Day: June 29, 2014

SDS: There is no Plan B — Colorado Springs Business Journal

The new north outlet works at Pueblo Dam -- Photo/MWH Global
The new north outlet works at Pueblo Dam — Photo/MWH Global

From The Colorado Springs Business Journal (John Hazlehurst):

CSU’s ongoing billion-dollar bet is the Southern Delivery System. Scheduled to go online in 2016, SDS will convey water from Pueblo Reservoir via a 66-inch-diameter underground pipeline to Colorado Springs. It will expand the city’s raw water delivery capacity by an eventual 55 million gallons per day (MGD), a nearly 50-percent increase in system capacity…

“What we’re hoping for is a record snowpack,” CSU Chief Financial Officer Bill Cherrier said in late March, “followed by a hot, dry summer.”

Cherrier said it with a smile, but he had neatly summarized CSU’s dilemma. Water in the reservoirs must both be replenished and sold. The sell side of the equation is driven by fixed costs, including system maintenance and replacement, energy costs and continuing capital investment. But buyers don’t care about CSU’s problems; they prefer to water their lawns with free water from the skies.

Per-capita water use has dropped sharply in the past 20 years, leading to corresponding reductions in the city’s long-term consumption estimates.

“The Base (i.e. revenue) forecast is for an estimated service area population (city, suburban, Green Mountain Falls, military) of about 608,552 and about 106,000 AF/yr for demand,” wrote CSU spokesperson Janet Rummel in an email. “The ‘hot and dry’ scenario uses the same service area population and estimates about 120,000 AF/yr demand. This particular ‘hot and dry’ scenario equates to an 80 percent confidence interval and adds about 13 percent to annual demands.”

That’s a precipitous drop from the high-side estimate of the 1996 water resources plan, which forecast a population in 2040 as high as 900,000 and water demand of 168,150 acre-feet. The base forecast, at 106,000 acre-feet annually, is only 1,800 acre-feet more than the community used in 2000, 40 years previously.

Does that mean CSU’s water managers dropped $841 million into a new water delivery system that we may not need until 2016? Does this prove that the project, originally conceived to furnish water for the Banning-Lewis Ranch development, is now entirely unnecessary?

Perhaps not…

“SDS is not a short-term solution,” Rummel said in a 2010 email. “The time to build a major water project is not when you have run short of water … [we need] to better prepare our community for drought, climate change and water supply uncertainty on the Colorado River.”

Many factors entered into the decision to build SDS. In 1996, there was no discussion of system redundancy, of having an additional water pipeline that could serve the city in case one of the existing conduits needed emergency repair. But 18 years later, the pipelines are that much more vulnerable to accident or malfunction.

In 1996, population growth and per capita water use were expected to continue indefinitely at historic levels. But they didn’t. Commercial and industrial use declined, and price-sensitive residents used less water. Indoor use declined as well as outdoor, thanks to restricted-flow shower heads and low-flush toilets.

SDS stayed on track. In the eyes of the water survivalists who conceived and created the project, the city’s rights on the Arkansas River had to be developed. They saw long, hot summers in the city and dry winters in the mountains. Opponents could make any arguments they liked, but these five words trumped them all.

Use it or lose it.

Undeveloped water rights are like $100 bills blowing down the street — someone will grab them and use them for their own benefit…

“This will be our last pipeline,” said CSU water resources manager Gary Bostrom. “We will never be able to develop a new water delivery system. When SDS is finished, that’s it.”

Bostrom’s peers in Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego and Los Angeles have reason to envy him. Colorado Springs has won the water wars. We’ve bought ourselves decades of time. Whether we save or squander this liquid bounty is up to us.

In 2040, the city may have 30,000 to 50,000 acre-feet a year of unneeded delivery capacity. That cushion will allow for decades of population growth and for the introduction of sophisticated irrigation techniques that will preserve our green city and minimize water use.

In years to come, members of the Colorado Springs City Council will decide how to preserve the city’s future. Will they heed Bostrom’s warning and encourage radical conservation? Will new developments be required to xeriscape, and preserve trees with drip irrigation devices?

More Southern Delivery System coverage here and here.

Summer Monsoon Watch 2014

FTO_700Hghts_062614

Click here to go to the CWCB’s Colorado Flood Threat website. Here’s an excerpt from the June 26 update:

An area of cloudiness and disorganized showers and thunderstorms extends for several hundred miles offshore of the coast of southern Mexico and Central America. An area of low pressure is expected to form in a couple of days within this region of disturbed weather south of the coast of Mexico. According to the National Hurricane Center, conditions appear favorable for this system to become a tropical cyclone by late this weekend or early next week while it moves west-northwestward. As it does it’ll set off a chain of events that will culminate with the emergence of the 2014 summer monsoon in Colorado.

The figure [above] shows the NOAA GFS model forecast for ~10,000 ft over the United States and bordering areas. The blue arrows show the Pacific storms track moving into a more northerly location. The black arrows highlight flow of monsoon moisture into the Southwestern states ahead of a tropical disturbance near the Gulf of California. Based on this forecast expect a weak surge of monsoon moisture into the West Slope for July 3-4 followed by a stronger surge July 10-15. This latter surge will likely enhance the threat of flooding statewide and begin a new summer storms season statewide.

Collbran mudslide remains under watchful eye of experts — The Denver Post

Grand Mesa mudslide before and after via The Denver Post
Grand Mesa mudslide before and after via The Denver Post

From The Denver Post (Nancy Lofholm):

Trash trucks are once again picking up the garbage on West Salt Creek Road near Collbran — one of the best signs, residents say, that some sense of normalcy is returning to those living under the threat of more movement from a giant mudslide.

“We feel very comfortable now. We feel like there is so much intelligence coming in now and that they are really watching that mountain,” said Celia Eklund, who lives along lower West Salt Creek Road.

The residents there are still on alert from the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office since the mountain above them slid on May 25 and buried three local men who had gone up to check on a smaller slide that occurred earlier that day…

Dozens of experts from local, state and federal agencies have studied the slide that is now being called a “debris avalanche” or a “rapid earthflow” by geologists. They have used high-tech aerial imaging, GPS and water flow meters and have installed monitors that can detect even slight movements in the slide.

They now have a more accurate size on the slide, which is smaller than originally estimated.

The latest information from the U.S. Geological Survey shows that the slide stretches for 2.5 miles and covers 550 acres…

The slide contains a pool of water at the top behind a large block of earth that broke off from the Grand Mesa where the slide originated. Geologists now estimate that pool will hold about 245 acre feet of water before it could reach an outlet and spill over. A gauge has been installed by the USGS Colorado Water Science Center just below the toe of the landslide to measure any flow from the slide.

Heather Benjamin with the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office said the Army Corps of Engineers joined the geologists from the USGS and the Colorado Geological Survey this week. The entire group of geologists and emergency management personnel from the Colorado Department of Public Safety have been holding nightly briefings since the slide occurred.

Water Lines: What can local governments do to protect & conserve water?

Sprawl
Sprawl

From the Glenwood Springs Post Independent (Hannah Holm):

As people around the state debate how to make Colorado’s limited water supplies stretch to accommodate nearly twice as many people by 2050, the topic of growth surfaces repeatedly. Some call for outright limits on population growth, while others point out that how communities grow can have as big an impact on their water use as how much they grow. For example, smaller lots equal smaller lawns, resulting in less water consumed per household.

In May, the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments (NWCCOG) held a workshop to explore how land-use planning practices and regulations can be employed to achieve water conservation and water-quality goals. According to the workshop report prepared by Torie Jarvis, staff to NWCCOG’s Water Quality & Quantity Committee, some communities are already taking substantial action in these areas. The full workshop report is available here: http://www.nwccog.org/index.php/programs/water-qualityquantity-committee. Key points are highlighted below.

For some communities in Colorado’s High Country, conservation measures serve the dual purpose of ensuring that new developments have reliable water supplies and protecting streams. The Town of Winter Park places a high value on the Fraser River, which runs right through town, despite the fact that 65 percent of its natural flow is diverted to the Front Range before it reaches the town. The Town limits the issuance of development permits to maintain 10 cubic feet per second in the Fraser River, and does not allow outside irrigation in the town limits. The Town of Eagle requires that water rights attached to developments annexed by the Town to be donated to the Town. The rights are then leased back for use by the development, but the Town retains ultimate control.

Tools to regulate the pace and location of growth are also tools to limit pressure on water supplies. Pitkin County has a growth management quota system, which establishes a set number of development permits on a competitive basis, while the Town of Eagle uses an urban growth boundary to control density and the location of new growth.

In addition to ensuring the long-term reliability of their water supplies, local governments use various tools to protect habitat along stream banks and water quality in streams. The Town of Eagle’s Brush Creek Management Plan identifies values that should be protected in the stream corridor and then requires any new development to protect those values in order to receive permits. Pitkin County limits which portions of a property can be developed and landscaped in order to protect its stream banks, while annexation to the Town of Winter Park generally requires Town ownership of the river corridor. Several local governments have also invested substantial funds in stream restoration projects.

Ultimately, the workshop participants agreed that local governments have the tools to ensure that new growth doesn’t outstrip water supplies. They also agreed that water conservation targets should be incorporated into land-use plans, but were wary of any state mandate regarding what such targets should be or how they should be reached. The report states that all workshop participants agreed that the dialogue on the intersection between land-use planning and water conservation should continue.

What do you think? To communicate your opinion to the Water Center at Colorado Mesa University and water planners at the state and local levels, take a brief survey here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Water-land.

More conservation coverage here.

“Western Views” — news from Western Resource Advocates is hot off the presses

Yampa/White/Green/North Platte river basins via the Colorado Geological Survey
Yampa/White/Green/North Platte river basins via the Colorado Geological Survey

Click here to read the newsletter. Here’s an excerpt:

Earlier this month, Bart Miller, Water Program Director, joined a group of more than 20 national and local conservationists, water policy stakeholders, and other river advocates on a four-day raft trip through Yampa Canyon and Dinosaur National Monument as part of the Yampa River Awareness Project (YRAP).

Some YRAP participants did a fly-over of the Yampa Valley and Yampa Canyon to see the river and landscape from the air. Then the entire group spent the next four days floating down the 71-mile stretch of river from Deerlodge Park (west of the town of Maybell) to the Split Mountain Boat Ramp in Utah.

The trip was fun and informative. Rafts and kayaks crashed through waves at a whopping 20,000 cubic feet per second while the group learned about the Canyon’s geology, history, recreation, and habitat value for endangered fish. Discussions took place on potential threats to the river and how best to preserve the flows and integrity of the river’s bio-diversity and many other values. Each participant left with a better understanding of what needs to be done to preserve the Yampa and his/her personal role in that effort.

Bart’s take-homes included the benefits of: better aligning recreational and agricultural interests at the local level; creating an update to the management plan for the Yampa’s resource values; and spreading the word on the Yampa River’s unique and irreplaceable bio-diversity.

More Yampa River Basin coverage here.

Reducing the Impact of Stormwater Challenges — Nancy Stoner

aspen
From the Environmental Protection Agency (Nancy Stoner):

Stormwater pollution is a dilemma all across the country – even in beautiful mountain towns like Aspen, Colorado. Pollutants such as oils, fertilizer, and sediment from the steep mountains that tower over the town, can be carried via stormwater and snowmelt and deposited into waterways like the Roaring Fork River. This has a huge impact on the ecosystem.

Last month, I toured the Jennie Adair wetlands, a bio-engineered detention area designed to passively treat stormwater runoff in Aspen. I saw firsthand how the city is working to deal with its stormwater challenges. Before this project, stormwater did not drain to a water treatment facility. It used to flow directly into the Roaring Fork River and other water bodies within the city limits, having significant impacts on the water quality.

To reduce this impact, Aspen designed a passive stormwater treatment facility that also serves as an attractive and natural looking feature in a beautiful park that is dedicated to the memory of John Denver. The innovative and beautiful design uses boulders and large rocks that were naturally present on site, to shape the channel that carries runoff from the roads and from a vault into the detention pond where sediment and other pollutants settle out. On the other side of the pond, the water comes out crystal clear and drains right into the Roaring Fork River.

I was impressed by the use of green infrastructure to improve water quality and that they made such a beautiful public park out of it and did so voluntarily. This is a town that is dedicated to clean water. The people of Aspen should be proud.

Green infrastructure, similar to what is being built in Aspen and many other cities across the country, can be a cost-effective approach for improving water quality and can help communities to stretch their infrastructure investments further. Green infrastructure reduces and treats the water at its source, often delaying the time it takes to clear the structure. Therefore green infrastructure often reduces flooding within the area the project is constructed.

Since 2007, the EPA has supported the idea of green infrastructure to control storm events. The Agency has formulated strategic agendas, built community partnerships, and provided technical assistance to many communities seeking to implement green infrastructure practices.

Aspen has shown us that with a little innovation we can reduce our impact on the environment while enhancing its beauty.

More stormwater coverage here.

Runoff/snowpack news: Ruedi pretty much full #ColoradoRiver

ruedidam

From email from Reclamation (Kara Lamb):

It looks like Ruedi Reservoir is inches from completely full. Last night at midnight, the reservoir’s total content was about 98.8%. Tonight’s reading will likely be around 99% full. As a result, tomorrow, Sunday, releases from the dam to the Fryingpan River will bump up another 50 cfs. We will make the change around 8:00 a.m. After that, flows past the Ruedi Dam gage will be closer to 321 cfs.

Lake Nighthorse: No recreation plan yet, no recreation this season

Lake Nighthorse via the USBR
Lake Nighthorse via the USBR

From The Durango Herald (Sarah Mueller):

Kathleen Ozga, resource manager with the bureau’s Western Colorado area, gave an update at a public meeting at the Durango Community Recreation Center. About 100 residents attended the meeting, and some asked questions that Ozga either couldn’t answer or declined to answer. However, some residents said they felt Ozga provided the information she could, and it was new to them.

Opening Lake Nighthorse is not an option this year, and no timetable was presented. Ozga said a May 31 letter to the editor in The Durango Herald by Ed Warner, Western Colorado area manager for the bureau, that said the agency was committed to working with stakeholders and hoped to reach a consensus by early 2015 was a “little presumptuous.”

“We would love to put a date up there, we would, but we can’t because we don’t know,” she said. “There’s too much uncertainty, for lack of a better word and too much level of detail we still need to work out.”

More Animas-La Plata Project coverage here.

Water Pollution: Conservationists tally 849,610 pounds of pollutants released to surface water in 2012

effluent

From The Denver Post (Bruce Finley):

Industrial polluters released 849,610 pounds of toxic chemicals into Colorado waterways in 2012, according to a report drawn from federal data. The most prevalent chemical — nitrates — causes algae growth that leads to dead zones in rivers and streams.

“If we suck all the oxygen out of rivers, then there are no fish and our rivers become lifeless,” said John Rumpler, senior attorney for Environment America, who conducted the analysis. “This toxic pollution is a reminder of why we need the strongest protection we can get under the Clean Water Act.”

The data presented Thursday by Environment America’s affiliates in Colorado and other states comes from disclosures by industrial facilities to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Among the leading polluters in Colorado, according to the report:

• Cargill Meat Solutions Corp. at Fort Morgan — 462,608 pounds of nitrate compounds and ammonia released into the South Platte River.

• Army at Fort Carson south of Colorado Springs — 143,419 pounds of nitrate compounds released into Fountain Creek.

• Suncor Energy in Commerce City — 78,280 ponds of nitrates, dioxins and other compounds released into Sand Creek.

• MillerCoors’ brewery in Golden — 71,000 ponds of nitrates and ammonia released into Clear Creek.

• Climax Molybdenum Co. in Empire and Climax — nitrates, manganese, zinc and other compounds released into the West Fork of Clear Creek and Tenmile Creek.

• Leprino Foods’ plant at Fort Morgan — 19,534 pounds of nitrates released into the South Platte.

• The Western Sugar Cooperative in Greeley — 12,394 pounds of nitrates released into the Cache la Poudre River.

Environmental groups rolled out the report as EPA officials consider extending Clean Water Act protection to thousands of miles of streams and rivers and millions of acres of wetlands around the nation. They contend restoration of federal protection to these intermittent waterways — which had protection before 2006 — will help control the growth of dead zones.

More Environmental Protection Agency coverage here.

“Coors and skiing commercials worked. People came and some of them stayed.” — Jim Pokrandt #ColoradoRiver #COWaterPlan

The Glenwood Wave
The Glenwood Wave

From the Vail Daily (Randy Wyrick):

We live in a semi-arid environment, but we love to play in the water.

Take the massive wave park in Glenwood Springs. Surfers love it, but it hasn’t run like this for a few years, says Jim Pokrandt, communications and education director with the Colorado River District.

“The bigger the snowpack the bigger the runoff and the bigger the wave at Glenwood Springs. It gets this big when the river is running 20,000 cfs,” Pokrandt said, pointing to the picture with this story.

Pokrandt chairs the Colorado River Basin Roundtable. Every month, 50 to 60 people come together from Summit and Grand counties where the river begins, down to the state line below Grand Junction. The roundtable has been meeting for eight years.

Here’s what they know: There’s already not enough water to do everything that everyone wants to do, and some people want more.

“Coors and skiing commercials worked. People came and some of them stayed,” Pokrandt said.

They get together and have kids, and the population grows. By 2050 Colorado’s population could hit 10 million people, Pokrandt said. It’s around 5 million people right now…

Much of that growth will remain along the Front Range, where officials euphemistically talk about “new supply,” which basically means transmountain diversions, said John McClow, general counsel of the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District and one of the West’s foremost water experts.

“How can that be when the river is so dangerously close to being overdeveloped?” McClow asked.

The Front Range already pulls 650,000 acre feet every year from the Colorado River, McClow said.

Another 150,000 acre foot diversion is already planned, Pokrandt said.

“We don’t think there’s enough water for another big diversion project,” Pokrandt said.

Transmountain diversions to the Front Range would be a junior water right. That means if there’s not enough water to go around, they’re the first to go without.

“Denver and Aurora are acutely aware of all that,” McClow said.

Douglas County, however, is a “black hole,” McClow said.

“They say water must be provided for farms and that it has to come from somewhere,” McClow said.

More Colorado Water Plan coverage here.

Cleanup of debris that washes down Fountain Creek a concern for Pueblo Councilor

Fountain Creek Watershed
Fountain Creek Watershed

From The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):

Pueblo City Councilwoman Eva Montoya wants less talk and more action on removing logs and other debris from Fountain Creek.

“We need to talk about how we’re going to take care of it, and get a dialogue among the cities on Fountain Creek,” said Montoya, chairwoman of the Fountain Creek Watershed Flood Control and Greenway District.

She made her comments during the directors portion of Friday’s board meeting at Pueblo City Hall. The board has discussed the debris left from last fall’s flooding at several meetings, but most of the large trees, logs and debris have not been removed.

Officials fear another heavy flood will pick up the logs within Pueblo and upstream, potentially clogging structures such as bridges and creating worse flooding problems.

“There are a lot of senior citizens (on Pueblo’s East Side) in the pathway if it comes over the levee,” Montoya said. “We have to get something done. We can’t wait for a disaster. We need to be prepared.”

More Fountain Creek coverage here and here.

Roundtable meeting Tuesday at Pueblo Community College for comments on the basin implementation plan #COWaterPlan

Arkansas River Basin -- Graphic via the Colorado Geological Survey
Arkansas River Basin — Graphic via the Colorado Geological Survey

From The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):

Pueblo-area residents will have the opportunity to offer their comments on the Arkansas River basin’s portion of the state water plan next week.

The Arkansas Basin Roundtable will host the meeting at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the Fortino Ballroom at Pueblo Community College. The roundtable has been discussing how to stretch limited water supplies for municipal, industrial, agricultural, recreational and environmental uses since 2005. Its primary purpose is to identify ways to meet the water resources gap identified in the Statewide Water Supply Initiative, which originally was completed in 2004, and updated in 2010.

Gov. John Hickenlooper has asked the Colorado Water Conservation Board to develop a draft state water plan by the end of 2014. As part of that, nine basin roundtables throughout Colorado are developing basin implementation plans.

To learn more about the plan and the process, go to the roundtable’s website (http://arkansasbasin.com).

More Colorado Water Plan coverage here.