Jason Salzman, author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits, is chairman of the board of Rocky Mountain Media Watch and a former media critic for the shuttered newspaper Rocky Mountain News.
Rolly Fischer, who died recently, is the subject of this blog post from Jason Salzman and The Huffington Post. Jason, characteristically humble, doesn’t mention his role in uncovering the plagiarism scandal. I know he was involved because he emailed me early on asking about the work that Scott McIinnis so blatantly stole from Greg Hobbs and others.
Hobbs said at the time that he would have expected some credit from McIinnis.
Take a trip back through time in the Coyote Gulch archives here.
Here’s Jason’s blog post:
Rolly Fischer, who bravely fought off 2010 GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis’ attempts to blame him for McInnis’ plagiarized water articles, died last week in Glenwood Springs.
Fischer went from “irascible“ water nerd to cult hero in Colorado political circles after some of McInnis’ articles, commissioned by the Hasan Family Foundation, on Colorado water issues turned out to be substantially lifted from the writings of then Colorado Supreme Court Judge Gregory Hobbs.
After the plagiarism came to light, McInnis blamed Fischer, who was 82 years old at the time.
“I had staff assistance, I had research, and as you know, the research – that’s where the problem is here,” McInnis told Denver 7 at the time. McInnis added on the radio that his assistant felt “very remorseful” and “sick about it.”
Rolly Fischer via TheDenverChannel.com.
But, oops, Fischer soon told the [reporter] “Scott’s responsible for it.”
The piano fell through the floor when Fischer spoke with then Denver 7 reporter John Ferrugia in one of Colorado’s greatest political TV-news moments.
Ferrugia asked, “Rolly, is Scott McInnis lying to us?”
After some thought Fischer said, “Yes.”
The 82-year-old said, “I never knew about the foundation or any foundation Scott was associated with.”
“Did you know how he was using these?” Ferrugia asked, referring to the articles.
“No. I had this sophomoric assumption that he wanted them for his own inventory,” said Fischer.
Turned out, McInnis even tried to get Fischer to sign a letter saying the plagiarism was Fischer’s fault.
After the Ferrugia interview, McInnis sort of took responsibility for the plagiarism, telling The Denver Post, “I made a mistake. . . . I immediately owned up to it. It’s my responsibility. I’ve got to fix it. I’ve told my side of the story. So that’s where we are on that. I’d love to talk to you on jobs and some of these other things.”
He gave his two-year stipend of $300,000 back to the foundation. (He’d paid Fischer a few hundred dollars per water article.)
But in 2014, McInnis appeared to throw Fischer under the bus again, telling the Grand Junction Sentinel that he “didn’t plagiarize, period” and that he’d “used ghost writers my whole career” and “didn’t make the mistake.”
Scott McInnis, a former U.S. representative and current Mesa County commissioner, called Fischer “a water giant in his time,” who prepared the district for the issues it faces today…
Fischer figured in the collapse of McInnis’ campaign for governor in 2010, but McInnis said he never held the incident against Fischer.
“That’s water under the bridge now. I always thought Rollie was one of the brightest water people on the Western Slope,” McInnis said.
Did McInnis really say water under the bridge? A new water musing?
In any case, Fischer’s uninvited but starring role in the story of the downfall of McInnis deserves more than an asterisk in Colorado history. It was game changing.
If you were around at the time, you know that McInnis’ treatment of Fischer was far more damaging politically to McInnis than the plagiarism itself. It lead directly to McInnis’ loss in the GOP gubernatorial primary to Dan Maes, whose many flaws (and despite the best efforts of former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo) paved the way for Hickenlooper to be governor.
Unlike now, Hickenlooper, you may recall, was weak and flailing during the 2010 election, and Hick would might have lost to McInnis in a general election. And McInnis might have won the GOP primary had Fischer lied and taken fake responsibility for the plagiarism, as McInnis asked him to do. I mean, Tancredo and Maes, who both ran for governor in 2010, together had nearly as many votes as Hick.
It clearly wasn’t easy for Fischer, who served as a Colorado Water District Chief, to stand up to his long-time friend McInnis, but apparently in keeping with his personality, he did, and it brightened the spotlight not only on the plagiarism but on a nasty side of McInnis that GOP voters didn’t like. Can you blame them?
We owe Fischer our collective gratitude for his honesty.
Storm drain and open channel improvements between the East Rail Line (38th & Blake Station) and the South Platte River (Globeville Landing Outfall), Stormwater detention/conveyance between the East Rail Line (38th & Blake Station) and Colorado Blvd, (Montclair Basin) Stormwater detention/ conveyance immediately east of Colorado Blvd. (Park Hill Basin).
The city of Denver’s $300 million stormwater diversion project has already generated significant community resistance, from complaints over the sharp hike in stormwater fees needed to finance the plan to protests over the impacts the construction will have on north Denver neighborhoods and the City Park Golf Course to heated debates over who truly benefits from the project.
But as more details of the plan become public, opponents of the Platte to Park Hill Stormwater Systems are increasingly focusing on a little-discussed aspect of the project: the decision to direct storm runoff to the South Platte River through a heavily polluted Superfund site, a process that some fear could expose the river and nearby neighborhoods to a toxic brew of contaminants from arsenic-laced groundwater and a long-buried landfill.
“This is authentically nuts,” says civil engineer Adrian Brown, who’s raised questions with city engineers about the viability of the storm runoff outfall design. “If this thing fails, it’s just going to deposit the whole landfill into the river.”
Public works officials say the project is safe and will actually improve river quality. They have touted Platte to Park Hill (or “P2PH”) as a necessary fix for long-festering drainage problems in the northeast part of the city — water that flows north and west from Fairmount Cemetery through the Montclair, Park Hill, Cole and Whittier neighborhoods to Elyria, Swansea, Globeville and ultimately the South Platte River. Officials have stressed that some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods will benefit from the improvements, which include a fifteen-block channel along East 39th Avenue, an expanded outfall area at Globeville Landing Park, and a thirty-acre detention “pond” at the golf course, which won’t fill up except in the worst storms.
The number of Jeffco schools affected by unsafe levels of lead in drinking water from at least one sink or water fountain has risen to 109.
According to documents posted to the district’s website, approximately 7,500 samples have been taken from 144 schools since June 3, and more than 500 of those samples showed lead levels above the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum allowable level, which is 15 parts per billion.
As of Wednesday morning, test results are back for 137 schools, and approximately 80 percent have lead levels above the EPA threshold.
The test results show that a significant number of classroom and laboratory sinks are affected, as well as numerous food service sinks and sprayers, and drinking fountains in girls’ locker rooms at several schools. The lead levels at the affected schools range from 15.1 to 3,704.8 parts per billion.
Commenting on the latest numbers, district spokeswoman Diana Wilson said some of the results were expected due to the age of many of the buildings.
“Considering the age of many of our schools, we knew there was a risk that some of the plumbing fixtures could result in lead content in the drinking water being above the EPA recommended level. That is exactly what led us to test,” she said.
Six months ago, the district began testing its drinking water after high lead levels were found at the Head Start building the district previously owned in Arvada. Since then pipes and plumbing at several schools have been replaced, and a remediation plan has been developed.
Still, district officials said at a special meeting of the Jeffco school board in late July that the district hadn’t tested for lead since 1990 — partially because it wasn’t legally required to do so.
Test results for a handful of schools are still forthcoming, but do not include charter schools. Wilson said that of the school district’s 155 schools, 10 percent are charters, and “their facilities are not maintained by the district.”
Westwide SNOTEL map November 14, 2016 via the NRCS.
FromThe Associated Press (Dan Elliott) via KOAT.com:
Autumn snow has been scarce in the Rocky Mountains, forcing some ski areas to push back opening day and causing some nervousness about how much water will be available next spring for the Colorado River, the lifeblood of the Southwest.
But the first significant storm of the season is expected to blow into Colorado and Utah Thursday, bringing up to 10 inches of snow at higher elevations, forecasters said. Water managers and climate experts say it’s too early in the season to predict a dry winter.
“This doesn’t mean at all that the winter is going to be dry,” said Klaus Wolter, a climate scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences in Boulder, Colorado.
“It’s kind of a nervousness-inducing late onset,” he said.
A lot can happen between the fall and spring, said Marlon Duke, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages multiple reservoirs on the Colorado River.
“We’re hoping to see some good precipitation through the winter months,” he said.
The Colorado snowpack is off to its worst start in more than 30 years, said Brian Domonkos, who supervises the U.S. Department of Agriculture snow survey in the state.
At least five Colorado ski resorts have postponed their opening day. Unusually warm temperatures have limited how much artificial snow the resorts can make, compounding the lack of natural snow.
Still, two Colorado resorts have opened with limited skiing and two more are scheduled to start this weekend. Others plan to open before or during the Thanksgiving holiday, said Chris Linsmayer, a spokesman for Colorado Ski Country USA.
No matter how much or how little snow this week’s storm brings, the colder weather should help with snow-making, Linsmayer said.
“We’re hearing is that Thursday is going to be kind of a shift in the weather pattern to cooler weather,” he said.
At least three ski resorts in New Mexico have delayed their opening. In Utah, five resorts that hope to open this weekend are waiting to see what Thursday’s storm brings before deciding, said Paul Marshall, a spokesman for Ski Utah.
Water managers pay close attention to the snowfall in the Rocky Mountains because of its direct impact on the Colorado River, which supplies water to about 40 million people and 6,300 square miles of farmland. Seven states and 20 Indian reservations rely on the river.
After a yearslong Western drought, Lake Mead — a vital Colorado River reservoir in Arizona and Nevada — is barely able to supply all the users who depend on it. By 2018, some users might not get all they need, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said last summer. The agency manages multiple reservoirs on the river.
About 90 percent of the river’s water comes from the region known as the Upper Colorado River Basin, a large swath of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and smaller sections of Arizona and New Mexico.
With their normally deep winter snows, the Colorado mountains are the heart of the Upper Basin.
The Colorado snowfall could catch up to normal, Domonkos said, but that’s unlikely.
“I wouldn’t call it likely, no. But it’s not out of the realm of possibility,” he said.
Click here to go the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s a excerpt:
Summary
A large upper-level ridge of high pressure dominated the Lower 48 States (CONUS) this USDM week, keeping much of the country warmer and drier than normal. Low pressure troughs moving in the jet stream flow brought precipitation to the Pacific Northwest, northwest California, and the Northern Rockies; parts of Texas and the Gulf of Mexico coast; and the coastal Southeast to Mid-Atlantic States and eastern Great Lakes. But, except for Texas and a few areas in the coastal Carolinas, even with the precipitation the week was drier than normal. The continued and prolonged dryness in many areas resulted in expanding and intensifying drought, especially in the Central to Southern Plains, Lower Mississippi Valley to Ohio Valley, and Southeast to Northeast…
The Great Plains
One to 2 inches of rain fell in parts of Texas, and North Dakota had a tenth of an inch or less, but most of the Great Plains had no precipitation this week. There was some contraction of D0 in Texas where the rains fell, but more expansion of D0-D2 occurred with the addition of a new oval of D3 over northeast Texas and adjacent southeast Oklahoma. D0-D2 also expanded in parts of Oklahoma, D0 expanded in Iowa and Missouri and adjacent parts of Illinois, and D0-D1 expanded in western Kansas and Nebraska and adjacent parts of Colorado. The Oklahoma State Climatologist’s office has received widespread reports of low or dry farm ponds, dry soils and ruined crops. In LeFlore County, cattle producers are already feeding hay due to the lack of forage caused by drought conditions, and water supplies in the northern half of the county are becoming very depleted. Reports of drought impacts in the Arklatex, received by National Weather Service personnel, include much lower than usual stock ponds and significant risk for wildfires…
The Rockies and Far West
Precipitation fell from northwestern California, across the Pacific Northwest, and much of Montana this week. But this is well into the wet season for the Northwest, so the precipitation that fell was still below normal in most locations. No precipitation fell outside these areas. Temperatures were well above normal across the West. Additional changes in Colorado include the insertion of a couple D2 spots, and D0-D1 was expanded in south central Wyoming. Otherwise, no changes were made to the drought depiction in the West. The Colorado Climate Center noted that the warm, dry weather of the last month or two has led to an abysmal start to the snowpack season with all major river basins in Colorado reporting less than 25% of average snowfall by this point in the cold season. The lack of snowpack is evident across most of the West…
Looking Ahead
In the 24 hours after the valid time of the November 15 USDM, a low pressure system dropped 1-2 inches of rain across parts of the Northeast and another system brought additional precipitation to the Pacific Northwest. During November 22-26, above-normal precipitation is expected across the Far West, the Midwest, and Northeast, while below-normal precipitation is forecasted for Texas, the Southeast, Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska. A similar pattern is evident in the outlook for November 24-30. Odds favor drier than normal weather in the Southern Plains to Southeast, Montana, and eastern Alaska, and wetter than normal weather across the Far West to Central Plains, Northeast, and western Alaska Temperatures are expected to be below normal along the East Coast but above normal for the rest of the CONUS and parts of Alaska for the entire period, November 22-30.
Westwide SNOTEL map November 14, 2016 via the NRCS.
New West Texas Mesonet station…Old Fort Lewis…looking north…station is 10 miles west of Durango and 20 miles east of Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado.
Completed in September, the weather station is part of Texas Tech University’s “West Texas Mesonet” network of nearly 100 stations – mostly concentrated on Texas’ Panhandle Plains – that began in 2000.
Yet a connection between Fort Lewis College physics professor Charlie Hakes and a staff member at Texas Tech ultimately led to discussions about installing a weather station on the college’s sprawling 6,200-acre property, about 16 miles southwest of Durango.
“Their study is to make better weather models of remote places where a lot of people are still just guessing,” said Hakes, who is also director of the Fort Lewis Observatory. “And Durango is now their most remote location.”
Crews spent about a month erecting the new weather station, which stands about 33 feet tall on the plateau above the offices of the Southwest Conservation Corp. The $23,000 station was financed in large part by Texas Tech, but also received state and federal funding, as well as endowments from wind energy companies.
The station now streams 28 different parameters – including temperature, wind speed and direction, relative humidity and precipitation – to the West Texas Mesonet website every five minutes.
“It’s tough to know what’s going on (with the weather) in your area,” said Wes Burgett, operations manager for the West Texas Mesonet. “So we’re really anxious to see some of the data come back.”
The Four Corners region has long been known as a sort of “blind spot” when it comes to weather and radar modeling, as major hubs in Albuquerque, Flagstaff and Grand Junction take in data at elevations too high to accurately hone in on places like Durango.
“The radar coming out of Grand Junction is pretty high above our head here, so it doesn’t see a lot of the lower level weather going on,” McNamara said.
“Especially, anything below mountain tops. There’s a lot that’s missed from the radar, which is typically the primary source for current conditions. As a result, we have to rely more on secondary weather systems out there.”
Indeed, by piece-mealing stations in remote, isolated places like Hesperus, forecasters can rely on that data to create a more complete picture of the region’s weather, said Dennis Phillips, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Grand Junction.
“The more data we have, the better we can make our forecasts,” Phillips said. “Observations are really what drive everything, so accurate wind, temperature, precipitation forecasts in one spot is awesome. It’s almost invaluable.”
The only official NOAA weather station is located by the Durango-La Plata County Airport, yet McNamara said other agency stations around the region help filter in more on-the-ground information, which is used to help predict wildfires, avalanches, as well as other extreme natural events.
Yet the station at the Old Fort Lewis campus also has some more specialized purposes, Texas Tech’s Burgett said.
Researchers will look at the data, at the behest of stakeholders, to help farmers and ranchers in the area better time the growing season, namely hay production, by using data to find trends with temperature, humidity and wind.
The real-time data will also assist Mesa Verde Helitak pilots, who operate out of the Old Fort Lewis campus, know the wind speed and direction when they come in to land.
And, Burgett said, Texas Tech University, a leading institute on wind energy research, will be paying close attention to the possibilities of production in southwestern La Plata County.
So how long will the new weather station – the project’s 99th – stick around?
The Widefield Water and Sanitation District became the last major water system to stop using well water from the tainted aquifer, according to the district’s water manager, Brandon Bernard.
As of Nov. 10, all of the district’s customers receive cleaner surface water from the Pueblo Reservoir.
“We’re looking forward to moving forward without having to worry about PFCs,” said Bernard, using an acronym for the toxic chemicals.
The announcement ends one chapter of a water crisis that sent thousands of residents scrambling for bottled water…
The contamination has spawned two class-action lawsuits against companies that manufactured the foam. The Air Force, which found the chemical harmful to laboratory animals as early as the 1970s, also is studying its role in the contamination by drilling several test wells around Peterson Air Force Base…
For months, local water officials raced to limit residents’ exposure to the chemicals, which remain unregulated by the EPA.
Fountain officials shut off their wells in fall 2015 – relying instead on cleaner water from the Pueblo Reservoir. But other water districts couldn’t meet customers’ demands this past summer without using contaminated well water.
Security Water and Sanitation Districts weaned itself from the aquifer in September.
Officials for all three water districts are optimistic that customers will no longer receive contaminated water from the aquifer, unless its cleansed of the toxic chemicals.
Officials in Security and Fountain have previously voiced plans to build treatment plants to filter the fouled water. Water rates there could rise to help finance those projects.
Widefield officials, however, are conducting two test projects to determine whether ion exchange or granular activated carbon filters best remove the chemicals, Bernard said.
Widefield’s test projects, which began in October, are expected to last six months, he said.
The district also is planning a $1 million project to install a pipe under Interstate 25 capable of bringing in more water from the Pueblo Reservoir. Widefield has several thousand acre feet of water stored at the Pueblo Reservoir, and officials there are no longer concerned about running out of water rights this year.
District leaders also plan to meet with Air Force officials on Thursday to coordinate how the military can help filter water. In July, the Air Force vowed to spend $4.3 million to supply bottled water and well water filters for the affected communities.
Unlike other water districts, Widefield is not planning to raise rates in 2017 to pay for the water projects, Bernard said. Rather, they will be paid for using reserve funding.
Customers are only likely to pay for operations costs once a treatment plant is built, he said.
“It’s nice just to not have to worry about our customers being concerned,” Bernard said. “And now we can just move forward with fixing the problem.”
During their monthly meeting…Lower Arkansas board members voted unanimously to join a lawsuit filed last week against Colorado Springs for discharging pollutants into Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River.
Members also said they have asked Pueblo City Council and the Pueblo County commissioners to join the lawsuit, as well.
“I can’t see where Pueblo County and the city cannot step up and do the same thing,” said Anthony Nunez, a former Pueblo County commissioner who sits on the Lower Ark board…
Peter Nichols, an attorney and a Lower Ark director, told board members that intervening in the lawsuit would give them a seat at the table in any sort of trial or negotiated settlement that might occur…
Nunez said Colorado Springs needs to be held accountable and, in the nearly six years he has been on the board, he’s heard the same thing from Colorado Springs over and over again.
“We’ve met with the (Colorado Springs) City Council. I guess to put it in better terms, we meet with half of the City Council because they are always waiting for the next city council,” Nunez said.
“We have talked and talked, and I think it is time that actions be taken.”
[…]
“As long as they can keep giving us the stiff arm — put us off, put us off, put us off — they don’t feel like they have any obligation because, quite frankly, if they have a violation, they pay a small fine and that fine is far less than rectifying the entire problem,” [Melissa Esquibel] said.
One of the worst recorded droughts in human history has stretched water supplies thin across the far-reaching river basin, which serves 40 million people.
Nowhere is this more obvious than Lake Mead, which straddles the border of Arizona and Nevada. The water level in the country’s largest manmade reservoir has been plummeting; it’s now only 37 percent full.
With an official water shortage imminent, Arizona, Nevada and California are taking matters into their own hands. The states are hammering out a voluntary agreement to cut their water use — an approach some consider revolutionary after so many decades of fighting and lawsuits.
The cooperation springs from self-preservation. If Lake Mead drops too low, the federal government could step in and reallocate the water.
At the same time, upper basin states like Colorado and Wyoming want to use more Colorado River water — something they’re legally entitled to.
In Colorado, Denver Water is in the final stages of seeking approval on a water storage project that would take more water out of the Colorado River. Wyoming is researching whether to store more water from the Green River, a Colorado tributary. Utah is discussing whether to build a pipeline to transport water from Lake Powell, the reservoir found up river from Lake Mead along the Utah – Arizona border.
Add in the likely impacts of climate change and how it’s affecting the Colorado River basin and you have an increasingly complex and challenging picture developing for the 21st century.
Pat Mulroy, a senior fellow at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and a leading Western water expert, says the time for a new toolbox and ideas to approach water management has arrived.
“There won’t be any winners and losers,” Mulroy says, unless Colorado River states move beyond the fighting and lawsuits of the last century as they try to adapt to the next century. “There will only be losers.”
