This is Paul, her and Jennifer Sweeney of Arizona State University,
speaking with Randy Seaholm in Arvada, Colorado on April 27th, Randy.
Thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure. Can you start out by
telling us your name, your full name, the positions that you've held in
the Adaptive Management Program in the years that you were involved? OK.
Um My name is Randy Chol. I started working with the Colorado Water
Conservation Board on Colorado River issues extensively. In 1990 I started
participating in the Grand Canyon Emperor in uh 2000
and I was actually, I was made the designated Twig representative on
behalf of the State of Colorado in July of 2000.
Mm. I also served as an alternate member to the AM wig
and I only had a couple of meetings in that capacity. I retired in
November 2009.
Following my retirement, I was retained as a consultant by the State of
Colorado to advise them on GCM activities and I remain a twig alternate
to this day to this day. It's amazing to me how um much longevity, a lot
of the members of the wig and Twig have. There's a lot of people have been
there for decades. What keeps you motivated to stay involved for so long?
I've always found Colorado River issues. Just fascinating.
The GCM has thrown a couple of monkey wrenches if you will into the
operations on the Colorado River, which I got to know very well and we'll
go into those. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get into those. So the next question is
about what aspect of the program you were mostly involved in? There's a
lot of people who primarily do scientific research, other people primarily
do policy and management type work. What, what was your main contribution
you're making? I would consider my main responsibilities in policy and
management, but I have a technical background and natural resources. So I
crossed the line on occasions, but mostly policy and management and what
aspect of natural resources uh are, is in your background? OK. I had a
degree in watershed science from Colorado State University. So I'm neither
an engineer or an attorney
which is suited me. Well,
that's good. Yeah, a lot of people who uh work in water policy are, are
attorneys, right?
I've always found it fun to uh have a good debate with an attorney and
come out on top.
So, um uh since this is a history project, we're um very interested in
change over time. And I wonder now if you can reflect a little bit on what
kind of changes macro or micro level changes that you've seen in the
program over the time that you've participated. Ok. I guess I've seen the
program evolve basically coming right out of the 1995 EIS and the
responsibilities that determined to be that and that came out in a paper
by Scott Lovelace. I don't know if you had a chance to read any of the
minutes and stuff at all. Some of the more recent ones, but not all the
old ones. Let me give you this. This is Scott's paper and it's in the
minutes from January of 2000.
And it has a lot of questions that the uh and we asked for some direction
on to see where we can, you know, where, where we needed to focus our
efforts and kind of work. Um The bottom line is we should be focusing on
dam operations and not the existence of the damper. And that was been a
hard distinction to uh keep as we've gone along and not one that a lot of
the environmentalists in particular were interested in trying to abide by.
Can you clarify for us a little bit more? The what you mean by that
distinction between the operations of the dam versus the dam? Just say a
little more. OK. The existence of the dam caused a number of things to
change in the k. So it cut off the sediment supply that had come down the
river and it caused a lot of
the beaches to become hardened with, with the river rock and stuff. Um
And that's not something that you can really change through operations of
the dam without interjecting additional sediment supply.
And with respect to operation of the dam, um that is generally operations
that I think that you can make, that can actually have an impact on the
environment of the canyon. So
for example, you can operate the dam in a manner that allows you to
conserve the existing sand supply that comes in, put it up on beaches and
that's what a lot of the experiments have aimed at doing. Going from beach
habitat building flows, which we call them at the outset habitat
maintenance flows. And as the reservoir dropped to a variety of different
experiments which we're now looking at in the temp.
And so um you were saying that uh uh some interest groups including the
environmentalists were um interested in talking about the existence of the
dam. You're suggesting that other interest groups want to have the dam
accepted as a de facto reality and talk about operation of the dam only.
Well, in all the documents that you look through the existence of the dam
is a given it's supposed to be there and all the existing laws and
everything that impacted operations of the dam were to stay in place. So
as we go through the Adaptive Management Program, we are looking for
operations that can be done within what we refer to as the law of the
river. How much water we in the upper basin or I say basically above Glen
Canyon have to make sure um that goes down the river to maintain the 10
year running average flow at Lee Ferry.
And so we're keenly interested in that and then from the standpoint of
power generation of all the reservoirs we have above Lee's ferry. Glen
Canyon is the biggest one provides the most hydroelectric energy and power
revenue and that power revenue is necessary to not only maintain Glen
Canyon but all the other primary units of the Colorado River storage
project
which include Blue Mason Navajo and Flaming Gorge are the primary as, as
well as Glen Canyon. And then we have a number of participating projects
that were built with CRSP power revenues. The RSP is the Colorado River
storage project. I will use acronyms. So make me clarify whenever you have
a question. Everybody uses that.
But uh so we have a number of what we call participating projects. The
last one that was completed was the animus who platter project down there
by Durango. So CS CRSP revenues have to go towards the maintenance of that
project as well as 20 some other projects throughout the upper basin. And
then in addition, the power of revenues have to uh serve the upper
Colorado River recovery programs, both the upper Colorado itself and the
San Juan. Um and it provides the bulk of the, the money for those
endeavors. And then it also contributes money to the Colorado River
salinity control program. So we have all these interests in the power of
revenues. And so we try very hard to make sure that the revenues are
maximize like the Hawk calls for it, but at least maintained enough to
feel your obligations.
And if you can't do it, then your choice is either cut back or raise power
revenue rates
and uh raising any rate these day and age is not terribly popular.
I was wondering, so you, you represent the state of Colorado and their
water interests, but it sounds a little bit like the hydropower aspect of
the water flow is perhaps the most important factor in policy making. No,
I wouldn't say the most important, but it's probably equally, it's
important. Glen Kane gives us the flexibility because it's such a large
bucket to make sure we can maintain the 75
make an acre feet plast. Yeah, leaf ferry in any given 10 year period. Um
So it's very important in that aspect and I'd say water rights probably
just a little bit more important, but the power revenues are extremely
important. So, can you clarify? So, in the upper basin states, there's,
there's quite a number of them. New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah. Um
can you clarify Colorado's more specific interest in, in water and power
in this program as compared to the other states? Colorado gets 51 and
three quarters percent of the depletion that have been allocated to the
upper basin. So we have the, the lion's share of that and that's probably
the, well, it is the biggest reason that operations at Glen Canyon, the
other reservoirs upstream or um the most important the other three states
divvy up the remaining percentages.
And uh uh New Mexico really has all of their apportionment. Consumptive
use apportionment accounted for with their settlement agreement with the
Navajo nation. Uh Utah has plans in place for real.