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Thursday, July 3, 2008
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They're having a discussion of priority and groundwater up on at Colorado's Little Water War. colodesert writes, "This page is intended to solicit comments, and about the reasons, for the repeal of Colorado's water law, specifically, the 1965 Ground Water Management Act, and the 1969 Water Rights Determination and Administration Act. Post comment in support, or opposition; or post comments on what YOU think Coloraodo's water law - the most important law concerning our most precious resource - should look like.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:35:43 PM 
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colodesert (via Colorado's Little Water War) doesn't think there is enough water in the Poudre and West Slope projects to deliver the 40,000 afy that Northern is hoping for from the Northern Integrate Supply Project.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.
Category: Colorado Water
Category: Colorado Water
6:27:23 PM
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From email from Reclamation (Kara Lamb): "As everyone has probably noticed, snowmelt run-off finally started peaking this last week. As a result, our releases from Ruedi Dam were increased in stages corresponding to the inflow the reservoir was receiving. This week, inflows to Ruedi have been dropping off. Consequently, we have been cutting back our releases. Today, we cut back releases another 50 cfs (about 2 hours ago at 1 p.m.). With the Rocky Fork Creek running around 48 cfs, there is about 377 cfs in the Fryingpan right now. Tomorrow morning, we will curtail releases one more time, again by about 50 cfs. With the Rocky Fork's contribution, by mid-morning tomorrow, there should be about 307 cfs in the Fryingpan River below Ruedi Dam."
Also from Ms. Lamb: "Snow melt run-off into Green Mountain Reservoir is peaking. As a result, we are both storing and releasing water to the Lower Blue River. The reservoir is currently at an elevation of 7947--only three feet down from full. We are releasing about 1100 cfs, currently, to the Lower Blue."
More: "We currently have over 300 cfs coming into Horsetooth Reservoir. The water elevation is still above 5400--we're at 5405 today. We've gone up a little bit in the past month from 5404. We are starting to see the snow melt run-off on the Big Thompson River drop off a little bit. Early this morning, we scaled back releases from Olympus Dam on Lake Estes to the Big T River. We've dropped about 50 cfs from around 505 to 455 cfs in the Big T.
The water level elevation in Carter Lake is remaining steady at 5726."
Category: Colorado Water
5:23:25 PM
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Here's an article about Reclamation's Risk Assessment for the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel, from The Leadville Chronicle. From the article:
The BOR highlighted findings that it is highly unlikely that the blockage near and below the Pendery Fault will have a sudden release of water, and that any release would occur over a period of weeks and months. Furthermore, if the upper blockage failed rapidly, a sudden release of water through the lower blockage and engineered bulkheads is also highly unlikely. In the event that the upper blockage were to rapidly fail, the findings state that water levels in the lower portion of the tunnel would rise and dissipate in the surrounding gravel and rocks, creating seeps that are similar to what has been occurring in the area for years. The monitoring wells nearby could experience an artesian flow. The assessment also found the hillside above and around the LMDT to be quite stable, even with potentially significant increases in water levels in the hillside...
The public and government agencies are now invited to submit technical comments to Reclamation by July 31, 2008. Comments may be submitted to Les Stone, Bureau of Reclamation, Great Plains Regional Office, P.O. Box 36900, Billings, MT 59107-6900 or lmdtra@gp.usbr.gov. The final report will be filed and adopted by the BOR by the end of September.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.
Category: Colorado Water
5:22:42 PM
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From The Environmental News Network: "Effective and affordable interventions that provide the global population with access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation are needed if water-borne diseases are ever to be controlled. This is the conclusion of a WHO report entitled 'Safe Water, Better Health', released last week (26 June). The report provides for the first time country-by-country estimates of disease caused by poor water quality, sanitation and hygiene. It finds that children, particularly in developing countries, suffer a disproportionate share of the disease burden caused by unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation. The WHO estimates that almost ten per cent of the global disease burden is caused by unsafe water and sanitation and that the economic return of investing in improved access to safe drinking water was ten-fold."
Category: Colorado Water
7:08:07 AM
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From The Salt Lake Tribune: "The cost of hauling away the Moab tailings by 2019 could exceed $1 billion, according to the latest estimate by the U.S. Energy Department, the agency managing the cleanup. Congress ordered updated cost projections based on a cleanup timetable that is nearly a decade shorter than the DOE's. The department had been planning to spend about $30 million a year through 2028 to remove the leftover uranium waste piled up on the banks of the Colorado River outside of Moab. U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, said the new cost estimates are "radically different" from the projections of a couple of years ago. 'I question why doing the project more quickly will cost more money,' he said."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: 2008 Presidential Election
7:00:26 AM
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Bayfield is planning to move dirt for their new treatment plant starting on July 14th, according to The Pine River Times. From the article:
July 10 was the date for something to start happening, Town Manager Justin Clifton told town trustees on June 17. This week he said it will be July 14. "It's when we will have final approval from the universe of people who are making this so difficult to move forward," he said. "July 10 would have been the earliest possible date to issue the notice to proceed (to the contractor). We decided to issue that on July 14" since it's a Monday. That will be the notice to proceed, he said. The contractor will have to mobilize equipment on site, and actual dirt work should start fairly quickly after the 14th...
The construction contract is for just under $5.4 million. But with engineering, property acquisitions, electric service upgrade and other costs, the total cost is listed at $7.1 million. "Luckily we were very aggressive in raising what seemed like almost $1 million more than what we needed," Clifton reported. "That 'extra' money is saving us the headache of scrambling for more money this late in the game." The town has $7.4 million for the project - a $5 million loan from the Colorado Water and Power Authority, a $1.4 million grant from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, a $300,000 federal Community Development Block Grant, and $700,000 from the former Bayfield Sanitation District. Clifton said $700,000 is a conservative estimate of sanitation district money available for construction versus operating costs. "We are waiting on a sanitation district audit to determine how much capital reserve money they had to transfer," Clifton said on June 17. "I thought in the beginning that we would over-shoot our funding needs and be able to pay for the Gem Village lift station without additional financing. That no longer looks likely," he said. The lift station and transmission line to the new plant is the preferred alternative to also expanding or replacing the small Gem Village sewage lagoons. The cost for the line and lift station is estimated at around $1 million.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:53:59 AM
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From The Summit Daily News: "The Colorado Division of Water Resources, Water Division 5, in cooperation with Colorado Mountain College is sponsoring a public education class regarding the continued need for enforcement of permitted well use and potential curtailment of wells for the 'expanded use' of ground water not allowed by the terms and conditions of an exiting well permit. The 'well-use enforcement' class will be held Tuesday, July 29, at the Colorado Mountain College building, Room 206, located in Breckenridge, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Staff from Water Division 5 will present information on proper well use and be available to answer question regarding previous, present, and future well enforcement activities in the Blue River Basin. The SYN # for pre-registration is 36590."
More from the article:
This protection against injury may be accomplished through a Plan for Augmentation. Summit County Government and the Vidler Water Company have established such augmentation plans under decrees issued by the Division 5 Water Court. With the availability of these existing plans, all wells being used for purposes not allowed under the terms and conditions of an existing well permit are expected to seek coverage from either plan in order to operate legally or simply comply with the existing use limitation of the well.
Category: Colorado Water
6:46:56 AM
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Here's an article about the Reclamation Risk Assessment for the Leadville Mine Drainage Tunnel, from The Pueblo Chieftain. From the article:
For the time being, there's no imminent danger from a blow-out, and several scenarios show failure of huge plugs in the tunnel would create a trickle over time rather than a dramatic burst, according to the study by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation...
However, there's still more work to be done to determine who will ultimately have responsibility for implementing procedures to take care of the problems. "I don't know what will happen if we have failures in the future," Bureau of Reclamation Great Plains Regional Director Mike Ryan said Tuesday. "One of the questions we'll have to look at in the longer term are what levels we need to maintain the mine pool." Ryan and other Reclamation officials answered questions from the Leadville community at two meetings Tuesday, one day after releasing a final draft of a risk assessment study on the Leadville Tunnel. The public will have 30 days to comment on the report, and it will be completed by the end of September, Ryan said. Still unresolved is the issue of authority...
Ryan stressed that the study looked at only the Leadville Tunnel, not surrounding mining districts connected to the tunnel. The scope of the study was limited to human safety and property damage, not levels of contaminants considered harmful to the environment...
Around the portal near the Arkansas River, there are numerous sinkholes that began developing in the 1950s and into the 1970s that resulted in a plug about 150 feet long being put in the tunnel beginning at 466 feet from the portal. The upper blockage is 80-200 feet long, about 4,000 feet from the mouth of the tunnel, in an area where some cave-ins were reported as early as 1955. The result is a mine pool of somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million gallons of water, said Dick Wiltshire, chief engineer for Reclamation on the study...
There may be other blockages in the Yak Tunnel, part of the EPA Superfund site, above the Leadville Tunnel, and those blockages may create inflows of contaminated water. There is probably merit to Lake County Commissioners' suggestions to flume clean water from Evans Gulch away from shafts or adits leading into the Leadville Tunnel. At some point, more pumps and pipes may be needed. "I've lived and worked in the Arkansas Basin for 30 years, and I don't want the Arkansas River contaminated by what's happening in Leadville," Wiltshire said. "I know where the water goes. It goes into Pueblo Reservoir." Reclamation's study was reviewed and endorsed, with minor recommendations, by engineers Randall Jipson of the U.S. Geological Survey, Bob Elder and John Abel. While the situation is not completely understood, the engineering used in the report is sound, they said.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:40:00 AM
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From The Fort Collins Coloradoan: "The public comment period on a draft Environmental Impact Statement for Glade Reservoir and the Nor-thern Integrated Supply Project has been extended 45 days. Officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided to increase the comment period until Sept. 13 in response to requests for more time to study the 702-page document and about 4,000 pages of technical reports, said Chandler Peter, who is overseeing the EIS process for the Corps...The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, which has proposed building NISP in cooperation with 15 regional communities and water districts, has no problem with the extension, said spokeswoman Jill Boyd."
Here's an article about the June 17th public meeting on NISP, from The Brighton Standard-Blade. They write:
In contrast to the Fort Collins meetings during which politicians were allowed to speak prior to citizens, the Greeley session opened with an announcement that speakers would be interspersed, with no preference accorded to elected officials. With public comment running about 2-1 for the project, the arguments pro and con centered on the growing need for agricultural and culinary water versus potential damage to the Cache La Poudre River, and subsequently the Fort Collins economy.
First in a long list of speakers was former Fort Collins mayor pro-tem Gia Jeanette, Also the former manager of water utilities for the town of Milliken as well as a current water board member for Fort Collins, Jeanette appeared on her own behalf, in opposition to the project. Discussing the economic feasibility of the envisioned Glade Reservoir as it relates to Fort Collins, Jeanette raised the issue of higher total organic carbon loading in the Poudre River water versus what is already stored in the existing Horsetooth Reservoir. "That TOC is something that is much harder to treat by the drinking water plant for the city of Fort Collins, and it would be for any municipality receiving that high TOC water. It might possibly cause the city of Fort Collins to spend millions of dollars improving their water plant," Jeannette said...
Weld County Commissioner Rob Masden expressed his support for the project from both a historical and property rights perspective. "I think we can learn from history," Masden said. "Looking back, what has happened with water projects here in Colorado, and the droughts that we have had since 2002, I think that if the Narrows dam had been built, and Two Forks, at least one of those, if not both of them, we wouldn't have the situation we have now. We have thousands of wells that are shut down along the South Platte River," Masden said. "This water running through Fort Collins, and all the economic development tied to it, you know, sorry, but somebody owns that water, and it's not the people that are enjoying it with rafting and everything else. They don't own any of that water. They are using somebody else"s private property right."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:17:59 AM
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From The Pueblo Chieftain: "Bacteria levels in Fountain and Wild Horse creeks remain at unsafe levels and residents are advised not to wade or fish in either creek. Sarah Bruestle, public information officer at the Pueblo City-County Health Department, said Wednesday the unsafe bacteria levels are more likely the result of storm runoff carrying animal feces and other materials into the creeks than because of sewage spills. Weekly testing during the past three weeks has shown a pattern of higher bacteria levels in the summer months, Bruestle said. The pattern applies even when both creeks are flowing at minimal levels."
More from the article:
Residents also are advised to take the following precautions:
Do not allow children to play in the creek, nor allow children to play with toys that have been in contact with the creek water.
Individuals who have come into contact with the creek water should wash their hands frequently with soap and clean, warm water. If clothing or shoes get wet, they should be removed and washed in warm water.
Anyone exposed to the water who has open wounds should contact a doctor or the health department for guidance regarding receiving tetanus and/or other immunizations.
Category: Colorado Water
6:12:21 AM
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© Copyright
2008
John Orr.
Last update:
8/1/08; 10:48:37 AM.
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