Monday, January 9, 2006

Dolores - San Juan water roundtable Here's an article about the Dolores-San Juan basin water rountable from the Pueblo Chieftain. They write, "Nearly 40 years ago, a plan to provide water to farms and growing cities in Southwestern Colorado was hatched. "Since then, the Animas-LaPlata Project has changed to serve the needs of the environment and two Indian tribes. "What a difference a few decades can make. "The $500 million project is finally under construction after years of efforts in Congress to build it. The 120,000 acre-foot reservoir will serve two emerging needs not even envisioned when the project was first proposed. "Taking a page from history, one of the first orders of business for the Dolores-San Juan Basin roundtable was to invite the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes to join the group... "On the other hand, the district is geographically separate from the other parts of the state. Five small ditches send water across the Continental Divide to the Rio Grande Basin, but it is unlikely more diversions would ever be built. "Rather than a network of rivers that converges into a mainstem, the Southwest corner of the state is a series of four main basins that flow out of the state. Because of the mountain topography, most of the streams in the basin are protected by an instream flow right." Category: Colorado Water 6:48:21 AM     Colorado River Basin The Colorado River Basin is the subject of this article from the Pueblo Chieftain. They write, "Enough water to support more than 3 million city dwellers moves from the west side of the Continental Divide to the Front Range in Colorado each year. Nearly all of it comes from the Colorado River Basin. It's a big reason why that part of the state is watching carefully as regional roundtables work toward forming an Interbasin Compact Committee." Category: Colorado Water 6:34:46 AM     Runoff from oil and gas drilling The State Water Quality board hearing about jurisdiction over storm runoff from oil and gas wells is this morning, according to the Rocky Mountain News [January 9, 2006, "Storm over drilling site water"]. From the article, "The booming oil and gas industry is fighting a proposal that would give state health regulators a role in protecting water threatened by road building and clearing of land for drilling sites. At a hearing scheduled for this morning, a state water quality board will decide whether inspectors for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment should have oversight of the oil and gas industry's storm-water controls. Environmentalists and more than 30 local governments argue that health regulators should oversee the industry, which must disturb land in preparation for drilling. That, in turn, makes the landscape more susceptible to erosion during rainstorms and can send stream- choking sediments into local waterways, harming aquatic life and water quality. While many oil and gas companies take the matter seriously, not all do, activists say. So, having the health department participate in supervising storm-water controls during construction of the sites would add a layer of protection for streams and for local governments that have to treat the water for residents." Category: Colorado Water 6:01:09 AM

© Copyright 2006 John Orr. Last update: 12/29/06; 10:58:38 AM.