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Wednesday, April 9, 2008
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From The Durango Herald: "Durango Water Commission members agreed Monday that the city should start to identify potential recreational uses at the future Lake Nighthorse reservoir...Emphasizing that the commission's primary concern is the 'quality, availability and affordability of water for the citizens of Durango,' Commission Chairman Bill Ramaley agreed that comments for recreational uses at the reservoir should be gathered before funding is secured...Questions such as whether to permit motorized boats on the reservoir and, if so, what type, need to be considered and addressed, he said. Just one mile southwest of Durango, the reservoir offers an 'unbelievable opportunity' for recreation, said commission member Bob Wolff."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
7:08:53 AM 
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Voters in New Castle have turned down a proposal to borrow $8 million for expansion of their water treatment plant, according to The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. From the article:
Residents turned down the measure 332-155, according to unofficial results Tuesday night. Voter turnout was about 38 percent. The tax measure had been proposed as a means of meeting the expanding needs of the fast-growing town. Under the plan, aging filters would have been replaced with a more efficient system that would have boosted the plant's processing capacity from 1.8 million to 3.5 million gallons per day and met anticipated new federal and state water quality requirements. The measure would have let tax revenues be increased up to $800,000 a year to pay for debt related to the project. Mayor Frank Breslin said he wasn't surprised at the measure's defeat. The town council only learned in January that it needed to act on the water plant, which left little time to educate voters, he said. Laws prohibiting the town from campaigning for the measure also presented a challenge, he said. Breslin expects that the town will put the measure on the ballot again in the fall.
Category: Colorado Water
6:57:59 AM
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Here's some snowpack news from The Summit Daily News (free registration required). From the article:
A winter-long trend of above-average snowfall continued in March, as local weather-watcher Rick Bly measured a 10-inch surplus for the month. Tallying daily totals for the National Weather Service at his backyard weather gauge, Bly said 34 inches piled up in March, compared to the average 25.5 inches, based on records going back more than 100 years. The monthly snowfall was far from being a record, but the moisture content in the snow keeps adding up, promising a healthy spring runoff. Bly said the precipitation for the month (the amount of water in the snow) totaled 2.6 inches, about 39 percent higher than average (1.9 inches). That's on track with the season-to-date total for precipitation, Bly said. Through early April, the snowpack at the Breckenridge weather site contained 13.18 inches of water, 39 percent more than the average 9.43 inches. For snowfall to-date, Bly has measured 177.3 inches, against the historic average 137 inches...
Average snowfall in April is 24.7 inches, but the month can bring big snows. the all-time record for April is 72.5 inches in 1900. More recently, it dumped 54.3 inches in 1995. The driest April on record was 1946, with a mere 1.6 inches. Snowfall at the Dillon weather site was near average for the month, with 17.5 inches of snow, melting out to 1.15 inches of water. That's about a half-inch below the average precipitation at the Dillon site...
In the Upper Colorado River Basin, the snowpack is at 129 percent of average. The Gunnison River Basin is 132 percent. The South Platte, crucial to Denver Water's storage and supply system, is at 111 percent. All the state's river basins are reporting above-normal snowpack for this date.
Category: Colorado Water
6:50:25 AM
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Here's a recap of last night's open house in Fountain for Colorado Springs' proposed Southern Delivery System, from The Pueblo Chieftain. From the article:
Some residents who live downstream of a proposed reservoir that would be part of the Southern Delivery System say their concerns about floodplains, wetlands and dam safety are not adequately addressed by a draft environmental impact statement. "There are 700 homes seven miles below the Jimmy Camp Creek reservoir that receive no benefit from this project and another 400 new homes going in," said Eric Mitchell, of Colorado Centre, located east of Colorado Springs. "What's left out is the rest of El Paso County. They excluded us from this process." More than half of the 50 people who attended the open house were from Colorado Centre, and attended on the advice of a letter from the district's board. Mitchell, who has been involved with the district for about 20 years, said Colorado Springs refused to annex the homes and now could build a reservoir that would add expense to homeowners. The area below the dam on Jimmy Camp Creek could become a flood plain, and this is not taken into account in the draft environmental impact statement, Mitchell said. He said flood insurance could add costs of $200-$1,000 per home in the area if it is declared a flood plain. The creation of wetlands in Jimmy Camp Creek, which is normally a dry creek, could also create a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Finally, he said the possibility of the dam - which would hold up to 9.8 billion gallons of water - breaking and flooding the downstream communities is not addressed. "We bear the burden of all those costs without getting any benefit from the water," Mitchell said.
Residents downstream of a second reservoir on Williams Creek, which would regulate return flows of treated effluent to Fountain Creek, also attended the open house in force. They mostly own ranches and want to maintain the character of the land, but are wary of more flows coming down the creeks. "There are so many alternatives that it's hard to say which is best," said Ferris Frost, whose family owns ranchland near the confluence of Williams Creek and Fountain Creek south of Fountain. "We're concerned because we're on Williams Creek. The open house was useful, because I was able to find some contacts within Colorado Springs Utilities to answer my questions."
Meanwhile, leaders from Fountain and Security utilities were on hand to explain how their communities will use SDS. "We need the water to balance our supply and meet the Fort Carson growth," said Larry Patterson, director of Fountain utilities. "The studies say 50 percent of the new growth is coming to the Fountain area." Fountain plans to blend its well water, which is high in salinity, with fresh supplies from SDS in the same way it uses supplies from the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project. New water is essential to the plan for the city of 23,000. Fountain has hedged its bets by signing on with the Pikes Peak Water Authority, which is looking at a pipeline plan by developers Mark and Jim Morley that would bring water leased from Arkansas Valley farmers to communities outside Colorado Springs in El Paso County. Even with leases - one-time sales that do not change the ownership of water rights - Fountain would need to drill more wells if SDS is not built. The city of 23,000 is expanding, annexing nearby developments. Patterson's goal is to drop per-capita water use to the point where an acre-foot could serve three households. That can be achieved because many of the new developments are apartment complexes which use less water for landscaping. "You can't build a city on leased water," Patterson said. Fountain reduced its participation in SDS to just 3 percent a few years ago for economic reasons, but the proposed action of coming from Pueblo Dam is the best option, Patterson said. "I'd call it a natural use of basin resources," he said. SDS is just right for Security, said Roy Heald, water manager. Unlike Fountain, Security cannot expand its boundaries. The community of 18,000 eventually will grow to about 24,000. There are no plans to blend water since wells and water from the Fountain Valley Authority are on essentially independent delivery lines, Heald said.
Meanwhile U.S. Representative John Salazar is asking for an extension to the comment period for the Southern Delivery System, according to The Pueblo Chieftain. From the article:
U.S. Rep. John Salazar wants an extension of the deadline for comments and a public meeting on the Bureau of Reclamation's environmental impact statement for the Southern Delivery System. "I firmly believe an extension of the comment deadline would allow for more meaningful public participation in review and comment on the draft EIS without resulting in a significant delay," Salazar, D-Colo., said in a letter this week to Reclamation.
Salazar asked for a 60-day extension of the deadline, moving it to June 27 from April 29. The same request was made Monday by a coalition of 15 environmental and labor groups, who also cited the large volume of technical information contained in the report and its appendices. Reclamation has taken the request under consideration and has not made a decision, said Kara Lamb, public information officer. Salazar also wants Reclamation to attend a public meeting in Pueblo that would allow for comments to be presented in an open meeting. Lamb said the open houses satisfy the National Environmental Policy Act requirement for public input...
Former Salazar staffer Sal Pace, who is running as a Democrat for state House District 46, said Reclamation turned down his request for a town meeting, which he was trying to organize for Friday. "I was told that the NEPA is not a popularity contest," Pace said Tuesday. "It's clear to me the bureau is run out of Colorado Springs and Aurora, and doesn't care about Pueblo. I'm fairly confident that at some point we will have a public meeting in Pueblo."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:34:49 AM
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From KRDO.com: "Residents who get their water from Teller County Water and Sanitation District One need to boil their water before drinking. 240 homes in the Paint Pony subdivision north of Highway 24 and east of Highway 67 could have contaminated water because three squirrels were found dead in the bottom of the district's 80,000-gallon underwater storage tank. This contamination warning does not affect Woodland Park Utilities customers."
From The Rocky Mountain News: "The turbidity of the water in the Hot Sulphur Springs system rose sharply Monday morning, to 15 times the normal rate, so town officials took the steps that led to the restrictions. Turbidity refers to the amount of suspended substances such as silt or clay in the water that cloud its transparency. "We contacted the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to let them know the turbidity of the water at the filtration system was too high," said Darin Foran, mayor pro tem of Hot Sulphur Springs. State health officials issued the order."
Category: Colorado Water
6:23:11 AM
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© Copyright
2008
John Orr.
Last update:
5/1/08; 7:39:19 AM.
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