From the Colorado Independent (Scott Kersgaard):
Salazar’s comments were made at the signing of a Secretarial Order to elevate the Office of the National Landscape Conservation System and Community Partnerships to the level of a Directorate. The Directorate will have jurisdiction over 27 million acres of public land in the West.
From The Colorado Springs Gazette (John C. Ensslin):
4th Judicial District Judge David L. Shakes refused to intervene in the recall vote against Robert Lovato after hearing a day and a half of testimony about alleged irregularities in the petition-gathering process. Before issuing a lengthy ruling from the bench, Shakes said he wanted to make it clear he wasn’t taking sides in the recall. “That issue is a political matter and is up to the voters,” he said.
From the Fort Collins Coloradoan (Bobby Magill):
The snowpack is nearly 200 percent of average at some monitoring sites in western Larimer County. The South Platte Basin, which includes the Poudre River, has an overall snowpack 157 percent of average as of Friday morning, according to U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service data. The most robust snowpack in Colorado is in western Larimer County and Jackson County, where some monitoring stations in the Park Range and the Rawah Mountains have a snowpack greater than 200 percent of average for the season.
More coverage from The Greeley Tribune (Bill Jackson):
Going into the 2010 water year, water reserves were at 120 percent of average throughout the [Colorado-Big Thompson Project], Karen Rademacher told a crowd of about 150 during the Fall Water Users Meeting of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District at the Embassy Suites Hotel. Rademacher is a senior water resources engineer with the water district. But, Rademacher said Thursday, it was late winter snow storms and early spring rain storms that really made the year. As a result, reserves going into the 2011 water year are at 150 percent…
Mike Applegate, president of Northern’s board of directors, said the heavy runoff resulted in 640,000 acre-feet of water leaving Colorado at the Nebraska line, which was another sign of the need for additional storage in the state. That additional storage, he said, would allow better management of water resources. The permitting process, however, for two new projects, the Northern Integrated Supply Project and the Windy Gap Firming Project, continue at a slow pace…
While the Front Range has seen dry weather conditions for the past three months, Rademacher said Grand County — where the C-BT collects water for diversion — has been hit with early wet, snowstorms. Storms Oct. 25-26 and Tuesday and Wednesday, she said, “have got us off to a great start; 30 percent of the entire snow season is already on the ground in our collection area.” There was an estimated 2 feet of snow on the ground near Grand Lake as of last week…
Dave Nettles, Division 1 Engineer with the Colorado Division of Water Resources in Greeley, said the peak flow on the South Platte River at Kersey came in June and was about twice the average for that time of year. However, by July, it was below average. Reservoir storage all along the South Platte basin is in pretty good shape, he said, despite the dry conditions of the past three months.
It looks like the San Juans are going to get a dumping by Sunday night.
Here’s a report from Chris Woodka writing for The Pueblo Chieftain. Click through and check out the sidebar about the consumptive use factor calculation for the various ditches. From the article:
“I think Super Ditch is a good idea. . . . Participate or don’t participate, but don’t be jealous of what your neighbor has,” one speaker said. “It’s always going to be better to lease the water than sell it and retire to Arizona.”
The Super Ditch board held the meeting at the Gobin Community Center in an attempt to inform shareholders of seven ditches about two pending lease agreements with the Pikes Peak Regional Water Authority and Aurora and measure interest in participation…
Bart Mendenhall, attorney for the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District, explained that only the amount of consumptive use of a crop could be leased, and that the amount likely would be the same coefficient as was applied in the H-I (hydrologic-institutional) model under the Kansas v. Colorado case.
That amount is anything but certain. Consumptive use is technically the number of inches of water a plant uses to grow, but defining it is like shooting at a moving target. The state now is locked into the H-I model, but has spent millions of dollars on studies such as a weighing lysimeter at the Rocky Ford Agriculture Research Center to refine it. In addition, the availability of water, the amount of rain, the type of crop and the method of irrigation all play a role.
Then, there are percentages of consumptive use determined as part of the 24-year Kansas v. Colorado U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit that the State Engineer’s Office likely will require in any change case or administrative contract, Mendenhall said.
More coverage from The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):
The Super Ditch board mailed out information packets to shareholders on seven ditches on proposed leases to sell up to 8,020 acre-feet of water annually to Pikes Peak Regional Water Authority and 10,000 acre-feet in three years out of 10 to Aurora.
“Never in the life of the valley have seven ditches come forward with this type of effort,” Super Ditch President John Schweizer told 120 people at the Rocky Ford meeting. “The idea is to lease water as a crop.” The Super Ditch initially will limit farmers to 35 percent of eligible acreage in any given year, which caused some to question whether payments would be small if spread out over the 200,000 acres irrigated under the ditch systems — Bessemer, Catlin, Fort Lyon, High Line, Holbrook, Otero and Oxford. Dry up of ground also must be rotational. Schweizer said the idea is to proportion the acreage to avoid detrimental impacts to those who keep farming.
The ditches annual have diversions of about 600,000 acre-feet, and many of the ditches could meet the demand of the two leases now on the table. Pure Cycle, which owns more than 20,000 acres on the Fort Lyon Canal, could alone fill both orders and has submitted a card indicating interest in the leases.
