Massive fish kill hits Loveland's Horseshoe, Boyd reservoirs

Warming: photos at the bottom of this article may be disturbing.

By Bill Prater

Horseshoe Lake, the privately owned, shallow reservoir across the street from Boyd Lake State Park, has been drained of virtually all water, choking Boyd's Marina Bay with thousands of dead and dying fish.

The water in both reservoirs is owned by the Greeley & Loveland Irrigation Company, which uses the water for agriculture and the City of Greeley's municipal water. Boyd is leased to Colorado Parks and Wildlife for public fishing and other recreation. The irrigation company, which has not commented publicly about its actions, began draining water from Horseshoe last month as water evaporated from the shallow reservoir. It normally covers about 300 acres. 

Only tiny pools and trickles of water remained in Boyd's Marina Bay Sunday, as the inlet was choked  with thousands of dead and dying carp, shad and catfish, along with opportunistic gulls and herons with a poor sense of smell. Colorado Parks and Wildlife struggled to save a few survivors Sunday, with little success. Only a few isolated pools of fillthy water remain in the popular fishing inlet, from the county road on west past the park marina all the way to open water. Horseshoe is now essentially a giant mudflat.  

Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) spokeswoman Kara Van Hoose, said the combination of low water levels, extreme summer drought conditions, stress, and depleted dissolved oxygen levels led to massive mortality along Boyd Lake shorelines. But the fish kill in what little remains of Horseshoe is near total. While Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) leases Boyd Lake for state park recreation, CPW does not own or control the water levels.

As word of the fish kill spread, social media called on CPW to rescue fish and maybe feed the hungry. But Horseshow is privately managed by Greeley irrigation; CPD lacked authority to mandate a fish salvage operation prior to the draining, and that mandate from the irrigation company never came. 

Boyd Lake is now essentially two smaller reservoirs separated by dry land, similar to drought conditions in 2002 and 2003. Both have considerable deep water, so hopefully further fish loss there will be minimal. For the rest of our state's water, who can say?