Friday, August 11, 2006

GSA: Managing Drought and Water Scarcity in Vulnerable Environments EurekAlert: "Geoscientists from around the globe will gather next month to address 'Managing Drought and Water Scarcity in Vulnerable Environments: Creating a Roadmap for Change in the United States.' The conference, convened by the Geological Society of America, takes place 18-20 September at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center, Longmont, Colorado, USA...Conference outcomes will include recommendations for changes in policy and practice. A document will be developed after the meeting for use in supporting congressional visits, letter-writing campaigns, and other efforts to accomplish policy change." Category: Colorado Water 6:13:25 AM     Trout Creek water for conservation? The Mountain Mail: "An Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District plan to purchase land, water and a reservoir at the base of Trout Creek Pass received preliminary support last week from Chaffee County Commissioners. Commissioners held a special meeting Thursday to consider the district request for county support. Formal support enhances the district application for a Colorado Division of Wildlife grant worth as much as $8 million to pay for the project. The project calls for placing about 2,200 acres in a conservation easement to be used in perpetuity for agriculture and wildlife habitat. The land, mostly owned by Paul Moltz, who also owns the water rights and reservoir in the deal, is located east of the Arkansas River Valley near Johnson Village... "Glenn Everett, water district board of chairman, said the project would keep one of the oldest water rights in Chaffee County - the Moltz 1872 right on Trout Creek - tied to land in the county. It would also protect habitat for hundreds of deer and elk that graze on the property. 'One of the main things we've talked about through the years,' Everett, a former county commissioner, said, 'is keeping open space and protecting our water and this does both.' He confirmed this is the first conservation easement the water district has been involved with. Water rights in the deal are enough to irrigate 600 acres, Everett said. But the district hopes to retain the flexibility to occasionally interrupt irrigation and use the water in other ways, such as to complement the Buena Vista supply in dry years." Category: Colorado Water 6:07:28 AM     Oil and gas drilling Rocky Mountain News: "The 14 parcels of roadless Forest Service land leased for energy development Thursday went for premium prices compared with bids on unprotected areas. The top bid on a roadless area was $300 per acre for 1,117 acres in Mesa County near Grand Junction, said Vaughn Whatley of the Bureau of Land Management. The average price on the 118 parcels offered, totaling 139,555 acres, was $32.97 per acre, but the bid on many parcels was $2 an acre - the lowest allowed - Whatley said. The identities of the oil and gas companies that purchased the leases weren't available, officials said. The 14 roadless parcels, about 14,400 acres and 11 percent of the land drawing bids, were promised roadless protections by the Bush administration in 2005. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., Rep. John Salazar, D-Colo., and Bill Ritter, Democratic candidate for governor, had asked federal officials to withdraw the roadless parcels from the lease sale, but received no response." Category: 2008 Presidential Election 5:57:43 AM     Fountain Creek management The increased flows in Fountain Creek have changed the uses of the stream in Pueblo, according to the Pueblo Chieftain. From the article, "Ask someone on Pueblo's East Side their opinion of the Fountain Creek, and they're likely to tell you it stinks - literally and figuratively. In the past 10 years, Colorado Springs has averaged 10 spills a year releasing millions of gallons of untreated sewage into Fountain Creek. The continuing flood of sewage has pushed the condition of the creek to the forefront of residents' and politicians' attention. The spills are the impetus for federal lawsuits against Colorado Springs brought by Pueblo District Attorney Bill Thiebaut and the Sierra Club, and have galvanized some East Side residents by giving them two things that community activists say are long overdue: a cause and a pulpit. In the city of Pueblo's 2003 survey of almost 400 East Side residents, storm water drainage was rated 19th out of 29 problems confronting the neighborhood. Ross Vincent, senior policy adviser to the Sierra Club says that today drainage would probably rank much higher on the list of East Side priorities, given the attention that has been brought to the Fountain by the spills... "Experts close to the Fountain Creek issue said E. coli readings in the waterway have been relatively static for years, and the water quality downstream from Colorado 47, including the East Side, is actually better than it is upstream from there. Over the long term, the greater concern, some experts say, is the potential for flooding on the East Side from increased runoff in the Fountain Creek if the astronomical growth projections for Colorado Springs over the next two decades are accurate. Although they say the quality of water in Fountain Creek is no worse today than it has been historically, health officials still say it's unsafe for anyone to have direct contact with the water in the creek. Sources of E. coli bacteria, which is not a pathogen itself but an indicator of other possible disease carrying bacteria in the water, are naturally present in the Fountain. They include runoff from upstream and pockets of wildlife living along the river. When rain or increased flow kick up bacteria in the creek bed, concern over bacteria increases, according Scott Cowan, an environmental health specialist with the Pueblo City-County Health Department's environmental health division... "Vincent of the Sierra Club said the stigma associated with the condition of the Fountain has further isolated the East Side from other parts of town. He said the division already exists in the sense that Interstate 25, U.S. 50 Bypass and the physical barrier of the Fountain Creek create borders for the neighborhood. However, he said there's a silver lining in the Fountain headache. 'It's created an opportunity for a table large enough and broad enough to hold all of us who are interested in the future of the Fountain Creek,' he said. 'The first step is to ask ourselves what it is we want this stream to look like in 10-15 years.'" Category: Colorado Water 5:54:20 AM     Global warming? Is the planet getting warmer? Scientists are trying to do the science around that question. Here's an article about warming and the Greenland Ice Sheet, from the San Francisco Chronicle. From the article, "The vast ice cap that covers Greenland nearly three miles thick is melting faster than ever before on record, and the pace is speeding year by year, according to global climate watchers gathering data from twin satellites that probe the effects of warming on the huge northern island. The consequence is already evident in a small but ominous rise in sea levels around the world, a pace that is also accelerating, the scientists say. According to the scientists' data, Greenland's ice is melting at a rate three times faster than it was only five years ago. The estimate of the melting trend that has been observed for nearly a decade comes from a University of Texas team monitoring a satellite mission that measures changes in the Earth's gravity over the entire Greenland ice cap as the ice melts and the water flows down into the Arctic ocean... "Next to Antarctica, Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory, is the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth and holds about 10 percent of the world's supply. The increasing flow of fresh water -- most of it from glaciers melting on Greenland's eastern coast -- is already beginning to change the composition of the ocean's salt water currents flowing past Northwestern Europe, the scientists say. The result could be a critical change in the composition of the main ocean current that flows past Europe's northern edge, blocking off warmer waters that normally flow there and -- ironically -- making Northern Europe's weather colder than normal, at least temporarily, while the rest of the globe continues warming. The report on Greenland is being published today in the on-line edition of the journal Science by the University of Texas scientists at Austin, including Chen, aerospace engineer Byron Tapley and geologist Clark Wilson. According to the researchers, surface melting of Greenland's ice cap reached 57 cubic miles a year between April of 2002 and November of 2005, compared to about 19 cubic miles a year between 1997 and 2003... "If the Greenland ice cap ever melted completely -- a highly unlikely event, at least in the foreseeable future -- the scientists estimate it would raise world's sea level by an average of 6.5 meters, or about 21 feet, more than enough to drown all the world's low-lying islands and even some entire nations, like Holland... "Only last March two University of Colorado physicists used the same satellite system to measure melting of ice on the Antarctic continent. Although earlier evidence using other techniques appeared to show that the East Antarctica ice sheet was actually thickening, satellite data gathered by Isabella Velicogna and John Wahr at Boulder found that melting -- primarily from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet -- had turned at least 36 cubic miles of ice to fresh water each year from 2002 to 2005... "Both the Texas and Colorado groups have been obtaining their data from two satellites known as GRACE, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, which fly in orbit 137 miles apart and determine with extraordinary accuracy just how the mass of even small regions of the Earth change as ice melts and flows away from the land to the sea. The GRACE satellite mission is due to end next year, but the Texas team is awaiting NASA approval for a new and improved satellite system to continue the work, using laser beams rather than microwaves to measure ice cap melting, Chen said." Category: 2008 Presidential Election 5:41:07 AM

© Copyright 2006 John Orr. Last update: 12/29/06; 12:03:04 PM.