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Monday, March 17, 2008
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From The Summit Daily News (free registration required): "The Silverthorne Town Council decided to continue the Town's financial support for enlargement of the Old Dillon Reservoir. As the partner with the smallest stake in the intergovernmental project, the Town is committed to $53,400 -- or 10.68 percent -- of the maximum cost ($500,000) for the second phase of the expansion. Summit County and the Town of Dillon have already authorized their more substantial contributions. Phase 2 of the project encompasses final design, engineering and permitting, town utility manager Zach Margolis told the council. Basic feasibility studies found no roadblocks, and the next step is formal approval and permitting by relevant agencies: the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Summit County. Actual construction -- at an estimated total cost of around $8.5 million -- will take place in the project's third phase, and could start as early as this summer."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
7:16:50 AM 
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Here's an opinion piece about Colorado Springs' new reservoirs associated with their proposed Southern Delivery System project, from The Pueblo Chieftain. They write:
Colorado Springs, long a critic of a Fountain Creek dam, takes the exact opposite view of the two reservoirs in its proposed Southern Delivery System water project. In the recently released draft SDS environmental impact statement, Colorado Springs plays up the strengths and downplays the weaknesses of dams. Colorado Springs' dams, that is. The first, Jimmy Camp Creek Reservoir, would be built near the geographic heart of the city's fledgling Banning Lewis Ranch housing development. The second, Williams Creek Reservoir, would be built on open prairie southeast of Fountain, about 4 miles east of Fountain Creek.
The first would hold 28,000 acre feet of water carried from Lake Pueblo by the SDS pipeline. It would be a recreational lake comparable in size to Chatfield Reservoir southwest of Denver. The second would hold the city's treated wastewater. Colorado Springs would trade the return flows for a like amount of fresh water out of Lake Pueblo. No recreation is planned. Costs aren't cited as a barrier to either dam. And there's also little handwringing about any environmental concerns. Instead, there's this: The proposed Jimmy Camp Creek Reservoir would anchor a 700-acre park that "would result in major benefits to recreation opportunities" for Colorado Springs city dwellers. And this: The proposed Williams Creek dam would offer "incidental flood control (that) would carry downstream in Fountain Creek and Arkansas River." And even this: Clear water scour is of little concern.
The issue of scour - clean water that hungrily chews up creek bed - is familiar to anyone who attends meetings on Fountain Creek's future. It is often cited as a key obstacle to a dam. Of course, a fix would be to stabilize the creek below a dam. On cue, Colorado Springs says, "Williams Creek would be designed with engineered channel improvements to reduce geomorphic effects."[...]
Hydrologic models suggest that damming Williams Creek would result in as much as a 6 percent reduction in flood flows on Fountain Creek through Pueblo. Moreover, when combined with a pledge to require flood detention on all new developments, the project would - presto - "be beneficial" in reducing flood threat, Colorado Springs trumpets. Of note, however, Colorado Springs says a Williams Creek Reservoir wouldn't be needed until at least 2020 or later, according to the SDS report. There's no such delay for Jimmy Camp Creek Reservoir. The city asks to move almost immediately on the urban playground, dubbed in the SDS report as "Jimmy Camp Creek Reservoir and Park."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
7:06:46 AM
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Here's an update on irrigator reaction to the process of establishing the proposed new efficiency rules in the Arkansas Valley, from The Pueblo Chieftain. From the article:
Irrigators say progress is being made in meetings with state officials over proposed surface irrigation efficiency rules. Others have reached an understanding with the state on the need for the rules, if not the final form they will take. The Arkansas Basin Roundtable this week heard an update on some of the meetings Division 2 water engineer Steve Witte, State Engineer Dick Wolfe and Colorado Water Conservation Board Executive Director Jennifer Gimbel have staged with key groups in recent weeks. Wolfe and Gimbel, who both took office after Witte proposed the rules, have slowed down the process of putting the rules into effect. Rather than hearing from state officials, the roundtable heard from some of the harshest critics of the rules, which Witte proposed last year. "At least they are listening to us," said Don McBee, an irrigator who farms at the end of the Fort Lyon Canal near Lamar...
Dale Mauch, former president of the Fort Lyon Canal, said farmers on every major canal met with the state officials recently and explained differences between irrigating from a well or a pond, and how that could change formulas that ascribe 75 percent efficiency to sprinklers versus 50 percent for flood irrigation. "When you don't have the ability to turn that switch on and off, you can't manage the water more efficiently," Mauch said. Farmers have found that the ponds that feed sprinklers leak, and that they must still use their allotted water in rotation. Most farmers have found savings in labor instead, Mauch said...
The farmers left the state with "four or five pages" of questions, however, and will meet again in the future. Farmers are concerned about limitations because it could hurt them in the marketplace, Mauch said. "We are in direct competition with Western Kansas," Mauch said. Terry Scanga, manager of the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District, said the state is collecting data to show how improvements like sprinklers are affecting return flows. Scanga has been critical of the rules and how they could affect irrigators in all parts of the Arkansas Valley. In his conversations with state officials, Scanga learned that urban runoff is not part of the study, because it was never part of the Kansas case. He said Kansas has raised the issue of surface efficiency verbally, but has not put its concerns in writing. Future disputes between the states could be settled by arbitration and Colorado has to be prepared, Scanga said. "There are two pieces," Scanga said. "First, we have to make sure we have studies, and if we see in those studies there is a reduction, we have to have an approach like the efficiency rules." While sprinklers could lead to increased consumptive use on ditches that are water-short, they are useful in many cases simply to reduce the cost of irrigation, Scanga said. The roundtable is scheduled to hear from state officials at its next meeting at 10 a.m. on April 9.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:59:05 AM
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Here's an update on the manmade flood through the Grand Canyon a couple of weeks ago, from The Salt Lake Tribune. From the article:
A manmade flood that gushed between these cliffs a little more than a week ago churned up coffee-creamer-colored clouds of sand from the bed of a normally green river, heaving new beaches ashore the way ancient floods did every year. At the same time that it seeded sheltering sandbars for an endangered fish, the 60-hour deluge drained $4 million from households that tap the river's hydroelectric power, from Phoenix to the Salt Lake Valley. Water blasting through four release tunnels raised the Glen Canyon Dam's output from a routine 14,000 cubic feet per second to a galloping 41,000...
"We know we need to keep studying, but we also know this is going to work," Park Superintendent Steve Martin said last week while smiling at a massive new sand mound burying the trunks of tamarisk trees. He's pressing the U.S. Interior Department for routine spring floods whenever Utah's Paria River dumps enough sand below the dam. "It's clear that we need to do these flows every time we have the sediment." Under typical weather conditions, that would be about every two years - enough for the highly erosive Paria to dump about two-tenths of sand that the pre-dam Colorado would have collected in a single year...
But those who manage the dam don't agree that the rationale is proven. Randall Peterson, Upper Colorado resource manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, puts the hydropower plant's troubles in terms of a homeowner still trying to pay off the investment. "You're working less hours but still have to pay your mortgage," he said. Previous tests in 1996 and 2004 had mixed results for different reasons. The 1996 test surprised scientists when it showed they needed new sand and couldn't rely on years of accumulation, which might have washed away first. The 2004 test showed that the Paria's average annual dump was only enough sand to fortify the upper reaches. Thanks to months of storms, this year the river had twice the new sand, and it showed. Slicing through the current on a raft during the flood, Martin dipped an oar in murky waters that in most springtimes he would see straight through. The submerged wood disappeared from view. It was a good sign...
But the Park Service's fortunes are at least as murky as the floodwaters. The agency and environmentalists would like not just springtime floods but steady flows for months afterward to calm spawning and rearing fish - a costly proposition when hydroelectric turbines need rapidly ramped-up flows every afternoon to meet fluctuating air-conditioning demands. Aligned against them are competing federal interests that built the dam to win the West. Their power surges from 400,000 household electric meters across the Intermountain and Southwestern states. National Park Service managers point to their congressional mandates to preserve park resources and endangered creatures such as the humpback chub, a species of fish. Water and power interests counter that Congress mandated something else entirely when it authorized the Glen Canyon Dam construction. "There's a significant legal question as to whether they can bypass the turbines for any purpose," said Don Ostler, Utah's representative to the Upper Colorado River Commission, the board that administers watershed allocations. Congress in the 1950s mandated maximum low-cost power generation. Lesley James of the Colorado River Energy Distributors Association said that either routine floods or steady summer flows are out of the question. "It is not feasible to continue to advocate for one of these bypass tests every year or every time there is a tributary input." It's easy to divine this clash's wellspring. The government's Western Area Power Administration is charged with recovering dam construction and operation costs through power sales. Many of the communities that qualify for Colorado River power as nonprofit utilities are rural towns and Indian reservations, but metropolitan Phoenix also benefits. Such substantial Salt Lake suburbs as Bountiful, Murray and Tooele rely on the dam.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:48:50 AM
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© Copyright
2008
John Orr.
Last update:
4/1/08; 8:13:10 AM.
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