According to Ute elder Roland McCook, the Ute name for the Crystal River Valley was “Nuche-Mu-Gu-Avatum-Ada’he,” or “The People’s Place of the Heart.” The first white settlers who arrived in the Valley somewhat unimaginatively named the river “Rock Creek.” The contrast in cultural sensitivity was palpable. It was soon realized by early settlement boosters that “Rock Creek” wasn’t great advertising. John Osgood and his burgeoning interests in Redstone promoted a name change, eventually persuading the Department of the Interior in 1901 to rename it the Crystal River.
For over a century, water users south of Silt and Rifle have dreamed of impounding the Crystal, one of the last undammed rivers in Colorado. These dreams were formalized in the Colorado River Storage Act of 1956. In 1957 the Colorado River Water Conservation District obtained conditional water rights for the “West Divide Project,” which would use Crystal water for “generation of electric energy, domestic and municipal purposes, industrial purposes, including but not limited to the production of oil shale, irrigation purposes and stock watering purposes.”
The proposed Placita Dam would have created a reservoir that would have flooded a huge area which includes the largest and most ecologically valuable wetland in the Crystal River Valley. The West Divide Water Conservancy District was formed in 1964 with taxing authority to make it happen.
Meanwhile, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was passed in 1968 as one of several keystone environmental laws enacted with bipartisan support during that era. This act required federal agencies to determine the eligibility of waterways for inclusion in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. In 1972, the Crystal Valley Environmental Protection Association (CVEPA) was founded out of opposition to dams on the Crystal River. In the 1980s, the White River National Forest deemed the Crystal River eligible for permanent protection as a Wild and Scenic river.
Local concern for our rivers and streams led to the creation of the Pitkin County Healthy Rivers program in 2008. With new support from the Pitkin County Attorney’s Office, a coalition of river advocates succeeded in getting the West Divide Water Conservancy District to let go of most of its conditional water rights in 2001. And efforts by this group finally persuaded the Colorado River District to drop the West Divide Project altogether in 2013.
All that is now required to permanently protect the Crystal is Congressional action. However, such designations are unfortunately rare, as Congressional delegations require virtual unanimity from locals before proceeding. While a passionate group of river advocates has continued to push for this protection for the Crystal, the effort has thus far been stymied by misplaced paranoia of some influential landowners afraid of federal protection of the river.
This political deadlock led to the formation of the Crystal River Collaborative Steering Committee, with representatives from Gunnison County, Pitkin County, Marble, the Colorado River Water Conservation District and West Divide Water Conservancy District. While the committee has not been able to agree on permanent protections, it recently approved the Crystal River Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) whereby the five government entities agree not to support any new reservoir or impoundment of water on the main stem of the Crystal and to oppose any water rights application that would remove water from the Crystal River basin.
CVEPA lauds the commitment of these five agencies to respect the sanctity of our river. The present political consensus has been hard won and a long time coming. However, we are disappointed that a more durable protection has not yet been achieved. Paragraph 3 of the agreement provides that each signatory may simply “terminate their participation” at any time. David Brower once famously quipped that environmental protection requires constant victories where even a single loss is often permanent. There is nothing in this agreement that would bar the Colorado River Water Conservation District or West Divide Water Conservancy District from again proposing dams and diversions.
For this reason, the CVEPA Board remains cautious. Given the stated transience of the commitments made in the Crystal River IGA, we must remain vigilant to protect “Nuche-Mu-Gu-Avatum-Ada’he,” or “The People’s Place of the Heart.”

For more information about CVEPA, please visit www.cvepa.org