Green Mountain 15.9% full

Reservoir on the Blue River in western Colorado started the runoff this year with the lowest water level since it began filling in the 1940s. Now, it’s even lower.

Green Mountain Reservoir, located on the Blue River in Summit County, continues to decline. The Bureau of Reclamation, operator of the dam, reports that as of today the reservoir is 15.9% full. The above photo was today Aug. 17.

The dam that creates the reservoir was built from 1938 to 1943, giving the Western Slope a way to store water as part of the Colorado-Big Thompson diversion that came after World War II. The normal allotment of the reservoir storage for downstream irrigators, mostly in the Grand Junction area, is 66,000 acre-feet.

For the first time in the history of Green Mountain, the water is unavailable, said Andy Mueller, the River District’s general manager, at the board’s April meeting. Instead, the river district has been tapping various pools of water over which it has control to come up with a thimbleful here, a cup there. A creative solution, Mueller called it. Irrigators won’t become whole, but they will get some help.

This story will be updated around Sept. 1.