Coyote Gulch

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Mining water?

Las Vegas plans to mine water in the future because they may outgrow their share of the Colorado River by 2007 according to the North County Times. From the article, "Kay Brothers, the Water Authority's deputy general manager, called that timeline a worst-case scenario, adding that through conservation and careful planning the state's share of the river water could be stretched beyond 2007. But Brothers acknowledged that the day is coming when southern Nevada will no longer be able to depend largely on its allotment from the river which currently supplies 90 percent of the area's drinking water. Brothers also said the annual budgets are based on separate projections from each of the authority's member agencies -- projections that 'tend to be conservative.' The water authority has had to come up with back-up resources, just in case. The 2006 water resource plan approved along with the agency's budget Thursday outlines some of those options. They include about 290,000 acre-feet of groundwater stored beneath the Las Vegas Valley, 30,000 acre-feet banked with California and an agreement with Arizona that guarantees Nevada 1.25 million acre-feet of water over the next 30 years. The water authority already has plans to build a $2 billion pipeline to pump groundwater from rural basins in rural Nevada. Officials also hope to use water from the Virgin and Muddy rivers. The first of the rural groundwater is slated to arrive in 2008 from watersheds near Indian Springs. Nevada gets 300,000 acre-feet of water that flows into Lake Mead from the Colorado River each year, though that amount is stretched to about 460,000 acre-feet through return-flow credits the state receives for returning its treated wastewater to Lake Mead."

Coyote Gulch wonders if officials in Las Vegas are aware of the problems of mining water and sustainable supplies that we know about here in Colorado (Douglas County)?

Here's an article from the Pueblo Chieftain detailing opposition to an agreement between Aurora and the Bureau of Reclamation. From the article, "The president of the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District is challenging the authority of the Bureau of Reclamation to enter into a long-term Lake Pueblo storage contract with Aurora. John Singletary said Friday he will ask the Lower Ark board to request congressional intervention in the storage question, which was a central point in Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District negotiations that led to a 2003 intergovernmental agreement...Singletary's question comes at a sensitive time on two fronts. Reclamation is doing an environmental assessment on Aurora's request for a 40-year contract for 10,000 acre-feet of storage and 10,000 acre-feet of contract exchange - trading water between Twin Lakes and Lake Pueblo without a drop hitting the stretch of river between the two reservoirs. Meanwhile, the Lower Ark District is negotiating with Aurora over the Preferred Storage Options Plan, which would study the feasibility of enlarging Lake Pueblo and Turquoise Lake. As previously written, PSOP legislation would formalize Reclamation's authority to deal with Aurora. PSOP was near passage last year, but was stopped by opposition from the Lower Arkansas. Negotiations began earlier this year. Singletary said he favors the 2003 IGA and wants to continue negotiations with Aurora, but he does not think Aurora should be working on a separate deal with Reclamation."

Category: Colorado Water

7:35:15 AM

Intelligent Design?
Here's an opinion piece defending Intelligent Design. from today's Rocky Mountain News [December 10, 2005, "Speakout: 'Design' critics often employ straw men"]. From the article, "Ever since President Bush advocated that the intelligent design critique of Darwinism be allowed in public schools, a riot of public pronouncements has condemned the design perspective as retrograde, unscientific and downright ominous. A number of logical fallacies are routinely employed in efforts to debunk intelligent design. In such cases, intelligent design is criticized and dismissed on the basis of an argument that is illogical and therefore false. One need not be an expert in Darwinian biology to sniff out these basic blunders. In this brief space I will note just one: the straw man argument. In the straw man argument a position is made to look ridiculous and then the caricature is knocked down. Intelligent design is repeatedly presented as a plan to institute religious and unscientific dogma in the public schools. The facts, however, speak otherwise. Intelligent design's think tank, The Discovery Institute, says this: 'The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.' The controlling premise is the effort to discern the best explanation for a natural phenomenon, given the available empirical evidence: a fundamental precept of scientific investigation. Unlike creationism, intelligent design makes no appeal to religious texts, but invokes empirical evidence, as well as the principles of design detection, which are already used in sciences such as cryptography, archaeology, forensics, and in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Mathematician and philosopher William Dembski argues that certain features of the natural world exhibit patterns that are best explained on the basis of design (or intelligent causes), rather than on the basis of mindless nature (or unintelligent causes)."

Category: 2008 Presidential Election

7:22:31 AM

Amendment 38?
Denver (and Colorado) voters have their first ballot issue for next fall, according to the Rocky Mountain News [December 10, 2005, "Blake: Overhaul of initiative process OK'd for '06 ballot"]. From the opinion piece, "That problem wouldn't happen again if 38 passes. It allows circulators 12 months, not six, to collect signatures, and if they don't make it by the early August deadline they can keep collecting and try to get on the following year's ballot. Under current law, if you don't make it by the August deadline, you have to start all over again. The proposed constitutional amendment would also: Establish the state standard for signatures (5 percent of the last vote for secretary of state) as the maximum for initiatives on local-governments ballots. Cities are currently are allowed to set their own varying standards; Extend the initiative process to county governments and special districts, which unlike cities don't have it now; Allow any sort of initiative to be considered even on odd-year ballots, which the state Supreme Court has ruled can now only feature TABOR-related issues like last fall's Amendment 37; Make it much tougher to disqualify signatures by giving the benefit of the doubt to the sponsors in every case. There's a bit of irony in that, concedes Polhill, a fellow at the Independence Institute, since he helped try to get the Interstate 70 monorail off the 2001 ballot by searching for technicalities; Limit titles of ballot issues to 75 words, no matter how complex the proposal. 'The title isn't supposed to educate the voter in the booth,' grumped Campbell. "The voter is supposed to read the blue blook and become educated before getting to the booth." Apparently he believes that long titles only serve to confuse the voters. For the record, the title board stretched Campbell's and Polhill's title for Amendment 38 from 75 words to 111; Makes all but 12 legislative acts a year subject to immediate review by the people, and the exceptions must be approved by a 3-to-1 margin; Shorten the protest period for ballot titles and single-subject challenges to five days from the title setting, and give the Supreme Court only seven more days to decide the issue. That's very short, but the high court has often taken its sweet time to rule on issues it doesn't like, thus drastically curtailing the signature-collection period; Require voter approval of any future petition laws."

Category: Denver November 2006 Election

7:18:52 AM

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