Coyote Gulch's Colorado Water
The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land. -- Luna Leopold



































































Urban Drainage and Flood Control District
















































































































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Friday, December 21, 2007
 

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Here's an update on proposed legislation designed to eliminate conservation easement abuses in Colorado from The Denver Post. From the article:

Organizations wanting to hold conservation easements on which a state tax credit will be claimed would have to be certified under legislation that State House Majority Leader Alice Madden plans to introduce early in the upcoming legislative session. Madden plans to base the legislation, which has not yet been drafted, on recommendations by a task force charged with stemming abuses of the state's conservation-easement program. The task force met Wednesday. The certification process is intended to identify fraudulent or unqualified applicants and establish a minimum bar for well-intentioned but marginal applicants.

"This is important to us," said Chris West, executive director of the Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust. "This recommendation came from easement holders. We thought it was one of the best ways to get at the problem." There have been concerns that people are using inflated appraisals and land with questionable conservation value to take advantage of the state's tax-credit program. Task-force chairman Larry Kueter, a lawyer with Isaacson Rosenbaum PC, said a certification requirement is likely to deter people who want to take advantage of the system. "If there's somebody thinking about setting up their own land trust, they know they're going to be scrutinized in the public arena in a way they aren't right now," he said. Madden said certification would make it "pretty much impossible to abuse this system."[...]

Other recommendations by the task force include: Requiring appraisers to submit a copy of the completed appraisal and an affidavit with the Division of Real Estate. The affidavit would include information about their qualifications and about the appraisal; Requiring conservation- easement appraisers to have a specified number of hours of education and state how many conservation-easement appraisals they have valued; Changing the Department of Revenue's confidentiality rules so it can share information with other state enforcement agencies, allowing it to request the Department of Agriculture to review an easement if it has concern about its conservation value or the Department of Revenue to look at questionable appraisals.

More coverage from The Rocky Mountain News. They write:

Colorado would impose fees on conservation easements that qualify for state tax credits and would seek to license nonprofit land trusts that execute the deals, under a set of draft proposals headed to lawmakers next year. The fees would help cover the cost of reviewing the transactions, paying for things such as screening of appraisals by the Division of Real Estate and accrediting land trusts...

The idea is to scrutinize deals early, before the tax credits are claimed, and to weed out land trusts that aren't qualified to protect the land or that are being misused by unscrupulous business people. Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus, and Rep. Alice Madden, D-Boulder, are spearheading the planned legislative overhaul of the program next year. Isgar said he favored as much screening of the deals as possible to ensure that the program can continue. More than 1 million acres have been protected, much of it as a result of the law.

More Coyote Gulch coverage here.

Category: Colorado Water
6:44:08 AM    


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Here's an update on the omnibus spending bill passed last week by Congress, from The Lamar Ledger. From the article, "The bill provides $691,000 to fund evaluations and studies concerning the Arkansas Valley Conduit. The conduit was originally authorized in 1962 as part of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project and is intended to provide water to 42 communities encompassing nearly 50,000 people along the Arkansas River east of Pueblo Reservoir. The total cost of the project is estimated to be $330 million."

More Coyote Gulch coverage here, here and here.

Category: Colorado Water
6:31:55 AM    


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From The Leadville Herald, "Clear Creek Reservoir near Granite reopened to fishing Dec. 15 following maintenance work on the dam. Most of the water was removed from the reservoir during the repairs, but the water level is rising again during winter storage."

Category: Colorado Water
6:23:58 AM    


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Here's a look at the EPA's cleanup order for the Avondale Water and Sanitation District from The Environmental News Service. From the article:

Without the required permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the district constructed a channel 40 feet wide by 400 feet long through a sandbar in the Arkansas River and illegally discharged the dredged material on both sides of the new channel within the banks of the river. The district also illegally constructed a berm across the existing channel of the river northwest of the Avondale Road bridge. The Federal Clean Water Act prohibits discharges of dredged or fill material unless authorized by a Corps permit, but the district took these actions without a permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, despite being informed by the Corps of the need to obtain a permit. The EPA order requires the Avondale Water and Sanitation District to remove all unauthorized material placed into the river and to restore the river to pre-impact conditions. Michael Risner, EPA Region 8 Legal Enforcement Director, said, "EPA is taking this action to protect Colorado rivers, wetlands and lakes and to provide deterrence against future violations of federal laws designed to protect valuable water resources." "The environmental impacts cited here could have been avoided if the district had followed the Corps' guidance prior to commencing their activities," Risner said.

More coverage from The Pueblo Chieftain. They write:

Avondale will cooperate with an Environmental Protection Agency order to restore a segment of the Arkansas River the EPA says was damaged. The damage cited by the EPA was an attempt by Avondale officials to protect wells in danger of being washed out by river encroachment...

"I've met with our attorney, and we will cooperate with the EPA in any way possible," Bert Potestio, manager of the Avondale district, said Wednesday...

The district undertook the project after a 2006 flood washed out a 40-foot-wide section on the north bank of the Arkansas River. The flows brought the river bank dangerously close to two wells that 3,500 people in Avondale rely on for water. Avondale cut the channel through a sand bank that had been deposited after large floods in 1999 and deposited the sand in the berm, Postestio said. The project has kept the river from further cutting into the north bank. The sand bank, located just west of the Avondale Bridge, has been largely covered with tamarisk since it was deposited, Potestio said. "We'd hoped the river would wash it away," Potestio said...

Potestio had contacted the Corps about four years ago, but the district could not afford its share of the $400,000 project recommended to fix the river. The Corps also had no funding available for the project and could only provide technical advice...Any person planning to do work in such waters needs to contact the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Southern Colorado Regulatory Office, 200 South Santa Fe Ave., Suite 301, Pueblo, CO 81003, phone 719-543-9459 before beginning work to determine if a permit is needed.

More Coyote Gulch coverage here.

Category: Colorado Water
6:16:31 AM    


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The Bureau of Land Management released their draft environmental impact statement on oil shale development Thursday, according to The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. From the article:

Commercial oil shale development in western Colorado is expected to supplant all current uses of the land in areas slated for oil shale leasing, urbanize small towns, dramatically affect regional air and water quality, stamp out agriculture, cause a decline in some property values and drive away thousands of recreation-related jobs while creating thousands more oil shale-related jobs. That's the federal government's conclusion in a draft environmental study released Thursday of the Bureau of Land Management's fledgling commercial oil shale leasing program. Called the Oil Shale and Tar Sands Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, the report is available online at http://ostseis.anl.gov.

The BLM has no specific date for when commercial leasing will begin, but BLM spokeswoman Heather Feeney said it will be at least 10 years before construction can begin on any future leases. Of three possible oil shale development scenarios outlined in the statement, the BLM's preferred scenario calls for 1.99 million acres of federal land and mineral estate to be available eventually for commercial oil shale leasing in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. More than 359,000 acres would be available for leasing in Colorado, all of which would be in the Piceance Basin southwest of Meeker and due north of Parachute. If leasing goes forward, oil shale development would preclude all other uses of the federal land where extraction would occur, including ATV use, agriculture and all other oil and gas development, the statement says...

Construction of a single in situ oil shale processing site, similar to that now being studied by Royal Dutch Shell, would create up to 2,900 jobs, producing up to 950 jobs during peak operations, the statement says. Construction of power plants for the in situ oil shale sites would produce up to 3,100 jobs, with up to 330 remaining during plant operations. Coal mines needed to power the shale production process would create up to 1,300 jobs. Housing construction for oil shale workers in the three states would create up to 620 jobs, while such construction for power plant workers would create up to 820 jobs. Coal-mine worker housing construction would account for up to 320 jobs, the statement says...

The government doesn't know how much surface and ground water any method of oil shale extraction would consume, but where the industry acquires water rights, oil shale development "may result in a complete loss of agricultural uses in some areas." The amount of water oil shale would consume isn't known, the government says, because there's not enough information about the kind of technology that could be used to extract oil shale. But the government expects surface water quality in the region to degrade, natural runoff patterns to be altered, hydrocarbons to contaminate surface and ground water in some areas and a possible reduction or complete loss of water flow into some domestic wells. The government also projects a dramatic loss in wildlife habitat where oil shale is developed, and habitat for 14 threatened and endangered species could be destroyed. "What you're describing to me sounds like a natural catastrophe on the scale of a meteor impact," Western Colorado Congress President Bill Grant said. "You're sacrificing a large chunk of western Colorado to oil shale. Is there no alternative to this total destruction to western Colorado?"[...]

The release of the environmental impact statement kicks off a 90-day public comment period on the document. Paper copies will be available at the Grand Junction BLM field office, 2815 H Road today.

More Coyote Gulch coverage here.

Category: 2008 Presidential Election
6:10:06 AM    


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During a Detroit Free Press interview John McCain was asked, "You come from a state that is growing and dry. Michigan is a state that is shrinking and has lots of water. Do you see a time when states in the South and West might want to go after the water here?"

The Senator's answer:

I'm sure they might want to go after it. But I don't see that as a likely scenario, because I think that would be up to the people of these states, and they wouldn't enter into an agreement that would move water out of the Great Lakes to other states. I'm a federalist. I don't think water should be taken from one area to another, unless there's some kind of compact. The Colorado compact, over the Colorado River, was the agreement of every state that was involved [ed. except Arizona]. I would think maybe, in this region, you might see compacts to share the water of the Great Lakes, and how to make best use of the water. But I don't see them willingly saying they'll ship all that water down to Arizona. If they would, I'd work on the pipeline myself. Same thing with off-shore drilling. If Louisiana wants it, fine. But if Florida doesn't, that's fine, too. You really can't force these things, especially when there are environmental issues. I wouldn't want drilling in the Grand Canyon in Arizona, for example.

Category: 2008 Presidential Election
5:56:07 AM    



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