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Thursday, October 30, 2008
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Trout Unlimited isn't letting up on the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District and the propose Dry Gulch Reservoir, according to the Pagosa Daily Post. From the article:
Monday afternoon, Andrew Peternell, director of the Colorado Water Project for Trout Unlimited, filed an appeal of Judge Gregory Lyman's September 11 judgment awarding the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District and the San Juan Water Conservancy District an additional water storage right of 19,000 acre feet for their Dry Gulch Reservoir project and the right to pump water from the San Juan River at the rate of 150 cubic feet per second.
PAWSD presently has the right to divert 6300 acre feet of water from the San Juan River for storage and to pump 6.9 cubic feet per second from the river to its Snowball treatment facility. The 150 cfs grant in Lyman's decision represents a more than twenty-fold increase. Significantly, the 150 cfs right is 700% larger than the right the water districts' engineer Steve Harris claimed was necessary to meet 2040 demand in his initially engineering report for the Dry Gulch reservoir. The 150 cfs right would permit the Dry Gulch Reservoir to pump more than 25,000 acre feet of water from the San Juan in less than 3 months. This right was reduced from the original 280 cfs right granted by Water District Judge Gregory Lyman in his 2006 decision which granted the water districts conditional water rights of 64,000 acre feet per year.
PAWSD currently supplies about 2000 acre feet of potable and irrigation water to its 7,000 customers.
It was the water districts' original claim to pump 280 cfs from the San Juan -- an amount permitting the filling of a 35,000 AF reservoir in two months -- that motivated Trout Unlimited to challenge the districts' Dry Gulch project.
Lyman's original decision was a seeming knockout win for the advocates of the 35,000 AF reservoir planned for a site one mile north of the Town of Pagosa Springs. It granted the districts a nearly one hundred year planning period, accepted population growth figures 30% greater than the Colorado State Demographer forecast (and 60% greater than present projections for 2010), and accepted water conservation savings for the year 2100 which had already been achieved in 2003. However, the Supreme Court overturned Lyman' decision in October 2007. If not a knockout, the Court's decision, authored by the Court's water law expert Gregory Hobbs, was a unanimous decision against the 100-year, 64,000 AF decision of the lower court. Hobbs returned the case to Lyman, demanding a more reasonable planning period, reliable population growth projections, and substantiated projections of future water use which incorporate future water conservation.
Hobbs also demanded that the lower court provide finding demonstrating the financial ability of the water districts to actually construct and put into use the water rights conferred on them. The Court did not limit Lyman to facts before him in the 2006 proceedings, but opened the case up to further findings of fact regarding water usage, population growth and the ability of the water districts to actually construct the Dry Gulch reservoir.
Lyman issued his second ruling on the case six weeks ago. The judge reduced the planning period from 95 years to 50 years, and the conditionally water rights for the initial fill from the river from 29,000 AF to 19,000 AF, leaving the water districts 25,300 AF of diversion rights at the Dry Gulch site. Combined with the existing storage of nearly 5000 AF in existing reservoirs within the Stollsteimer watershed, PAWSD would possess over 30,000 AF upon completion of a 25,000 AF reservoir at Dry Gulch. Lyman's decision was a very confident restatement of his previous decision, tailored to a fifty-year planning period. At one point Lyman characterized the Court's Bijou doctrine as "sufficient" to his present case...
Peternell anticipates that the Supreme Court will require briefs from the contending parties this winter and oral argument next spring. He expects a decision from the Court within one year, with the likelihood that the case will be returned yet again to Lyman with more explicit direction from the Supreme Court regarding population growth projections and water usage.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here, here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:51:57 PM 
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Here's a recap of last week's public meeting about Colorado Springs' proposed Southern Delivery System, from the Pueblo West View. From the article:
The impact of the SDS on Pueblo West were outlined during an open house and meeting on Oct. 23 at the VFW Post 5812 building in Pueblo West. SDS is a proposed $1.1 billion project that would carry water from Pueblo Dam to serve Colorado Springs, Fountain, Security and Pueblo West...
The first phase of the project likely would be the water treatment plant at the project's north end in Colorado Springs. That project is the most complex and would take the longest (up to three years) to complete. The next steps in the project would be the connection to the dam and much of the route through Pueblo West, according to SDS Project Director John Fredell and Project Manager Bruce Spiller. Fredell and Spiller did their best to convince the 50 or so individuals who showed up for the presentation (one of two set for Pueblo West, the second was held on Oct. 27) on the benefits of the SDS to Pueblo West.
Among their promises:
To build SDS in an environmentally responsible manner.
To restore land disturbed by the project and mitigate impacts.
To use water rights the cities already own.
There will be no costs for the SDS to Pueblo County or State Parks.
Not everyone was convinced. State Rep. Buffie McFadeyn, D-Pueblo West, said she was opposed to the project and was concerned that Colorado Springs would be able to live up to its promise to pay for the project.
"Colorado Springs Utilities has the ability to pay for the project," Fredell said...
The Pueblo West Metro District already is pondering rate increases for water and wastewater treatment beginning in 2009 to pay for a list of projects. A portion of the money generated by that increase ($1 million) would pay for the installation of a "T" off the SDS pipeline near Pueblo Dam. That would provide Pueblo West an additional water capacity of 12 million gallons a day at the proposed southern access point. If the northern access route was used, that capacity could be increased up to 30 million gallons a day.
If the SDS project was moved to the alternate location and routed through Fremont County, the cost for Pueblo West to connect to the pipeline would be about $12 million, said Pueblo West Metro District Manager Don Saling.
Spiller said the 66-inch diameter pipeline would be buried in a trench about 12-15 feet deep just east of the current easement for the Fountain Valley Conduit. The work area would be 100 feet wide and fenced off to prevent access. The pipeline would be capped each night during construction for safety.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:37:14 PM
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According to the Crested Butte News Gunnison County is taking a hard look at the results from cloudseeding. From the article:
...with a tight budget and recurring nightmares about the costs of last year's plowing, the Board of County Commissioners wasn't ready to commit funds right away to bring the seeding program back this year.
At their regular meeting Tuesday, October 28, the commissioners heard from Don Griffith of Utah-based North American Weather Consultants, Inc. who presented the plan purely as fact, with scientific data to prove that cloud seeding increases snowfall.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:20:05 PM
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From the Crested Butte News: "With the UGRWCD entering its yearly budget process, [Gary] Hausler is once again encouraging the board to consider reducing the District's mil levy to ease the tax burden. During a regular UGRWCD meeting on Monday, October 27 Hausler argued that the tax burden of keeping the 2.0 mil rate in 2009 was too much to ask of citizens in the district in the current national, and local, economic situation. Haulser warned that assessed property values may rise again during the county's biannual property assessment next year. Citing the projected 2008 end-of-year reserve of $1.9 million, Hausler said, "The question becomes how much reserve is enough. That's what the board has to determine.'"
Category: Colorado Water
6:14:17 PM
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From the Pueblo Chieftain: "The south end of John Martin Reservoir will be closed today through Nov. 30, officials said Tuesday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has planned the construction of a spoils area for a dredging project. Upon completion of the spoils area, the entrance at the south end of the dam will be reopened to provide public access to the west end of the south shore. The east end will remain closed during the dredging project."
"colordado water"
6:02:54 PM
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Here's an update on the cleanup at the Summitville Mine Superfund Program, from the Valley Courier. From the article:
The Summitville Mine Environmental Protection Agency Superfund Site is getting set to close down for the winter following a summer of construction work on the mine's water control system. Contracts for an estimated $3 million worth of construction were put out for bid last November. The money was to upgrade the water system to withstand a "100-year event." Most of the work centered on enlarging discharge culverts on the Wightman Fork Diversion and to improve the capacity and operational efficiency of the Summitville Impoundment Dam. Wightman Fork Creek was moved from the bottom of a valley just below the water treatment plant at Summitville to make room for the site's impoundment dam which creates a holding pond from which water is pumped into the Summitville water treatment plant. The creek was moved to the side of the Valley and that stretch became the Wightman Fork Diversion. This waterway carries ground water and treated water off the site.
Other work upgraded parts of a 15,000-foot system of canals and underground pipes used to get ground water into the water treatment plant. There, water that has washed over the site and picked up heavy metal pollutants is mixed with a chemical polymer that binds with the metal particles. The metal then precipitates out of the water as a solid, known as cake. That material is then collected, dried and deposited on site as inert material.
Construction at the site this summer included work done on the A3 Turnout, a water gate in the water control system and a MicroHydroPower plant for use on site...
Officials in charge of Summitville have been pushing to receive a new, two-stage water treatment plant. This type of facility would improve removal of some metals, particularly aluminum. The current treatment plant was improved and its capacity expanded in 2006-7 and it is now operating at about its theoretical limit.
The site shuts down for the winter as snowfall in the area makes access impossible. It opens in the spring, just in time for the runoff.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
5:43:15 PM
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From: "Yellowstone National Park and researchers at Stanford blame their decline on global warming. These amphibious indicators of the environment are the kind of discovery that, for a Ph.D. candidate [Sarah McMenamin], can be the makings of a career. So, it says quite a bit when Sarah McMenamin of Stanford University says she would give it all up for a different result."
Here's a link to a short video of her work.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Climate Change News
5:30:53 PM
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If you were trying to get here today using http://www.coyotegulch.net/ we apologize for an outage this morning. Power went down and the UPS didn't keep the server up and running.
5:11:56 PM
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Here's a recap of Wednesday's Reclamation public meeting for Colorado Springs' proposed Southern Delivery System, from the Pueblo Chieftain. From the article:
The Bureau of Reclamation's evaluation of the Southern Delivery System does not take into account the full impacts of changes that keep happening after reports are released, several critics said Wednesday. Nine people commented at a public hearing sponsored by Reclamation for a supplemental information report to its draft environmental impact statement for the Southern Delivery System. All but one said Reclamation is still missing some pieces of the puzzle in determining the environmental impacts of SDS.
Reclamation intends to issue its final environmental impact statement in December nonetheless, said Jaci Gould, Reclamation resources division manager. SDS is a $1.1 billion proposal by Colorado Springs, Security, Fountain and Pueblo West to build a pipeline from Pueblo Dam to meet water needs through 2046. Reclamation is evaluating it because it requires contracts to use Pueblo Dam and Lake Pueblo.
The changes in plans in the project led to the hearing, when Colorado Springs changed its terminal storage location to Upper Williams Creek, rather than Jimmy Camp Creek, and Reclamation added new water quality analysis in the supplemental report. "How do you spend 20 years and $80 million on a project and still be surprised?" Colorado Springs City Councilman Tom Gallagher asked after the meeting. Gallagher delivered a stinging criticism of his city's project, saying the modifications required at Pueblo Dam alone require a new EIS. In a separate series of meetings related to Pueblo County 1041 land-use permits, Colorado Springs revealed earlier this month it is studying a new alignment of the north outlet works at Pueblo Dam, rather than relying on a joint-use manifold. The Pueblo Board of Water Works, which owns most of the capacity at the manifold, has raised questions about its inclusion in SDS since 2005 and reiterated its concerns earlier this year. The manifold already serves the Fountain Valley Conduit and Pueblo West. Eventually, it would serve the Arkansas Valley Conduit as well...
"The plans keep changing - even after the Bureau of Reclamation announced a new public comment period on the EIS Supplemental Report," added Jane Rawlings, assistant publisher of The Pueblo Chieftain. "We learned just recently that Colorado Springs now proposes to build an outlet on the north side of Pueblo Dam as an alternative to tying into the joint-use manifold south of the Arkansas River. What we don't know are the economic and environmental impacts that this change would have." Rawlings also talked about the impacts of the pipeline route through Pueblo West and Fountain Creek concerns, saying Colorado Springs would have more of a stake in water quality if it took the water east of the creek's confluence at the Arkansas River...
A new concern about water quality was given by Joseph Santarella, an attorney representing the Rocky Mountain Environmental and Labor Coalition. Mercury exposure risks would be elevated in the reservoirs proposed by Colorado Springs, but are not identified in either of Reclamation's reports, Santarella said. He said the mercury is likely to concentrate in fish in the Williams Creek reservoirs and in the Arkansas River downstream, which also raises questions under federal environmental justice laws...
The newest Reclamation report also ignores earlier questions raised by environmental groups, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers...
The hearing was separate from the 1041 meetings, which are being sponsored by the SDS partners at the request of Pueblo County. There will be a meeting looking at Fountain Creek impacts at 5:30 p.m. tonight at El Pueblo History Museum, 301 N. Union Ave.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:51:56 AM
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From the Norwood Post: "The Colorado Water Conservation Board's plan to protect instream flows with water rights granted to the state from the old Uravan mill site has been dammed up, for now. The board made a presentation to the San Miguel County Commissioners Wednesday, a presentation that was well-attended by other water rights holders who fear that their water rights could be affected by the plan. Although the CWCB claims would be junior to the more senior rights held upstream, if a rancher or the Town of Norwood were to change their rights in any way, they would become junior to the CWCB's claims. Ranchers at the meeting opined that the current San Miguel River flows on which the CWCB was basing its plan are flawed, because with the decline of irrigation and farming upstream, water that used to be stored in the soil and released differently or in smaller amounts has been measured by the board even though it is already appropriated...Members from the Norwood Water Commission were also present to protest the CWCB plan. The NWC holds the rights to 5 cfs (cubic feet per second) on the San Miguel River, which they currently don't use. Should they choose to draw the water, if they don't do so from a particular point on the river, their right would become junior to that of the CWCB."
More Coyote Gulch coverage here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:36:55 AM
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Here's a look at Yuma County's supply problems in light of next week's ballot issue to buy water rights for augmentation to satisfy the claims by the Pioneer/Laird ditch and form the Yuma County Water Authority Public Improvement District. From the Rocky Mountain News article:
Voters must decide Tuesday whether to pay nearly $27 million to buy water rights and settle a court case that could have taken the water from many of the county's rich corn fields and its towns. The case has split the close- knit community. Some angrily wonder why the community must pay to keep farmers in business, with others praying the voters unite and agree to buy the water. "It's a crying shame it's come to this," said Conrad Bauer, who tests irrigation wells. "But I think we have to vote for it. If it doesn't pass, it could wreck our economy."
In June, lawyers and farmers hammered out a settlement designed to keep at least 1,300 irrigation wells pumping. But it is the 4,893 Yuma County voters who have the final say because they must approve increasing property taxes to pay for the accord. If the tax measure fails, the case goes back to court. And few expect a different outcome that would keep the wells pumping, or at least pumping at the high levels required by corn and potatoes, another major crop here. Shutting down the wells likely would cripple the county's booming ethanol industry, as well as close off the municipal wells that serve Wray, Eckley and Yuma. If the bond issue passes, it will be perhaps the first example of a farm community in which bankers, hairstylists and shoe store owners alike must pay to keep their water, and it will set Yuma County apart from dozens of other Colorado farming communities that have seen their wells sharply curtailed or shut down, the remaining water purchased by cities and piped far away...
At issue is a small set of century-old water rights on the Republican River that has been injured over the years by the pumping of mass irrigation wells. For decades, the wells, which draw from the Ogallala Aquifer, were believed to operate independently of the river. But a study triggered by another legal battle involving Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado over the Republican established that the wells' operations were linked to the river and were harming its flows and this historic set of surface water rights that date back to the 1880s. The surface water owners, who farm about 1,500 acres of the 190,000 cultivated acres in the area, were just two days away from the start of the June 2 trial when the tentative settlement was reached. Under the proposal, taxpayers will buy the water rights for $15 million. The water will remain in the river to repair any damage done by the wells, allowing them to continue pumping. It also will help Colorado meet its legal obligations to Kansas under the Republican River Compact of 1942. By the time the bonds are issued and interest is paid, the tab likely will hit $27 million, according to the Yuma County clerk...
How Yuma County hopes to save its water
* Raise property taxes and issue bonds: About $15 million of bond proceeds would be used to buy a small set of historic water rights on the Republican River. By purchasing the rights, the potential for a mass well shutdown will be averted.
* In the long term, the county hopes to enact conservation measures that will reduce groundwater pumping and stop the drain on the Ogallala Aquifer and the river. If farmers are unable to dramatically reduce water use, neighboring Kansas, with its own court-ordered rights to Republican River water, could eventually demand a mass well shutdown.
* In a separate transaction, the surface water owners would receive another $5 million from the Republican River Water Conservation District, bringing their total take from the settlement to $20 million. The district would then lease the water rights, if the Nov. 4 measure is approved, from Yuma County to help meet obligations to Kansas under the Republican River Compact of 1942.
More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.
Category: Colorado Water
6:29:55 AM
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© Copyright
2008
John Orr.
Last update:
11/1/08; 8:18:11 PM.
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