Coyote Gulch

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Energy policy: Geothermal

From The Mountain Mail: "In an effort to locate geothermal resources hot enough to generate electricity, Mount Princeton Geothermal recently announced plans for exploratory drilling of six test holes in the Mount Princeton area. Six proposed drill sites are on private land in the Nathrop and Buena Vista areas. Work awaits permit approval from the Colorado Division of Water Resources. State law mandates a comment period for landowners within a half-mile of proposed drill sites. Letters were mailed to each landowner within the specified distance and they may raise 'substantive concerns' about the project until Oct. 24. Before the end of the comment period, the company hopes to contact landowners near each site to discuss the project. When the comment period ends, the company will have 30 days to submit applications to drill, subject to Colorado Division of Water Resources approval."

More Coyote Gulch coverage here.

6:42:33 PM

Governor's Conference on Managing Drought and Climate Risk

Here's a recap of the first day of the Govenor's Conference on Drought and Climate Risk, from The Rocky Mountain News. From the article:

More than 200 water managers, scientists and elected officials gathered for the three-day event, designed to help lay out a strategy for coping with water shortages fueled by growth, climate change and energy development. "We must be careful stewards of Colorado's water supply," said Gov. Bill Ritter. "If we fail, we fail at the peril of our children and our grandchildren."

Colorado, like other states, is hampered in its response to warming because little local data exists on the phenomenon. But a study commissioned by the Colorado Water Conservation Board found that Colorado will warm significantly during the next 40 years, from 2.5 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Summers are expected to be extremely hot, causing water demand to rise and stream flows to shrink, perhaps as much as 20 percent in such areas as the Upper Colorado River Basin. Even as the state continues to warm, its energy industry is growing , [Harris] Sherman said. Western Slope oil shale production is expected to require billions of gallons of new water supplies. But how rain and snow patterns will change is less clear, scientists said.

Existing climate models have difficulty predicting what will occur in Colorado's unique high altitude, according to Brad Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment, which coordinated the research effort. And because the state lies in the middle of the continent, it's difficult to discern how warming will affect weather patterns that shift and change as they move over giant land masses. What is clear, said Joe Barsugli, a scientist at the Boulder- based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, is that water utilities must change the way they forecast water supply and demand. "You can't assume the past is going to be your best guide to the future," Barsugli said. In response to the uncertainty, Colorado's largest water utilities, including Denver, Aurora and the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, are gearing up to do their own risk analysis, to examine how warming will affect the Front Range and its water supplies.

More coverage from The Pueblo Chieftain. They write:

Policies put into place today to counter the worst effects of climate change will take years to take hold, but could reduce the rate of change and improve Colorado's long-range planning, Gov. Bill Ritter said Wednesday. "At no time has our water been threatened so much by drought, climate change and population growth," Ritter said. "As we assess the impact of climate change, water absolutely has to be a part of the discussion."[...]

Ritter called for communities to put new emphasis on planning for drought. "While many communities have developed water conservation plans, drought planning has to be a part of the equation," Ritter said. Ritter tied in his concept of a "new energy economy" with the reduction of greenhouse gases in the future, praising Vestas, a wind turbine manufacturer building plants along the Front Range, including Pueblo, and Conoco Phillips, which is building a major climate and energy research center in Denver. Quoting the late congressman Wayne Aspinall, Ritter said "water touches everything" and has to be central to any discussions of growth in Colorado. He talked about growing up on a dryland wheat farm, taking time off lately to squeeze in fishing trips and the need to furnish water to a booming state population. Ritter called for the state to begin building a framework to determine the scope of obstacles facing water users. He called for innovative solutions...

The conference unveiled a new report by the Colorado Water Conservation Board and the University of Colorado at Boulder that projects vast changes for Colorado agriculture, recreation and cities. The Colorado Water Foundation issued its own report on how climate change affects water. The reports predict a new climate for Colorado that will mean less intense winters, less snowpack, more reliance on rainfall, longer growing seasons and higher temperatures. Harris Sherman, director of the Department of Natural Resources, called for all state municipal water providers to come up with drought plans. "Only 27 percent of the state's water suppliers have drought plans," Sherman said, adding that they are mostly the larger cities in the state. "We need to do better."[...]

Climate change has been incorporated into the most recent phase of the Statewide Water Supply Initiative, which in 2004 predicted an 18 percent gap in meeting future municipal water needs in the state. The state also is looking at a boom in oil shale, uranium, coal and natural gas development that will increase demands on water, particularly on the Western Slope. At the same time, flows in the Colorado River basin are projected to drop 6-20 percent. "Our traditional assessment about the amount, form and location of precipitation has become a moving target," Sherman said.

Climate change will create challenges in water quality as well as supply, said Martha Rudolph, environmental director for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. "We would likely find more water bodies are impaired by the loading of pollutants and water temperature change," Rudolph said. Less snowfall and more rainfall will mean more runoff from urban areas as storms wash contaminants off streets and parking lots and salinity could be increased. If more forest land burns in wildfires, there could be more sediment from erosion flowing into reservoirs. Reusing municipal water on crops could be detrimental to production, Rudolph said.

More coverage from The Denver Post. They write:

The majority of water utilities and providers in Colorado have failed to submit required water conservation and drought plans, state officials said Wednesday The failure raises questions of how prepared Colorado is for the next drought. "Some of this planning may be going on. We just don't know," said Harris Sherman, executive director of the state Department of Natural Resources...

"The law requires filing plans, but the law has no teeth," said Jennifer Gimbel, executive director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board -- which is responsible for water project planning and financing. A water purveyor cannot get state funding for a project without submitting the plans, but if it isn't seeking state money, there is nothing to compel the provider to file. "There is no enforcement mechanism," Gimbel said. Under state law, the approximately 110 utilities and systems that use 2,000 acre-feet of water a year or more -- an acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons -- must file conservation plans with the state. Only 25 percent have done so, according to the state water conservation board. Water providers also also required to have drought plans. A survey of 350 by the water conservation board found only 27 percent had plans...

The water conservation board can provide planning grants and technical expertise, Gimbel said. The major water systems in the state have filed both conservation and drought plans, according to the state water conservation board survey.

Update More coverage from The Cortez Journal:

Colorado water providers are looking at a future that's hot, dry and crowded. To prepare for this future, hundreds of water experts gathered Wednesday for the Governor's Conference on Managing Drought and Climate Risk...

Most large water utilities have drought plans, but three-quarters of the state's municipal water providers don't, Sherman said. He wants opinions from water managers on whether the Legislature should pass a law requiring drought plans from city water providers...

People at the conference got a copy of the Colorado Water Conservation Board's brand new report on climate change in Colorado. It is one of the only reports to try to show the effects of global warming in the state. There is strong consensus among climate scientists worldwide that the Earth is getting hotter, and humans are the likely cause. But scientists tend to shy away from using their global models to predict local climates. The new report reviews a variety of previous studies. It predicts an average temperature increase in Colorado of 2.5 degree Fahrenheit by 2025 and 5 degrees by 2050. In the mountains, that means the climate common at lower elevations will move up toward the peaks. Western Slope valleys will feel more like the desert Southwest, the report says. Most concerning to water managers, the report predicts 6 percent to 20 percent drops in streamflows in the Colorado River Basin, which includes Southwest Colorado.
"colorado water"
6:28:16 AM