Monday, May 28, 2007

Desalination plant for San Diego Cheap federally subsidized water for Southern California is coming to an end. The Colorado River can barely be expected to keep up with growth in Las Vegas, along with new needs in Colorado for oil shale development. Californians are looking to the Pacific Ocean as a source of water now that the costs of desalination are becoming competitive. Here's an article from Processingtalk.com. They write: GE Water and Process Technologies has announced its participation in what will be the largest seawater desalination facility in North America, the Carlsbad Seawater Desalination Plant. GE Water and Process Technologies, Poseidon Resources Corporation, American Water and Acciona Agua have joined together to invest in the final stage of the desalination project to bring a long-term, drought-proof, safe and affordable supply of drinking water to the water-scarce region... The facility, which will draw water from the Pacific Ocean to create a cost-certain, drought-proof supply of fresh water for San Diego County, will dramatically reduce the area dependence on imported water from the Sacramento San Joaquin Bay Delta and the Colorado River... The Carlsbad Seawater Desalination Plant will be located alongside the Encina Power Station and use its existing intake and discharge infrastructure. Over 100 MGD of seawater can be diverted from the circulating water system to supply the desalination facility. The plant source water will be pretreated by the GE ZeeWeed membranes, and then processed through reverse osmosis membranes to produce high-quality potable water. Category: Colorado Water 7:59:28 AM     Glen Canyon Dam celebration Friday Glen Canyon Dam is 50 years old now. Numerous problems have been caused by the dam and some would decommission it. Here's a short article about the dam and a celebration of it's construction in Page Arizona Friday, from the Arizona Republic. They write: If Glen Canyon Dam were a person, it would surely suffer from low self-esteem. It was born of a compromise, the second choice as a storage site for Colorado River water. It lacks the art deco flair and iconic stature of downstream sibling Hoover Dam. Edward Abbey imagined blowing it up in his classic eco-novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, and environmentalists still clamor for its removal. Arizona's Sen. Barry Goldwater, once a staunch ally, said before he died he wished he'd never voted to build it. That's a lot of angst for a 710-foot-tall hunk of concrete... On Friday, residents of Page will mark the 50th anniversary of their community, a true company town that sprang from dusty Manson Mesa for the sole purpose of housing workers on the nearby dam project. Their celebration will acknowledge none of the controversy and sing only the praises of a structure whose departure would take most of Page with it. Not many people had heard of Glen Canyon when site studies began in the late 1940s and early 1950s. No roads led to it, and the only inhabitants were Navajos, whose land included the present Page town site. "Back in 1948, before anything was there, National Geographic explored Glen Canyon and sent an expedition into what is now Lake Powell," said Barry Wirth, regional spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in Salt Lake City. "They reported on the absolute barren desolation and wrote about seeing only a few hogans and Navajos herding sheep. They said it was the most remote spot in the United States, that if it wasn't the end of the world, you could see it from there." Remote as it was, it offered for engineers a good location for a dam and for water managers the deep canyon walls needed to form a reservoir... The goodwill ended sometime after the grass started growing. Environmental groups never wanted the dam built there, insisting it would destroy a priceless ecosystem in Glen Canyon. As years passed, they seized on another consequence: The water released from the dam back into the Colorado River was cool and clear, not the warm, muddy habitat needed by native species. A series of lawsuits forced the government to conduct environmental studies and find a way to blunt some ill effects. By the 1990s, several environmental groups began agitating for the removal of Glen Canyon Dam. In 1997, a reflective Goldwater stunned people with this admission: "I have to be honest with you. I'd be happier if we didn't have the lake," the former senator said in a PBS miniseries based on the book Cadillac Desert. "I'd vote against it. I've become convinced that, while water is important, particularly for those of us who live in the desert, it's not that important." Category: Colorado Water 7:49:36 AM     SB 07-220 The Colorado State Senate passed and sent to Governor Ritter, SB 07-220 [pdf], Concerning an Increase in the Powers of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, and, in Connection Therewith, Specifying the Establishment, Operation, and Financing Procedures of Subdistricts of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, according to CBS4Denver.com. From the article: The Senate approved and sent to Gov. Bill Ritter a plan that would allow a Rio Grande Water Conservation subdistrict to charge fees that opponents say would drive some farmers in the San Luis Valley out of business. Lawmakers said without the fees, the state water engineer might have to shut off 5,000 wells because of the recent drought. They said one way or the other, the valley will be forced to idle 40,000 acres of farmland. Rep. Rafael Gallegos, D-Antonito, said the water district petitioned lawmakers to allow them to impose the fees rather than facing a shutdown of the wells and the state should grant their wishes. Category: Colorado Water 7:36:49 AM     Blue River runoff Here's a report about expected runoff on the Blue River, from the Summit Daily News (free registration required). From the article: With water levels in streams expected to rise to their highest level in 10 years, officials are preparing for possible localized flooding and dangerously swift stream flows as peak runoff approaches... The Upper Blue, from Hoosier Pass to Dillon Reservoir, may see the brunt of it, [Summit County emergency manager Joel Cochran] said, explaining that some of the water normally captured for diversion to the Front Range will course down the west side of the Continental Divide instead. Big flows are expected in the Town of Blue River, through Breckenridge and on down to the Blue River inlet. High water could also reach north of the reservoir, along the Lower Blue, where flows are expected to climb as high as 1,800 cubic feet per second (cfs), levels that haven't been reached since the mid-1990s, according to Silverthorne town manager Kevin Batchelder... Frisco is not expecting any significant high water issues this year, according to spokesperson Linda Lichtendahl. Town officials recently reviewed snowpack data and found that the snowpack on Hoosier Pass, the key watershed, is at about 19 inches, as compared to 23 inches last year. Category: Colorado Water 7:05:51 AM

© Copyright 2007 John Orr. Last update: 6/1/07; 6:59:20 AM.