Surface-water quality in the Yampa River Basin, Colorado and Wyoming: an area of accelerated coal development

Coal production in the Yampa River Basin is expected to exceed 20 million tons annually by 1990. This development could increase withdrawals of surface water, which currently supplies the bulk of water used in the basin. Analyses have been carried out to determine ambient surface-water quality prior to the increase in coal-mining activity. Since 1951 there has been a 14% increase in dissolved solids in one sub-basin. Eighty-two sites were sampled during low-flow conditions in the summer of 1975 and the results are reported in this paper.