Coyote Gulch

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Chaffee County RICD clarification

Mountain Mail: "As is typically the case with complex water issues, there are misconceptions about what the RICD will and will not do. At the top of the list is that it will 'guarantee' water flows to the county. Nothing could be further from the facts. In a nutshell, the RICD covers the months of March through November. It calls for 1,200 cfs in the river for essentially the month of June and up to 1,800 cfs for eight event days during the month. From July 1 through Aug. 15, the recreational diversion basically follows the voluntary flow program of the past 15 years with a minimum flow of 700 cfs. The balance of time, the agreement calls for 250 cfs. So, what happens if, for example, flow drops below 1,200 cfs in June, or if there's not 1,800 cfs for the event days, or if the July-August flow falls below 700 cfs? The prevailing - but incorrect - belief is that the county would issue a water call to satisfy its decree and junior water rights holders upstream would be forced to cease their diversions to satisfy the county's call. This is how water calls normally work. In the case of the county diversion, however, there are no major water rights holders with decrees junior to the RICD. This means that even though the county would possess the diversion right, for all practical purposes carries no force at this time under these circumstances when it comes to calling for water to satisfy its decree. As an example, if the recreational diversion had been in effect during the '02 drought, a water call to satisfy the 1,200-1,800 cfs during June or the 700 cfs later in the summer would have had no effect. This is because the county diversion is, once again, junior to all other major rights holders on the upper Arkansas and because water simply was not available. In the summer of '02, flows in the Arkansas hovered around 250-300 cfs for much of the summer, coming as a result of downstream calls from the most senior water rights holders. The RICD would have been powerless to do anything to improve flows in the upper valley."

Category: Colorado Water

11:04:17 AM

Help for the Ogallala

Colorado farmers took 65,000 acres of marginal cropland out of production Friday, under the federal Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, in exchange for $91 million in state and federal funds, according to the Central Utah Daily Herald. From the article, "Taking the land out of production means it no longer has to be irrigated, which will translate into a 5 percent annual reduction in the amount of water pumped from the vast Ogallala Aquifer for agriculture, said Aaron Johnson, a spokesman for Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo. Returning the land to native grasses and trees will also create conservation buffers that will help preserve water quality, soil and habitat, Johnson said. Private groups have been buying conservation easements for years to prevent development of scenic land."

Category: Colorado Water

10:43:08 AM

Bayfield cease and desist order to be lifted

Durango Herald: "A cease-and-desist order issued 23 days ago against the Bayfield Sanitation District is expected to be lifted as soon as Monday. In an e-mail sent Friday to the district, an official with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment wrote that 'it is appropriate to lift the cease-and-desist order.' But exactly when the order will be lifted was not clear Friday evening. Dave Akers, manager in the health department's Water Quality Control Division, said the order won't be lifted until the legal paperwork is done, which would be 'very soon.' Cindy Parmenter, communications director for the Department of Public Health and Environment, said 'we will not make a final decision until Monday' about lifting the cease-and-desist order...

"On Friday, Sam W. Maynes, lawyer for the tribe, said his understanding is that the cease-and-desist order will be lifted, but the sanitation district will have to meet certain deadlines for making future improvements. The tribe questions the wisdom of lifting the order after only a week of collecting sampling data, he said. But if the state does lift the order, the tribe hopes it will be conditional on future test samples meeting permit requirements, Maynes said. In his e-mail to the sanitation district, Akers wrote that a study done by the sanitation district provides a schedule for rapidly increasing capacity of the Bayfield treatment plant that would add necessary capacity for at least the next five years of planned growth. The study also commits to additional plant improvements that will result in a better quality of discharge and provides a sound engineering analysis that indicates the plant is operating under capacity. In addition, recent discharge samples analyzed by the state and the tribe show the plant is performing better than required under the existing permit."

Category: Colorado Water

10:30:07 AM

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