Colorado Department of Natural Resources Wetland Enhancement Grant

Richard State Wildlife Area ¿ Ulrich Ditch Rehabilitation ¿ replacement of the existing, dilapidated head gate with a structure engineered to be more efficient at capturing decreed water rights while decreasing the amount of maintenance needed to prepare the structure for annual diversion of water.

Lake Creek Wetlands Enhancement – manipulation of water levels in an on-channel impoundment created by placing a levee across the course of Lake Creek. An estimated 4,057 cubic yards of fill will be placed across Lake Creek, creating a levee that can impound water to the preferred depths while still allowing Lake Creek to flow unimpeded.

Prewitt Reservoir State Wildlife Area (SWA) Wetlands ¿

1.) The restoration of existing shallow-water basins associated with Prewitt (downstream of the dam) whose season-long saturated hydrology has resulted in a shift in plant communities to late successional, monotypic stands of emergent vegetation and, therefore, in a degradation in habitat quality for most migratory birds and other wildlife species;

2.) The identification of areas marginal to the reservoir that may be enhanced through the careful excavation of material impeding the natural back-flooding of shallow basins providing the best habitats to birds, other wetland wildlife, as well as fish; and,

3.) The design and installation of small levees placed (sometimes temporarily) on the margins of the reservoir that would serve both to protect existing infrastructure as well as provide additional flooded shallows. Prewitt Reservoir SWA has not been surveyed and mapped.