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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
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Wi-Fi at the Hyatt costs $9.95. Since there is not much happening today (workshops), at least in public, we're going to abandon ship until later. At least we have the edge network and our iPhone to use to post this. Very slow. It's not looking good for live blogging.
9:12:24 AM 
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Here's a recap of the state legislature's activities concerning water from The Sterling Journal Advocate. From the article:
This week is a big one in the Colorado Legislature for efforts to bring Colorado into compliance with requirements to deliver Republican River Basin water into Nebraska and Kansas. A hearing is scheduled Thursday before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Natural Resources and Energy on Sen. Greg Brophy's bill to drain Bonny Reservoir by converting state-held storage rights to state-held in-stream flow rights. "Passage of this bill will keep us from needlessly pumping 1.6 billion gallons of water a year out of the Ogallala Aquifer to offset the evaporative and seepage losses at Bonny Reservoir," Brophy, R-Wray, said Monday. "We can't value fish over farmers." As of Dec. 31, 2007, Colorado is about 50,000 acre feet short of complying with the compact. Deputy State Engineer Ken Knox said at Bonny's current level of 10,000 acre feet, about 3,500 acre feet is being lost to evaporation.
Brophy and the House sponsor of Senate Bill 28, Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, are hoping to overcome expected opposition from two state agencies -- the Division of Wildlife and the Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation -- which currently lease the water in Bonny Reservoir from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The Department of Natural Resources, the home for both the parks and wildlife divisions, describes Bonny Reservoir as a "recreational oasis" on Colorado's eastern plains...
The Colorado Water Conservation Board also is meeting this week to finalize the annual "projects" bill, which outlines water projects that are recommended to the Legislature for grants or low-interest loans funded through severance tax revenue. The Republican River Conservation District is seeking a $50 million loan to build a pipeline that would move water directly from the aquifer to the state line without evaporative losses. "The pipeline is by no means a panacea, but it is our hope it would be a safety valve that's only used when we are going to be out of compliance," said Gardner, who planned to attend the CWCB meeting to push for the loan's approval. Gardner said the conservation district is in the process of buying water rights to be used in the pipeline.
Meanwhile, an alternate plan for moving water from the South Platte River to the Republican River Basin is being shopped around the Capitol, even though the legislature would not be involved. Arvada water lawyer Tim Buchanan said he is representing a group of about 20 senior water right holders in Logan County who are willing to sell enough water to the Republican River Conservation District to put Colorado into compliance with the compact. The group has formed a limited partnership called South Platte Resources to sell about 10,000 acre feet of water for $60 million that could be piped in the first phase into Frenchman Creek and later about 50 miles away into Chief Creek. "This plan would address both declining water levels in the aquifer and the compact call that Colorado needs to deliver to Kansas and Nebraska," Buchanan said. He noted that the plan also would help keep farmers in business in the event a petition to de-designate the Northern High Plains Designated Basin is successful.
A hearing is scheduled later this year on the Pioneer Irrigation District's petition to put Republican River wells under the same augmentation rules that now govern the South Platte. "If all or a portion of the designated basin is de-designated, the wells withdrawing water from the High Plains (Ogallala) Aquifer and alluvial aquifer of the Republican River will be required to terminate irrigation," Buchanan said. Buchanan said the Republican River Conservancy District declined the South Platte group's offer, deciding to proceed instead with its own pipeline project, so he is looking for other potential buyers in the neighboring river basin. "Water users in the Harmony and Farmers ditch companies asked to find some options for sale of their senior water rights," Buchanan said. "We considered bringing it to the Denver metropolitan area and other options, but this appeared to be the best alternative -- farmers helping farmers."
Buchanan said the water was not offered to South Platte irrigators whose wells have been shut down because they would have to use it as augmentation water to replace depletions from prior pumping. "We have offered other deals to them to lease water, all of which were turned down," said Buchanan, who represented surface water rights holders in their objections to continued well pumping along the Platte in Weld, Adams and Morgan counties.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.
7:05:21 AM
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The Castle Pines Country Club has a new way to treat wastewater and reuse the water for irrigation, according to The Edmonton Journal. From the article:
One man's poop is another man's bottle of water.
It may sound distasteful, but Seair Inc.'s portable wastewater treatment systems transform effluent into something you can drink, all in a few metres of piping and machinery.
The key is ozone gas, a powerful natural sterilant which eliminates harmful contaminants and bacteria as the effluent passes through Seair's proprietary process and helps decompose, er, unwanted organic materials.
Seair has 100 portable sea-container-sized units working in the oilsands and drilling camps which eliminate the need to haul away sewage in trucks. Now the company has designed a new system with a much smaller footprint that improves the quality of pond and irrigation water on golf courses. The first one was shipped recently to Castle Pines Golf and Country Club in Colorado, and with 16,000 golf clubs and more than three million golfers in the U.S., CEO Harold Kinasewich likes his odds of a good score. "With legislation forcing golf courses to use reclaimed wastewater as their source, the need for enriched bacteria-free water is becoming more important for the health and well-being of golf courses and golfers alike," says Kinasewich, a plumber by trade who moved into wastewater treatment from fish farms and agriculture applications when he saw which way environmental regulations were heading. Poorly treated wastewater's high alkaline content can ruin the finely manicured fairways and greens of even the best golf course. Seair's new system increases the dissolved oxygen levels in the water, which gives it a more neutral pH balance. It also helps break down the hard black soil layer which restricts root growth. You get healthier grass and need less fertilizer, which helps the environment, Kinasewich says. "All the U.S. golf courses have water problems, and being forced to reuse water and effluent is a health issue. We are on the cutting edge of the technology, but our biggest problem is convincing people we can treat wastewater in such a small footprint." he says.
The heart of Seair systems is the patented diffusion tower, which produces tiny stable bubbles of ozone, oxygen or carbon dioxide, depending on the application, to create a supersaturated fluid. "The major difference between us and other diffusion technologies is our extremely small (five micron) bubble size, which allows for mass transfer of gas to fluid." It's efficient, economical and low maintenance. The only moving parts are the compressor and the pump, Kinasewich says. Seair's technology is also increasing oxygen levels in oilsands and forestry industry aeration ponds, providing municipal wastewater treatment for smaller communities such as Airdrie and Wolf Creek, and working with Edmonton Waste Management Centre of Excellence to develop more community applications.
Category: Colorado Water
6:49:20 AM
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© Copyright
2008
John Orr.
Last update:
1/31/08; 9:23:23 AM.
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