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Thursday, June 26, 2008
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Coyote Gulch remembers the bumper stickers that said, "Don't Californicate Colorado." Now we find ourselves wishing for California's sensible policies on greenhouse gases. grist writes, "How do you return greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 while promoting jobs, competitiveness, and public health? Conservatives in the U.S. Senate think it can't be done. California knows it can. The Air Resources Board has just published their "Scoping Plan." How do they cut 169 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2020? Efficiency, efficiency, renewables, renewables, and even some conservation: Given that the single biggest source of California's GHG emissions is transportation, surging oil prices will make it that much easier for them to achieve this target and increase the savings for California consumers and businesses."
Category: Climate Change News
5:50:48 PM 
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From The Sky-Hi Daily News: "Grand Lake Town Board members voted unanimously in favor of a 6 percent annual water-rate increase for the next 10 years, going into effect in April 2009. The vote followed a 2007 capital improvement plan from Diamondback Engineering's Water Analysis report that identified $2.1 million in needed improvements to the water system infrastructure followed by a water-rate study prepared by the national firm Raftelis Financial Consultants. Included in the capital improvement summary is an additional 500,000 gallon water tank, priced at $983,000, to satisfy Grand Lake's future growth. The 6 percent increase, which will bump up the quarterly in-town water rate from $82 to $147 by 2018, should net the town $1.1 million in a capital fund to ensure 'safe and reliable water delivery' for the future, according to town officials. This figure is based on 'the premise that the town can get low-interest loans on big-ticket items (such as the tank) from the State Drinking Water Revolving Fund, thus greatly reducing the need for a large cash reserve to fund these items,' says a memo from Town Manager Shane Hale to board members."
Category: Colorado Water
5:43:56 PM
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Here's an recap of a recent tour of the site for the proposed Chimney Hollow Reservoir, from The Loveland Reporter-Herald. From the Article:
On Tuesday, among wildflowers and ponderosa pines, a group of local residents toured some open land that, in a few years, is planned to contain trails, hikers and a 90,000-acre-foot lake. The Chimney Hollow Reservoir, which will be built just west of Carter Lake, will transform the nearly empty valley into a functional and recreational body of water. With an estimated completion date of 2015, the reservoir will store water that's been pumped from the Colorado River during high-water seasons for local use in low-water years. And along with the water storage, the reservoir will offer nonmotorized boating opportunities, as well as surrounding trails for hikers, bikers and horseback riders...
Loveland estimates that, at build-out, it will need 30,000 acre-feet of water available to it from myriad sources. A little more than 22,000 acre-feet is now available, and the city has a current demand of 15,000 acre-feet. The new reservoir, which will make room to store more water from the Windy Gap Project, will provide another continuous supply to Loveland and surrounding areas...
"There aren't a lot of reservoir sites left in Northern Colorado," explained Jill Boyd of Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, noting that sloped mountains like the ones at Chimney Hollow are perfect for reservoirs. Also, she added, the reservoir will be environmentally sensitive. Since no river or stream passes through the land, the reservoir will not interfere with any natural flows...
Once the dam is built, it will take two to five years for the reservoir to completely fill up, Boyd said. Along with the reservoir -- which will be open for kayaking, canoeing and other nonmotorized water sports -- the surrounding area will be accessible on about 10 miles of recreational trails. The open space will combine with the nearby Blue Mountain Conservation Area, creating more than 9,000 acres of protected land full of wild plants and animals.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
7:36:24 AM
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From The Telluride Watch: "Boaters and river activists are getting excited for this weekend's First Annual Ridgway River Festival, to be held on the mighty Uncompahgre. In addition to live music, whitewater festivities and kids' events, the festival is an opportunity for the community to learn more about their river and the watershed they call home...The river walk will begin at 9 a.m. at the Rollans Park parking lot. Bill Coughlin, owner of Western Streamworks, will lead participants downstream, discussing the Town of Ridgway's Uncompahgre River Restoration Project, the river trail system, the ecology of the stream ecosystem, the glacial geology of the area, and stream channel dynamics and hydrology...The Watershed Education Tent will be set up at Rollans Park from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Information will be available from several not-for-profit river and whitewater groups such as the Colorado Watershed Assembly, the Black Canyon Land Trust, American Whitewater, American Canoe Association, SavingParadox.org, and Friends of the River Uncompahgre, as well as public lands agencies involved in the stewardship and management of lands within the Uncompahgre watershed. To help celebrate the river, the festival will feature several local musicians. Acoustic artist Christina Callicott starts the show at 11:30 a.m. A semi-acoustic set by groove-rockers Fall Baby follows at 12:30 p.m., and high-school rock prodigies Fair Sickness take the stage at 1:30 p.m. The Red Mountain String Band closes out the show with a set from 2-5:30 p.m."
Category: Colorado Water
7:28:19 AM
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Here's a recap of the recent conference hosted by the Consortium for Integrated Climate Research in Western Mountains (Cirmount), from The Durango Telegraph. From the article:
The conference, which was hosted by the Mountain Studies Institute June 9-12, attracted more than 120 scientists from across the West, as well as assorted others. The conference was sponsored by the Consortium for Integrated Climate Research in Western Mountains, or Cirmount. The goal of the group, in part, is to create a better and expanded network of monitoring stations in high mountain locations. Colorado has only two mountain monitoring stations - one at Niwot, northwest of Boulder, and another in Senator Beck Basin, between Silverton and Telluride, which is maintained by Chris Landry's Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies. The argument for research stations is that the mountains are like canaries in coal mines. In this case, they serve as early predictors of change to come to lower elevations. Already, high-mountain temperatures have increased far faster than in the valleys.
Dozens of presentations on topics related to this and other warming-related issues, were given in Silverton's tin-ceilinged town hall over the course of the three days. Some ideas, though simple in expression, were complex in implications. Such was the case with water. Between 60 to 80 percent of precipitation in the West arrives in the mountains in the form of snow. Even drizzly Seattle depends upon snow in the Cascades. Most impressive of all is the Colorado River Basin, which includes the Animas, Dolores, Uncompaghre and other rivers that cascade off the flanks of the San Juan Mountains. The Colorado River and its tributaries provide vital sustenance for everywhere, from the haciendas of San Diego to the cornfields of Nebraska, up to 34 million people by some estimates.
Water managers have always assumed they were planning for a future that looked like the past. In the West, that's a limited rear-view mirror, with only 100, maybe 150, years of records. But new evidence of climate change is forcing a firm nudge to the idea that the future won't necessarily look like the past. What the future is almost sure to bring is more heat - much more than the rise of recent decades. "The American West will be the epicenter for warming," said Roger Pulwarty, of the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder. Whether the future will bring more snow, or less, remains uncertain. Warmer clouds can carry 30 percent more precipitation, which might mean lots of snow. Unlike the computer models that show heat, forecasts regarding precipitation are more murky. The only clear message is that winter will, on average, be much shorter - as it already is in California's Sierra Nevada, where runoff is typically 20 days shorter. More isolated sampling also finds earlier runoff over the last 30 years in Colorado, but with a stronger signal in the San Juans.
One of the problems with forecasting precipitation as the globe warms is the coarseness of computer models. While several dozen models show broad trends, such as heat, precipitation in the West depends so much upon the interaction with mountains. Earlier computer models showed the Rocky Mountains as only slight bumps, like the highest point in Kansas. But now, computer scientists are working to come up with finer-scale models, which instead of showing grids every 50 kilometers, show them every few kilometers. That still isn't the sort of resolution that will show the verticality of an Eolus, Vestal Peak or El Diente, but it will be a marked improvement.
Category: Climate Change News
7:23:31 AM
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Grand County has struck a deal for water for late summer flows in the Colorado River with the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, according to The Sky-Hi Daily News. From the article:
At the end of Windy Gap's pumping cycle, high river flows this season have satisfied water users, leaving room for Grand County to strike a deal with the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy municipal sub district. Commissioners voted Tuesday to spend about $57,500 for use of the sub district's Windy Gap pumping facility in an effort to put aside 1,500 acre-feet of water in Lake Granby. "It's free river water, no one has ownership of the water at this time," said County Commissioner James Newberry. The water, to be used in 2008 only, may be stored for late summer, when Colorado River flows are the lowest. "We'll be able to release fresh, clean, clear water out of Granby Reservoir into the stream to benefit fish and the river itself," Newberry said...
The deal is considered a breakthrough that exemplifies how East Slope and West Slope water negotiators can come to terms, commissioners said Tuesday. The county hopes the deal might serve as a template for future talks with Denver Water and Northern, both of which are mounting projects to firm up their water rights on this side of Continental Divide. The price covers the cost only of powering the pumps. In other words, the sub district extended use of the facility "at cost." "We had completed our pumping for the year, our pumps were available, and an agreement was made between the county and sub district for the cost of energy," said Noble Underbrink, Northern's West Slope collections systems department manager. The county will be able to have the water released at any rate of flow when it deems necessary...
The municipal sub district within the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District was formed in 1969 to build the Windy Gap Project, completed in 1985. Windy Gap supplies water to municipal and industrial users in northern Colorado. In any given year, storage in Lake Granby must be available, and Colorado River flows must exceed 190 cubic feet per second at Windy Gap Reservoir before water can be pumped to Lake Granby.
Category: Colorado Water
7:07:48 AM
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From The Colorado Springs Independent: "...while the city has acclimated to relying on volatile sales tax, and while it's adjusting to the weakened economy, and while it's working to mend the problem of sales tax 'leakage' (money spent at businesses just outside the city), a Goliath is on the horizon. Namely [Douglas] Bruce, the anti-tax warrior who authored the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR). Bruce, in all likelihood, will get two initiatives on November's ballot. They're aimed at eliminating the Stormwater Enterprise, which Bruce says violates TABOR, but they would affect all city enterprises. If passed, they would make today's budget slashes look like paper cuts. The first ordinance would phase out all payments to the city from its enterprises (Colorado Springs Utilities, Memorial Hospital, the city's golf courses, etc.) over 10 years, and pass the extra cash on to customers. The second would state that city enterprises can only collect charges for 'voluntary customer contracts,' meaning that citizens would have to sign up for an enterprise service of their own free will before they could be charged for it. 'I don't think life will be the same for our citizens if these pass,' says city attorney Patricia Kelly."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:54:31 AM
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Here's a recap of last week's South Platte River Tours sponsored by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education, written by State Representative Mary Hodge, from The Brighton Standard-Blade. From the article:
Earlier this month, the Water Legislative Review Committee joined the Colorado Foundation for Water Education on a tour of the South Platte and was able to see some of the challenges involved. It's generally accepted that much of the water for this growth is going to come from agriculture. Agriculture owns nearly 85 percent of the water rights in Colorado, and the bulk of our water is on the western slope. Much of the water currently being used by eastern Colorado agriculture will need to be reallocated.
A question we asked was: should municipalities just "buy and dry," meaning buy all the available water and dry up the land? Communities dependent upon the agriculture economy can suffer greatly when that economy is crippled. This affects the implement dealers, the grocery stores, the schools and the restaurants. Or is there a softer landing in which a municipality buys or leases just some of the water from the land and asks farmers to lay fallow some fields? I passed legislation in 2006 making this an option...
We started our tour at Metro Wastewater Reclamation. The South Platte River downstream of this plant (64th and York) is largely treated effluent discharged from the plant. Increasing quality standards and how Metro Wastewater is meeting that challenge was the focus of this part of the tour. From there we went to Barr Lake State Park. Barr Lake, until Metro Wastewater started secondary treatment of wastewater in 1965, was filled largely with raw sewage. Three miles away in Brighton, the stench was so bad that a lawsuit was eminent. The lake is still not pristine and is a focus of much testing by Metro Wastewater to continue to improve the water quality. We also learned of the expense involved in treating this water to get it to drinking water standards (reverse osmosis was the treatment of choice, creating its own waste concern). On to Pawnee Power Plant, a coal-fired electrical generating facility that is highly dependent on a secure source of water because steam is required to turn the turbines that generate the electricity. The 2001 drought caused Xcel, the owner of the plant, to add more water to their portfolio, a difficult task on the high plains.
Parker Water and Colorado State University have set up an experimental acreage to measure how much water certain crops need to remain viable when involved in rotational fallowing. They had plots of soybeans, corn and sunflowers under an elaborate sprinkler system that could be programmed for a variety of situations. Along the bus route we were shown examples of "buy and dry" land and some of the results of wells shut down because of a lack of augmentation water. We had speakers on the effect of increasing urbanization on wildlife. Conservation gardens, water development by Northern Water, dual water systems, how diversion dams work and meeting our endangered species compact were also part of the discussion.
Category: Colorado Water
6:49:55 AM
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Here's a look at Colorado Springs' responses to the draft environmental impact statement for their proposed Southern Delivery System, from The Pueblo Chieftain. From the article:
Colorado Springs officials vigorously defend the Southern Delivery System in comments to the Bureau of Reclamation on its draft environmental impact statement for the project...
They also defend Reclamation's evaluation process, which has been criticized by Pueblo County and environmental groups, and say many positive statements for the project were included among the comments by more than 200 people or organizations. "We greatly appreciate the level of support expressed for SDS in the comments submitted to the Bureau of Reclamation over the past 4 months," said John Fredell, SDS project director for Colorado Springs Utilities.
Reclamation officials early on in the process made the point, however, that the comment period would look for new scientific data that might have been overlooked in developing the draft EIS. Reclamation stressed the review period was not a popularity contest, but an opportunity for public disclosure. Letters from Fredell, Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera and Utilities Chief Executive Officer Jerry Forte were among those sent to Reclamation. The letters primarily emphasize points covered in the draft EIS and defend the public outreach process that followed its release. All stress the need for the project because of projected growth in Colorado Springs, Fountain, Security and Pueblo West, the aging infrastructure of other pipelines serving Colorado Springs and the desire of Colorado Springs to develop its existing water rights. Those factors are all included in the statement of purpose and need in the draft EIS, which environmental groups have criticized as too narrow under the National Environmental Policy Act, because the statement does not take into account the needs of the entire project area. Fredell said the draft EIS statement of purpose and need is valid because the four partners in the project may outgrow their present water systems in the next four years...
Fredell, Rivera and Forte all say Colorado Springs has contributed 73 percent of the property tax revenue to repay part of the cost of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project as justification for contracts to use Pueblo Dam. The property taxes actually provide federal reimbursement for about 23 percent of the cost of the Fry-Ark Project, which included building Pueblo Dam and Ruedi Dam, as well as enlarging Turquoise and Twin Lakes.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:40:15 AM
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Here's an article about river sledging from The Aspen Daily News. From the article:
Two small, local river-running companies were given approval by the Pitkin County commissioners Wednesday to run trips down the Slaughterhouse and Toothache sections of the Roaring Fork River. Kiwi Adventure Ko., owned by Scotty Gibsone of Aspen, plans to offer river trips in 8-foot-long rafts with one guide and two passengers per boat...
Aspen Seals, which has been providing "whitewater sledging" trips for the past five years, also came through the process Wednesday to become consistent with county regulations regarding commercial rafting on the Fork. "Sledges" are molded plastic flotation devices customers lie on in the river. They are fitted with elbow rests and handles, and the user can steer one easily simply by shifting his or her weight and using swim fins. "We're swimming down the river with the use of a small board," said Gary Pera of Aspen Seals and White Water Sledging, Inc. "The client who comes to Aspen is perfect for this sport." Aspen Seals runs approximately 200-300 sledging trips each summer, said Pera, who also operates on the Arkansas River.
Category: Colorado Water
6:32:29 AM
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© Copyright
2008
John Orr.
Last update:
7/1/08; 8:10:42 AM.
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