A little understood local ecosystem consisting of peat bogs that are sometimes called  “fens” and which are being championed by environmental groups have delayed the expansion of two Grand Mesa reservoirs.

Public lands managers are now in the process of conducting a region-wide inventory of fens on the GMUG and in other national forests.

The term “fen” relates to an area in western England where the peat bogs thrive in large areas and have received protected environmental status. In the United Kingdom, environmentalists have raised alarms that “global warming” may cause water loss from peat bogs thus drying out and killing the peat and destroying habitat they provide for dragonflies and other creatures.

Peat bogs at risk

Dealing with the presence of fens is particularly tricky because, explains USFS range conservationist Gay Austin, not enough is known about fens to understand how their loss can be replaced, or mitigated, elsewhere in the forest. “We don’t know how to restore fens,” Austin told a meeting of the Delta-Montrose based Public Lands Partnership recently.

Fens are found in various locations on the Grand Mesa and in other national forests. For years the peat material in them could be harvested by anyone with a Forest Service permit for the use.

Chunks of peat material periodically break off from a main fen body at Kennicott Slough Reservoir on the Grand Mesa and have to be retrieved from the spillway area, explained USFS planner Carmine Lockwood.

Environmental Protection Agency and Forest Service regulations give fens a protected status. They are considered to be a type of wetland. They have also been termed an “aquatic resource of national importance” (ARNI) by the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers.

But, says Austin of the Forest Service, it is the lack of understanding of how to restore peat bog fens, and not necessarily how they are classified, which accounts for their special regulatory status. Unlike a typical wetland, peat bogs may take thousands of years to develop in nature.

The peat bog fen issue and the lack of understanding of what fens really are and how they work is also  concern for the oil and gas industry, but mostly on private land.

“There are many definitions of a fen,” said Bruce Bertram, Delta County local government designee for oil and gas. “Some definitions are based on pH of the water they hold, some are based on size or other considerations.

“What environmental groups need to do,” Bertram said, “is define something that is real, something that is actually out there in the field.”
Water and rights at risk

Locally, a proposed expansion of the Overland Reservoir above Paonia is being delayed  because of the presence of peat bog fens in the expansion area.

Tom Howe of the Overland Ditch and Reservoir Company board says that only six one-hundredths (.06) acres of fen ecosystem would be inundated by the reservoir expansion, and only for 10 days of the year.

The GMUG has advised Overland to hold off on their expansion until an issue involving the EPA and Crops of Engineers and fens on the north side of Grand Mesa is resolved, Howe explained.

There, the expansion of Hunter Reservoir has had to go through an expansive and lengthy Environmental Impact Statement process. Hunter Reservoir provides domestic raw water supply for the Ute Water Conservancy District system that serves the Grand Valley.

Lockwood of the Forest Service said there isn’t a lot of interest in the draft environmental impact statement on Hunter Reservoir. “There’s not a whole lot of public interest,” in that report he said. “But, those people who are interested are very interested,” he added.

The Overland Reservoir’s  owners see their expansion project as essential to maintaining water rights that will fill the expanded reservoir.

According to a grant application made to the Gunnison Basin Roundtable committee a year ago, The Overland needs its expansion “to store 971 acre feet of agricultural water decreed to the Overland in 1902. The decree has been classified as “conditional” and may be lost to the Overland and the state of Colorado if the capability is not found to store the water. The Overland has already begun a project to expand the existing reservoir and has secured a Colorado Water Conservation Board loan to move forward.”

A forest at risk

The fen issue played out in another forest issue recently.

A large blowdown of spruce forest on the Grand Mesa two years ago threatened to become a breeding ground for spruce beetle that could eventually wipe out large portions of the local old growth spruce forest.

Forest managers and others saw it as critical that the down timber be harvested as quickly as possible to remove the spruce beetle threat to the Grand Mesa.

But environmental groups threatened to protest a public lands timber sale because they saw a threat to fenn peat bogs in the timber harvest area
A protest to the sale could have created an indefinite delay in removing the downed timber. That in turn could have given the spruce beetle time to incubate and reproduce in the dead wood sanctuary before moving out to attack and kill live trees in very large numbers.

Meetings with forest managers, local elected officials, and environmental group representatives led to delicate negotiations that were able to resolve concerns over possible harm to the pet bogs.

The timber sale was able to proceed without an environmental protest being filed.

Grand Valley District Ranger Connie Clementson explained during a meeting at the Delta County Courthouse during those talks that the Forest Service has been dealing with peat bogs for many years. They are nothing new, she explained, but have become a new field of interest for environmentalists and have been given a new name – fenns.

Lockwood says that the forest service inventory of the fenn peat bogs began last winter and will take two to three years to complete. He said that the inventory work is currently farther along in the San Juan National Forest than it is now on the GMUG.