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Wednesday, April 23, 2008
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Here's the reaction from Grand County regarding Governor Ritter putting his signature on HB 08-1280 this week, as reported by The Sky Hi Daily News:
The legislation, dubbed the "Protect Lease Instream Flow Water Right Bill" among supporters, allows water rights owners to leave their water in a stream or river without the risk of losing it, said Kirk Klancke, Winter Park Ranch Water & Sanitation District manager...
Afterwards, Klancke told the Colorado Water Conservation Board to roll up their sleeves because there's a lot of work to be done. Water right owners can now keep water in the river by working with the state through the Colorado Water Conservation Board, an entity that since 1973 has been the only body allowed to acquire water rights for the sole purpose of letting water continue to flow downstream. The conservation board acquires these rights in a number of ways, by grants, purchases, donations or leases. Klancke plans to approach municipalities and private landowners to initiate a contract. "Everyone has some water they can leave in the stream," Klancke said. "Everyone doesn't need all of their water all of the time...Some people will be paid to leave their water in the stream, but others will do it for free to improve the river's health, he said. "I'm just optimistic that a lot of the municipalities would be elated to have their water rights protected,[per thou] he said. Legal contracts range from $5,000 to $10,000, he said.
The Colorado Conservation Board has a bill in process that could raise $1 million for legal fees. Trout Unlimited also has volunteered to help with legal costs, Klancke said. This is the first water law of its kind to encourage ranchers and municipalities to keep water in the river.
Thanks to Colorado Trout Unlimited for the link. More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
7:49:14 PM 
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Here's the link for the handouts from the recent Aspinall Unit Operation Meeting from Reclamation (Dan Crabtree). He writes in email, "Handouts for the April 24th meeting have been posted on the website [ http://www.usbr.gov/uc/wcao/water/rsvrs/mtgs/amcurrnt.html
]. It may take a few hours for them to appear as they must go through our Denver Server. Once on the web page, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the appropriate handout links.
From email from Reclamation (Dan Crabtree), "The Gunnison Basin snowpack is still holding at 134 percent of normal. With warmer days ahead and in consideration of the large high elevation snowpack, a rapid warm-up could bring the abundant snowpack down in a hurry, making the runoff efficiency very high and possibly stressing reservoir storage capacities. To prepare for this possibly, we need to create additional storage capacity in Blue Mesa Reservoir by increasing releases from the Aspinall Unit by another 500 cfs. This increase will take place on Thursday April 24th and will result in a total release from Crystal of about 3,600 cfs. The Gunnison Tunnel is diverting about 560 cfs, so after the change there will be about 3,040 cfs in the Black Canyon and Gunnison Gorge."
From email from Reclamation (Kara Lamb): "Just an informational note to let you know the current status at Green Mountain Dam. We are currently releasing about 500 cfs to the Lower Blue. That is slighly higher than last week."
From email from Reclamation (Kara Lamb): "As you have probably already noticed, we bumped up releases from Ruedi Dam this morning by 50 cfs. This evening, we will be bumping up an additional 50 cfs. The incremental releases will result in around 330 cfs in the Fryingpan River downstream of Ruedi Dam, 324 cfs from the reservoir. The Rocky Fork is currently adding around 6 cfs. The increase in releases is in preparation for the upcoming spring run-off. The Fryingpan River basin is showing an impressive snowpack this year and we are making sure we have room in Ruedi Reservoir to capture the melting snow. There will most likely be other changes in the next few weeks before run-off begins. I will be sure to keep you posted. Also, we have set a date for our annual Ruedi Operations Public Meeting. This year's meeting will be on MONDAY, May 12 in the Basalt Town Hall at 7 p.m. I will send out a press release announcing the meeting a week before it happens. Please mark the date on your calendar."
Category: Colorado Water
7:37:35 PM
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Conservation groups are proposing a summit in Denver in the fall in an attempt to find the common interests between conservative hunters and fisherman and groups such as the Sierra Club, according to The Denver Post. From the article:
Activists anxious over various issues vital to the state's fish and game have proposed a Wildlife Conservation Summit, perhaps in early autumn when all the Democratic dust has washed out of Denver. The notion is to collect numerous groups and influential individuals under an umbrella of common concerns. Such a gathering might reflect what has become a profound, recent trend in outdoor circles - a serious dialogue among traditional sportsmen and hard-core environmentalists.
This connect has been a long time coming, in part from intransigence on both sides, but mostly through a diabolical effort by special interests that continue to profit by keeping them apart. For those who despoil the public's lands and waters, it has been a remarkably effective strategy: Make environmentalism a dirty word. Armed with lots of campaign money, they've isolated the enviros while bamboozling sportsmen, typically a conservative lot unwilling to act, or even think, contrary to party dictates. Thus deceived and divided, we've watched big-money interests steal our water and rape our land. Now, finally, enviros and sportsmen have come to realize that, despite certain voting preferences and the way we part our hair, there are overwhelming reasons to clasp hands. We increasingly find mainstream environmentalists joining wildlife action organizations such as Trout Unlimited and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation in rushing to the aid of local action groups when the inevitable brush fires explode.
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
7:13:53 PM
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From The Mountain Mail: "Salida City Council members will hear a presentation from Nestle water officials during the regular meeting at 6 p.m. today in council chambers. Nestle and the city may enter a proposed lease for augmentation water Nestle needs to replace bottling water it takes from a natural spring near Nathrop. Council members were briefed April 7 by councilman Jay Moore about a proposed lease. Nestle needs to lease nearly 200 acre feet of water annually from the city and Moore said the company is interested in paying about $1,000 per acre foot."
Category: Colorado Water
7:08:14 PM
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Here's an update on the South Metro Water Authority's needs going forward, from The Rocky Mountain News. From the article:
A major water-supplying authority for the south metro area may need up to 148,000 acre-feet of water to meet projected demands through the year 2060, according to a report by an engineering and consulting firm. At the lower end, the South Metro Water Supply Authority would need at least an additional 75,000 acre-feet of renewable water supplies for the next 52 years, according to a report by CDM, a consulting, engineering, construction and operations company that helped put together the 2007 Regional Water Master Plan for the authority.
The report recommended, among other things, that the authority: Look at potential water needs for the south metro area that currently are not in the authority's service area but will need renewable water supplies; Use local renewable water supplies and expanding water reuse; Preserve deep groundwater mostly as a backup supply during droughts.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
7:03:52 PM
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The use of pervious pavement systems to control runoff and surface pollution is growing. In fact we've installed a demo project in Denver at Wastewater Management. (Email me at coyotegulch [AT] mac [dot] com if you'd like to come see it.) Here's an article on the subject from Stormwater magazine. From the article:
Several low-impact development (LID) techniques are used to mimic predevelopment hydrology and reduce the negative effects of urbanization on waterways. While vegetative LID techniques such as grass swales, buffers, green roofs, and porous landscape detention areas are attractive, they have limited use and effectiveness in significantly reducing runoff volume in existing, highly impervious environments. Permeable pavers and porous pavement are techniques that can substantively reduce stormwater runoff volume and provide detention capacity in highly urbanized areas. Many successful installations of these materials exist around the world, yet comments and concerns about cost, cold-climate function, maintenance, and plowing linger. Communities in the United States are increasingly regulated for the effects of excess urban runoff and are collecting millions of dollars in fees annually to manage hundreds of millions of dollars in backlogged waterway stabilization and water-quality needs. It is time to address these issues and construct our communities in a manner that produces a more functional, sustainable urban environment.
While the words permeable, porous, and pervious are often interchanged, in this article they are used as follows: Permeable refers to water moving through openings between pavers and aggregate. Porous refers to the material allowing water to move through it, as is the case with porous concrete and asphalt that has voids in the material because the fines are removed. Pervious refers to the ability of the surface of the material to accept water.
The first thing I learned is that permeable paver installations with an open-graded aggregate system are based on Roman road construction techniques from 2,000 years ago. Romans would excavate a trench and fill it with a layer of large rock on the bottom, then smaller rock, followed by a setting bed. They would then fit large stones on top of the aggregate layers for the travel surface or a "wearing course." Some sections of Roman roads are still used today with a new asphalt wearing course, although many other sections have been preserved as historical remnants throughout Europe. Roman road construction is the basis of current road construction, but instead of pavers, asphalt or concrete is used as the wearing course...
From a stormwater management perspective, porous asphalt, porous concrete, and permeable pavers[~]all with the open-graded aggregate system[~]are techniques that can restore permeability and infiltration and provide large storm detention in a highly urban environment. Parking lots, alleyways, driveways, fire lanes, and parking lanes on streets are common examples of impervious flatscape areas that can instead be porous or permeable to reduce runoff. Communities can retrofit these areas to help retain the economic benefits of developed land while reducing offsite impacts.
Click through and read the whole article. It's full of technical information and photos.
Category: Colorado Water
7:01:21 PM
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From The Colorado Springs Gazette: "Officials at Lake Pueblo State Park will launch a boat-inspection system Saturday to stop the spread of invasive zebra mussels. The park hired 30 new people and bought new equipment, at a total cost of $1.37 million. Inspections like this have never been done in Colorado before, so boaters may want to pack some extra patience along with the life preservers and cooler when they head to the popular lake this weekend."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:41:00 AM
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From The Greeley Tribune: "The National Weather Service has posted a flood advisory for north central Jackson County in north central Colorado effective until 9:30 a.m., Friday. The Jackson County Sheriff's Office has reported minor flooding along the North Platte River, three miles west of Cowdrey. A horse pasture and fences are under water and the ditches in hay fields along the North Platte are overflowing due to a sizable ice jam on the river."
Category: Colorado Water
6:37:23 AM
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Here's a report from the symposium on weather modification held this week in Westminster at the annual meeting of the Weather Modification Society, from The Rocky Mountain News. From the article:
It's high time the federal government fund research in modifying the weather to bring more rain to the thirsty West and to slow down deadly hurricanes, top scientists said Tuesday. The brainpower is available, instrumentation is vastly improved, but the feds haven't funded weather-modification research since the mid-1990s, Joe Golden, a scientist specializing in atmospheric modification, said at an international symposium being held this week in Westminster. Scientists urged federal funding, especially in light of evidence the West is experiencing thinner snowpacks and global warming may be stirring up more extreme weather. New research also is essential because there needs to be better evidence that either long-standing cloud seeding efforts or newer approaches actually work, they said...
Areas such as Colorado's Front Range, with upslope weather patterns, could be especially promising, they said. Aerosols from power plants and automobiles are changing cloud behavior and keeping clouds from shedding snow in upslope areas, leading to a 10 percent drop in snowpack, Golden said.
One long-standing attempt to bolster rainfall is infusing clouds with silver iodide, which mimics ice nuclei and, the believers say, can induce clouds to make more ice crystals and to drop rain or snow. Proof of whether the infusion can increase snowpack will require the use of research airplanes, state-of-the-art instruments and enough experiments to ensure that it wasn't the natural variability of rainfall that made the difference. Bruintjes's research involves using water-attracting particles such as potassium chloride that occur naturally. Making the particles bigger than they occur in nature can induce larger raindrops that fall more quickly and collide with smaller droplets on their way down, stimulating even more rainfall, he said. "We are at an exciting moment in this field in terms of capability," he said. He noted that efforts are under way in 11 states and in 69 foreign countries to induce greater rain or snowfall. Yet, 90 percent of the money funding the efforts at NCAR come from foreign countries, just 10 percent from the U.S., he said. What humans do inadvertently to change the weather - by releasing fossil fuels, for example - is far greater than purposeful weather modification, Bruintjes said. That's why he's not very worried about purposeful modification efforts disrupting the natural cycle.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:32:10 AM
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Here are Denver Water's summer watering rules, that go into effect on May 1st, from The Denver Post:
The mandatory rules are:
- No lawn watering between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.
- No overwatering that results in puddles in gutters, streets or alleys.
- No spraying concrete or asphalt.
- Leaky sprinklers must be repaired within 10 days.
- No using spray irrigation during rain or high wind.
- Watering is limited to three days a week, but there are no assigned days.
A first offense nets a warning. The fine is $50 for a second violation and $100 for a third. Denver Water could suspend a customer's service for subsequent violations. People who spot water waste in Denver parks can call the city's 311 customer-service line. To report water waste at homes, businesses or elsewhere, call 303-893-2444.
Category: Colorado Water
6:19:48 AM
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Here's an update on the Fountain Creek Task Force's efforts to create an authority to manage the creek and proposed projects, from The Pueblo Chieftain. From the article:
The Fountain Creek Vision Task Force is running out of time to create some sort of authority to develop and fund projects, Pueblo County Commissioner Jeff Chostner said Tuesday. "We need elected officials at the table," Chostner told a committee looking at long-term funding options. "Unless you have an entity to enforce (Fountain Creek rules), it's building castles in the air. I want to see that we have buy-in from elected officials." The task force committee had little success Tuesday coming to an agreement. In May, the group will resume discussions on the geography of a district, what it would have jurisdiction over, how it would be funded and how representatives would be selected. The committee has spent several months looking at other models for flood control or watershed management groups and its recommendations would ultimately be considered by the full Fountain Creek Vision Task Force. Even then, the task force does not have any authority to make a binding resolution...
Tuesday, it appeared to be like eating an elephant one bite at a time for the committee. The first area of contention was whether to include just the 937-square-mile watershed; the watershed plus immediately affected areas, but minus federal lands; or to include all of Pueblo, El Paso and Teller counties. Most of the tax base of a district following the watershed's boundaries would be in El Paso County, since the drainage narrows as it moves through Pueblo County. There are few homes or businesses within the watershed in Pueblo County. But there are health and safety issues for Pueblo, said Dennis Maroney, stormwater utility director. For example, both hospitals are located to the west of Fountain Creek, and some areas of Pueblo that are not in the watershed could be inundated in a major flood. Gary Barber, of the El Paso County Water Authority, suggested a "watershed-plus" boundary that would eliminate areas of the counties that have no connection to the Fountain Creek watershed. Chostner said it makes more sense and is simpler to include all of Pueblo, El Paso and Teller counties rather than trying to sort out how each would benefit.
There was also discussion over whether a Fountain Creek authority should be formed by a vote, or through consensus among existing entities. Gary Rapp, of the Shook's Run Trail Friends, suggested using the Pikes Peak and Pueblo area councils of governments - which cooperated with the Army Corps of Engineers in the $3 million Fountain Creek Watershed Plan - to establish a Fountain Creek authority. Barber said it would be preferable to ask the state Legislature to create a "hand-made" district to cover specific issues on Fountain Creek and then put it to a vote. Voters might not be likely to pass a district, and there is a danger that if an authority were turned down by a large margin, a second vote might not be possible, several people said. Maroney said a similar watershed authority on the South Platte River, the Denver Urban Drainage District, was formed after a devastating flood in 1965, and until Fountain Creek is struck by floodwaters again, people would not be inclined to support an authority...
The group also began discussing what sorts of powers an authority would have, generally agreeing it would not usurp local zoning powers or stormwater control, but would instead encourage wise development through financial incentives. The group also weighed the relative advantages of fees, property taxes and sales taxes. Chostner said the formation of an authority is the most important thing the Vision Task Force is doing. "All the other things, water control and water quality, are subservient to coming up with an entity," Chostner said. "Once that's in place, all the other pieces come together."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:13:50 AM
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© Copyright
2008
John Orr.
Last update:
5/1/08; 7:47:36 AM.
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