Day: May 24, 2013

Entities hope to coordinate restoration efforts for the High Park fire burn scar

highparkfiremaplarimercounty06112012

From The Greeley Tribune (Dan England):

The snows that fell again and again this spring did more than just annoy you. It saved this year’s rafting season on the Poudre River. In fact, outfitters and kayakers are looking forward to a normal year, whatever that is . The snowpack hovers around 100 percent of average, and the flows are pretty standard for this time of year. The river should peak around June 10, and it should be good for Memorial Day.

No one’s taking those flows for granted after the last two years. In 2011, an historic snowpack turned the river into a monster, with high, fast flows, and last year’s barely-there snowpack not only killed the season early, it stopped it all together for a few weeks in May because of the wildfires. Outfitters lost a quarter of their business just from the closures, said David Costlow, executive director of the Colorado River Outfitters Association.

Outfitters fretted this year before the spring because the snowpack was low and the reservoirs were almost empty. Outfitters need both for a good year. The cool spring not only saved the snowpack, it preserved it until rafting season opened on May 15. “The outlook’s really changed in the last six weeks,” Costlow said. “The river didn’t really start running until last week, and last year, it was March and April. We’ll enjoy it until August at least. It’ll be great.”

Still, because of those fires, the Poudre Canyon as a recreation area and a water provider won’t be normal for quite some time, maybe a decade or more, despite the efforts of volunteers, city and county officials in northern Colorado and a nonprofit group that should start operating in June. The burn area is closed, and that includes some popular spots such as the Mount McConnel/Kruetzer and Young Gulch trails. But the closed area will shrink after July 1, when mulching operations are complete, said Reghan Cloudman, spokeswoman for the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and the Pawnee National Grassland. All campgrounds are open and will close only for the season, not because of the burn. The area commonly referred to as the “Crystal Wall” climbing spot is open. The Old Flowers, West White Pine and Monument Gulch roads remain closed.

Falling trees are a safety concern, both in burned and unburned areas that were hit by the pine beetle. Rolling and falling rocks can also become a hazard in the burned areas. Flash floods in the burn area are a great concern now, and those visiting the canyon should check the weather for potential rains that can trigger flooding.

Crews are already doing preliminary work on the Young Gulch, and volunteers should help complete some rehabilitation during designated days this summer, Cloudman said. Additional road and trail work will also take place.

If you do visit the canyon, you could see helicopters flying overhead. They are mulching approximately 4,700 acres of forest service land with agricultural straw to protect the soil from erosion, the water supply from runoff and the area from flash flooding. Larimer County hopes to use the $9 million expected from Emergency Watershed Protection funds to mulch about 4,000 more acres of private land, said Suzanne Bassinger, fire recovery manager, but that mulching, along with other projects, will have to wait until the money arrives. She hopes to start the work by mid-June.

Bassinger said she’s the only fire recovery manager in the state and, because of that, she’s still learning on the job. She’s frustrated by the lack of resources, both in manpower and money, to get the work going. “It’s surprising how hard it’s been to get the recovery moving forward,” she said. “We all had jobs and responsibilities in the city and county and this came on top of it all. It’s a large amount of work that needs to be done.”

Much of her work will help private landowners. About half of the burn was on forest service land and half was on private property. A lot of the immediate work includes the mulching and other projects to help with flood protection. Even then, the runoff means cities that draw water from the Poudre, including Greeley, will struggle with water quality for the next five years, Bassinger said.

That’s why the Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed will start work in June after the initial effort by non-profits and volunteer organizations who care about the river to monitor and coordinate recovery efforts. The mix of public and private land means “an alphabet soup” of agencies and private entities will be involved in restoration, and the coalition will help make sense of it all. “What if we did $30,000 worth of restoration, only to have a month later someone come along and rip up 300 yards of roadway?” asked Dick Jefferies, president of the Rocky Mountain Flycasters. “We hope to look at the big picture and coordinate all the efforts.”

The efforts also meant putting aside personal agendas. As an angler, fire can bring more nutrients into the river, and that can bring more bugs and, therefore, not only healthier fish but more of them. “But this has to do with 300,000 or 400,000 and their drinking water,” Jefferies said. “I have a biased perspective, but anyone who opens a tap to take a drink of water should probably be concerned about this.”

If sediment continues to run into the river, Greeley may have to stop using it again, as it did last summer, or clean it, which will be much more expensive, Jefferies said. There’s some speculation that it will cost a utility a million more dollars per year to treat it. But the restoration, such as mulching, could help with that, he said.

The Coalition plans to host several volunteer days to help control flooding and erosion. When the group was called the High Park Restoration Committee, it hosted 14 events with 785 volunteers to treat 185 acres of land.

It will take years for the Poudre Canyon to look the way it was before the fires. Bassinger visited the famous Hayman fire, which burned 138,000 acres 35 miles northwest of Colorado Springs 11 years ago, and the land still looks charred. The burned land up the Poudre looks the same, and it will for a decade, at least. But there’s hope, too. There were many areas licked, not consumed, by the flames. “With all the snow, it’s now green all over those areas,” she said. “It looks like Ireland.”

More Cache la Poudre River coverage here and here.

Parachute Creek spill: No benzene detected in creek on Tuesday and Wednesday #ColoradoRiver

parachutecreekspillmarch2013

From The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Dennis Webb):

Tests showed no benzene in Parachute Creek Tuesday and Wednesday, in another sign that remediation efforts related to a natural gas liquids leak there are proving effective. Aeration treatment of the creek and groundwater “has done a good job,” Parachute town administrator Robert Knight said Thursday.

Williams estimates that about 10,000 gallons of natural gas liquids leaked this winter into soil and groundwater from a pipeline leaving its gas processing plant up the creek valley. It has been using air sparging and related methods to remove carcinogenic benzene in groundwater and the creek at a point 1,300 feet downstream where the benzene has been moving from the groundwater into the surface water.

Benzene in surface water once barely topped the state drinking water standard of 5 parts per billion (although the standard doesn’t apply to the creek), and for a time showed up at lower levels at a few points downstream. However, Williams noted in a recent update at its http://www.answersforparachute.com website that those benzene levels have steadily declined since May 2, although trace levels at the one measurement site had continued to linger. “Surface water samples from Parachute Creek indicate that Williams continues to make progress in its remediation efforts to remove benzene from a defined area of Parachute Creek, as well as from groundwater,” the company said in that update.

No benzene has ever been detected where Parachute diverts water for its town irrigation system farther downstream. Knight said diversions into that system began about two weeks ago. He said that with the success in efforts to clean up the creek, he’s not hearing any concerns from residents about the irrigation water.

Of greater concern to him is the low level of the creek due to the lack of snowpack, he said. The leak situation has raised questions about how benzene conditions might change when spring runoff occurs, but Knight said he flew over the creek watershed and the snowpack that feeds it already was gone. “We’re down to August levels. We haven’t even seen the creek rise,” he said.

As of last Friday, Williams had estimated that it had recovered about 6,766 gallons of the leaked natural gas liquids. It is projecting that a water treatment system it will use to remove and clean groundwater before returning it to the aquifer will be in service by June.

From the Glenwood Springs Post Independent (John Colson):

Two ranchers who live and work downstream from a natural gas liquids spill near Parachute Creek said on Wednesday that they remain concerned, but not alarmed, about the cleanliness of the water that flows past their ranches. The ranch owners, Sidney Lindauer and Howard Orona, live along Parachute Creek about three miles north of the Town of Parachute, on opposite sides of the creek. Both have previously voiced concerns about the cleanup of a large spill of natural-gas liquids about one mile upstream from their properties. The two have said they worried about the potential contamination of their domestic and irrigation water supplies from the spill, which according to state and industry officials has dumped tens of thousands of gallons of potentially toxic chemicals into the soils and groundwater near a natural gas processing plant owned by the Williams Midstream company…

Lindauer runs horses on a ranch that has been in his family for decades.

“I’d like to say they’ve cleaned it up,” said Lindauer on Wednesday, referring to the combined efforts of Williams Midstream and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE).

But he said he is skeptical about the wisdom of leaving the cleanup in the hands of the company that owns the facilities from which the liquids leaked. “We need an independent agency that isn’t associated with the industry, or any industry, to monitor that creek,” he said on Wednesday, lamenting that “they [the CDPHE] pretty much leave it up to Williams.”

He said he has seen unexplained layers of dingy, brownish foam on the creek’s surface in recent weeks, something he has occasionally seen in the past but in masses that were less dense than those he has spotted recently.

More oil and gas coverage here and here.

The very hot and dry 2012 helped change Nolan Doesken’s approach to discussing climate change #COdrought

nolandoesken1

Nolan is one of my favorite people. I noticed in the past that he was cautious about mentioning climate change in his public talks. That changed as the High Park fire raged west of his office at Colorado State University, according to this article from Bobby Magill that is running in the Fort Collins Coloradoan. Click through and read the whole thing. Here’s an excerpt:

…after the High Park Fire swept the foothills in 2012, Doesken decided to talk more openly about the reasons behind Colorado’s changing weather when talking to the agriculture community. Doesken, Colorado’s state climatologist based at Colorado State University, said Tuesday that he never really feared talking about climate change, but it gave him pause…

Before the 2012 drought, Doesken rarely included many of his thoughts on human-caused climate change in his drought and water reports to Colorado’s agriculture and water communities.

“Some folks in my position have experienced certain amounts of persecution for speaking out boldly one way or the other,” Doesken said. “I have feared that at times in the past. I don’t fear it now.”

The future, Doesken often says, is full of uncertainty — variability in the weather will trend to the more extremes, with drier dry years and wetter wet years, sometimes back-to-back.

“What has come out of my mouth has never been driven by a fear of what somebody was going to say or do as a result,” he said. “It’s mostly been me thinking my way through a challenging subject, which is a polarizing topic that I want to communicate as clearly and understandably as possible without an agenda.”

The High Park Fire began to change how he talks about climate change, a story he told to a national audience for last weekend’s “This American Life” episode, which aired on radio stations across the country…

Climate data and nothing else strictly dictates what he reports, Doesken said. It’s hard to argue that carbon emissions are not behind climate change, he said, calling the science “very defendable.”

“If we know what we as a human race is doing could be fouling our nest, then the sooner we figure it out and do something different, the better,” he said.

Granby: State of the Colorado River meeting recap #ColoradoRiver #COdrought

coloradorivergranby.jpg

From the Sky-Hi Daily News (Leia Larsen):

A panel of water experts spoke at the public State of the River Meeting on Wednesday at the SilverCreek Convention Center to discuss the quality and quantity of the Colorado River Basin and its relationship to Grand County. Among the discussion topics were Wolford Mountain Reservoir, background on the Windy Gap Firming Project and wildfire planning. But benefits to Colorado’s water supply following April’s precipitation events dominated much of the discussion…

Current data from the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s SNOTEL sites places the Upper Colorado River Headwater Basin’s snow water equivalent at 106 percent of its median levels. Total precipitation is at 93 percent of average for the area. The recent influx of precipitation comes as a relief, especially after shortages in the 2012 season. According to [Don Meyer], last year’s water demands on Wolford Mountain Reservoir, located north of Kremmling, dropped its levels by 38 feet. But Meyer now feels optimistic. “We hope to fill the reservoir this year,” he said. “We had a ton of demands because of the drought, but this year is looking a lot better.”[…]

Granby Reservoir is projected to be at 90 percent of average, according to Andrew Gilmore of the Bureau of Reclamation…

Releases from Granby Reservoir to the Front Range will be at normal levels, Gilmore said. The water is transported via the Colorado-Big Thompson project…

The Windy Gap Firming Project continues to move forward. The Bureau of Reclamation is deliberating modifications to the current Windy Gap carriage contract. The carriage contract specifies the procedures and fees for water moving through the Colorado Big Thompson Project. The Bureau of Reclamation’s next step will be to issue a Record of Decision, then Northern Water and its participants will begin hashing out design plans for the project. According to Northern Water’s Eric Wilkinson, the design process will take at least two years. Actual construction will take around three years. “So the earliest we would see the Windy Gap Firming Project placed into operation is 2018 or 2019,” Wilkinson said…

While the recent influx of precipitation will provide relief to Grand County and the Front Range, especially after snowfall shortages last year, areas downstream remain in drought. SNOTEL data for the entire Colorado River Basin above Utah’s Lake Powell indicates that the year’s precipitation remains low, at 81 percent of average. Lower Colorado users below Lake Mead project mandatory shortages as early as 2015, said Eric Kuhn, general manager for the Colorado River District.

More Colorado River Basin coverage here and here.

An explanation of Colorado’s administration of the Rio Grande River Compact from Steve Vandiver

Here’s a guest column running in the Taos News written by Steve Vandiver, the general manager of the Río Grande Water Conservation District, that is in response to this letter published on May 6. Vandiver explains the origins and administration of the compact. Click through and read both letters. Here’s an excerpt from Vandiver’s letter:

The Río Grande Compact is a document that was approved by the states of Colorado, New Mexico and Texas in 1938 and then ratified by the Congress of the United States. Among other things, the compact sought to recognize and protect the then-existing uses of the waters of the Río Grande in each of the three states and to divide the waters of the Río Grande among the three states according to that use.

Colorado’s apportionment or right to those waters, is set forth in Article III of the compact, which protects the water uses which were occurring in Colorado at that time, but also significantly limited any future development. The apportionment in the compact is to the state of Colorado for the benefit its citizens, just as the compact apportionment of the Río Grande is to the state of New Mexico for the benefit of New Mexico’s citizens.

As a matter of comity, in the 1938 compact, the state of Colorado recognized existing plans of the United States government and the state of New Mexico to construct diversion works and tunnels to deliver water from the San Juan River into the Río Grande drainage for the sole benefit of citizens of New Mexico downstream from Española.

Colorado’s acknowledgment of New Mexico’s plans for those diversion works on tributaries of the Colorado River was included in the Río Grande Compact in order to allow New Mexico to fully realize its benefits from the Colorado River Compact that had been signed in 1922. It had nothing to do with existing uses that were occurring within Colorado’s San Luis Valley.

The Río Grande Compact, far from permitting the “dewatering of the mainstem of the Río Grande through Taos County” actually requires the State of Colorado to deliver water through that very reach of the river and limits the ability of Colorado’s water users, including farmers in the San Luis Valley, from consuming more water from the Río Grande than was used during the period prior to 1938.

The economy that serves the writer’s interest, based upon river rafting, did not exist at the time of the compact and only came into being 100 years after Coloradans were making use of the Río Grande for the purposes to which it is put to this day.
Colorado’s right to the waters of the Río Grande is no different than the rights claimed by irrigationists in New Mexico taking water through acequias which also reduce the flows in the river. Both states have historic uses that are entitled to respect and protection.

Each state is entitled to the beneficial use of its share of the Río Grande in the manner that it may so choose. Taos County and its rafting industry has no right to suggest that uses within the state of Colorado are less valuable, nor less entitled to protection, than uses within Taos County. New Mexicans are fully entitled to make whatever economic decisions they wish about the water to which they are legally entitled under the Río Grande Compact but they are not entitled to make decisions about the water to which Colorado is entitled.

Finally, the writer does not acknowledge the severe drought that the San Luis Valley and Northern New Mexico are currently experiencing. The May 1 NRCS forecast for 2013 for the Upper Río Grande in Colorado is only 44 percent of normal. That equates to flows that are the fourth lowest since the period of record started in 1890.

More Rio Grande River Basin coverage here and here.