Coyote Gulch

 



















































































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  Wednesday, April 19, 2006


Beauprez or Holtzman for governor?

Here are some fund-raising numbers for the governor's race from the Denver Post. They write, "Still six months away from the August primary, Colorado's two Republican gubernatorial candidates have each spent about $1 million, according to campaign finance reports released Tuesday."

Category: Denver November 2006 Election


6:56:24 AM     

SB37 and HB1352
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HB1352 - Concerning an expansion of water judges's jurisdiction to address the effects of a water right adudication on water quaility and SB37 - Concerning the Adjucation of Recreation In-Channel Diversions are both hung up in the House, according to the Fort Morgan Times.

From the article, "The two most controversial water bills of this year's legislative session are hung up in the Colorado House of Representatives while their Democrat sponsors troll for the 33 votes needed for passage. Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, admits she is a couple votes shy of passing her bill allowing water judges to set terms and conditions for water quality when ruling on large water transfers that change both the use and point of diversion. Similar bills have been defeated each of the last three years. McFadyen said her bill is needed because downstream water users, such as those on the lower Arkansas River, are left with degraded water quality when water is diverted higher up on the stream and transferred from agricultural to municipal use. The House barely gave preliminary approval to House Bill 1352 on April 5 with both Republican Reps. Diane Hoppe of Sterling and Cory Gardner of Yuma opposed. They argued issues of water quality should be left with the Colorado Quality Control Commission...

"McFadyen picked up support from a Western Slope Republican who previously opposed any bills that dealt with water quality in diversion cases. 'The water courts today are imposing terms and conditions on water quality on whatever they want with no strictures, no standards and no sideboards,' said Rep. Josh Penry of Grand Junction. 'This creates clarity in the law and ties the water quality issue back to a standard that already exists with the Water Quality Control Commission. It minimizes the opportunity for judicial mischief.' If the bill passes the House, it still would have to go through the Senate with less than three weeks left in the 2006 session, which is scheduled to adjourn on May 10.

"Also languishing on the House calendar for several days is Senate Bill 37, which is the latest attempt to limit decreed water rights for recreation. Lawmakers are trying to rein in the massive decrees being sought for increasingly popular whitewater parks, mostly in Colorado's mountain communities. Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, is working to reach a compromise on the Senate-passed bill with tourism, recreational and environmental groups on one side and agricultural groups and Front Range water providers on the other. The measure has changed substantially since it passed the Senate on March 3. Under the amended bill, applicants for a recreational in-channel diversion (RICD) could choose from between seeking 35 percent of the stream flow between April 1 and Labor Day or seeking a higher amount but be subject to a requirement that at least 85 percent of the water be available in the stream before the water right could be called out. The 85 percent call threshold was one of the most controversial provisions of the Senate-passed bill. Gardner and Hoppe, while agreeing the four-year-old state law allowing recreational water rights needs to be refined, both opposed SB 37 bill as it left the House Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Resources Committee early this month."

Category: Colorado Water


6:39:22 AM     

Watering restrictions for Colorado Springs or Pueblo?
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KOAA.com: "Colorado Springs and Pueblo will both likely remain under voluntary water restrictions this summer. Colorado Springs Utilities' staff will recommend staying under voluntary restrictions at their monthly board meeting Wednesday. A majority of city council members supports the move."

Category: Colorado Water


6:30:14 AM     

Water grabs
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Here's a short introduction to the World Water Forum, describing some of the water problems around the world, from the Khaleej Times. They write, "One hundred years ago, William Mulholland introduced the citizens of California to a new concept in state politics: the water grab. Charged with securing water supplies for a small, thirsty town in a desert, the baron of the Los Angeles Department of Water hit on an imaginative response. He quietly bought up water rights in the Owens Valley, 230 miles to the north, built an aquifer across the blistering Mojave Desert, and took the water to downtown Los Angeles.

"When local ranchers protested by dynamiting his aquifer, Mulholland declared war, responding with a massive show of armed force. Nowadays southern Californians fight over water in courts of law. Angelenos have some of America's greenest lawns and biggest swimming pools, not to mention a desert that blooms with cotton and fruit. Keeping it that way means piping in water from hundreds of miles away and draining a Colorado River so depleted that it barely reaches the Gulf of Mexico. And it means disputing every drop of the Colorado with Arizona.

"The Mulholland model represents a brutish form of what has been a global approach to water management. Want to urbanise and industrialise at breakneck speed? Then dam and divert your rivers to meet the demand. Want to expand the agricultural frontier? Then mine your aquifers and groundwaters. [ed. note. the forum was held in March ending on the 22nd] This week and next, governments, international agencies and nongovernmental organisations are gathering in Mexico City at the World Water Forum to discuss the legacy of global Mulhollandism in water - and to chart a new course. They could hardly have chosen a better location. Water is being pumped out of the aquifer on which Mexico City stands at twice the rate of replenishment. The result: the city is subsiding at the rate of about half a metre every decade. You can see the consequences in the cracked cathedrals, the tilting Palace of Arts and the broken water and sewerage pipes. Every region of the world has its own variant of the water crisis story.

"The mining of groundwaters for irrigation has lowered the water table in parts of India and Pakistan by 30 metres in the past three decades. As water goes down, the cost of pumping goes up, undermining the livelihoods of poor farmers. Meanwhile, a lethal combination of water shortages, soil salination, and waterlogging threatens the breadbaskets of both countries. In India, about one quarter of grain production is based on unsustainable groundwater use. In China, urbanisation and rapid growth has lifted millions of people out of poverty. It has also left a water crisis of epic proportions. The Hai-Huai-Yellow river basin tells its own story. More than 80 per cent of river lengths are chronically polluted. The basin is home to more than 400 million people and about one half of the rural poor. It produces more than half of China's wheat and corn. And it is running out of water. Current use exceeds river flow by a third, leading to another case of groundwater overexploitation.

"What is driving the global water crisis? Physical availability is part of the problem. Unlike oil or coal, water is an infinitely renewable resource, but it is available in a finite quantity. With water use increasing at twice the rate of population growth, the amount available per person is shrinking - especially in some of the poorest countries. Over the next 25 years, the number of people living in countries with water crises will increase from 700 million to 2.2 billion, with more than half of the populations of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa affected.

Category: Colorado Water


6:27:24 AM     


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