmade and waves.

And the hope is that it will really connect the community to the river here in a different way and provide a great place to play.

The fear a lot of people have that live along the Yampa River is it will be stolen to other drainages from other parts of the state.

We could do a lot of things to destroy this place and de-watering.

It, I think would be the first thing.

Even though it doesn't seem like a big deal, these massive cottonwood trees and willows.

This is called the cottonwood willow Gallery forest.

It's a rare and unique site that doesn't exist most places along the Colorado River watershed, of which the Yampa is a tributary.

These places provide a mixed story habitat and are home for endangered species, migrating birds, shade for people along the river.

They keep the water temperature cooler.

Many different functions of this gallery forest.

And the only reason that they're here is because this river floods and deposits all the cottonwood seeds and willow seeds along the side of the banks.

Then these new trees generate each year.

So it's an ongoing regeneration of the forest.

And downriver they spend millions and millions and millions of dollars to try to recreate this habitat for the endangered species.

And the Yampa does it here naturally.

What a gorgeous beach.

This is spectacular.

I mean, how often do we see or not see this kind of driftwood?

Because, you know, too many of the rivers are dammed up in this country and don't have the natural fluctuations piling up this driftwood.

It's lovely.

And the sand even having a sandy beach.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, we've got so many of our rivers, the vast majority of them are dammed.

And as a result, they're just not a natural flowing ecosystem that's good for human life, good for agriculture, good for the fish, the wildlife.

Too many of them are either reservoirs or controlled.

It's a waste, it's expensive.

And then when we try to restore these rivers that cost millions of dollars, to restore it a whole lot better, leave the river protected and free flowing.

The natural systems are doing their thing.

You have the spring runoff.

It does get drier in the middle of the summer.

But the point is the river does what rivers do or should do, and that is they fluctuate these logs that have been washed up during flood season.

And it's a river to river.

That's a life that's, you know, flowing up, flowing down.

And that's what rivers are supposed to do.

And the natural systems and the human world benefit by free flowing rivers.

Because it fluctuates.

It's got cleaner water, it's got healthier wildlife.

This kind of fluctuation like this also brings nutrients up in the floodplains.

The floodplain absorbs water and smooths out the flow.

So you don't have communities downstream that are flooded.

You also end up with cleaner water.

The vast majority of our drinking water in this country comes from rivers, and that's a whole lot cleaner water when it's a free flowing river.

And if we don't let nature do it, it costs us billions of dollars.

We're putting in levees, we're putting in dams to try to protect communities a whole lot less expensive and more effective, to let nature manage the water flow.

When we're putting in all these dams, we've got roughly 90,000 dams in this country.

So many of them have outlived whatever use they had.

They need to be taken down so that rivers can flow naturally, like the Yampa does.

We see about 10 to 15000 visitors on the river each year.

There were two major dams planned for the Yampa River below this point, and it would have just devastated the canyon.

The Yampa River has been looked at many times for major projects to to change it.

Big dams and it's survived the test of of humans knowing it's important in saving it.

I'm blown away by the so many uses that that the Yampa River provides for the communities in addition to the fun.

All this generates a lot of economic activity.

I think over $86 billion a year is spent on water related activities.

I think there's a multiplier effect to not only people buying kayaks and paddles and lifejackets and all the stuff that goes with it, but it creates a vibrancy that connects our town to our river.

It's hard for those of us who don't work with the land to understand the connection to place that ranchers and farmers who live and breathe it each day have.

Many of these families are completely dependent on the Yampa River for their way of life.

You have people that use the Yampa for recreation.

They, I don't think, realize how important all the water is to us.

Water is our lifeline.

This is an irrigated meadow by a pivot.

Without water, there would not be a crop.

Tell me about this.

Where we are and where.

And northwest Colorado, ten miles north of Craig, Colorado.

It's my two sons that are doing this.

Their goal is to have all these bales picked up.

So by tomorrow morning they can put a little bit of water.

What we've got left start irrigating again.

So possibly we can get a second cut now alfalfa off of this.

My grandparents moved here in what 86?

We didn't have water on this field or on this place.

We wouldn't have a crop.

It's all run off.

And so when the snow's gone, we're we're out of water here.

The Yampa is our lifeline.

This part of the country is considered high desert and without water, without the Yampa, you don't have nothing.

I mean, back in early times, I mean, people were killed over water.

I mean, ditch fights.

Yeah, people were actually killed over it.

Yeah.

What does that Mark Twain quote?

Whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting.

Every bit of water we got is all metered, we know exactly how much we're using.

So that makes it easier on them.

If we're not up to our amount of water that we should have, then they slowly start shutting people that don't have as many rights off until we get all of ours.

But when the water is out, it's out.

We got senior rights on the water.

People that don't have as senior rights get shut off.

You see this line right here where there's green grass.

There's brown grass.

That's as far as this pivot comes.

Oh, okay.

This here has had no water.

Oh, wow.

This is how dry it is right now.

Usually when we cut this hay on this meadow, it's this high.

Wow.

So I'd be almost not able to see you right now on a normal year?

On a normal year Yeah, it should be between five and six feet high.

Wow.

This mountain here behind us?

That mountain range there's called Black Mountain.

That's Black Mountain.

That's where our water comes from.

It comes down Bear Creek.

The pivot alone, it's a water saver all the way across the board.

And we can manage it with different sizes of nozzles to cut down on our water usage so it can pass on to the neighbor or, you know, and then go to the neighboring state when we're kind of finished up.

We're in an extreme, extreme drought right now.

Everybody here is fighting for everything.

They got to keep their water rights and keep keep the water so they can keep their production and keep moving on like we always have been.

And how many years can a farmer handle not having a crop?

You need a crop every year.

It starts snowballing and pretty quick you got to sell out.

Who's buying these ranches?

Development.

Everybody wants to live out in the wide open.

What keeps you go and what keeps you doing it?

It's.

It's a way of life.

I don't know anybody that's getting rich in agriculture, but it's a way of life.

It's a life we enjoy.

Kind of like a freedom, a connection to the land of wide open spaces.

Yeah, as you can tell.

I mean, it's pretty amazing that you can stand here and look 100 miles in every direction and not see nothing but wide open.

Water is the lifeline of everybody in the Yampa Valley Not only the agriculture, the recreation, the wildlife.

It affects all parts of it.

Without water, there would be none of it.

This is really cool for me because one, it's the first time I've ever been on a fresh bale hay in the middle of a hay field.

And yeah.

To having grown up in Colorado the sandhill cranes.

I've never seen that before.

Right.

The habitat has been enhanced and then we do have the water and the nesting area and interrupted.

So that's why they're here.

You're able to be making a living off the land, but yet you're providing so much habitat.

Yep, we are.

And we work hard.

My.

My dad has always been a steward to the land and made sure there was enough left for the wildlife and planted purposely.

Behind the steak or hamburger on our dinner plates there's a story beyond what we can imagine.

It's about the ranchers who bring these things to us and their connection to the land and way of life that the Yampa makes possible.

My dad bought this ranch in 1947.

I was five and we moved down here and I was in love with horses before we ever got here.

So I grew up on this place, but we've been here ever since we run cattle and raise hay.

We have to irrigate to put up hay for the cattle and the river and Maybell Irrigation District canals are the lifeblood of this valley.

Without it, there probably wouldn't have been hardly anybody here.

We've raised our children here.

I have three great grandsons that live right up across the highway.

Now our great grandkids have all been a part of running this ranch.

I guess the land kind of becomes part of you.

We've been taking care of this land for over 100 years.

The homesteaders and the people that live here as a rancher, if you don't take care of your land, you're not going to be in business very long because the land is what carries you through, the land and the water.

Without water, this valley would be virtually worthless.

We are the 13th oldest water right in the mainstream of the Yampa.

And that water right dates back to 1896.

The oldest water right, which is the first one filed, has the absolute number one priority.

If the river goes dry and there's only five cubic feet per second going down the river, that water right belongs to the number one filed water right in court system.

Not only is a river completely interconnected between all of these various uses, whether it's recreation or ranching or power or gravel mining or municipal drinking supply or golf courses, but it's also connected to all the downstream states and the country of Mexico.

Popular ski resort towns like Steamboat Springs also depend on this hardworking river to provide drinking water and support businesses that are the backbone of the economy.

It's interesting.

In my days of guiding, you always had a plan B on the river that speaks to the adaptability of people just along a river in general, whether it's adapting from from a coal mine to tourism or a coal mine to solar and wind powered energy.

everything we do is dependent on water.

We have to adapt.

And especially when it's a wild river, you never know how much you're going to get.

But even in times like right now with the Colorado River, where this river eventually flows, even though that's the controlled river with reservoirs, the water there is the lowest that it's ever become.

This is a great time of change and adaptation in the West in general.

Part of that change includes moving from extractive resource energy production to more sustainable methods like wind and solar powered energy generation.

At one point this was the the largest power generating station in the state.

You know, it's like three 450 megawatt generators.

It provided base load power, you know, for a lot of years.

You know, the power plant needs water.

And they have a pump station just down over the hill to the northwest of this.

And that pumps water up to that dam that you can see, right where the concrete spillway is coming out, that little narrow slot right.

There.

And from there, they pump it into the turbines.

And so they've had they've consumed quite a bit of river water over the years.

Part of the transition occurring on the Yampa includes changing two different economic activities to support the community.

Recreation and tourism are part of that transition.

Fishing is fun You don█t always catch any fish Come on baby, come on... That█s cool.

We're trying to find an identity because we've always been that coalmining, blue collar community and not that we're never going to be that, not a blue collar community, but we're just going to have to go and start I think being more of that craft industry, that that custom, if we want to survive, you know, we're right down the road from a world class resort.

There's no reason why we couldn't manufacture stuff here like they do Moots.

They do everything.

Now, Good Vibes is here and it's.

Made in the Yampa Valley.

It's amazing how popular we've become in just the short amount of time that we've been doing this.

And I think part of it is because of where we're at on the Yampa, it's the last stop to basically one of the most sought after river permits in the in the nation.

Yeah, I worked for Tri-State and for a couple of years and it's just kind of neat that I was used to get really dirty out out of the coal mine and or at the power plant.

And now I stay here in flip flops all day talking to people that are on that vacation high.

And it's pretty cool.

People are starting to really recognize what Craig and the Yampa and like why it was saved as one of the like this amazing river that never had any recognition until they decided to go through this transition phase.

And now it's getting the I think it's getting the recognition that it needs.

But I'm afraid we might get too much.

We█re going to put them in the river.

We█re going to go boating.

This is so great to see the next generation on the water.

These teenagers are learning how to paddle and row and do all this stuff themselves.

And it's especially exciting to see these are kids from Craig, Colorado, and this is their first time out on the river.

Woo, hoo, hoo... High five... Oh, hold on, hold on to the boat.

We're doing a three day river camping here on the Yampa and Craig and taking the seventh and eighth graders on the river, and teaching them basic boating skills and and learning as much as we can about why the Yampa is so amazing.

Here in Craig, you have the opportunity to to float rivers right in people's backyards and it just opens up so much more.

You think about the basketball court, you think about the soccer field.

Well, if you got a river flowing through your your town getting on the river is about as good as it gets.

You get connection to all the nature.

You get the connection to the wildlife and the plants.

And it's a whole lot of fun.

And this is a collaboration with Friends of the Yampa.

So this summer camp is getting youth out here enjoying this beautiful resource that we have in our backyard and teaching them that we need this for future generations and getting them involved.

Bring more people here.

Tilt it sideways, sideways...

Okay, throw it on three... One, two, three.

Good job!

We use to throw them like five and six stacks high.

Coming down here, you know, bringing bringing the kids from Craig out on the river.

It's super cool to connect them to potentially a resource that they haven't ever gone on.

Some of these kids have never gone down the river right here.

In their own back yards, in their own backyards.

So it's just outstanding.

All of us who love rivers have a river origin story, and it starts at 13 and 14 years old.

When you're messing around in the creek and you're playing with the crawdads and chasing snakes.

So yeah, I mean, I was a little bit older at 17, right.

But Big Bend, Texas, a trip like this with a bunch of classmates and and like when one of the girls said the guy had told me, lay back and watch the river in the canyon, go by.

And that was that was it.

I was hooked.

And ever since.

We depend on wise use from all the other uses of water.

Recreation is kind of the gateway to rivers for a lot of these kids.

They don't, you know, once you get on the river and you floated, then you're connected to it and then you learn, okay, where's my water coming from?

Where's where's my food coming from?

And so it's kind of that that nudge of inspiration of all things river, which is great.

And we floated past the Diversion Project, which is going to be a recreation project here in Craig, but at that diversion is where they get their water.

So like oh, interesting.

This is where the faucet when I turn the faucet on, this is where the water comes out of.

And I think that's really important.

You got to know where your water is coming from so that you can conserve it in the future.

What I'm struck by after this trip, this wild and mighty Yampa River, it gives and it gives.

It's like that Shel Silverstein book The Giving Tree, and it keeps giving us food and clothing and power and water to drink as we face growing water shortages.

Who's going to speak for the river?

And in any great relationship, there is give and take.

And so at what point are we going to remember to give back to this river that gives so much At the heart of it it's everybody who cares deeply, deeply, deeply about this incredible being that is the Yampa River.

So from this little sweet guy here, all the way through to everything we've seen from the connection to the river, to everything, this is what goes into all of the clothes we're wearing, what we eat.

Wow.

And it's all connected, and we just don't realize it.

And and it's all all part of this gigantic web that is connected together by water.

The Living Peace Foundation is honored to provide funding support for Wild Rivers with Tillie supporting people and projects that creatively and courageously advance collaboration, compassion and living peace.

This series shares the passion that the Living Peace Foundation has for the health and connectedness of our planet and all who inhabit it.

I invite you to visit us at wildriverswithtillie dot org or wildriverswithtillie dot com