Thursday, August 28, 2008

Supply news From The Trinidad Times: "The Trinidad City Council approved the purchased of water rights in the John Flood Ditch at its regular meeting last Tuesday. The purchase grants the city access to about 213 acre feet of water for $507,000, though plans call for it to be leased back to the original owner at cost for several years. According to City Utility Supervisor Jim Fernandez, the city purchased the rights from Gerald and Judy Maglia to bolster its available water supplies to be later accessed when its new water filtration plant comes on line in an estimated 10-years time." Thanks to the Water Information Program for the link. From The Greeley Tribune: "A multi-million dollar purchase by the City of Evans leaves officials hopeful that a major piece to the city's muddled water supply puzzle will be filled -- one heavy spring runoff at a time. The Evans City Council on Tuesday approved the $5.15 million purchase of 210 acres of land southwest of the city -- a purchase that Evans City Manager Aden Hogan called the "biggest" water-related purchase in the city's history. "This is one of those opportunities I told you about that when the opportunity comes along, we have a responsibility to take advantage of those opportunities when they're beneficial to us," Mayor Lyle Achziger said. While previously used for farming purposes, the plot of land located along Weld County Road 396 between the Big Thompson and Platte Rivers southwest of Evans, is slated to be transformed to a water storage facility capable of holding about 3,000-5,000 acre feet of water. One acre foot is generally considered to be enough to supply two families with water for a year. No timeline is set yet for the lake's creation as Aggregate Industries, which owns the mining lease for the land, still has yet to decide on a good time to begin mining with the city." Thanks to the Water Information Program for the link. "colorado water" 7:45:46 PM

McCain: Renegotiate the Colorado River Compact The Denver Post reports on the John McCain's Colorado political suicide. McCain, as you know, has received a flash flood of criticism for advocating the renegotiation of the Colorado River Compact. From the article: Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, hurt his chances in the West when he commented that a pact governing the use of the Colorado River water "obviously needs to be renegotiated" because of the realities of population growth and scarcer resources, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said today. "He just stepped into it," Schwietzer, a Democrat who backs Barack Obama, said at a panel discussion sponsored by the Denver Post, Politico and Yahoo! "It was fresh, it was wet and it smells funny."[...] The panel of elected Democrats from the region gathered today for the panel said the presidential election could turn on Western issues, from water to energy to land management, With the party making a play for many formerly die-hard Republican states, concerns usually ignored by presidential contenders could get some air time, and voters will be paying attention to how the candidates talk about the West, they said. "There is room in the next 60 days for a national conversation between Washington and the West," Democratic Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano said. Several states in the West, including Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, are considered battlegrounds in this year's general election. Thanks to Colorado Pols for the link. More Coyote Gulch coverage here and an opinion piece here. "colorado water" 7:22:37 PM

Green Mountain and Colorado-Big Thompson update From email from Reclamation (Kara Lamb): The weekend is almost here and I know many of you are making plans. Here is what to expect from the reservoir and river releases along the Colorado-Big Thompson Project: For those of you over in Summit County, we are still looking at a full pool at Green Mountain Reservoir. We have spent the past several days bumping up releases from Green Mountain Dam to the Lower Blue River. Today, we are running about 860 cfs out of the dam to the river as we bypass inflow to the reservoir. We are anticipate that this release will last through the three-day-weekend. We are back to running a full tunnel through the Alva B. Adams Tunnel under the Continental Divide. That means we are bringing about 550 cfs over from Granby and the west slope of the C-BT Project and into Lake Estes. We are releasing about 280 cfs from Estes through Olympus Dam to the Big Thompson River. However, as we run more water through the power section, those visiting and living along the Big Thompson River will notice a change. TONIGHT we will cut back releases to the Big T by 20-30 cfs. Currently, the Big Thompson has a flow of about 280 cfs. By Friday morning, that will be reduced to about 255 cfs. Project water from Estes is being sent through our southern power arm to generate electricity and to pump water up to Carter Lake. We are sending out about as much as we are bringing in, so Lake Estes should not see much fluctuation over the holiday weekend. In fact, Estes has risen just slightly and is currently at an elevation of 7471. Pinewood Reservoir, between the two powerplants on the southern section, is seeing inflow from Lake Estes via tunnel and canal. We are pulling a little more out of the reservoir to pump up to Carter Lake. So those around Pinewood this weekend might notice it dropping slightly. Currently, Pinewood is at an elevation of 6573, 7 feet below full. It has dropped just over a foot today. Carter, on the other hand, has been going up just a bit. With the pump on and the cooler weather, we've been able to gain back a little elevation. Today, the reservoir is at an elevation of 5708--about three and a half feet above where it was this time last week. All boat ramps at Carter are in the water. The South Boat Ramp, though, is only open to smaller boats. What we are not pumping up to Carter we are sending back to the Big Thompson River. We are delivering it into the river at the Big Thompson powerplant at the canyon mouth, next to The Dam Store. That means that not much is going into Horsetooth. Last night, we were still running about 130 cfs into the Horsetooth, but as we have continued to meet demands downstream on the Big Thompson, the flow north to Horsetooth has dropped over the course of the day to about 50 cfs. Inflow to Horsetooth will remain around 50 cfs through the weekend. Meanwhile, demands out of Horsetooth have been up. They jumped up considerably at the the end of last weekend, hitting the low 600s earlier in the week. They dropped off slightly into the 580 cfs range and have remained about about 586 cfs all day. With little going in and water users taking their water from Horsetooth Dam, the reservoir is dropping. It is currently at an elevation of 5395, about three feet down from this time last week. It is dropping at a rate of about 6 inches a day. That is typical for this time of year and not a surprise. We are tracking along our projected operations very well. In fact, we are higher than we have been this time of year in some of the more recent years gone by. All boat ramps are definitely in the water and will remain so well past this holiday weekend. That sums up operations for the C-BT as we move into Labor Day. As always, please let me know if you have related questions or concerns. "colorado water" 5:57:12 PM

Climate Change: The earth is a beautifully complex system From The AP via The Pueblo Chieftain: "More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global warming 'tipping point' in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second lowest level in about 30 years. The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that sea ice in the Arctic now covers about 2.03 million square miles. The lowest point since satellite measurements began in 1979 was 1.65 million square miles set last September. With about three weeks left in the Arctic summer, this year could wind up breaking that previous record, scientists said." "cc" 7:28:20 AM

Supply news From The Norwood Post: "It started with the Town of Norwood's innocuous efforts to protect drinking water, but last week the situation reached a boiling point when the Farmers Water Development Company threatened to pull the water it sells to the municipal system. It was the threat of gas drilling around the Gurley ditch and the potential contamination that made San Miguel County and Town of Norwood officials explore the possibility of an ordinance to protect the town's water source, but local ranchers and farmers instead seem threatened by the ordinance itself. Farmers Water has a contract to sell as much as 300 acre-feet of water annually to the Norwood Water Commission for the town's water system, and the town typically consumes about 200 of those acre-feet each year. The organization warned officials that they could rescind that agreement if the ordinance were pursued... "The Town of Norwood has the rights to draw water from the San Miguel River, some 5 cfs (cubic feet per second), but as yet has not created the infrastructure to reverse gravity, and pump the water upward from the designated diversion point. The Norwood Water Commission operates the municipal water system and is in the midst of an expensive upgrade to the treatment plant that processes the current water supply. The plant has been plagued by problems in the recent past, and has been out of compliance with the drinking water standards. The water in the system is difficult to treat for the exact same reason that it is particularly vulnerable to drilling: it's an open source system. Any surface disturbances, including the normal seasonal snowmelt cycles, affect the water as it enters the system to be treated." "colorado water" 7:16:53 AM

Whitewater park for Palisade? From The Grand Junction Free Press: "The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service will support Palisade building a whitewater park in the Colorado River, but only if the design allows enough water to flow to accommodate endangered fish, said the director of the federal endangered fish recovery program. "We've always supported this project, if it can provide adequate passage for the endangered fish," said Bob Muth, director of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program." More from the article: The town needs permission from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issues a permit for the town to build the park. These actions are necessary because the park is proposed in the middle of critical habitat for four endangered fish -- Colorado pikeminnow, razorback sucker, bonytail chub and humpback chub. The U.S. government just spent $18 million building four fish ladders, said Patty Gelatt, fish and wildlife biologist for the Fish & Wildlife Service. Fish ladders are canal-type bypass structures designed to allow fish to swim around dams in a river. Since 1996 when the first fish ladder opened on the Gunnison River around the Redlands diversion canal, 127 endangered fish and 90,000 other native fish have used the Redlands fish ladder, Gelatt said. The last thing the federal government wants to do is permit a structure that would impede the flow of endangered fish, Gelatt said. Now, the federal agency requested the town to model a new design of the whitewater park that was submitted in June. Sarmo said the town shouldn't need to do that and spend the money because all the information the federal agency needs has already been provided. More coverage from The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. From the article: Palisade's plans for a whitewater park in the Colorado River seem to be going nowhere, prompting town officials to push the project to the back of the line of municipal projects. Federal officials have told the town they're unlikely to issue the positive biological opinion needed to win approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Town Administrator Tim Sarmo said. "And they can't assure us that if we did certain things, we'd have a permit," Sarmo said. "It's gone on too long and without assurances, without assistance and without proactive help. We're out of time, out of money and out of patience." The town has told the federal agencies involved in the project that it won't provide any more documentation for its project and that it wants a determination about whether a permit will be approved... This past winter, Palisade sounded the river to build a two-dimensional map of the section of the river near Riverbend Park that it wants to use for the whitewater park. Federal officials asked the town to arrange rocks in a chevron formation, which is believed to offer the best opportunity for fish to swim their way upstream. The town agreed, but federal officials asked them to run the model again, Sarmo said. Time, however, is catching up to the project, and it's fast disappearing, Sarmo said. To move ahead, the town needs the permit by Sept. 15. "If they don't issue it by then, I'd like to know why," he said. Work has to begin in the riverbed by Oct. 15 in order to be done by the spring runoff of 2009, he said. More Coyote Gulch coverage here. "colorado water" 7:04:13 AM

Tamarisk control update Here's an update on the use of tamarisk leaf beetles for tamarisk control, from The Durango Telegraph. From the article: Tamarisk, or salt cedar, is a native of Eurasia introduced to North America by nurseries that sold the small tree as an attractive, quick-growing ornamental. However, without any natural predators, the trees spread rampantly from front yards into river corridors and beyond. Since its first introduction, the tenacious plant has seeded itself all over the West, displacing more than 1.6 million acres of willows, cottonwoods and other native vegetation. It is also estimated that each year the thirsty trees consume 2 to 4.5 million acre-feet of water from Western rivers, water that could meet the needs of 20 million people or 1 million acres of irrigated farmland. Tamarisk also recently set deeps roots in the Animas River drainage, joining Russian olive and Siberian elm, two invasive trees that have been on the local landscape for many years... But now a decades-old effort to bring a natural tamarisk predator into the region is beginning to yield strong results. Tamarisk stands along the Dolores, Colorado and San Juan rivers have taken hard hits in recent years thanks largely to the release of a non-descript green bug known as the tamarisk leaf beetle. In conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Dan Bean, of the Palisade Insectary, first explored bio-control of tamarisk in 1987. At that time, Bean discovered Diorhabda elongata deserticola Chen, a beetle native to China and Kazakhstan that subsists exclusively on the invasive tree. A decade of study went into the beetle. When land managers were confident the bug would feed only on tamarisk, it was approved for open release in 2001. Initial test releases of the bugs were conducted in Delta, Utah, and central Nevada, where hundreds of acres of tamarisk were rapidly defoliated by the bugs. In 2004, beetles from Delta where transported to Moab and Horsethief bench outside of Fruita. Not only have those local transplants thrived at the expense of tamarisk, they have started to spread through the region and chewed through many of the invasive trees in their wake. "The beetles in Moab and in Horsethief Canyon have taken off," Bean said. "In 2008, they blasted their way up the Dolores River and are past Bedrock and have reached as high as McPhee Reservoir. They've also started to sweep across from Monticello and down into the Cortez area." Beyond having a huge appetite for tamarisk leaves, the tiny beetles are well suited to the Southwest, which is similar in latitude to their native range in Asia. Further south or north, introduction efforts have been hampered by poor reproduction by the bugs. "Regionally, the effort has exceeded expectations," Bean said. "We expected that the beetles would present a mild challenge to tamarisk and open the way for some natives to return. We didn't realize that we'd see complete defoliation of large stands of tamarisk." However, there are some concerns that this biological solution could cause some problems of its own. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has objected to releases of the beetles in the Animas River drainage because of the endangered southwest willow flycatcher. In an ironic twist, the flycatcher nests in tamarisk when the native willow has been displaced. However, Bean doubts the validity of this claim. "There's no evidence at all that the beetles harm the birds," he said. "In fact, there is evidence that they provide an additional food source. The concern is that without willows or tamarisk, the birds will have no nesting sites." Bean also disputed any danger of the beetles making a host jump and developing a taste for native plants. He noted that no species are even remotely similar to tamarisk, and when the beetles are finished with a stand they virtually disappear. "They leave the area when the plants are defoliated," Bean said. "They get up in the wind and they're gone. I always tell people that this is a bug that would rather commit suicide than switch hosts." More Coyote Gulch coverage here. "colorado water" 6:58:35 AM

Draft EIS released for Windy Gap Firming Project Reclamation has released the draft environmental impact statement for the Windy Gap Firming Project which the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District hopes will lead to the construction of the proposed Chimney Hollow Reservoir, according to The Fort Collins Coloradoan. From the article: Federal officials have released the draft Environmental Impact Statement for Chimney Hollow Reservoir and the Windy Gap Firming Project, which would solidify water supplies for some Northern Colorado cities. The draft EIS document looks at four alternatives for the project, which is intended to shore up Western Slope water supplies for participating water districts and municipalities, which include Loveland, Greeley and Longmont. The lynchpin of the project is Chimney Hollow Reservoir, which would hold 90,000 acre feet of water, about as much as Carter Lake... The reservoir is the alternative preferred by the Northern Water Conservancy District and the municipalities. Northern Water officials have begun reviewing the document, but so far have found no surprises, said district spokeswoman Jill Boyd. "From the analysis we've seen we believe this is a viable project," Boyd said. The reservoir would be built on land purchased by the Northern Water Conservancy and Larimer County in 2004 from Hewlett-Packard Co. for $7.8 million... If the project is approved, reservoir construction could begin in 2011, officials say. It could be open for recreation in 2015 or 2016...Comment on the document will be taken by the federal Bureau of Reclamation through Oct. 28. More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here. "colorado water" 6:47:32 AM

Mining From Market Watch: "Colorado Goldfields Inc. initiated two projects to assess alternative water treatment technologies in the Cement Creek watershed of San Juan County, Colorado, one of which is in conjunction with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. These projects and our pursuit of green energy sources for our sites demonstrate our environmental stewardship and intent to decrease future production costs. "One project tests the Rotating Cylinder Treatment System(TM) (RCTS) at a proposed district-scale water treatment facility near Gladstone, Colorado. The U.S. Government is providing the bulk of the project's funding. Testing is being performed by Ionic Water Technologies, Inc. of Nevada. CGFI is providing test work locations, equipment, water containment vessels, and personnel. "Separately, CGFI will be testing an Ionic State Modification (ISM) system, developed by Blue Sky Water Treatment Technologies, Inc., to potentially treat the water discharge at the Company's Gold King site." "colorado water" 6:38:57 AM

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