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Tuesday, April 1, 2008
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From The Valley Courier: "District Judge O. John Kuenhold on Monday scheduled an October trial for a water case revolving around the management plan for the San Luis Valley's first water management sub-district. District Judge O. John Kuenhold on Monday scheduled an October trial for a water case revolving around the management plan for the San Luis Valley's first water management sub-district. The state engineer and Rio Grande Water Conservation District board that is sponsoring the water management sub-district both approved the management plan but objectors are protesting those decisions to Judge Kuenhold. Attorneys involved in the proceedings likened this case to the lengthy 2006 trial over rules governing new withdrawals from the confined aquifer in the Rio Grande Basin. The Colorado Supreme Court just last week upheld Kuenhold's approval of those rules."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
7:03:36 PM 
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USGS: "Spring may be here, but a chilly 1,529-foot cylinder of ice (cut into meter long pieces) will make its way to Denver to be analyzed and provide clues to the last 100,000 years of earth's climate history. This is a section of what is hoped to be an 11,300-foot column of ice, just over two-miles long. Geoff Hargreaves and Brian Bencivengo, two U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists ... spent over two months helping to obtain the core in Antarctica...The NICL is run by the USGS with funding from the National Science Foundation."
Category: Climate Change News
6:33:24 PM
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We think that it is smart politics for the GOP to go after election wins in New Mexico. They've had success before. From Politics West: "The national chairman of the Republican Party said Tuesday the GOP is targeting New Mexico in the presidential race and is taking sides in one of the state's contested primary campaigns for a congressional seat, reports the Associated Press. In addition, state GOP chairmen from across the country are gathering in the Albuquerque area this week."
McCain has started running ads there. Here's the website if you want to sign up for email from New Mexico.
We appreciate McCain coming out here. Of course we're hoping to highlight water issues in the 2008 election. It would be cool to get a debate or two here in Denver, ask those tough questions, like, "What do you think of prior appropriation?"
Political Wire: "A new SurveyUSA poll in Indiana finds Sen. Hillary Clinton leading Sen. Barack Obama, 52% to 43%."
Political Wire: "A new SurveyUSA poll in Pennsylvania shows Sen. Hillary Clinton's lead over Sen. Barack Obama shrinking over the last few weeks. Clinton leads 53% to 41%. However, compared to an identical poll three weeks ago, Clinton is down two points and Obama is up five, with Clinton's previous 19-point lead cut to 12."
Political Wire: "Sen. Hillary Clinton's once commading lead in Pennsylvania is shrinking, according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll. Clinton now leads Sen. Barack Obama by just five percentage points, 47% to 42%."
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
5:40:18 PM
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From The Telluride Watch: "Although the San Miguel County Commissioners expressed concern over the proposed location of a white water play park on the San Miguel River next to Applebaugh Park in Placerville, the general consensus was that the San Miguel Whitewater Association should move forward with plans in creating a whitewater park somewhere on the San Miguel. A Wednesday's Board of County Commissioners meeting in Norwood, San Miguel Whitewater Association (SMWA) President Bob Gleason presented plans to build a whitewater park along the river banks at Applebaugh Park. The park would include three features, creating recreational opportunities for river users of all types - rafters, fishermen and, especially, kayakers."
Category: Colorado Water
7:32:09 AM
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Here's the latest on the salmonella outbreak in Alamosa from SLV Dweller.
Category: Colorado Water
7:25:55 AM
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Here's a look at new wetland mitigation rules from the EPA and Corps of Engineers. From press release:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today released a new rule to clarify how to provide compensatory mitigation for unavoidable impacts to the nation's wetlands and streams. The rule will enable the agencies to promote greater consistency, predictability and ecological success of mitigation projects under the Clean Water Act. "This rule greatly improves implementation, monitoring, and performance, and will help us ensure that unavoidable losses of aquatic resources and functions are replaced for the benefit of this Nation. This is a key step in our efforts to make the Army's Regulatory Program a winner, and the best it can be for the regulated community we serve and those interested in both economic development and environmental protection," said John Paul Woodley, Jr., Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works. "This rule advances the president's goals of halting overall loss of wetlands and improving watershed health through sound science, market-based approaches, and cooperative conservation," said EPA Assistant Administrator for Water, Benjamin H. Grumbles. "The new standards will accelerate our wetlands conservation efforts under the Clean Water Act by establishing more effective, more consistent, and more innovative mitigation practices." Benefits of the compensatory mitigation rule include:
* Fostering greater predictability, increased transparency and improved performance of compensatory mitigation projects
* Establishing equivalent standards for all forms of mitigation
* Responding to recommendations of the National Research Council to improve the success of wetland restoration and replacement projects
* Setting clear science-based and results-oriented standards nationwide while allowing for regional variations
* Increasing and expanding public participation
* Encouraging watershed-based decisions
* Emphasizing the "mitigation sequence" requiring that proposed projects avoid and minimize potential impacts to wetlands and streams before proceeding to compensatory mitigation
Each year thousands of property owners undertake projects that affect the nation's aquatic resources. Proposed projects that are determined to impact jurisdictional waters are first subject to review under the Clean Water Act. The Corps of Engineers reviews these projects to ensure environmental impacts to aquatic resources are avoided or minimized as much as possible. Consistent with the administration's goal of "no net loss of wetlands" a Corps permit may require a property owner to restore, establish, enhance or preserve other aquatic resources in order to replace those impacted by the proposed project. This compensatory mitigation process seeks to replace the loss of existing aquatic resource functions and area.
Property owners required to complete mitigation are encouraged to use a watershed approach and watershed planning information. The new rule establishes performance standards, sets timeframes for decision making, and to the extent possible, establishes equivalent requirements and standards for the three sources of compensatory mitigation: permittee-responsible mitigation, mitigation banks and in-lieu-fee programs.
Thanks to beSpacific for the link.
Category: Colorado Water
7:22:38 AM
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Here's a look at the new proposed rules on the oil and gas industry from The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. From the article:
Oil and gas drilling in and around municipal watersheds and other public water supplies would be prohibited under a series of highly anticipated energy regulations unveiled Monday. Under the proposed rules, released by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, drilling within 500 feet or five miles upstream of public water supplies, including municipal watersheds, would be prohibited. David Neslin, acting director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, said the watershed protections were included in the draft rules after Western Slope residents raised the issue at public forums. Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, said he was pleased to see the watershed protections included in the rules. "There was a lot of anguish and concern, but clearly the commission listened," Buescher said, "and these rules quite obviously took into consideration the concerns the industry expressed."
Matt Sura, energy organizer for the Western Colorado Congress, said the rules' watershed protections were a good start, but "clearly don't go far enough...It's a step in the right direction, but we believe clean drinking water is the most important resource in the West," Sura said. "We'd like to see that protected by every means possible."
The rules, which are the result of numerous stakeholder meetings with the energy industry and others, also:
- Reduce the amount of time it will take for most oil and gas operators to obtain drilling permits down to 70 days or fewer;
- Require operators drilling within a half mile of occupied homes in northwest Colorado's Piceance Basin to use odor-control devices;
- Close down wells in wildlife migration routes for up to three months of the year unless alterative migration routes are proposed; and,
- Require energy firms to log what chemicals they use and release into the environment.
More coverage from The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. They write:
Proposed regulatory reforms unveiled Monday could provide some relief to people such as [Dee] Hoffmeister. Within a half mile of homes and schools, the rules would limit construction of drilling pits and require odor controls on gas production equipment. The provision also had been part of a "pre-draft" proposal by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. However, the latest provision applies only to the Piceance Basin in northwest Colorado and the San Juan Basin in southwest Colorado, where odor concerns are most prevalent...
The draft rules would preserve a Colorado Division of Wildlife proposal for seasonal drilling restrictions to protect wildlife habitat. But the rules spell out that the limits couldn't last more than three months a year, and alternative protections could be implemented in consultation with the DOW. The Colorado Oil & Gas Association says limits of even two or three months a year could mean the loss of tens of millions of dollars in severance and property tax revenues from drilling in the Piceance Basin. Bob Elderkin lives on Silt Mesa and is a board member of the Colorado Mule Deer Association. He said that in some cases, so-called timing limitations are less effective than employing comprehensive drilling plans under which a company completes drilling in one area and then moves on to the next, so the amount of habitat disturbance at any one time and place is limited. The draft rules encourage the creation of such plans. In response to concerns from municipalities such as Palisade, the rules announced Monday would prohibit construction of oil and gas activities within 500 feet of drinking water sources, for up to five miles upstream of a water supply intake.
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
7:02:39 AM
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© Copyright
2008
John Orr.
Last update:
5/1/08; 7:35:09 AM.
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