Click on the thumbnail graphic to the right and then go out and conjure up the snow spirits.

From The Greeley Tribune (Eric Brown):

The snowpack for the entire state is [35] percent behind the norm.

However, most of the snowfall in the mountains comes in March and April and “some really good snowstorms during those months could get numbers back up to normal before the snow season is over,” said David Nettles, an engineer for the Colorado Division of Water Resources office in Greeley.

Also, the amount of water stored in northern Colorado reservoirs and other storage facilities is at healthy levels because of last year’s above-average snowpack. Dana Strongin, communications specialist with the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, said water levels in the region’s 12 reservoirs that are part of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project are nearly 30 percent above normal.

“There’s nothing terribly alarming about the snowpack numbers we’re seeing right now,” Nettles said. “If this continues, that could be a different story. But for now, we’re not panicking.”

Jim Hall, water resources manager for the city of Greeley, echoed Nettles’ comments. He said the current low levels of snowpack aren’t particularly alarming, not for a city that has plentiful access to water storage facilities.

Since reservoir levels are well above average, those with senior rights on the river and access to water storage facilities — particularly municipalities — will be in good shape for quite a while, even if low snowpack levels persist.

Nettles said it’s those with junior water rights and who don’t have access to storage water — consisting mainly of farmers in the region — who will be hurt first if snowpack numbers stay low, or fall off even further.

Frank Eckhardt — a LaSalle area farmer who serves as president for the board of directors for the Farmers Independent and West Mutual ditch companies, and also serves presidents of the Board of Consolidated Ditches, made up of 11 ditch companies — said there are only two ditch companies between Denver and LaSalle that own rights to water storage facilities.

“Just about all of us farmers depend on good snowpack and having good flows in the river to operate,” he said. “Hopefully Mother Nature starts to cooperate with us a little better. Hopefully there will be more snow.”

The theme for the issue is, “Water Quality and Health.” Click here to download a copy. Here’s an excerpt:

Many situations exist in which water practitioners want to know the concentrations of organic chemicals in water, including evaluating whether a site is characterized as contaminated and/or whether a water treatment process is effective. But obtaining this informa- tion has traditionally involved collecting a water sample and analyzing it in a laboratory, usually off-site. Laboratory analyses involve various steps before the sample is analyzed in a gas chromatograph or similar instrument, and thus results are expensive and not readily available. Undesired outcomes of this situation include cases in which relatively few data are available to make important decisions (e.g., about the design of a remediation system), and that poorly functioning treatment systems are not corrected quickly.

About 15 years ago, my [Ken Reardon] laboratory at CSU began to develop biosensors to make it easier to measure this aspect of water quality. Our goals were to develop sensors that could provide continuous measurements of an organic chemical concentration and that could be placed directly in the water to be measured. The ability to take the sensor to the water (rather than removing a sample of water) is important, because sampling can skew the results in several ways.

A biosensor is a device that contains a biological detection element, usually an enzyme or antibody, as well as components that allow the biological detection event to be converted into a useable signal or number. We used our knowledge of the ways in which bacteria break down pollutants to develop enzymatic biosensors, and we chose to interface this with an optical method to produce a signal, since that approach often is more sensitive and has less environmental interference than electrical methods. These sensor systems consist of three parts: an optical- electronic hardware unit, one or more biosensor tips, and optical fiber connectors. Sensing is done using a two-layer detection element immobilized on the end of the biosensor tip (Figure 2). One layer is a fluorescent dye, and the other layer contains specific enzymes. The enzymes catalyze a reaction with the chemical of interest (the analyte), and the products of that reaction change the fluorescence properties of the dye. Those changes in fluorescence are detected and correlated to the analyte concentration. We recently started OptiEnz Sensors LLC to commercialize this technology.

Important features of the biosensor system are:

• Versatility: By matching enzymes and fluorescent dyes, biosensors for a wide range of organic chemicals can be constructed. The biosensors can also be designed to cover different concentration ranges.

• Ease of use: Measurements with these biosensors are simple and require no reagent or pretreatment. The tip of the biosensor is simply placed in the sample to be measured, and the analysis time is on the order of minutes.

• Ability to measure continuously, in place and online: These biosensors can be placed in a process vessel or in a process flow and can provide continuous, real-time measurements of the analyte concentration. Such information can then be used for process control or quality assurance/control.

• Low detection limits: Detection limits in the biosensors developed to date range from μg/L to sub-ng/L.

• Small size: The biosensors are based on plastic optical fiber that is about one millimeter in diameter, and can thus easily be placed in small wells.

• Multiplexing: Our optical-electronic hardware unit can monitor up to eight biosensors simultaneously, meaning that several contaminants can be measured.