"This is the drier southwest, so it's not surprising this is the place where the effects of climate change are first really coming to a head. Do we pull together as a team? Do we figure out how to adapt? How to be able to balance water use between cities and agriculture, between different states? Or do we fail?"

Rob Billerbeck is the Colorado River Coordinator for the National Park Service. Rob highlights the challenges facing the Colorado River and why he still has hope for the future.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Ceili: Hi, I'm Ceili, coming to you from the Phantom Ranger station at the bottom of Grand Canyon. What do Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Curecanti National Recreation Area, Dinosaur National Monument, Canyon Lands National Park, Arches National Park, Rainbow Bridge National Monument, Lake Mead National Recreation area and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area have in common with Grand Canyon and with each other? These places are in three different States and look vastly different, but are inextricably connected by nearly 1000 miles of the Colorado River and its major tributaries. They're also all managed by the National Park Service. In 2022, they welcomed more than 17,000,000 visitors and contributed more than $1.8 billion of visitor spending to local and regional economies. The Colorado River is contentious. Managing 277 miles of it through Grand Canyon between two of the biggest dams in the country is complex. There are hydropower needs, sediment loads, threatened and endangered fish recreation groups, and many other aspects of river management. But because the river flows through such a huge swath of the dry desert southwest, it needs to be managed as a bigger whole system, making it even more complex. Complex enough that coordinating the needs of these Park Service units as they relate to management of the Colorado River is someone's whole job. Rob Billerbeck is the National Park Service’s Colorado River coordinator and I got to talk to him when he was visiting Lees ferry, Arizona, the launch point for river trips through Grand Canyon. The places he works to protect now, the places through which the Colorado River flows, are what first brought him to his home in Denver, CO. Rob: The reason I live here is because of my very first trip west when I was 20. You know, I saw Rocky Mountain National Park. And on that trip, I also met, you know, the woman who would later be my wife because she had a flat tire driving between national parks like I was. And so those were the two big loves of my life, Rocky Mountain National Park and my wife. So that brought me West. Now that I've been in this role, you know, even though I have had some incredible experiences in Dinosaur, I love Black Canyon of the Gunnison, I have spent nights in Canyonlands where you get up in the middle of the night and you can see by the light of the Milky Way, I still would have to say, you know, the Grand Canyon is a place for me that just prompts a really deep spiritual feeling. You know, when you are down at the bottom of the Canyon looking up, you really do feel like you are one tiny piece of a great, huge, amazing natural place and you know for me that experience, that feeling of spirituality in the Canyon makes me have to say Grand Canyon is my favorite spot along the Colorado River. I'm Rob Billerbeck and I'm the Colorado River Coordinator for the Park Service. Ceili: I had not even realized that the Colorado River had its own Park Service Coordinator, and I wondered if any other rivers had their own coordinators. Rob: There are some other river coordinators. There's one for the Mississippi and the Missouri because that's a really huge river as well. That's the only other one that I know that's specific to a river. There are other folks, of course, in our water resources division who cover a lot of different rivers. There's been a lot of work done on the Rio Grande but that doesn't have a specific coordinator. So, for the Colorado River the reason my job exists and has since the year 2000 is because Colorado River is just incredibly complicated, legally, politically. It's been quoted by many as the most complicated river in the US. That's really because it's providing water in the southwest. The dry Southwestern United States. So indeed, it is, you know, water is for fighting over. So, you know, in this arid landscape, the river corridor is incredibly important for wildlife. Even though the riparian areas, you know, make up maybe 1% of the landscape. For wildlife in these arid landscapes, 80% of the species have some critical part of their life cycle that occurs in that river corridor. So, you know, water is life. So, for the Park Service, it's incredibly important for us to interact on these river issues. In fact, you know many of our most iconic and most visited park units are here in the southwest. So of course, the Grand Canyon that we, you know, we'll be looking down towards when we're at Lees Ferry. But you know Glen Canyon National Recreation Area where Lake Powell is has incredibly high visitation. Further downstream, we have Lake Mead and then up on the tributaries upstream of us, you know, we have places like Dinosaur National Monument, Black Canyon of the Gunnison and way up at the headwaters, Rocky Mountain National Park. So for the Park Service, that's a pretty heavily vested interest given the importance of the water to our resources, given how many people want to come and have that visitor experience, then it's very important. And because it's so legally and politically complicated, what was found in the year 2000 was we really had to coordinate between the park units to determine what it is we wanted to ask for, what our positions were. So we had to make sure literally we were all rowing in the same direction within the Park Service. And then needed a coordinator to really interface with all of the partners. So, if you want to do anything on the Colorado River, you have to meet with seven states with a large number of tribes. If you're looking at the whole river, you know that can be as many as 30 tribes. And if you, you know, are talking about doing anything that would alter the flows, then you really have to talk with the Bureau of Reclamation, Western Area Power, about the dam operations. And then talk with many of the users and interest groups on the river, whether those be hydropower, interest groups, fishing groups or, you know, boating, rafting groups. So, a lot of partners to meet with because so many people use or receive this water. Really the water in one way or another gets to 40 million people and produces billions of dollars' worth of, you know, business and enterprise all along the river. Ceili: So many people rely on and care a lot about the Colorado River. Because Rob's role is about coordinating the National Parks on the Colorado River and communicating with the many management partners he often travels to various locations on the river for meetings. On this day, we both found ourselves just upstream from Grand Canyon National Park. Rob: We're at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area headquarters and I traveled here from the Denver Regional Office of the Park Service where I work now to here to meet with some of the park staff and some tribal representatives, and we're going to talk about a set of vegetation projects that we do below the Glen Canyon Dam and the vegetation projects really mitigate the effects of the Glen Canyon Dam on the river corridor. So we were able to get money starting in 2016 for that vegetation project really through the Bureau of Reclamation and the Adaptive Management program that was formed below the dam to comply with the Grand Canyon Protection Act. So, because of that law, we were able to get money to mitigate those effects, like I said, and do this big vegetation project that involves removing invasive plants, replanting native plants, doing some great restoration work, and keeping the campsites along the river, viable by clearing away vegetation from them by working with partners to grow native plants. So, we're really excited to meet with tribes today, talk a little bit more about the project. You know, we're a few years into it, and I've been partnering with them, but this is a good opportunity to walk around, show them some of the work that's happened, some prescribed burning, some replanting. Ceili: It is not always vegetation that projects are focused on. Rob needs to be familiar with all of the many aspects of the Colorado River. Rob: So, you know what has occupied most of my time is has changed over the 12 years I've been in this role. You know, in the past I worked a lot on Glen Canyon Dam operations and what was called the LTEMP the long term experimental and management plan. And you know, that looked at ways to do some occasional high flows out of the dam to rebuild beaches and sand bars that are part of the habitat, part of what protects the cultural resources by keeping them covered, and provides a way to simulate what used to be the natural spring flooding in the Canyon. And that maintains nice sandy beaches that, as people do their lifetime experience, you know, rafting through the Grand Canyon, they can camp on those nice sandy beaches. So, I spent many years on that, have spent many years since then, you know, balancing between working on some Grand Canyon and Glen Canyon issues and some of the operations in the Upper Basin. So how flaming Gorge Dam is operated, that dam is right above Dinosaur National Monument, so that affects, you know, the river corridor, the Green River that goes through Dinosaur and then down into Canyonlands. The Yampa, which is one of the he most free flowing rivers left, that's a major tributary of the Colorado, it meets the green within Dinosaur. So, it's a unique place, kind of a living laboratory in a way because we have this managed river, you know the upper Green coming together with a