Yellowjacket board asks Rio Blanco County to help fund $200,000 feasibility study for Lake Avery enlargement

Yellowjacket Water Conservancy District board members asked Rio Blanco County commissioners at a June work session to consider contributing seed money toward a roughly $200,000 feasibility study to evaluate enlarging Lake Avery and developing an augmentation plan for the White River basin.

The study, described by Yellowjacket representatives as a two-year engineering and feasibility effort, would analyze options ranging from small spillway adjustments that could add a few feet of water storage (an early estimate cited a potential gain of about 2,000 acre-feet for a modest raise) to larger dam-height increases and associated engineering, geologic and permitting challenges.

County commissioners said they were broadly supportive of the goal but declined to make a decision during the work session. Commissioners asked Yellowjacket to provide a written plan and commitments before the county would commit funds, citing several open issues: who would serve as fiscal agent, whether the district could legally accept and hold grant funds without violating TABOR, which entity would assume liability for an enlarged dam, and how any new storage would be governed and released under an augmentation plan.

Why it matters: county officials and district leaders said the White River is central to local agriculture, recreation and tourism. Yellowjacket and other speakers said the river now faces a water-rights “call” that has made augmentation water more important for future residential and agricultural development; speakers also…