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Friday, September 5, 2008
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We started a large publishing process yesterday evening, republishing the Colorado Water category. Pages published in August were missing the blogroll. The process had not finished as of this morning. If you're reading this then things are back to normal.
6:29:45 AM 
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Here's a recap of this week's meeting of the Fountain Creek Task Force, from The Pueblo Chieftain. From the article:
U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar had high praise for the Fountain Creek Vision Task Force and voiced his support for Colorado Springs' stormwater enterprise Thursday. "I think it is a testament to these communities working together," Salazar said, referring to the diverse membership of the task force. "People are working together, and I find that the most positive thing the group has accomplished. I have all the confidence in the world that if you continue the way you have, you will be successful." Two years ago, Salazar launched what he called the Fountain Creek Crown Jewel Project. Thursday he checked in with the task force, which has been the driving force toward that goal...
There were also reports at Thursday's meeting of the task force of some other efforts by the Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Geological Survey and a partnership between Colorado Springs and the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District that is identifying areas that need to be fixed on Fountain Creek. The task force, which formed two years ago, has tried to sew those various efforts together and is getting close, said El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark, who was instrumental in setting up the task force...
Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera told Salazar the community's leaders are committed to fighting a citizen's initiative on the November ballot that would gut a stormwater enterprise that annually funds $16 million on improvements to drainage into Fountain Creek. The initiative was sponsored by state Rep. Doug Bruce, the author of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights. "I am confident the community will not support that initiative," Rivera said. "We have an obligation to protect Fountain Creek and an obligation to the communities' downstream.[per thou] Salazar said the stormwater enterprise was a big step forward and called Bruce's initiative "misguided."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:12:49 AM
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Here's a recap of "River Week" activities up in Fort Collins, from Fort Collins Now. From the article:
As the sun began to stretch into the sky to fend off the brisk morning air, the Poudre River steadily lapped against its banks, welcoming a group of early visitors and guests. Like a newfound celebrity, the river has gained lots of publicity lately from interest groups, government officials and environmentalists battling over issues that affect its future. But throughout last week, its visitors weren't there to make any political point. They didn't dive in naked with signs that spell "Save the Poudre," and they didn't conduct any studies to support or oppose future water storage projects. Instead, the dozens of feet that scattered up along the grass and dipped into the cool water were there to reap the knowledge the river has to offer. In the same week that the Fort Collins City Council officially took a stance against the proposed Glade Reservoir and the Northern Integrated Supply Project, eighth graders at Cache La Poudre paid the river a visit. The river, which stretches just past the football field behind the school, became the students' classroom for science, English, math and several other subjects.
River Week, in its fifth year, is a week where classes are held outside in pure nature and students participate in a variety of hands-on activities. "This is part of our culture," said Jennie Russell, who is in her 27th year of teaching science at Cache La Poudre Junior High School. "It's expected every year. Parents, teachers and students look forward to it."
Category: Colorado Water
6:03:39 AM
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Here's a report on Fort Collins' opposition to the proposed Northern Integrated Supply Project along with Glade Reservoir, from Fort Collins Now. From the article:
Given the proposed Glade Reservoir's potential impacts to Fort Collins' drinking water supply, economy, recreation and environment, a unified City Council on Tuesday decided to slam an initial study of the project and voice its official opposition. On a 6-0 vote, with Councilman Wade Troxell absent because he is on vacation, the council adopted a resolution opposing the Northern Integrated Supply Project, which would divert water from the Cache la Poudre River in summer months...
Among several points raised Tuesday night, council heard that the EIS doesn't address the 223 species of birds found on the river corridor; that it does not fully address the potential economic impacts of a less-full river; that it excludes the city's largest wastewater reclamation facility from its analysis; and that it neglects to note upgrades to that system and another one on Mulberry Street could cost Fort Collins between $75 million and $125 million. City Manager Darin Atteberry said before the vote that the point was to allow the city to comment on the plan, which would affect Fort Collins despite the city's own lack of involvement. "We were really disappointed in the quality of the analysis, as a staff," he said. "We had to look at the EIS in the interests of Fort Collins."
Fort Collins is not part of NISP, which includes Glade Reservoir and a companion reservoir in Galeton that would provide enough water for 80,000 new homes on the northern Front Range. If built, Glade would require the relocation of much of U.S. 287 north of Ted's Place. Atteberry wouldn't comment on any legal options that could allow the city to fight the project. But Mayor Pro Tem Kelly Ohlson said he was committed to stopping it, a sentiment shared by several environmental and conservation groups in town.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.
Category: Colorado Water
5:53:06 AM
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From The Denver Post: "The federal Bureau of Land Management on Thursday issued a final environmental plan to open 2.4 million acres in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming to oil-shale and tar-sands development. The 1,800-page environmental-impact statement immediately drew fire from officials in Colorado -- where 360,000 target acres in BLM's "preferred" approach are located."
More from the article:
Local officials had pressed the BLM to delay any action until such questions as what technologies would be used to extract the oil and how much water and power would be needed are answered. But BLM officials said that some of those questions can't be answered and that the agency needs to move ahead. The BLM's goal, said agency director Jim Caswell, is to "promote economically viable and environmental sound production of oil shale."
Getting at the oil will require more power -- likely the construction of a 1,500- to 2,400-megawatt power plant -- and about three barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced, according to the BLM plan. The federal Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raised questions about the plan because the technologies to extract the oil are still experimental, making it difficult to know the real impact. It did not appear those questions were answered, said Amy Atwood, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity in Portland, Ore. "It looks what they did is remove the word 'draft' and replace it with the word 'final,' " Atwood said. Despite Thursday's release of the final environmental-impact statement, extraction of oil shale won't happen anytime soon. The BLM is still blocked by congressional moratorium from issuing a plan to actually lease the land, and it could be years before the technology to actually extract the oil is perfected.
More coverage from The Glenwood Springs Independent. They write:
The Bureau of Land Management has finalized a plan that would open up about 359,800 acres in northwest Colorado to potential commercial oil shale leasing. About 2 million acres in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah would be available for oil shale leasing under a land-use plan described in a programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS), which was published in the Federal Register on Thursday. Colorado's oil shale deposits are concentrated in Garfield, Rio Blanco and Mesa counties. The BLM will wait at least 60 days after publication of the PEIS before it issues a record of decision approving those land-use changes.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Climate Change News
5:38:52 AM
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From Scientific American: "Greenland, the world's largest island, holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 23 feet (seven meters). Add the ice sheets of Antarctica and the oceans would deepen more than 200 feet (60 meters). Satellite measurements from space and speed measurements on land confirm that Greenland's glaciers are melting and on the move. And although the picture is less clear in Antarctica, the global warming seems to be having an impact there, too. So the question is: How much--and how soon--will sea level rise? New research from glaciologist Tad Pfeffer of the University of Colorado at Boulder and colleagues published in Science attempts to better estimate the possible sea level rise over the next century by measuring the speed at which the world's glaciers--in Greenland and Antarctica but also the many mountain ice sheets throughout the globe--are actually speeding to the sea as well as how swiftly they may melt."
More from the article:
"What would the flow velocities of the ocean-ending outlet glaciers have to be," if Greenland alone was to raise sea level by just six feet (two meters)? "The answer turned out to be huge: about 49 kilometers [30 miles] per year, 70 times faster than those glaciers move today," Pfeffer says, "and three times faster than we've ever observed an outlet glacier to move." Given that Greenland's glaciers are not presently moving anywhere close to that pace--Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier, the fastest, reached speeds above nine miles (14 kilometers) per year in 2005--the researchers also looked at ice that could contribute from the rest of the world. Assuming that the largest remaining ice shelves in East Antarctica--Filchner-Ronne and Ross--will remain intact, sea level rise from all other melting ice and the expansion of seawater as the weather gets warmer over the next century would be somewhere between 2.6 feet (0.8 meter) and six feet (two meters)[~]or nearly twice as much as projected last year by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This does not take into account how much sea level might swell from the metldown of the numerous small glaciers in Alaska, Argentina, Canada and Russia, which already contribute 60 percent of sea level rise from glacial melt. (In fact, Pfeffer notes that they are melting faster and therefore adding to sea levels more rapidly than Greenland and Antarctica combined currently do.) Nor is it clear whether something might suddenly occur to change that upper estimate. "If those two big ice shelves [in Antarctica] go out, then it's an entirely different situation," Pfeffer says. "But there's no good evidence that that's going to happen over the next century."
Based on this historical record and the fact that the Laurentide melted away under summertime temperatures similar to those expected in Greenland by the end of this century, Carlson and his colleagues forecast glacial melting that contributes somewhere between 2.8 inches (seven centimeters) and 5.1 inches (13 centimeters) of sea level rise per year, or as much as a 4.3-foot (1.3-meter) increase by 2100. Current rates are just 0.1 inch (3 millimeter) per year--and Greenland is contributing roughly 0.02 inches (0.4 millimeters) of that rise annually. Pfeffer notes that the Laurentide and other ice sheets that disappeared in the past had an easier path to the sea than the glaciers in Greenland or Antarctica. "The analogies between those past climates and today aren't strong enough to say anything specific about the rate of sea level rise in the next century," he says. The bottom line: sea levels will rise much more than predicted by the IPCC, based on both present understanding of current glacial melt as well as evidence from the geologic record. [ed. emphasis ours] "The IPCC noted that their estimates should be seen as minimum estimates," Carlson notes, "and they are right."
From Canwest News Service:
Ice cover in the Arctic Ocean retreated by nearly 2.5 million square kilometres last month - the single biggest August melt observed by scientists, according to the latest satellite measurements released late Thursday by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. During a month highlighted by the collapse of more than 200 square kilometres of ancient ice shelves off the coast of Ellesmere Island - nearly a quarter of the total area covered by these rare features when the summer began - the Colorado-based centre recorded "the fastest rate of daily ice loss that scientists have ever observed during a single August." The unprecedented August thaw happened at an average rate of 78,000 square kilometres a day - 15,000 square kilometres faster even than last August, during a summer when the Arctic experienced its all-time greatest loss of sea ice.
Category: Climate Change News
5:28:13 AM
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© Copyright
2008
John Orr.
Last update:
10/1/08; 6:32:17 AM.
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