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Friday, March 21, 2008
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Here's an update on the shiny new fish ladder on the Colorado River at the Price-Stubb dam near Palisade, from The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. From the article:
At least two endangered fish species will gain access today to the highest reaches of the range, locked off for the past century by the Price-Stubb Dam. Chocolate-brown water from the Colorado River on Thursday morning trickled down the fresh gray concrete of the fish passage at the mouth of De Beque Canyon. By today, the detour will fill with water from the river, giving the Colorado pikeminnow and the razorback sucker a detour around the dam, letting them swim the river as high as Rifle. Whether any of the fish take immediate advantage of the $10 million passage around the Price-Stubb through the muddy Colorado waters might not be known immediately. Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said they will check a fish ladder upstream from the Price-Stubb to see how well the passage is being used. In any case, the pikeminnow, once called "white salmon" for their annual migrations up the Colorado River, don't start moving upstream until the tail end of the runoff, sometime in June or even late July.
If the fish gain new access using the fish passage, they'll negotiate 190 pylons arranged in 38 chevrons of five pylons, or baffles, each. The pylons, the bulk of their 8 1/2 feet buried deep in the riverbed and cemented in, will slow the waters of the river to a speed that the fish can negotiate. Each baffle is about 15 feet from the next one. The passage stretches to 600 feet. "That's two football fields; it's a long distance," said Mark Wernke, design and construction chief for the Grand Junction office of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which is in charge of the project. The main stem of the river, meanwhile, will rush by alongside the passage on a ramp that will send the river downstream in a fast-moving sheet. Boaters will be warned away from the Price-Stubb area of the river by caution signs upstream at the Island Acres section of the James Robb Colorado River State Park, and a log boom will cross the section of the river just above the passage, Wernke said. The passage will be entirely submerged when the river is running high, but much of it will be visible when water is low, as it was Thursday, running about 1,900 cubic feet per second.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
7:33:35 AM 
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From The Denver Post editorial staff: "The Post supports House Bill 1161 in its current form. We had reservations about the bill as introduced, but it has been substantially improved by its sponsors, Fort Collins Reps. Randy Fischer and John Kefalas, after repeated meetings with mining industry representatives, local officials and environmental groups...But mounting concerns over global climate change have spurred new interest worldwide in nuclear power. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized subsidies for up to six new reactors in the United States. Meanwhile, China, India and Japan are looking at nuclear to reduce their dependence on coal. That surge in demand has sparked renewed interest in Colorado uranium, especially in a new 'in-situ' process that promises to mine uranium more cheaply and with less environmental disturbance than the old open-pit mines... The trick is to be sure that the new mines are monitored to ensure they meet water standards. And that's where HB 1161 comes in...Fischer, an engineer, and Kefalas have worked diligently to craft a balanced bill that won't ban uranium mining in Colorado but will help ensure that the water supplies vital to agriculture and municipal use aren't sacrificed in a new mining boom. It deserves to become law."
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
7:20:45 AM
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Here's a recap of yesterday's meeting of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District. The board received a briefing on the Arkansas Valley Conduit according to The Pueblo Chieftain. From the article:
As proponents of the Arkansas Valley Conduit try to nudge their project forward, they have a great example of what it means to get the project evaluated through the National Environmental Protection Act. The Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District on Thursday received the information firsthand from the agency that most likely would evaluate the conduit, as Jaci Gould, Bureau of Reclamation area resources manager, described the process that Colorado Springs, Fountain, Security and Pueblo West are going through with Southern Delivery System.
Gould did not answer questions specifically about SDS, but outlined the process under which the conduit also would be scrutinized. "We're trying to understand the complexities of the project we want done," Southeastern Executive Director Jim Broderick told the board. "We've got a long way to go."
The NEPA process is started when a water provider proposes to connect to or use facilities controlled by the bureau. Meetings in affected communities determine the scope of the NEPA evaluation, which is required under a 1969 law and serves as a way to give public disclosure to the impacts of a project, Gould said. In some cases, such as Aurora's contract for excess capacity storage and exchange, the bureau does an environmental assessment that can lead to a finding of no significant impact. Any project with a pipeline would go immediately to an EIS, however, because there is going to be an impact, Gould said. In the EIS, alternatives are analyzed against a "no-action" alternative, because the bureau assumes the applicant would take some sort of action if it were unable to gain federal approval. "No-action" simply means there is no action on the bureau's part, Gould said...
In the case of SDS, the bureau held scoping meetings in 2003 to gather public concerns about the impacts. The alternatives then are developed, sometimes by mixing and matching different components, or by looking at ideas Reclamation initially did not consider...
The applicant also must pay for the engineering involved. MWH Engineering, which has 200 offices in 36 countries, prepared the voluminous reports used in the SDS draft EIS. The company was paid by Colorado Springs, which so far has spent $14 million on studies, but takes direction from the bureau, Gould explained. SDS has a 60-day public comment period, which is standard for the bureau, Gould said. Again, more complicated projects could require more time, sometimes years, she added. While the bureau is working with other agencies to sort out overlapping technical issues, it does not use its work to help the applicant obtain other permits...
"You don't get a vote on NEPA," Gould explained, emphasizing that changes in the final report would be based solely on new technical information.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.
Category: Colorado Water
7:14:41 AM
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From The Jackson Hole Star Tribune: "Federal officials have extended the comment period on a proposal to open nearly 2 million acres of federal land in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado to commercial oil shale development. The deadline for comments on the draft proposal was Thursday. The Bureau of Land Management has decided to accept comments for 30 more days after getting requests from water managers, conservationists and local governments in Colorado. The BLM has proposed opening federal land in western Colorado, eastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming to oil shale development. Experts estimate nearly a billion barrels of oil could be recovered from the shale once the technology is perfected."
Governor Ritter is telling the feds to slow down on oil shale development, according to The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. From the article:
Gov. Bill Ritter encouraged the Bureau of Land Management on Thursday to hold off on allowing commercial oil shale development in northwest Colorado, citing the "serious risk" of "tremendous adverse impacts" on the state's water, wildlife and public lands. In a letter to the BLM, Ritter said the federal government should wait until private companies can develop safe and efficient ways to develop commercial oil shale prior to permitting commercial development on federal land. "It is premature for the BLM to make any decisions that allocate federal land to a commercial leasing program through its resource management plans or otherwise," Ritter said. Ritter's letter came in response to the BLM's Oil Shale and Tar Sands Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, released in December...
The agency's preferred scenario called for the development of nearly 2 million acres of federal land and mineral estate, including nearly 360,000 acres southwest of Meeker and north of Parachute. Ritter called the BLM's preferred scenario "misguided and unacceptable." The governor said at this point the benefits of developing oil shale do not outweigh the need to preserve the region's wildlife, water and environmental resources...
"Yet another boom and bust cycle for energy development will be dire for Northwest Colorado, a region that retains considerable skepticism and frustration over the collapse of the oil shale boom of the 1970s," Ritter said. "Another failed attempt at oil shale development could preclude development of this nationally significant resource for decades."
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
7:04:37 AM
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Here's some snowpack news from The Montrose Daily Press:
Montrose County might not find itself high and dry this spring -- officials are warning the public of possible flooding due to increased snowpack. "Our snowpack is at 123 percent of snow-water equivalent for the Gunnison Basin," said Scott King, well commissioner for the Montrose office (division four) of the Division of Water Resources. The snow-water equivalent refers to the actual amount of moisture contained in the snowpack. "From this point, it all just depends on the weather -- if we get sustained runoff, or if it happens really quickly," he said. A slow thaw would likely result in a more gradual snowmelt and less flooding risk, Mark Young said...
Up to 200 sandbags per person could be available to the public, Emergency Management Coordinator Robyn Funk said. King said federally managed dams on area reservoirs, particularly the Aspinall Unit, were making as much room as possible for additional inflows and checking their spillway structures.
Category: Colorado Water
7:01:15 AM
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© Copyright
2008
John Orr.
Last update:
4/1/08; 8:15:10 AM.
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