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Wednesday, December 12, 2007
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From The Sky-Hi Daily News: "After looking after the town of Grand Lake's most valuable resource -- water -- for 28 years, Bill Hagemann is, well, going with the flow. The water superintendent's resignation marks the end of an era, taking effect at the start of the new year. He is a gentle giant, a matter-of-fact kind of man. He carries the weight of decades of responsibility in his eyes. 'The town has never been in violation of any state or federal (water) regulation,' he said. 'It's a record I'm proud of because it's always been my main goal: to produce a product that is safe to consume, in order for people to survive,' he said."
Category: Colorado Water
6:58:06 AM 
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From The Mountain Mail, "Although nearly 6 feet of snow fell in the Monarch area and more than 2 feet in other Chaffee County locations, weather forecasters Monday said La Niña continues in the Pacific Ocean. La Niña is the periodic cooling of water in the east-central part of the ocean. It creates a high pressure ridge off the West Coast, pushing moisture laden storms and cold air north of Colorado while allowing warmer, drier air to enter from the south. "Basically what that means is the trend would be that temps would be above average and precipitation near average," a National Weather Service meteorologist in Pueblo who refused to be identified said Monday. "And that's expected to continue into the spring.'"
Category: Colorado Water
6:50:12 AM
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Here's an analysis of Denver Water's relinquishing of water rights on the Eagle River from The Vail Daily (free registration required). They write:
Denver Water, which serves more than a million people in the metro area, had planned to someday use this water for future Front Range customers. But in a legal agreement reached recently, Denver is abandoning most of those rights. In total, it will be leaving 5,750 cubic feet per second of water in our local streams and 40,000 acre feet of water in Piney Reservoir, which translates to millions of gallons of water. Caroline Bradford, a longtime watchdog of water issues in the valley, said so many of the streams and rivers we take for granted would have been sucked dry had Denver ever used its water rights. Having Denver abandon those rights is a remarkable accomplishment for Eagle County, she said. "It would have been a horrible thing," Bradford said. "There would hardly be any water left for us."[...]
The settlement came just before lawyers went back to court to finish a trial that began this summer. Eagle County water managers were challenging the water rights held by Denver Water. Leaders with the Eagle River Water and Sanitation District and the Upper Eagle Regional Water Authority were confident that they could have won the lawsuit, but decided that working with Denver on a settlement would be better for future relations. In the agreement, Denver does keep some water rights in Eagle County, and also would have the right to participate in a possible reservoir project in Wolcott. The settlement also comes while negotiations continue between several water agencies across the state to solve a number of complex water issues and decide how both the Front Range and the West Slope will have enough water for the future. "This favorable outcome is representative of the value of our mediation efforts and sets the stage for more collaboration around water issues statewide," said Dave Little, Denver Water's director of planning...
Denver also gave up water at State Bridge Pump Plant and the Eagle River Pump Plant in Wolcott. Overall, securing water in all these streams is important to the tourist-based economy that drives the area, said Glenn Porzak, attorney for the Eagle River Water and Sanitation District and the Upper Eagle Regional Water Authority.
Denver Water not only wouldn't build what was needed to bring our water to the Front Range, it literally couldn't, attorneys argued. Porzak made the case that it would be impossible for Denver to obtain the necessary permits to complete their projects, especially a U.S. Forest Service permit and a presidential exemption to work in the protected Eagles Nest Wilderness. He also showed how piping water to Denver would actually put Dillon Reservoir over the legal limits of phosphorus, which also would end the project.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:46:29 AM
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Here's some background on a plan to keep water in John Martin Reservoir from The Pueblo Chieftain. They write:
Kansas is reviewing a request by Colorado wildlife and parks officials to use water rights from the Kessee Ditch to maintain a permanent pool of water in John Martin Reservoir. Kansas pledged to meet with state officials next month after being told time is running out on the state's deal at the annual Arkansas River Compact Administration meeting this week in Lamar, according to Water Division 2 Engineer Steve Witte. "There was no decision made, but they are trying to work out the logjam over this issue," Witte said. Colorado has until March 31 to complete the purchase and has already put $700,000 into engineering so far.
The state is working in partnership with the Lower Arkansas Water Management Association, a well augmentation group that would purchase half of the 6-mile-long ditch below John Martin. An interruptible supply plan would provide farmers supplemental water to operate wells in dry years, while supplying a pool for wildlife at John Martin in nine years out of 12. Kansas has not responded to the plan since Colorado first outlined it in 2005. Commissioner Matt Heimerich, who represents Colorado on the compact and chairs the engineering committee, pressured Kansas to make more of an effort to talk to Colorado about the deal, Witte said...
In a more technical matter, ARCA passed clarification of its 1980 operating rules to allow Kansas to receive water from the transit loss account at the same time as compact releases, a move which also reduces future transit losses, Witte said.
The two states also agreed on how to account for evaporative losses on flood water stored in John Martin Reservoir, Witte said.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:36:41 AM
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The Science Blog is running an article about the accuracy of current computer climate models at predicting historical conditions. From the article:
A new study comparing the composite output of 22 leading global climate models with actual climate data finds that the models do an unsatisfactory job of mimicking climate change in key portions of the atmosphere. This research, published on-line Wednesday in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology, raises new concerns about the reliability of models used to forecast global warming. "The usual discussion is whether the climate model forecasts of Earth's climate 100 years or so into the future are realistic," said the lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester. "Here we have something more fundamental: Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? It seems that the answer is no." Scientists from Rochester, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the University of Virginia compared the climate change "forecasts" from the 22 most widely-cited global circulation models with tropical temperature data collected by surface, satellite and balloon sensors. The models predicted that the lower atmosphere should warm significantly more than it actually did.
"Models are very consistent in forecasting a significant difference between climate trends at the surface and in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere between the surface and the stratosphere," said Dr. John Christy, director of UAH's Earth System Science Center. "The models forecast that the troposphere should be warming more than the surface and that this trend should be especially pronounced in the tropics. When we look at actual climate data, however, we do not see accelerated warming in the tropical troposphere. Instead, the lower and middle atmosphere are warming the same or less than the surface. For those layers of the atmosphere, the warming trend we see in the tropics is typically less than half of what the models forecast." The 22 climate models used in this study are the same models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which recently shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore...
After years of rigorous analysis and testing, the high degree of agreement between the various atmospheric data sets gives an equally high level of confidence in the basic accuracy of the climate data. "The last 25 years constitute a period of more complete and accurate observations, and more realistic modeling efforts," said Dr. Fred Singer from the University of Virginia. "Nonetheless, the models are seen to disagree with the observations. We suggest, therefore, that projections of future climate based on these models should be viewed with much caution." The findings of this study contrast strongly with those of a recent study that used 19 of the same climate models and similar climate datasets. That study concluded that any difference between model forecasts and atmospheric climate data is probably due to errors in the data.
"The question was, what would the models 'forecast' for upper air climate change over the past 25 years and how would that forecast compare to reality?" said Christy. "To answer that we needed climate model results that matched the actual surface temperature changes during that same time. If the models got the surface trend right but the tropospheric trend wrong, then we could pinpoint a potential problem in the models."
This is a great illustration of the strong interaction between the physicists (modelers) and empiricists.
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
6:24:13 AM
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© Copyright
2008
John Orr.
Last update:
1/1/08; 1:14:26 PM.
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