Yampa Approves $940K Stillwater Reservoir Fix to Lift Storage Ban

"Long story short of it is we picked this option which we have been assured that if we complete this project, the storage restriction will be taken off."

Andi Schaffner didn’t mince words when she stood before the Yampa Town Board last week. She was talking about Stillwater Reservoir, the water bank that sits just north of town, and the seepage problem that has kept its full potential locked up since 2018. The fix? A pair of engineering tweaks that cost a fraction of the original dream. The result? A reservoir that might finally hold the water it was built to store.

Here’s the thing though: the fix doesn’t actually stop the water from leaking out. It just manages it well enough for the state to get off its back.

"I guess the elephant in the room is that this project really does not prohibit any seepage," Schaffner admitted. "We’re still going to have the same amount of seepage we’ve been having because this project does not control that."

It sounds counterintuitive. You pay money to fix a leak, but the leak stays. But Schaffner, representing the Bear River Reservoir Company, said this is the least expensive path to lifting the storage restriction that has hamstrung Yampa’s water rights for nearly a decade. The original proposal — a massive grout curtain injected directly into the dam itself — was projected to cost over five million dollars. That was too rich for the grant funding stream. This new plan? It’s under a million.

The project kicks off in July, with a notice to proceed scheduled for July 13. It’s a two-phase job. Phase One involves installing a blanket drain and filter collar to handle the seepage on the left abutment, the side you’d walk up if you came from the parking lot. That’s estimated to run $730,717. Phase Two tackles the channel stabilization and removes an old culvert and flume, adding another $209,874 to the tab.

The total comes to roughly $940,000.

And that’s where the money comes from. The town of Yampa owns 112 shares in the reservoir, which is about 2% of the total storage capacity. The financial burden falls on those shares. The biggest chunk comes from a loan from the Colorado Water Conservation Board. It’s a 30-year loan at 1.85% interest. The initial loan was $202,000, but it’s expected to be approved at double that amount; $404,000 - to cover the higher-than-anticipated bids from contractors.

For the town, that loan translates to roughly $381 a year. Schaffner expects the only other expense to be an assessment of the shares, which amounts to about $5. It’s a small price to pay for the certainty of lifting the restriction on a reservoir with a total capacity of 6,088 acre-feet. In low snow years, that stored water is the difference between irrigation success and dry fields.

The work is expected to wrap up by the end of October. When it does, the state’s Dam Safety Division should finally remove the designation that has limited how much water can sit in Stillwater. It’s not a perfect fix. The water will still seep. But for the folks in Yampa who rely on that stored water, it’s the most cost-effective way to unlock the resource they’ve been paying for for years.

Picture the dam in late October. The construction crews will have packed up their trucks. The new drains will be buried, the filters in place. The water level will rise, inch by inch, past the limits that have held it back for six years. It won’t be a miracle. It’ll just be engineering, paid for in small annual installments, doing exactly what it was promised to do.