Sunday, December 2, 2007

Update: First Groundwater Management Sub-District, Rio Grande Water Conservation District Here's an update on the Rio Grande Water Conservation District's First Groundwater Management Sub-District from The Pueblo Chieftain. From the article: Approval of the subdistrict's water management plan had originally been slated for two separate venues. District court proceedings were scheduled Friday to field objections to the conservation district's decision to approve the management plan. The water court would have handled arguments against the state engineer's approval of the management plan. [Judge O. John Kuenhold] set a status conference for Dec. 20 and told the parties they could assume he would approve the consolidation. Backers of the subdistrict plan failed to negotiate a stipulation with the other parties in the district court proceedings that would have allowed the subdistrict to get on county tax rolls and collect fees and assessments this year. Ray Wright, president of the RGWCD board of directors, said there are other funding options the subdistrict could pursue for the coming year. Those include funds from the Colorado Water Conservation Board and a possible application through the Rio Grande Basin Roundtable for SB 179 funding. The subdistrict's water management plan calls for groundwater irrigators inside its boundaries to be assessed a series of three fees. That money, along with funds from a federal conservation program, would be used to retire up to 40,000 acres from production. More Coyote Gulch coverage here. "colorado water" 10:32:20 AM

Durango RICD approved Water Division 7 Judge Gregory G. Lyman approved Durango's Recreational In Channel Diversion on Friday, according to The Durango Herald. From the article: The agreement approved by 6th Judicial Chief District Judge Gregory Lyman gives Durango its recreational in-channel diversion, or RICD, as the water right is called, guarantees a quantity of water for upstream development and cancels a two-week trial on the matter scheduled to start Jan. 7. It ended a three-year dispute, and allows Durango to use from 185 to 1,400 cubic feet per second of Animas flow, depending on the time of year, for a whitewater sports park at Smelter Rapid. Although the negotiated outcome makes Durango's claim to recreational water junior to two water rights for future development, all parties agreed that there is enough water to go around except in extreme circumstances. "We're happy because we did what we set out to do," Jack Rogers, the city's interim manager, said outside the courtroom. "We protected the right of kayakers and other recreational boaters while allowing things to happen upstream that would benefit the community." There should be enough water for everyone except in a drought or an extremely dry year such as 2002, the height of what many say in an ongoing drought, Rogers said. No one had water in 2002, he said... Barry Spear, the legal counsel for the Southwestern Water Conservation District, agreed the settlement benefited both sides. "It was a good settlement," Spear said. "It allows recreation to occur in a reasonable manner and at the same time allow sufficient water for development... Durango plans to create an 850-foot structured course for kayaks, rafts and canoes on the Animas River at Smelter Rapid behind Santa Rita Park. City staff members have indicated that a four-structure whitewater course would cost from $600,000 to $2 million to construct. Additionally, a permit for the course from the Corps of Engineers would cost an estimated $300,000. La Plata County will have a total of 9 cubic feet per second of water from the Animas River and Lightner and Junction creeks. The combined water right will provide as much as 40 cfs from the Animas River for upstream development. The effective date of the city's water right is Feb. 23, 2006. La Plata County's effective date is Feb. 21, 2006, while the effective date of the combined application is Feb. 22, 2006. "The senior appropriation dates are important to ensure future water development, Spear said. As long as there is water available within the limits of the decrees for water development approved by the court, applicants may secure a water right senior to the city, Spear said. Only if decree limits have been reached or a water user doesn't obtain a court-designated amount of water would the city's recreational water right be senior to subsequent requests. More Coyote Gulch coverage here. "colorado water" 10:23:08 AM

Wellington planning for future Here's a look at the planning around a sustainable water supply up in Wellington, from The North Forty News. From the article: Currently, Wellington has two domestic water sources. The town purchases water from North Poudre Irrigation Co., which is stored in Reservoir 3 northwest of Wellington. It also owns three wells located near Eyestone Elementary and Wellington Junior High. The NPIC water is treated in the town's main water treatment plant, while the well water is treated in a separate facility. Treating surface water--such as that from Reservoir 3--is an entirely different process than treating well water, Lorentzen explained; hence the need for two treatment plants. The wells supply 400 acre-feet of water per year to Wellington. The contract with NPIC allows for a maximum of 2,000 acre-feet. In 2006, the town used 629 acre-feet of NPIC water. On the surface, it would appear that there's plenty of NPIC water left to use, but it's not that simple. The main factor is the cost. The first 275 acre-feet are called the base amount, and it's dirt-cheap: it costs the town just 13 cents per 1,000 gallons. The next 225 acre-feet, however, jump to $1.98 per 1,000 gallons. And, for everything above 500 acre-feet, the town must pay $9,000 per year just to reserve it, plus $1.98 per 1,000 gallons. With its growing population, Wellington has surpassed the 500 acre-feet mark every year since 2004. With this pricing structure, the bottom line in 2006 was this: For the first 275 acre-feet of NPIC water, Wellington paid $11,587. For the remaining 354 acre-feet, the town paid $235,904. At some point, Lorentzen said, the NPIC water would become cost-prohibitive. "There's less expensive water out there," he commented. Besides cost, the other issue with NPIC water is the lack of diversity. If Wellington is able to secure other sources of water, the town will not be left high and dry if one source becomes unusable for some reason, such as contamination... In addition to a water court application by Richard and Sandy Seaworth to change two wells they own from ag to domestic the town has looked at several other projects: Buying more water from the Colorado-Big Thompson project: Lorentzen said there would be no way to deliver this water to Wellington. Even if NPIC were willing to deliver it, the water would have to use the same reservoir system as the current NPIC water. "We don't want to put all our eggs in one basket," Lorentzen said. -Purchasing water from Northern Colorado Water Association: According to the association, it is not in a position to provide water to an urban area because its water lines are too small. -Buying water from the East Larimer County Water District: According to Lorentzen, this option is "always a possibility," but it would require a substantial investment in pipelines. Also, if ELCO controlled the water going to Wellington, there would be no guarantees about rates or availability. Lorentzen said that Wellington has not held discussions with ELCO for several years. -Participating in the Northern Integrated Supply Project, which hopes to build Glade Reservoir and divert water from the Poudre River: Lorentzen noted that the project was very expensive to get into. Also, there would be huge pipeline costs--estimated at $10 million--to get water from Glade to Wellington. - Buying water designated as "nontributary": Wellington-area resident Harold Hagen approached the town a few years ago about buying his nontributary water, but Lorentzen said the town would require a ruling by the state water court that the water is legally available. Such a ruling could be difficult to obtain because the state has changed its methods of determining whether a water source is in fact nontributary, he said. "colorado water" 10:03:42 AM

Big snow hits the San Juans Big snow in the San Juans, according to The Durango Herald. From the article: Ski slopes throughout Southwest Colorado should be teeming with skiers and snowboarders today as the first major winter storm of the season moves out of the region. Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort received 22 inches of new snow Friday and Saturday morning. Another 6 to 12 inches are expected by the end of the storm today. The snowfall allowed the ski area to open today - one day after its originally scheduled opening date Saturday. Dry conditions forced the delay. Today is the resort's annual Benefit Day, with lift tickets costing $15. Proceeds will benefit Durango Nature Studies and the Durango Winter Sports Foundation. Regular lift tickets and season passes will begin Monday... Lt. Dan Bender with the La Plata County Sheriff's Office measured 15 inches of new snow at Cascade Creek at an approximate elevation of 9,000 feet on Saturday afternoon. Just a few miles north, but 2,000 feet higher at the summit of Coal Bank Pass, Bender measured 45 inches. Wolf Creek Ski Area, which opened Nov. 10 with one run, had received 32 inches as of Saturday morning. As much as another foot was forecast by today. Wolf Creek now has five lifts open, but the Waterfall, Alberta Peak, Knife Ridge and Horseshoe Bowl areas remain closed. Ironically, the snow was too deep for Silverton Mountain to open Saturday. Co-owner Jen Brill said she and her husband, Aaron, plan to open the area today. Silverton had received 48 inches at mid-mountain by Saturday morning, which Jen Brill said was the second highest total the ski area had received in a 24-hour period since 117 inches fell over several days in 2005. Silverton's mid-mountain base is now 60 inches. Twenty-eight inches fell at the ski area's 10,400-foot base area... The Colorado Avalanche Information Center reports that avalanche danger is "high" in the San Juan Mountains. The water content of the new snow is extremely high - 17 inches on Red Mountain Pass contained almost 3 inches of water, which forecaster Ann Mellick said is more common in the Sierra Nevada range than Southwest Colorado. High moisture content in snow raises the risk of an avalanche. An avalanche watch is in effect in the San Juan Mountains through this morning. National Weather Service forecaster Jerry Smith said 4 to 7 more inches were expected for the San Juan Mountains in Southwest Colorado through today. Five to 10 inches were forecast for the Crested Butte, Aspen and Vail areas. Steamboat Springs was expected to get 8 to 14 inches... Durango received 1.95 inches. The Animas River was running at 475 cfs at 6:15 p.m. Saturday, up from 250 cfs Thursday. Cortez reported 1.12 inches of rain, while the Vallecito Dam near Bayfield had 3.3 inches, breaking the previous 24-hour rainfall record there of 1.22 inches set in 1982, Smith said. "colorado water" 9:50:59 AM

Energy policy: Hydroelectric From The Aspen Daily News "reg", "'Pound for pound, (micro-hydro) blows solar and wind power out of the water.' Tony Rutgers, a contractor, in comments to the Pitkin Board of County Commissioners in reference to a proposal to allow small-scale hydroelectric systems." More Coyote Gulch coverage here. "colorado water" 9:42:41 AM

Boulder: Modeling climate change and supply Here's a look at climate change and the Boulder Creek watershed from The Boulder Daily Camera. The city feels good about where they're sitting. From the article: Island Lake and Goose Lake, which pour their frigid alpine waters into the larger Silver Lake, are coated with a fragile crust of ice, and snow dusts their winter armor. All winter, snow will continue falling into Silver Lake's cirque, carved long ago by the then-mighty Arapaho Glacier and tucked high on the Continental Divide west of Boulder. In the spring, the deep snows will begin to melt, swelling North Boulder Creek and filling the city's reservoirs... Boulder may well be the first city anywhere that has tried to model the potential effects of global warming on a scale small enough to predict how its water supply will be altered by warming temperatures and changing precipitation patterns. The results, according to a nearly completed study, show that Boulder probably has the flexibility to meet its future water demands under all but the most extreme scenarios. "Boulder is really ahead of the game in looking at this seriously," said Lee Rozaklis, who has been helping the city model its water supply since the mid-1980s. "From my perspective, the city has been on top of it early and often, and we've got as good a picture as we can have."[...] Even if summer rains added to the water in Boulder Creek, the city doesn't have enough manmade reservoirs to store the water until it's needed. "The snowpack is our major reservoir, and we don't have artificial reservoirs sufficient in size to manage it in the way that nature manages it for us," said Kathleen Miller, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and author of the book "Climate Change and Water Resources: A Primer for Municipal Water Providers." Building more local reservoirs sufficient in size to offset an earlier-melting snowpack or late-season rains has its own problems, besides steep costs. Increased warming will mean more surface water will be lost through evaporation. Already, dry air steals a significant amount of water from major reservoirs across the West. "We lose -- the rough number -- we lose almost 10 percent of the annual flow of the (Colorado) River in the main reservoirs on the river," said Martin Hoerling, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder. "That's a lot of loss, and that evaporation is only going to increase."[...] Today, Boulder's water-supply portfolio includes water from the Silver Lake watershed, water from Middle Boulder Creek that fills Barker Reservoir at the top of Boulder Canyon and even water drawn from the headwaters of the Colorado River, which eventually is stored in Boulder Reservoir after it makes a long, complicated trip across the Continental Divide. The first reservoir built in Boulder was constructed in Sunshine Canyon in 1875, but it didn't take long before the water was tainted by mine tailings. At the turn of the century, Boulder made a move to start buying land in the Indian Peaks that could provide clean water to the growing town. By the end of the 1920s, Boulder owned the entire Silver Lake watershed, which includes 13 reservoirs and natural lakes fed by the Arapaho Glacier. But even with that wealth of water, severe droughts and an exploding population in the 1950s strained Boulder's supplies and pushed the city to acquire more water, this time from Barker Reservoir and new trans-basin projects, which would carry water to Boulder from the Colorado River. "colorado water" 9:34:11 AM

Jennifer Gimbel named Director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board Here's an editorial about the makeup of the Colorado Water Conservation Board under Jennifer Gimbel from The Denver Post. They write, "Gov. Bill Ritter named Jennifer Gimbel as the board's new director Tuesday. She served 10 years in the water and natural resources sections of the Colorado Attorney General's office before joining the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 2001. Gimbel is expected to be more open to recreational water uses than the man she replaces, recently retired director Rod Kuharich, who often led the board in opposing proposals for recreational uses such as kayak parks. Another board member who scoffed at recreational uses, rancher Tom Sharp, has been replaced by Geoff Blakeslee, the Yampa River project director for The Nature Conservancy." More Coyote Gulch coverage here. "colorado water" 9:19:04 AM

Southern Delivery System Pueblo West signing on to the Southern Delivery System will help push the project along, according to The Colorado Springs Gazette. From the article: Colorado Springs has scored a coup in its controversial water pipeline plan by signing up Pueblo West Metropolitan District as an advocate. The district's financial portion is tiny at less than 1 percent. But its participation brings on board an agency that represents a fifth of Pueblo County's population -- a number Colorado Springs hopes won't be ignored by Pueblo County officials, who could make or break the project using land regulations. "They (Pueblo West) have a need, and they're willing to sign up with it," said Councilman Jerry Heimlicher. "Having them added on is one more component of Pueblo County that, hopefully, will turn the tide of a favorable opinion of county commissioners when they look at the 1041" application... Pueblo County commissioners are suspicious of the project because they fear it will cause further flooding, erosion and pollution in Fountain Creek, an overloaded stream that flows to the Arkansas River east of Pueblo... Meanwhile, last week the Springs City Council approved adding Pueblo West to the project, which involves participation from the city of Fountain and Security Water District. The agreement calls for fastgrowing Pueblo West, home to 32,000 people, to participate in the project to expand its ability to draw water from the Arkansas River below Pueblo Dam and pipe it to the district's treatment plant. Now the pipeline size restricts the district to 12 million gallons a day, but joining the Southern Delivery System project would increase its ability to pipe water by an additional 18 MGD, said district manager Don Saling. The bigger pipeline would allow the district to provide ample water to attain buildout of its 18,000 lots with a population of 60,000. An alternative plan, Saling said, would draw water directly from the river, but the water would be of lower quality. "It's a great opportunity for both of us," he said, referring to the district and Colorado Springs... For its part, Pueblo West agreed to "cooperate with the project manager to obtain all federal, state and local permits and approvals necessary for the construction, operation, maintenance and use of the project." That means Pueblo West would support Springs Utilities' 1041 application. Heimlicher said he expects Pueblo West to "exert pressure on the commissioners" to approve the pipeline. The district can bail out of the agreement if the Bureau of Reclamation, which is reviewing several alternatives, opts for a plan that doesn't accommodate Pueblo West's plans. It also may opt out if the bureau's decision is delayed beyond June 2009. The agreement calls for the district to pay .013 of 1 percent of the project's capital cost, or roughly $715,000. The rest of the $550 million project is split among Colorado Springs, $524 million; Fountain, $18.1 million, and Security, $7.1 million. Utilities CEO Jerry Forte called the agreement "very important" in making the project's scope regional in nature -- a critical aspect of federal water policy. More Coyote Gulch coverage here. "colorado water" 9:11:41 AM

Denver: Blizzard of 2006 Here's a retrospective on last year's big Christmas storm and the one 10 days later from TheDenverChannel.com. Read the whole thing. Here are a couple of excerpts: December 2006 brought one of the most historic winter weather events in the state's history. Back-to-back blizzards struck the foothills and eastern plains of Colorado during one of the busiest 10 days of the year. It all started with a strong storm system slamming into Washington and Oregon with torrential rain and hurricane-force wind. Once onshore, the storm split into two pieces. One moved into southwestern Canada and the other slid down the Great Basin and settled into Arizona. Forecasters in Denver had their eye on this storm as it hit the Pacific Northwest, and computer forecast models showed the potential for a major winter storm across eastern Colorado just before Christmas. But would it really happen? By Saturday, Dec. 16, the area of low pressure continued to sit and spin over Arizona, orphaned from the main flow of jet stream winds aloft. It was a prediction predicament because all signs pointed to it slowly moving east-northeast, tapping into plenty of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and gaining strength. The million-dollar question was would it really happen and if so, when? With the peak of Christmas travel underway, thousands watched each forecast with anticipation of what was going to happen. By Tuesday, Dec. 19, the details became clearer with each new set of weather data: eastern Colorado faced a major winter storm that had the potential to paralyze holiday travel... More Coyote Gulch coverage here, here, here and here. "colorado water" 8:53:22 AM

© Copyright 2009 John Orr. Last update: 3/14/09; 9:52:53 PM.