Coyote Gulch

Friday, June 30, 2006

The biggest reservoir that's depleted is the subsoil

Who's drying up this week? The North Forty News has the bad news about the drought. From the article, "The mood among farmers and ranchers has been nothing short of cranky this year. The hot, dry weather may be uncomfortable for city folks, but for farmers it's downright devastating. The Colorado Climate Center, based at Colorado State University, is calling the current conditions along the Front Range a 'severe drought.'

"Farmers and ranchers were dealt a hard one-two punch this spring and summer. First, despite a good snowpack early in the winter, the runoff was a big disappointment. George Varra, river commissioner for the Cache la Poudre, said the river peaked early on May 23 at just 1,800 cubic feet per second, compared to an average of 3,000 cfs. As a result, senior water rights were satisfied but there was little left for the junior rights. The second punch came with hot, windy weather, along with precipitation that's just half of normal to date. The combination has dried up pastures, raised the price of hay and put early demands on irrigation water. It has also caused major evaporation from reservoirs and shrink--ground absorption --in the irrigation ditches. The upshot: Cattle producers are feeding hay when the cattle should be eating pasture grass, and some may have to sell part of their herds. Farmers like Sipes had trouble getting their crops up and now can't keep them growing. The pasture situation is 'very, very bad,' according to Howard Diehl who farms and raises cattle northeast of Wellington. Even if it rains soon, it will be too late for some of the grasses, he said. Diehl is trying to raise hay on irrigated ground, but it's drying out fast in the wind and extreme heat...

"Wayne Kruse, general manager of Centennial Livestock Auction, said hay is selling anywhere from $100 to $275 per ton, which is $80 to $100 higher than in late April. Cattlemen are at the point where they're starting to sell some animals because they're out of feed, he said. Mike Gillespie, snow survey supervisor for Colorado, said the snowpack dwindled dramatically from April 1 to May 1. In the Poudre drainage, snowpack was 104 percent of average on April 1 and just 70 percent of average on May 1. The primary reason was the lack of precipitation in April, he said, although evaporation and absorption by the soil likely played a role...

"Steve Smith, manager of North Poudre Irrigation Co., said it will be a challenge to make the company's water stretch through the season. Part of the problem is the long-term drought and subsequent dry soils, he said. 'The biggest reservoir that's depleted is the subsoil,' he pointed out. It took several years to dry out the subsoil, and Smith expects recovery to take several years as well - assuming some moisture arrives to make it happen. Shrink in the ditches is currently in excess of 50 percent."
"colorado water"
7:01:05 AM

Hearing on Black Canyon water rights

Did federal officials sell the Black Canyon short on water? That's the question that Trout Unlimited and others are asking in court, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. From the article, "Arguments over how water flowing through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park should be managed were made in federal court Thursday, but it will likely be another month before a ruling is made on the controversial case. A consortium of environmental groups led by Colorado Trout Unlimited have sued the federal government for allegedly claiming too little water for the national park. The park's South Rim lies 15 miles east of Montrose. The area is home to rainbow and German brown trout, among other species of fish and wildlife. The lawsuit stems from a deal made several years ago that allegedly reduced the amount of water the National Park Service was claiming under a federal reserved water right. Melinda Kassen, Colorado Western Water Project director for Trout Unlimited, said the Park Service had filed in 2001 for annual river flows aimed at mimicking the natural conditions of the canyon. Peak flows are meant to flush out the river canyon in a flow regime that better mimics the natural hydrology of the river before the three dams of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Aspinall Unit were built. The Park Service then amended its application in 2003 after reaching a negotiated agreement with the state where the Park Service would claim a base river flow of 300 cubic feet per second through the canyon. Meanwhile, the Colorado Water Conservation Board was to file for instream flow rights, allowing it to raise the river level when there is sufficient water in Blue Mesa Reservoir. The environmental groups are asking a federal judge to order the Park Service to secure larger stream flows for the national park, without allowing the state to administer its water rights...

"Thursday's hearing will result in a final ruling, which will likely be issued in a written statement from the judge. The judge said he would have a ruling in one month, according to Drew Peternell, staff attorney for Trout Unlimited. 'I don't want to count chickens before they hatch, but the judge asked questions that suggest he's skeptical of the government's arguments,' Peternell told The Daily Sentinel on Thursday evening. If the environmental groups win, and the case is not appealed, Kassen said she hopes the federal government will go to Colorado's water court and apply for a 'more robust and reserved water right. Then it will be possible to get a more natural situation in the park, mimicking a spring runoff situation,' Kassen said. 'We think it's possible to still do that and satisfy most of the existing water rights.'"
"colorado water"
6:52:29 AM

Arkansas Valley Conduit

Here's an update on the Arkansas Valley Conduit from the Pueblo Chieftain. From the article, "Money is finally starting to move toward the Arkansas Valley Conduit project, courtesy of Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., who added $600,000 to a water appropriations bill Thursday for the project. The $300 million pipeline project would bring drinking water from Lake Pueblo to 42 cities, towns or water districts along the Arkansas River Valley. The $600,000 would begin paying for preliminary design work on the conduit system. Allard, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, added the conduit money to a Department of the Interior appropriations bill Thursday. 'This is a major step forward for the conduit,' Allard said afterward in a statement. 'For the first time, we actually have money flowing to the project.'"
"colorado water"
6:09:26 AM

Weather modification: Do the science

Weather modification is the subject of this article from the Contra Costa Times. From the article, "A holdover from 1950s-era scientific theory, weather modification has drawn renewed interest with the growth of technology and 21st-century weather concerns. Its next aspirations - to combat Atlantic hurricanes or Western drought - may well prove the most far-reaching. Weather modification already operates at a staggering scope. Projects in some three-dozen countries seek to save wine crops, ease drought and kill fog. The Chinese government spends $40 million a year to seed clouds for rain. Canadian insurance companies pay to suppress hailstorms blamed for crop damage. In the U.S. there were 53 reported weather-modification projects last year with a combined price of more than $5 million, according to interviews and records filed with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is required to keep track of such projects. About 1,900 pounds of silver iodide was scattered last year to tweak atmospheric moisture above 102,000 square miles out West - a patch of sky nearly twice the size of Iowa. An additional 30 projects already are booked for this year...

"Where skeptics and proponents agree is that no one knows exactly how cloud seeding works, or how well - if at all. The people paying to do weather modification aren't eager to stop and study it, an approach raising red flags with scientists. 'You're really playing with fire, because if you don't understand the fundamentals of what you're doing, you have no ability to predict the consequence of your actions,' said Michael Garstang, a University of Virginia atmospheric scientist involved in a 2003 report on weather modification for the National Academy of Sciences. It called for fundamental study. /It's derelict not to have funded research,' he said...

"The rise, fall and rebirth of modern weather modification is an amusing and tantalizing tale. It begins with Vincent Schaefer, a high-school dropout, apprentice toolmaker and tree surgery correspondence student taken in by a Nobel laureate with a shared a love of the outdoors who took him to the General Electric labs in New York as a research assistant. Among other things, Schaefer studied ice, and in he 1946 tried to modify the weather by dumping dry-ice shavings from an airplane and making snow from cold fog. Soon after, meteorologist Bernard Vonnegut discovered silver iodide did the same. After that, almost anything seemed possible. Parched states took up cloud seeding. The Soviet Union toyed with using warm Atlantic water to melt polar ice and open northern ports. From 1962 to 1983, the U.S. government tried to weaken hurricanes with silver iodide seeding. All but the local programs eventually were shelved as infeasible or ineffective...

"By the 1980s, the idea of weather modification - including cloud seeding - became a taboo in serious scientific circles, he said. Research spending dropped from a high of $20 million a year in the late 1970s to less than $500,000, the National Academy noted in 2003. Its report called for more research funding but was ignored. Had it not been for persistent drought in Western states, followed by a flurry of hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, that's probably where the U.S. would have left things. After years of lobbying centered in her home state of Texas, Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison proposed in March 2005 that a federal board be formed to draft weather-modification policies and devise ways to carry them out. When the bill cleared the Senate science committee, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy raised a host of concerns - it might rob one region's rain to feed another; it could fuel global warming suspicions; it might violate treaties. John Marburger, director of the technology office, assured Hutchison the White House would study the need for a new board. But freighted by two decades of scorn, supporters say, the effort fell apart...

"Four operators undertake about half such projects. Along with the Desert Research Institute - Nevada's non-profit, university-affiliated research lab - are three private companies: Atmospherics Inc., North American Weather Consultants and Western Weather Consultants...

"Local water boards, county and state governments spend millions of dollars each year to fund these companies. North Dakota alone pays $650,000 to $700,000 a year in tax money for hail reduction, said state Atmospheric Resource Board Director Darin Langerud. Seven states in the Colorado River basin - Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming - are seeking to formalize and expand cloud seeding. But even Westerners paying for it aren't 100 percent convinced that cloud seeding performs as advertised. The great question out there is, `What would the snow have been like had it not been for cloud seeding?' said Rick Brown, acting deputy director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. While the National Academy agreed mankind can affect the weather, its 2003 study cited a lack of "unequivocal scientific evidence" that weather modification did it. On the other hand, statements by the American Meteorological Society and others support the effectiveness of winter cloud-seeding projects, crediting them with adding 5 percent to 20 percent to snowfall in target watersheds, which then melts into reservoirs. Research involving computer modeling might help decide the issue."
"colorado water"
6:03:54 AM

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