Chama flows are a go
Recreational releases slated for Chama this summer despite dam project
Thanks to a recent agreement between the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which owns and operates El Vado Dam, and the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, rafting conditions on the Chama River are expected to be similar to those of a typical year when El Vado Reservoir is operational.
On Sunday (March 27), the reservoir was filled to about eight percent of its capacity in preparation for a massive project to rebuild the failing, 90-year-old dam. Taos-based river guides and outfitters had been anticipating an unusual recreation season on the Chama this year due to the pending dam project.
“Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority is going to allow us to release their water from Heron Lake, and we expect to be able to do recreational releases the way we always do,” said Carolyn Donnelly, water operations supervisor with the Bureau of Reclamation in Albuquerque. “In a normal year, if El Vado was operational, the difference is we might stage the water in El Vado before we release it. This year, we’ll release it from Heron and it will immediately pass through El Vado,” into the Chama and down to Abiquiu Reservoir.
The Chama is regulated by several dams and storage reservoirs on its way to joining the Rio Grande just north of Española, and is the Rio Grande’s largest
tributary. As such, the Chama’s dams and reservoirs provide a major measure of control over the flow of the Rio Grande, the upper part of which does not feature flood control dams or storage reservoirs.
The Rio Chama is also the conduit by which additional water piped from the San Juan River Basin across the Continental Divide to Heron Lake (situated alongside the Chama River just above El Vado Reservoir) is delivered to Abiquiu Reservoir. In Abiquiu Lake, San Juan-Chama Project water is stored and then released — largely for municipal consumption in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, among other purposes.
That extra San-Juan Chama Project water is what allows for the “guaranteed” conditions suitable for whitewater rafting in the
summer months.
“The water needs to be moved anyway between Heron and Abiquiu, so in about 1984 we negotiated releases” timed in the summer for the benefit of boaters, recalled river guide Steve Harris, who founded his outfitting company Far Flung Adventures in 1976. He noted that the Bureau of Reclamation recently put a lot of effort into finding a way to maintain those recreational releases during the imminent El Vado reconstruction.
“That’s very good news, and we have to thank Albuquerque for looking out for the boaters, too,” Harris said.
Santa Fe had already agreed to let the bureau time the releases of its San Juan-Chama Project water for the benefit of recreational river users, but that was only equivalent to about one-quarter to one-third of the water needed to keep the river below El Vado running like it normally does during peak rafting season.
Because of that, Harris had earlier predicted that the best conditions for running two popular Class III sections of the Chama downstream of El Vado would probably occur this spring. Now that Albuquerque has signed on, he said river runners will rejoice at the promise of a relatively normal season.
Donnelly said it’s still a little too soon to know for sure what the
early season will be like this year on the Chama, but early predictions are there will be more than adequate water for boating.
Based on the monthly forecast from March, “We’re showing peak inflows to El Vado of maybe 1,700 cfs (cubic feet per second) around mid-May. The snow is up there, and you can see it, but it depends” on exactly how it melts.
Climate change is causing snowmelt to happen earlier in the year and in more-concentrated time frames, rather than in steady, sustained runoffs that occur over a longer period of time.
“Sometimes there’s rain-onsnow events, like in 2018 there was very little runoff but with a very high peak,” Donnelly said. “We’ll have a better idea next month. If anything I think the forecast will go up a little. We keep getting all these moderate storms, and the snow is still up there.”
Harris noted that permits during the early, snowmelt-fed part of the season are issued on a more restricted basis than they are later in the summer, when there are 10 weeks during which water is released on a schedule for recreational purposes, guaranteeing good river conditions on specific days.
Ken Whitaker, a canoeist who lives in Angel Fire, applied for a permit to run the Chama this year, but wasn’t successful. He’s considering attempting a two-day canoe
trip from below El Vado to Chavez Canyon before April 15, which marks the beginning of the season when a river permit is required. The early season relies on snowmelt runoff to create good boating conditions on the river.
“I’m still thinking I’ll try to get out there,” Whitaker said.
Harris said there are always far more prospective Chama river runners than there are permits.
“Unlike the Rio Grande, Chama permits are issued in a lottery system,” Harris said. “On the Rio Grande, they’re unlimited.”
Donnelly cautioned that the reconstruction will still make it an unpredictable rafting season between El Vado and Abiquiu.
“We’re really going to have be conscious of safety,” she said, also noting that regulating flows to control sediment is always a concern at El Vado Reservoir, which produces copious amounts of fine silt that can affect wildlife downstream if left unchecked.
“The watershed isn’t real big up there, so it’s quite rare the Chama gets a big flow that goes up dramatically from a huge storm, but we’ll have to watch that,” Donnelly added. “For spring runoff, we will do as best we can to match what comes in. And there’s a stream channel capacity of 4,500 cfs, so if it gets up to 6,000 cfs, 7,000 cfs, we won’t add to that.”