Day: March 5, 2013

Drought news: North Metro cities ask customers to conserve #codrought

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From 9News.com (Paris Elliott):

According to a press release issued by Thornton Water Conservation, the cities of Arvada, Federal Heights, Northglenn, Thornton, Westminster, South Adams County Water and Sanitation, and the City and County of Broomfield are asking residents for increased water conservation efforts this year.

Thornton Water Conservation has several recommended ways to reduce water use:

• Don’t turn on your sprinkler systems too early in the season. Leaving lawns dormant until May saves a significant amount of water. Water trees occasionally before the irrigation season if dry conditions persist.

• Water lawns no more than twice per week. Check with your water supplier for lawn watering rules.

• If it rains, water less. Watch the weather and adjust watering days and times accordingly.

• Do not water between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Watering during the day results in less water reaching your lawn due to evaporation and afternoon winds.

• Check your irrigation system monthly for leaks and other problems.

• If possible, delay new landscape installations for a non-drought year. Avoid installing landscaping during mid-summer. Incorporate water-wise plants when planning renovations or installations.

• Raise your lawn mower blade. Protect your lawn’s roots from heat by letting grass grow longer.

• Limit other outdoor water uses. Sweep driveways and sidewalks with a broom. Always use a nozzle on your hose when watering landscape or washing your car.

• Check your home and repair water leaks. Place a few drops of food coloring in your toilet tank and wait 10 minutes. If the water in the bowl turns color you have a leak. Replacing the flapper or other easy adjustments will generally solve the problem at little or no cost. Don’t forget to check showers and sinks for leaks.

• Know your water use. Check your water bill regularly to track use. Contact your water supplier for ways to identify and solve increased water use issues.

• Check with your water supplier for specific water use rules and conservation programs.

Two Rivers plans to lease 500 acre-feet of water to the Arkansas Ground Users Association #codrought

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From The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):

Some well owners in the Arkansas Valley will benefit from a lease from Two Rivers Water and Farming Co. The company, which is buying farms and creating water storage in Pueblo and Huerfano counties, is subleasing 500 acre-feet of water, which it obtained in a five-year deal with the Pueblo Board of Water Works, to the Arkansas Groundwater Users Association.

Two Rivers will plant an additional 200 acres of vegetables on its Bessemer Ditch farming operation, company CEO John McKowen said in a press release. Two Rivers uses AGUA to augment wells it owns.

Two Rivers leases the water for about $210 per acre-foot from the Pueblo water board under an agreement made in 2011. McKowen said the water is being provided at cost, and Two Rivers will not use the full amount on its ground. The water will be part of AGUA’s replacement water to make up for depletions from well pumping. AGUA members along the Arkansas River will be able to pump at 30 percent of normal rates. Along Fountain Creek, the pumping rate will be 40 percent to 45 percent.

“The water made available to AGUA through our 2013 lease with Two Rivers will be invaluable in helping to blunt the effects of the ongoing drought. It will keep farms in production that otherwise would have been dried up,” said Scott Lorenz, manager of AGUA.

“Two Rivers’ commitment to agriculture is clear, and we look forward to a positive, productive relationship with them for years to come.”

Water for well augmentation plans have been hard to find this year. While the Pueblo Board of Water Works is fulfilling multiyear contracts, such as the one with Two Rivers, it is not planning to lease water on the spot market, a major source of supply for the well groups.
Last week, the Colorado Water Protective and Development Association, another well owners association, told its members that it has no water this year.

AGUA provides augmentation for about 250 farm wells, while CWPDA serves about 500 farms.

10 Weld county students win awards in ‘Caring for our watersheds’ competition

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From The Greeley Tribune (Eric Brown):

The ambition of local youth will soon result in new drinking-water stations at school to reduce the amount of plastic bottles used, new composting programs and the implementation of many other strategies aimed at efficiency and reducing waste.

Ten Weld County teams from five schools placed in the top 10 or earned honorable-mention recognition in the recent Caring for Our Watersheds contest.

Now, the high-placing local students will use money from the competition’s sponsor — Canada-based Agrium, Inc., an international agricultural-products supplier with offices in Loveland — to watch their ideas come to fruition in their schools.

In recent months, 55 total teams from schools across northern Colorado examined the local Poudre and Big Thompson watersheds, identified problems, developed strategies to address them and then created presentations, which were judged at a recent awards banquet at the University of Northern Colorado.

All top-10 finishers walked away from the banquet with $300 to $1,000 cash prizes, and a matching cash prize went to the teachers who sponsored those students in the contest.

Additionally, Agrium will pay up to $1,000 for each of the top-10 and honorable-mention projects to be implemented at the students’ schools.

This is the fourth year that local schools have participated in the Caring for Our Watersheds competition.

There are now 12 different contests across North America, South America and Australia.

First place went to a team from Resurrection Christian School in Loveland, but it was Greeley Central High School that came away with the most prize money.

Greeley Central had five teams finish in the top 10, while another team from the school earned an honorable-mention nod.

Ivonne Morales of Greeley Central placed the highest among all Weld County students, taking second place with her project, Easy Peasy H2O, which looks to reduce the amount of bottled water consumed in schools.

With the dollars from Agrium, she’ll help bring water-refilling stations to Greeley Central, encouraging students to refill reusable bottles instead of buying plastic-bottled water from vending machines.

The water-refilling stations would replace water fountains, alleviating the sanitary concerns some students have, Morales added.

Morales — president of the school’s Green Cats organization, and the Colorado representative for the Alliance for Climate Education who took part in a 35,000-person march in Washington, D.C., this month — has learned through her research that 1,250 plastic water bottles are thrown away every second in the U.S.

Also, it takes 17 million barrels of oil to produce the amount of plastic used for bottled water in our country, and that doesn’t even factor in the amount of oil needed to transport the bottled water to the consumer, she noted.

Additionally, she said, there are concerns and a lack of understanding regarding the chemicals used in the plastic, like Bisphenol A.

Because her project placed high enough to earn money to be implemented, and because of the impact her project could have, Morales said her time dedicated to the competition was well worth it.

“It means a lot to me,” said Morales, who also works as a part-time custodian at her school to help support herself and also to save money for a trip to Costa Rica this summer, where she’ll learn about the country’s highly regarded sustainability programs.

Greeley Central High School science teacher Liz Mock-Murphy, who’s made the competition part of her curriculum in certain classes, and Ray Tscillard, director of the Poudre Learning Center in Greeley that organizes the competition locally, said they are amazed each year by all of the students’ effort and dedication to the contest.

“This competition is truly empowering … allowing these students to really make a difference,” Mock-Murphy said, noting that some of Greeley’s schools today have low-flow toilets, biodegradable sporks in the cafeterias and single-stream recycling programs as a result of projects executed through the Caring for Our Watersheds competition. “It’s been an amazing thing for our students.”

More South Platte River Basin coverage here and here.

Weld County water and history will be the subject of a presentation Wednesday

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From The Greeley Tribune:

The “handling” of the water in northern Colorado will be the topic of a presentation Wednesday night by Brian Werner of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District. He will talk of the change from the Great American Desert to one of the state’s largest agricultural areas, and of the people who worked to bring it about…

The program will begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Centennial Library, 2227 23rd Ave. in Greeley. It will be sponsored by the Northeastern Colorado Heritage League, and is free to all members and anyone else who would like to learn more about how this area’s history was affected by water.

More South Platte River Basin coverage here and here.

HB13-1013 scheduled for appropriations committee Friday #coleg

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From The Durango Herald (Joe Hanel):

[State Representative Jerry Sonnenberg] is sponsoring House Bill 1013, which forbids the federal government from forcing people to cede their water rights in order to get a special use permit. The bill matters because the Forest Service usually defers to state law on water rights.

Sonnenberg’s hometown is about as far from a ski resort as a Coloradan can get without crossing the border to Nebraska, but he has bigger concerns than fresh powder. “This isn’t just about ski resorts. This affects agriculture. Agriculture has a number of grazing permits on public lands,” Sonnenberg said.

But the unanimous votes Sonnenberg has received so far mask some serious concerns from Democrats…

The Forest Service’s 2011 policy was just the latest in three decades of efforts to make sure ski water rights stay tied to ski mountains.

Ski areas won a victory in a Denver courtroom last December when U.S. District Judge William Martinez threw out the policy nationwide. He cited “severe” and “serious” problems with the way the Forest Service wrote the rule without soliciting public input.

After that case, the Forest Service announced a public process to create a new water-rights rule for ski areas. The process should start this spring.

Legislators want to get a bill passed before the Forest Service approves a new rule.

The Forest Service, too, wants to get something done, especially in light of global warming and the recent dry winters.

“We know that the need for snowmaking is likely to grow, as evidenced by our current prolonged drought and warmer winters, which increases the importance of these issues for the industry and the public,” [Regional Forester Dan Jirón] said in testimony last month.

More 2013 Colorado legislation coverage here.

SB13-074: Irrigation Water Right Historical Use Acreage, clears Colorado senate #coleg

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From The Fort Morgan Times (Marianne Goodland):

[SB13-074] came out of the Interim Water Resources Review Committee in September, and got a 34-1 vote from the Senate on Feb. 20, where Sen. Greg Brophy (R-Wray) called it the most important water bill in a decade. The bill intends to clear up ambiguous language regarding water decrees put into place prior to January 1, 1937.

SB 74 would affect decrees that are silent on the maximum amount of irrigated acres. The bill creates a mechanism for determining the maximum number of irrigated acres, to be based on the amount irrigated in the first 50 years after the decree was issued. According to State Water Engineer Dick Wolfe, there are 16,338 water decrees statewide issued prior to Jan. 1, 1937. He said he could not determine how many would be affected by SB 74 without reviewing each one individually.

The bill stems from concerns over Colorado Supreme Court decisions involving the Jones irrigation ditch (Greeley) and Burlington irrigation ditch (Adams and Weld counties). In the Jones case, the court ruled that while farmers had been irrigating 700 to 900 acres for generations, the original intent was to irrigate only about 300 acres. In the Burlington case, the original intent was to irrigate only above Barr Lake, although the ditch had been using water flowing below the lake as well…

SB 74 was opposed by the Colorado Water Congress. Attorney Steve Simms, representing the CWC, said the bill was unnecessary and wouldn’t solve the problem. It also wouldn’t apply retroactively to the Jones or Burlington cases.

Simms, who was the lead counsel in the Burlington case, explained that the case was based on the legal location of the use of water, which he said SB 74 doesn’t address. In 95 percent of the cases brought to water court, the original decree should be sufficient. “The normal rule is that you go back to see what original farmer asked for,” Simms said. Look at the original claim, which shows how much water the farmer wants, here’s what he’ll do with it, and the judge figures out the legal area of use, a system Simms said has worked for 100 years. “A bill designed to say maximum use doesn’t solve the question.”[…]

Sen. Mary Hodge (D-Brighton) has thrown out her original bill to grant eminent domain rights to oil companies and has started over, but the new bill picked up more opposition. SB 21 claimed that it would simply make a technical correction to a 19th-century statute regarding the authority of pipeline companies to obtain rights-of-way for new pipelines. The original bill stated that its intent was to overturn a 2012 decision by the Colorado Supreme Court over alleged eminent domain and condemnation rights by oil companies. SB 21 would have granted those rights to oil companies.

The original bill has since been scrapped, and on Feb. 22, Hodge introduced a new bill, SB 191, which adds oil, petroleum and hydrocarbon to the types of pipelines and companies that can exercise eminent domain rights. The bill quickly moved to the Senate Local Government Committee for a Tuesday, Feb. 26 hearing. But that’s where the bill got more opposition, this time from irrigation ditch companies throughout northeastern Colorado.

Attorney Michael Shimmin, who represents the Bijou Irrigation Company, said SB 191 raises concerns for ditch companies that grant pipeline companies permission to cross irrigation ditches. Under a 2001 legal decision, Roaring Fork v. St. Jude, ditch companies have the right to deny pipeline crossings unless there is an agreement between the pipeline company and the ditch company. However, in the past year, Shimmin said, oil and gas companies feel they no longer need the agreement of the ditch company. In January, Shimmin obtained a temporary restraining order in Weld District Court against Kerr McGee Gathering, which attempted to cross the Bijou ditch without permission…

Much of the concern over how pipelines dig under ditches stems from an incident in 2008, when a gas pipeline went 20 feet under the North Sterling ditch. The ditch was full of water at the time, and although the ditch company believed 20 feet would be a safe depth, the ditch collapsed and emptied itself, and the ditch company lost water for three weeks. After that, Shimmin testified, the ditch companies changed their crossing agreements to make sure no crossings took place while the ditch was full of water. Most ditches are dry at least half of the year, so there is ample opportunity for crossings when the ditch is empty, he said.

The prospect that SB 191 would grant oil companies the right to put in pipelines whenever they want to “terrifies” the directors of the Bijou Ditch, Shimmin said.

Mike Groves, president of the Bijou Irrigation Company, testified that the oil companies do not “play ball” with the ditch companies. “We’re protecting what’s ours.”

The language in SB 191 would take away some of our rights, claimed Jim Yahn, manager of the North Sterling Irrigation Ditch. “We want oil and gas companies to succeed, but we want control of when and how.”

Scott Edgar, representing the Farmer Reservoir and Burlington irrigation companies, said they are not opposed to crossings and in fact granted 150 of them in 2012. However, the ditch companies cannot afford to go to battle with international oil companies. He said his ditch companies have gotten condemnation threats from the oil companies, and is currently fighting with one company that says it doesn’t have to get a crossing agreement.

More 2013 Colorado legislation coverage here.

Snowpack/forecast news: Winter storm moving into Colorado starting Friday #cowx #codrought

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From the National Weather Service Grand Junction office:

…THE NEXT WINTER STORM WILL IMPACT EASTERN UTAH AND WESTERN COLORADO FRIDAY AFTERNOON INTO SUNDAY…

ANOTHER PERIOD OF MOUNTAIN SNOWFALL IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP LATE FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND CONTINUE INTO SUNDAY AS A STRONG PACIFIC STORM SYSTEM MOVES ACROSS THE REGION.

A STRONG LOW PRESSURE TROUGH WILL DROP SOUTHEASTWARD THROUGH CALIFORNIA FRIDAY AND TRACK THROUGH THE DESERT SOUTHWEST SATURDAY…FINALLY EXITING ONTO THE PLAINS SUNDAY. AS A RESULT…PRECIPITATION WILL BEGIN TO SPREAD INTO THE AREA BEGINNING FRIDAY AFTERNOON…INITIALLY FAVORING THE MOUNTAINS OF EASTERN UTAH AND SOUTHWEST COLORADO. SNOWFALL WILL INCREASE AND BECOME WIDESPREAD ACROSS ALL MOUNTAIN AREAS FRIDAY NIGHT AND SATURDAY AS THE UPPER LEVEL STORM SYSTEM MOVES INTO ARIZONA. THE STORM SYSTEM IS EXPECTED TO LIFT ACROSS SOUTHERN COLORADO SUNDAY WITH THE POTENTIAL FOR WRAP AROUND MOISTURE TO BRING ADDITIONAL SNOWFALL…ESPECIALLY ACROSS THE NORTH. SNOW LEVELS WILL LIKELY START OUT ABOVE 7000 FEET ON FRIDAY BUT FALL TO THE HIGHER VALLEY FLOORS BY SATURDAY MORNING AND TO LOWER VALLEY FLOORS ON SATURDAY NIGHT. IN ADDITION…GUSTY SOUTHWEST WINDS WILL PRODUCE LOCAL AREAS OF BLOWING SNOW FRIDAY AFTERNOON AND EVENING. ON SATURDAY…WINDS WILL DIMINISH SOMEWHAT…AND THEN WINDS WILL BECOME NORTHERLY ON SUNDAY AS THE SYSTEM SLOWLY EXITS THE REGION.

WHILE THERE CONTINUES TO BE SOME UNCERTAINTY IN THE TRACK AND DURATION OF THIS STORM…IT HAS THE POTENTIAL TO PRODUCE SIGNIFICANT SNOW ACCUMULATIONS ESPECIALLY FOR THE MOUNTAINS.

Meanwhile, snowfall in Summit County was close to normal in February. Here’s a report from Bob Berwyn writing for the Summit County Citizens Voice. Here’s an excerpt:

In Breckenridge, long-time weather observer Rick Bly said he tallied 25.4 inches of snow for the month. The long-term average is 23.5 inches. The snow-water equivalent was also slightly above average, at 1.88 inches compared to 1.71 inches. The snowfall, combined with cool temperatures, helped maintain the snowpack but didn’t make much of a dent in the seasonal deficit. For the year to-date (starting Oct. 1), snowfall is still about 30 percent below average, at 69,5 inches. The average, based on records going back to the late 1800s, is 101.5 inches. This year’s total seasonal snowfall is also lagging well behind last winter, according to Bly, who reported that, by this time last year, he had measured 95.2 inches of snow at the end of February, about 30 inches more than this winter…

In Dillon, Denver Water observers reported 15.5 inches of snow for the month, about 4 inches below the long-term average (18.6 inches). All that snow fell in 1- to 2-inch increments and delivered a snow-water equivalent of just 0.75 inches, well below the average of 1.20 inches for the site.