As Greeley attempts to maintain its outward growth, booming water prices could slow it down.
The Greeley City Council on Tuesday held a work session on a water policy called “cash in lieu,” which allows developers to buy water access when a property’s existing supply is short of its city-mandated requirements.
Some developers already use the process, but it’s rare right now, said Water and Sewer Director Burt Knight. It’s going to become more common as Greeley continues to expand.
“Over time, there will be no more water to dedicate to the city,” said Eric Reckentine, deputy director of water resources.
Optimistic estimates give Greeley 40 years until cash in lieu water development is the norm. Pessimistic ones give it 10 years.
City officials contracted a firm to study Greeley’s cash in lieu policies and the options they have to modify it going forward.
If someone buys a pre-owned house in Greeley, for example, its water has already been set up. If a new house goes up in a developed area of town, it can use existing water infrastructure. If a new house goes up in an undeveloped area, often the property comes with water rights — access to a river or ditch that it gives to the city in exchange for access to treated water that comes out of a pipe.
But the land Greeley has left to develop is exceedingly short on water rights. Sometimes it’s because the land is far away from water. Other times, farmers have sold their water rights and later sold their land without them.
In this situation, the developer has to find a way to bring more water into the Greeley water system.
That water also is getting more expensive.
Water planners use the price of Colorado-Big Thompson access as a benchmark. For years, C-BT prices increased at about 13 percent a year. In the past three, the price has tripled, said Douglas Jeavons, managing director of BBC Research and Consulting, the contractor Greeley used for the study.
As cash in lieu policies become more common across the region, the price will continue to grow.
“There may not be very much C-BT left and changing hands at that point in time,” he said.
Greeley’s price for cash in lieu water is about $25,000 per acre foot, which BBC found was high compared to other communities.
For the city to acquire new water, it’s about $16,000 per acre foot, Jeavons said. It might be cheaper, but there is more uncertainty.
For example, one way to acquire more water is to build more reservoirs. Greeley is in the permit process for new ones, but those might fall through.
Developers, Realtors and economic development advocates already have issues with paying $25,000 to the city for water, according to the BBC report.
They say the city’s water amount requirements on new development — three acre feet of water per acre of land — and the costs associated with them are too high.
The report found that the required amount is standard throughout the northern Front Range, but the cost is $5,000 higher than average.
Changes in price as well as requirement amounts and charging processes will be discussed further by members of the Greeley Water and Sewer Board in an upcoming meeting.
A report at the Sept. 9 meeting of the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program Governance Committee in Kearney estimated the current cost at $170 million. Neither figure includes property acquisition.
“Much of the work is on hold, in particular the negotiations with landowners,” said Mike Drain, Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District Natural Resources Manager told the Hub Friday.
The Holdrege-based district would build, own and operate the two shallow reservoirs along the south side of the Platte River between Lexington and Overton that would temporarily hold excess water for later releases back to the river when needed to meet habitat target flows for threatened and endangered birds.
CNPPID’s major benefit would be to operate the upstream J-2 hydropower plant more efficiently.
The Platte Program, which involves the U.S. Department of Interior, Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska, would pay the majority of the costs and get the majority of river benefit credits.
Nebraska would pay for 25 percent of the credits, with the Grand Island-based Central Platte Natural Resources District and Holdrege-based Tri-Basin NRD each participating for 20 percent of the Nebraska share.
At Thursday’s CPNRD board meeting in Grand Island, the NRD’s biologist and Governance Committee representative, Mark Czaplewski, was asked what factors had caused the two project estimates to be so far apart.
“The biggest one by far was underestimating what it would take to line the reservoir,” Czaplewski said, explaining that RJH Consultants Inc. of Englewood, Colo., the engineering consultant hired by CNPPID, based the original figure on surveys of off-site areas, while the new number applies to what is known about the actual J-2 project site.
“There were a number of things,” he added, including some redesign on the reservoirs’ ring dikes and that contractors were “a little hungrier” for jobs when the first estimate was made than they are now.
Czaplewski said the J-2 project is an important part of the Platte Program’s first-increment goal to reduce annual Platte River depletions by 130,000-150,000 acre-feet. The J-2 project benefits have been estimated at 48,000 a-f…
The J-2 Regulating Reservoirs project already was behind on several schedule targets. Drain said CNPPID officials had hoped to have full access or ownership of all land within the project footprint by the end of this year, which isn’t going to happen.
“There isn’t any way that we haven’t at least delayed the project now,” he added.
From email from the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District:
Northern Water’s Fall Water Users Meeting will be held Tuesday, Nov. 10 at the Riverside Cultural Center, 3700 Golden St., Evans, CO starting at 8 a.m.
The meeting is a forum to discuss the current water situation and water-related issues, the water year, the Northern Integrated Supply Project and the Windy Gap Firming Project.
Other items on the agenda include the Granby Hydropower Plant project, Northern Water’s water management system and an update from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Dan Haley, the new CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, will be the luncheon speaker.
The afternoon session starts at 1:30 p.m. and will feature the screening of the documentary film The Great Divide. The 90-minute film documents the history of water development in Colorado from the Ancient Puebloan cultures to present day.
Go to the November Calendar page to register for the meeting online by Tuesday, Nov. 3. If you are unable to register online, please call our registration line at 970-622-2220. Please provide the name(s) of those who will be attending and the organization represented, if applicable. If you register and you later find you cannot attend, please cancel your reservation by calling us at 970-622-2220
Colorado-Big Thompson Project Map via Northern Water
A proposed septic storage site has caused a big uproar in a tiny Weld County community just south of the Wyoming border.
Sullivan Septic & Excavating, based in Mead, is trying to store sewage from Weld, Boulder and Larimer counties in tanks and on fields in Carr, an unincorporated community of only a few hundred people.
Residents have banded together to write petitions, submit letters and emails and turn out for permit meetings.
Their most prominent fear is the sewage will harm their water quality, both in the nearby streams and surrounding groundwater wells.
“If it destroys our wells … we can’t do anything,” said Mary Fenwick, one of the residents opposing the project.
They also fear air quality and odor problems, tank quality control and traffic issues.
Cynthia Sullivan, who owns the 21-year-old company with her husband, Kevin, said they pitched the project in Carr because they own 240 acres there.
They also already have three 20,000-gallon tanks on site and had to file for a permit with the planning department to start filling them, according to planning commission documents. They also have to file for a permit with the Weld County Health Department to spread the sewage over a field.
They haven’t done so yet, said Director of General Services Trevor Jiricek.
He helps the health department oversee regulations like this.
Applying waste to farmland is somewhat common in Weld County. There are two types of sewage that can be applied: septage and biosolids. Septage (what the Sullivans are trying to store) comes from septic tanks. It’s screened, which means it has plastics and other materials that aren’t biodegradable removed. Biosolids come from waste water treatment facilities. They’re screened, too, but they’re also treated afterward in various ways, which can include chlorination or aeration. Both kinds of waste can be spread over fields.
This practice isn’t only for storage.
“Land applying septage and biosolids is for its beneficial value,” Jiricek said. “It’s like fertilizer.”
In a given year, the health department grants from 180-200 biosolid application permits and maybe a handful of septage permits, he said. This isn’t a year-round process.
“There’s not 200 active sites at a time in our county ever,” he said.
Applying both biosolids and septage is usually a one-and-done deal, not something that happens continuously.
The county commissioners’ vote in a little less than two weeks will ultimately decide whether they can use the tanks. Because the case is ongoing, the commissioners declined to comment on it.
The planning commission, which acts as an adviser to the county commissioners, approved the project 7-2 in September. One of the “no” voters, Gene Stille, said he is familiar with the area and has concerns about water quality effects, according to planning commission documents.
From the beginning, residents have opposed the project.
“All we had was like two days before the meetings to get this organized,” Fenwick said.
Before the meeting, the planning commission received 35 letters and emails against the project. More than a dozen residents attended the meeting, and seven spoke against it.
During the meeting, commissioners added conditions to the permit request, such as required leak detection, and talked with engineers about how to mitigate potential damage.
“They never answered a single question (from residents),” Fenwick said. “They didn’t even ask our opinion, if that was going to satisfy us.”
The residents learned about the project from a notice on a lightly used back road. Fenwick said she thinks they should have put the notice in the post office, where more Carr residents would have seen it.
That’s not what the law calls for, said County Attorney Bruce Barker. It calls for a notice to the adjacent property owners, in the paper and on the property where the project is slated to go.
“They were thinking there should have been notice to — to my impression — everyone in Carr,” Barker said.
The septic storage would be the next link in a chain of industrial permit approvals in Carr, which residents have lamented.
“We moved here about six years ago, and there was nothing around here,” Fenwick said.
She said the only disturbance her family faced was the occasional train. In the past few years, gravel excavators and oil and gas sites have come.
Residents have various complaints about those, but the old developments aren’t their concern right now.
“This latest deal is the one that’s got us all upset,” she said.
The other sites can be loud and generate dust, but those grievances pale in comparison to worries they have about the danger posed to their water supply, she said.
Although she and the other residents plan to continue fighting the project with fervor, she said she doesn’t believe county officials will take their side because of all the projects approved in the past.
“We all have a big investment in our homes and trying to make our community better, and we just keep getting slapped in the face,” she said.
From the Associated Press via The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel:
A coalition of scholars across the West is urging the federal government to partner with the National Academy of Sciences to study the future of the Colorado River, including if climate change is leading to reduced stream flow.
Twenty-three scholars from Western universities sent a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell detailing their request for more scientific research on a host of issues related to the Colorado River.
Chief among the concerns is if there will be enough water in the river to support 36 million users in seven U.S. states and parts of Mexico over the next 50 years.
The scholars argue the federal government is relying on a projection of a 9-percent stream flow decline by 2060, while skimming over other estimates that suggest it could fall by as much as 45 percent by 2050 due to climate change.
Secretary Jewell was expected to receive the letter early Wednesday. The Bureau of Reclamation this summer issued the results of a nearly three-year study that concluded that there will be significant shortfalls between water supply and demand on the Colorado River over the next 50 years.
But the scholars say in the letter that those conclusions “may be insufficient to accommodate the full range of risks that lie ahead,” the letter says.
The scholars who signed the letter include Robert Adler of the University of Utah law school; Victor Baker of the hydrology and water resources department at the University of Arizona; and Tim Barnett at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
Owen Lammers, executive director of Living Rivers and Colorado Riverkeeper, said the federal government needs to pursue a wider breadth of scientific projections to ensure it is prepared for all water flow scenarios. His group supports the scholars’ efforts.
“We’re hoping for the best when we should be preparing for the worst,” Lammers said. “We are really putting society at risk without looking at some of these scenarios.”
Colorado River Basin including Mexico, USBR May 2015
Click here to go the Western Water Assessment website (scroll down for the latest briefing). Here’s an excerpt:
Latest Monthly Briefing – October 13, 2015
Highlights
September was dry overall for our region, with many areas receiving less than 25% of average precipitation for the month. Temperatures were extremely warm, with both Colorado and Utah recording their record-warmest September.
Water-year 2015 ended up with near-average (Utah) and above-average (Colorado and Wyoming) statewide precipitation for the 12-month period. The water-year average temperatures were unusually warm in all three states.
Nearly all reservoirs in Colorado and Wyoming had above-average storage as of the end of September; Utah’s reservoirs had mostly below-average storage.
El Niño conditions have strengthened further and are virtually certain to continue through the winter. El Niño’s expected influence is seen in seasonal precipitation outlooks showing a wet tilt for most or all of our region through the winter.
From email from the Sierra Club Rocky Mountain Chapter:
Americas Latino Eco Festival is coming up on Thursday, October 15th – Saturday, October 17th and there are plenty of opportunities for you to get involved!
On Thursday, October 15th there will be a People and Planet First Forum at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, St. Cajetan from 8:15 AM to 5:15 PM. For more details, a map, and to register for free, go here!
On Friday, October 16th there will be Climate of Hope Leadership Training at the Denver Art Museum Point Hall from 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM. For more details, a map, and to register for free, go here!
Also, join us on Saturday, October 17th from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM in front of the History Colorado Center (next to the Denver Art Museum)! We will be tabling with flyers and opportunities for people to sign up for outings, to be a part of our team, and learn more about our mission to explore, enjoy and protect our planet!
If you’re interest in volunteering to help us table, please go here and add your name, email and phone number and we can assign you a shift to help out.
For more information and to register for events, please go to http://americaslatinoecofestival.org! Let me know if you have any questions. Hope to see you there!
The headwaters of the Dolores River share space with century-old mines similar to the Gold King mine that spilled 3 million gallons of wastewater into the Animas River this August.
But the long-abandoned Argentine Mine Complex near Rico is receiving proper pollution controls to reduce the risk of such an accident, mining officials say.
The St. Louis and Blaine mine tunnels once provided access to a vast network of hard-rock tunnels bored into the Rico Mountains.
Now the tunnels act like drains for snowmelt and rain, which accumulate unnatural levels of heavy metals that has to flow out somewhere.
The mine entrances have collapsed, but the wastewater continues to drain out of them within yards of the Dolores River.
“It’s a hazard we need to pay attention to because the Dolores River supplies water for four towns, and for McPhee Reservoir depended on for irrigation,” said Paul Hollar, emergency manager for Montezuma County.
Mine drainage from St. Louis and Blaine flow through an on-site wastewater treatment system that is working properly, according to the EPA and state mining officials.
Eleven settling ponds remove heavy metals, and the water meets state health standards when it returns to the river.
For the past 15 years, the treatment system has being upgraded and maintained under a cooperative effort by former mine owners Atlantic Richfield Co., the EPA, and the Colorado Division of Reclamation and Mine Safety.
“While you can never be sure what is happening two miles back in these tunnels, we feel the mine entrances are under control,” said Allen Sorenson, project manager and engineer with the state’s inactive mine program…
It was also discovered in 1996 that a concrete plug in the nearby Blaine Tunnel was failing, releasing orange-colored, toxic water directly into Sliver Creek, a tributary of the Dolores River.
The Blaine Tunnel plug is designed to redirect drainage through the St. Louis Tunnel, and into the settling ponds.
In 2013, the Blaine plug was successfully repaired, Sorenson said, at a cost of $350,000.
“The mine entrance was shored up, and diversion structure installed,” he said. “There is no surface discharge out of Blaine.”[…]
To monitor whether that is happening at the Rico mines, wells with piezometers that measure water pressure and water level were installed behind the collapsed St. Louis Tunnel.
“Investigating whether they are backing up is ongoing,” Sorenson said. “It is being tracked, and if problems are observed they will be addressed.”
The Blaine Tunnel does not have the piezometers, he said, but it is checked several times a year by inspectors to make sure the diversion structure is working and to monitor flow rates.
Sorenson warned that the nature of underground mine tunnels make them unpredictable, and there are no guarantees a scenario like the Gold King mine won’t happen again.
“It’s a significant issue,” he said. “We eliminate risk to the extent possible, but you can’t rule out what a massive surge of water will do.”
Addressing issues with a leaky Boss Lake dam in southwestern Chaffee County could cost as much as $2 million.
Terry Scanga, general manager of the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District, estimated the cost at $1.5-2 million during the Thursday district board of directors meeting.
Scanga said an environmental impact statement would need to be prepared in order to construct a road across national forest land to get equipment into the site.
Confronted with the cost of dam repairs and the cost of an environmental impact statement, Scanga would not recommend moving forward with repair work, saying the lake has “limited utility for the district’s uses.”
During the Upper Ark district’s March 2014 meeting, district officials mentioned the possibility that the dam could be breached.
Scanga said he was hopeful the state would take over the reservoir and fund the necessary repairs so Boss Lake could be used to help re-establish endangered greenback cutthroat trout, the Colorado state fish.
The Upper Ark district stores water in Boss Lake and manages the reservoir pursuant to a 1982 agreement with Chaffee County.
When the state built Boss Lake, it encompassed the Donnell 1 and 2 reservoirs, and the Donnell water rights include a storage right in what is now Boss Lake.
Salco Associates, essentially Wanda and Jim Treat and family, own the Donnell water rights, allowing the Treats to store water in Boss Lake.
In spite of efforts to engage Salco regarding dam repairs, Scanga said the district had received “no response” since the family attended the March 2014 district board meeting to protest maintenance charges billed by the district.
The board meeting also included:
A review of the 2016 district and enterprise budgets with the budget hearing set for 2 p.m. Nov. 12.
A presentation entitled “Fry-Ark Project and Current Project Storage” by Roy Vaughan, Pueblo Reservoir facility manager, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
District hydrologist Jord Gertson’s water storage, precipitation and streamflow reports, showing full reservoirs and an above-average precipitation outlook for southern Colorado.
A progress report from the Upper Arkansas Multi-Use Project Committee indicating the project has gained positive attention from various elements in the water community.
A report from Director Greg Felt regarding a Multi-Use Project field trip attended by eight legislators.
A Thompson Ditch report from engineer Chris Manera indicating no substantial change in water levels due to groundwater infiltration following a wetter than average summer.
An update on planning activities for the Arkansas River Basin Water Forum, slated for April 27-28 at Salida SteamPlant.
Presentation of the 2016 conservancy district budget.
A legislative update from consultant Ken Baker.
A legal report updating board members on district applications and oppositions.
Snowmass Village water district users overwhelmingly want fluoride returned to the local water system, according to results released Monday by the public accounting firm hired to tabulate ballots for the 3,099 users.
Of the 1,168 total surveys received, 753 respondents (64 percent) want fluoridated water, while 404 people (35 percent) are against its return. Eleven responses were considered neutral (either unmarked or marked both “yes” and “no”), according to Dalby Wendland & Co. of Grand Junction.
“We as a board have no other choice but to reconsider our decision,” said Joe Farrell, the Snowmass Water and Sanitation District board member who was the lone fluoride supporter in the 3-1 decision made in July. Those favoring its removal were Dave Dawson, Michael Shore and Willard Humphrey.
“The whole purpose of the advisory question was to get the pulse of our paying customers, and they have clearly spoken,” Farrell added.
The board will discuss the results of the non-binding survey during its next regularly scheduled meeting, which is 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 21. The meeting has been moved to the Snowmass Club to accommodate what is anticipated to be a large crowd.
A recent photo of the water behind the Lincoln Gulch Diversion Dam on Lincoln Creek that forms Grizzly Reservoir. Repairs to the outlet gate were completed on Oct. 6 without having to drain the standing water at the bottom of the reservoir.
Nine weeks after the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co. drained Grizzly Reservoir in early August due to the failure of an outlet gate in the dam across Lincoln Creek, repairs have been made and reservoir operations are returning to normal.
But the usually obscure company is now also facing questions in state water court about its diversions through its larger system, which moves about 40,600 acre-feet of water a year from the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River east to Aurora, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Pueblo West.
On Tuesday, a new seal was installed on the bottom of the dam’s outlet gate, according to Scott Campell, general manager of the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co.
The installation of the relatively simple rubber seal was done underwater by crews standing in knee-deep water, reaching down to tighten the bolts on new steel straps holding the seal in place.
By working this way, they didn’t have to release the remaining dirty water at the bottom of the reservoir, as was done Aug. 10, when 10 to 20 acre-feet of muddy, yellowish water was released from the bottom of the reservoir and sent down Lincoln Creek and the Roaring Fork River.
After the release of water in August, the flow in the Roaring Fork near Aspen jumped up from fewer than 70 cubic feet per second to more than 160 cfs in a few hours and alarmed residents notified local public officials about the color of their local river.
Subsequent testing Aug. 13 by Lotic Hydrological for the city of Aspen found “elevated levels of several dissolved metals including aluminum, copper, iron, manganese and zinc” in Lincoln Creek and the Roaring Fork River because sediment in the bottom of Grizzly Reservoir includes material washed down from the historic Ruby Mining District and the naturally acidic upper Lincoln Creek Valley, according to a report provided by the city of Aspen.
The levels of aluminum and iron exceeded state standards, but no fish kills were reported. The city is awaiting results of recent testing for insect health on the river, according to April Long, Aspen’s stormwater manager.
With the repairs in place, water is now backing up again behind the dam on Lincoln Creek, and the reservoir, which normally holds 570 acre-feet of water, is expected to contain 300 acre-feet by Oct. 20, Campbell said.
The small reservoir primarily acts as a forebay to Tunnel No. 1, which allows for as much as 625 cfs to be moved from Grizzly Reservoir under the Continental Divide and into to the south fork of Lake Creek and down to Twin Lakes Reservoir.
Tunnel No. 1 and Grizzly Reservoir are the central components of the larger Independence Pass Transmountain Diversion System, which is owned by the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co. and diverts water from the Roaring Fork River and Lincoln, Grizzly, New York, Brooklyn, Tabor and Lost Man creeks through a series of dams, ditches and tunnels.
The water rights for the Independence Pass system have a priority date of 1930 and a court-issued decree from 1936. The water originally was diverted to grow crops in the lower Arkansas River Valley, but cities gradually bought the rights to the water.
On May 29, Twin Lakes filed an application in Division 5 Water Court in Glenwood Springs to make 21.33 cfs of its conditional water rights, as specified in its 1936 decree, “absolute.”
It offered evidence to the court that it has now physically diverted an additional 21.33 cfs of water through the Lost Man Canal, which today can carry as many as 272.33 cfs of water from Lost Man Creek to Grizzly Reservoir.
The Stillwater Ranch subdivision is on the Roaring Fork River east of Aspen, and the Caines own a home on Wildwood Drive west of Independence Pass.
Craig Corona, a water attorney in Aspen representing Stillwater Ranch and the Caines, said the application from Twin Lakes raises questions “as to Twin Lakes’ accounting of its diversions and administration by the state.”
Corona specifically points to a 1976 decree, which includes limits and conditions on Twin Lakes’ right to divert water.
“Twin Lakes must show that they diverted water in accordance with their water court decrees, including the restrictions the court included in the 1976 decree from Case W-1901 regarding storage in Twin Lakes Reservoir and the amount of water available to the Colorado Canal,” Corona said.
The decree, for example, states that if there is enough water in the Arkansas River to provide a certain amount of water to the Colorado Canal, then Twin Lakes does not have the right to divert water for that purpose.
Laura Makar, an assistant Pitkin County attorney specializing in water cases, said the county filed its statement of opposition to ensure that Twin Lakes was held to “strict proof” regarding its historical diversions.
“This involves transbasin diversions, and the county always wants to know what is going on if there is water leaving the basin,” Makar said. “We want to make sure all diversions have been in accordance with all prior relevant decrees.”
The resulting water court process could shed more light on the operations of the Independence Pass system and could do so just as a new level of communications has been established between Twin Lakes and various officials.
A map of the Independence Pass Transmountain Diversion System, as submitted to Div. 5 Water Court by Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co.
Rush of water
In early August, when Scott Campbell realized that Twin Lakes had lost the ability to store water in Grizzly Reservoir behind a damaged and leaking outlet gate, he made the rare call to drain the reservoir.
But in his rush to prevent a catastrophic release of water, he had failed to inform local and state officials of the pending release of muddy water from the bottom of the reservoir on Aug. 10, an oversight he has since acknowledged and regrets.
Over the past two months, Campbell has been working to repair both the seal on the outlet gate in the dam and his relationships with various officials.
In a sign of progress on both fronts, Campbell sent out a notice Friday that the repairs were complete and that by Tuesday, the reservoir would begin releasing about 1 cfs of water and do so through a sediment-trapping system below the reservoir.
Through a prearranged notification system, Campbell sent his update on Friday to the Pitkin County dispatch center, which in turn sent it out to various officials.
“We’re doing things that we’ve never even contemplated before,” Campbell said Friday, referring to the sending of updates to various officials. “But we’ve learned from this. We’ve made changes. And our intent is to operate as a good neighbor.”
When asked about the water court case, Campbell referred questions to Kevin Lusk, president of the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co.
A sediment filtering system has been set up below the outflow gate on the dam at Grizzly Reservoir. The silt fencing and straw bales has been an effective way to trap sediment coming out of the reservoir, according to Scott Campbell, the general manager of Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co.
A modest proposal
Lusk is also a principal senior engineer with Colorado Springs Utilities, which owns 55 percent of the shares in Twin Lakes.
The Pueblo Board of Water Works owns 23 percent of the shares in Twin Lakes, while the Pueblo West Metro District owns 12 percent and the city of Aurora owns 5 percent.
Lusk characterized the water court application from Twin Lakes as modest.
“Our case itself is one to just make a little bit more of a certain portion of the system absolute,” Lusk said. “It does not change the amount of water that we can bring to the East Slope in any way.”
Lusk also said the city of Aspen’s opposition to its application was routine.
“This is what we in the business typically call a smiley-faced objection, Lusk said. “It really is just a way to be more involved in the court case.”
He also said that Phil Overeynder, a senior utilities engineer for the city of Aspen, had called him in advance about the city’s filing of a statement of opposition.
“Phil assured me this is not an indication of any change in our cooperative relationship,” Lusk said.
The city is working with Twin Lakes on the management of other water rights that may allow more water to remain in the Roaring Fork River for environmental reasons, city officials have said recently.
But it remains to be seen how hard Pitkin County and the parties represented by Corona, the Aspen water attorney, will push on the issue of whether Twin Lakes has strictly adhered to the requirements of the 1976 decree.
Editor’s note: Aspen Journalism is collaborating with The Aspen Times and the Glenwood Springs Post Independent on coverage of rivers and water. The Times published this story on Sunday, Oct. 11, 2015 and the Post Independent published it on Monday, Oct 12, 2015.
The low water level in Lake Christine exposes the bottom of the reservoir and keeps a fishing pier high and dry. The state is determining how high the water level can go without saturating an adjacent hillside — photo / Scott Condon
Bill McCormick, chief of dam safety for the water resources division, said the agency worked with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the reservoir owner, to determine the source of water that was saturating a hillside beneath the reservoir and above Two Rivers Road. The water isn’t leaking from the dam, he said, but water is saturating the hillside when the reservoir is full.
“It’s not a dam-safety issue, but it is a public-safety issue,” McCormick said.
The hillside got so saturated the weekend of April 18 and 19 that mud and debris sloughed onto Two Rivers Road. The town of Basalt had to use heavy equipment to remove the debris. The water resources division and wildlife division came up with a plan to determine the source of the water. Lake Christine’s water level was lowered and increased throughout the summer to gauge the effect on the seepage, according to Perry Will, area wildlife manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. He said Basalt Mountain is riddled with natural springs, including some in the area of Lake Christine. The springs continued flowing even when the reservoir was at its lowest level, he said.
“The dam is fine,” McCormick said. The test established that water seeps into the surrounding terrain when water is above a certain level. That makes the hillside unstable and creates the potential for slides that could endanger people traveling on the road below, McCormick said.
The water resources division hasn’t established yet what level of water is allowable in Lake Christine. The seepage appears to occur when the reservoir’s water level is above 9 feet, or about 10 acre-feet, according to Erin Gleason, a dam safety engineer in Glenwood Springs for the Division of Water Resources. The normal storage when full is about 15 feet high and 30 acre-feet, she said.
The division needs to collect more information before formally issuing the water restriction, Gleason said.
From email from the Ditch and Reservoir Company Association (John McKenzie):
DARCA will be holding two Alternative Transfer Methods workshops this year. The first workshop will take place on December 2, Wednesday, at Northern Water in Berthoud. A week later, the second meeting will be carried out on December 9, Wednesday, at Pueblo Community College. Both events are free, and run from 7:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Lunch will be provided.
The workshops will address how Colorado’s valuable irrigated agricultural lands can be protected for future generations by the adoption of alternatives to permanent agricultural dry-up. These alternatives, known as Alternative Transfer Methods (ATMs), are important voluntary tools that can provide water to a growing population in the state while still being beneficial to farmers, ranchers, and ditch and reservoir companies.
A wide variety of speakers have been invited to not only inform, but to solicit input from the agricultural and water communities. James Eklund, Director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), and John Stulp, Special Policy Advisor for Water, from Governor Hickenlooper’s office will point out the importance of these tools in the context of Colorado’s Water Plan. Practitioners and experts in the field of ATMs will present on: the fundamentals, case studies, economic and valuation aspects, and legal, technical, financial, and other impediments of adoption. DARCA will detail its role in promoting ATMs for Colorado’s ditch and reservoir companies.
A federal environmental rule regulating waterways is on hold after a US appeals court issued a nation-wide stay on Friday.
The controversial Waters Of The United States rule regulates things like streams and wetlands. It was put in place last year to clear up confusion over what is covered under the federal Clean Water Act. But industries like agriculture and energy as well as individual farmers and ranchers argued that the scope of the so-called WOTUS rule made doing business costly and confusing.
Mark Squillace, a law professor specializing in natural resources law at the University of Colorado said this latest development is a shame because many of our nations waters are in really bad shape.
“So I think the continued bickering over the scope of the governments authority under the Clean Water Act is really unfortunate and really disserves this important goal of protecting our nations waters,” Squillace said.
In August, a federal district court granted a preliminary injunction against the WOTUS rule in response to a lawsuit filed by 12 states, including ND, WY, and CO.
The accidental spill from a holding pond at the Standard Mine reclamation project west of Crested Butte is not expected to have any negative impact on the town’s drinking water. The spill occurred late Wednesday and is believed to have involved approximately 2,000 gallons of water and gray-colored sentiment.
The town issued a press release Thursday afternoon stating that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) notified them of the accident Wednesday evening. The town was told that a contractor had been dewatering the pond “containing un-mineralized sediment from drilling operations and water from the lower mine adit. The contents had been treated to a neutral PH of 7. The treated water from the pond was being discharged into Elk Creek as part of a planned maintenance activity. A vacuum truck siphoning clear water from the surface of the pond accidentally dipped into gray-colored sentiment leading to the accidental discharge of sediment and gray-colored water into Elk Creek. The discharged material contained a mixture of PH-neutral rock slurry and water from the mine.”
In a statement from the EPA headlined “Standard Mine Vacuum Truck Release”, the agency said local and state governments were notified right away. “EPA immediately notified the Town of Crested Butte water treatment plant and called the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment spill hotline that an EPA contractor dewatering a sediment pond into Elk Creek at the Standard Mine Superfund Site released an estimated 2,000 gallons of water and sediment into nearby Elk Creek,” the statement relayed.
“Based on the neutral pH levels, the quantity of water released, and flow levels downstream in Coal Creek, the Town of Crested Butte did not close its water intakes. Subsequent investigation found no visible plume or signs of significant impacts in downstream locations. All work on the sediment pond is complete. The EPA continues to coordinate closely with Crested Butte officials on this matter.”
The town’s statement on the matter explained that based on the size and content of the spilled material, the flow levels downstream and the 10-million gallon storage reservoir at the Crested Butte treatment plant, “the Town Department of Public Works has determined that any impact to the town’s drinking water would be negligible.”
The Ruth Powell Hutchins Water Center at CMU is showing the Great Divide next weekend. Here’s an interview with Jim Havey from Laurena Mayne Davis writing in The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel:
“The Great Divide” is both a documentary and a companion coffee table-style book explaining the complexities of Colorado water issues in relatable narrative, while underscoring the urgency that all Coloradans become informed and involved in how their water is used and conserved.
Stephen Grace, of Boulder, wrote the book and served as screenwriter for the film, which was produced by Havey Productions, of Denver, which since 1979 has specialized in telling the stories of the American West. Jim Havey produced the film and provided images for the companion book.
Grand Junction on Saturday will host a free screening of “The Great Divide” as part of a 10-city film tour.
Laurena Mayne Davis: Who, or what, was the main driver behind the film and the companion book?
Jim Havey: Havey Productions specializes in historical documentaries on Colorado and the American West. We initially saw this as a compelling thread weaving through Colorado history and a new way to look at the state’s heritage.
Davis: Why did you feel it was important to be involved?
Havey: The urgency behind this film and book is the need for a more informed and inclusive public conversation concerning looming critical decisions on the management and allocation of water in Colorado. The Department of Natural Resources anticipates a gap in the demand for water, in the not too distant future, and the ability of our water providers to supply that water. Most Coloradans have very little knowledge of where their water comes from and what it takes to deliver it to their taps.
Davis: You had a KickStarter campaign, multiple sponsors and grants. What was your budget for this project, and how did the funding piece come together?
Havey: Our fundraising goal was $350,000. My associate producer, Blair Miller, led the effort, and we attended conferences and met water leaders throughout the state, learning about issues and attitudes while asking for sponsors to bring this film to the screen. After three years we successfully completed the funding with 55 sponsors and a $20,000 KickStarter campaign.
Davis: Talk about the photos in the book. They are a combination of your photos, contributed photos and historical photos. Did you oversee their collection?
Havey: The book includes a compilation of visual material from contemporary and archival photos to maps, paintings and illustrations. My film editor, Nathan Church, and I took most of the contemporary photos, which include some shot as stills and some pulled from video frames filmed for the movie. Nathan led the search for archival material, which came from the water archive at the Colorado State University library, the Western History collection at Denver Public Library, History Colorado, Denver Water, Library of Congress and many other sources.
Davis: How did the collaborative creative process work with book author and screenwriter Stephen Grace?
Havey: Steve Grace is an immensely talented and lyrical writer, and I was thrilled to have him on board for this project. We worked on the structure and drafts of the script for over a year before the book deal emerged from Steve’s contacts and reputation in the publishing world. But the publisher needed the book to be ready in about a six-week timeframe, and Steve worked round the clock researching, writing narrative, editing interviews, writing photo captions, and cataloging references to get it done. My team worked on the visuals. Then I edited the book narrative into the narrative script for the film and included lots of more recent interview material with some of the interviews in the book and worked with Steve to fine-tune everything.
Davis: I imagine the audience conversations at film presentations on the Western Slope (where most of the water naturally flows) are significantly different from those on the Front Range (where most of the state’s population grows). You’ve been on both sides of the divide now on your film tour. What are you expecting to hear in Grand Junction?
Havey: There are many points of view regarding water on both sides of the divide, and West Slope audiences are justifiably concerned about the growth projections for the Front Range and further depletions to their water supplies. The days of anyone getting something for nothing in water are long gone and we have entered a new era where negotiated agreements are far more desirable than court battles.
Davis: Agriculture, an important economic driver in the Grand Valley, accounts for some 85 percent of the water use in the state. What are the most realistic ways to make agriculture more water-efficient, and do you expect farmers and ranchers will be open to those changes?
Havey: Most farmers and ranchers are as concerned about conserving water as anyone and they are very aware that their water use is being carefully scrutinized as part of the solution for supplying the growing needs of Front Range and West Slope cities.
Agriculture has changed considerably in the last 50 years, and irrigation techniques are much more efficient today. As a state we all need to be concerned about threats to our rural communities in the face of buy-and-dry deals that turn hay meadows to shopping malls. Ag-urban transfers, rotational fallowing and more efficient irrigation technologies offer some solutions.
Davis: What do you want viewers and readers to do with their greater understanding of Colorado water issues? In other words, what’s your best hope for a more water-aware state populace?
Havey: My hope is that the film and book impress audiences with the urgency and complexity of western water issues, and the growing need to find collaborative solutions.
“It’s in the ‘Big Boy’ category,” said Klaus Wolter, a University of Colorado climatologist who studies the phenomenon whose translation is Little Boy.
Colorado could see a mixed bag of weather events from now through next spring — including a strong possibility of snow by the end of the month, Wolter added.
An El Niño of the current scope, measured by water temperature and wind direction, hasn’t been seen since 1997-98. Wolter figures this could be the third-strongest since 1900, after the events of ’97-98 and ’82-83.
“It’s behind 1997 at this time of year, but not far behind,” he said, adding that it won’t dissipate anytime soon. “But will it stick around for spring? That’s a crapshoot right now.”
Mid-September 2015 Plume of ENSO predictions via the Climate Prediction Center
From the Twin Lakes Reservoir & Canal Company via The Aspen Daily News:
The repairs were made under about 2 feet of water to minimize releases and control turbidity,” the TLRC statement says. “Over a period of about 24 hours beginning [Wednesday] afternoon … the stilling basin was [filtered] through the silt fence and straw wattles with very good results.
On September 23, the Huerfano County Water Conservancy District received approval from the Colorado Water Conservation Board for a grant totaling $250,000 to conduct a study of the storage needs for the Cucharas Basin. The current study is just one of 13 storage projects that are within the basin and are on the Arkansas Basin Improvement Project’s master needs list. Such projects are necessitated by the aged nature of existing storage infrastructure, 83 percent of which were built before the end of World War II. About 71 percent of all storage capacity has been lost due to abandonment or restriction. Funding for the grant has come from the basin and state-wide accounts, as well as from the Huerfano County Water Conservancy Board, the Huerfano County Board of County Commissioners, the Cucharas Water and Sanitation District Board, and the towns of La Veta, and Walsenburg. The water district has also applied for a second grant for gauging and administration modeling improvements along the Cucharas and Huerfano rivers. The purpose of the grant is to develop reliable infrastructure and technical data thatcan be used to provide help to arrive at difficult water administration decisions. The data can also be used to convey the reasons for decisions to water users impacted by those decisions in a clear, fact based manner. The district has not heard if the application has been approved. The two items in the gauging grant that will cost most are the stream gauge evaluation involving an inventory, assessment, and designing of gauge sites, and the construction of new gauges and improvements to gauges currently in use. Other costs include ground water monitoring, the development of administrative models, and project management. Following an executive session, the board approved signing a lease agreement with Sheep Mountain Ranch for an easement to possibly build an extra storage pond. The district’s attorney is still looking at the agreement at the time of the writing of this report. The Huerfano County Water Conservancy District adjourned after the executive session.
n 2013, the torrents of water that poured out of the mountains, ripping up roads and inundating Boulder, Lyons, Longmont and other Front Range communities, also resulted in a deluge of questions. Both the general public and local officials wondered just how unusual this rainfall and flooding had been. Had something like it happened before? Was anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change responsible?
“The intensity of the floods really caught a lot of us living in the region off guard,” said Lisa Dilling, director of the Western Water Assessment, which is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dilling is also a professor of environmental studies at CU-Boulder. “But because WWA has a long history of working with water managers and planners in Colorado’s Front Range, we could quickly assemble regional experts to assess the disaster.”
Within ten days of the floods, WWA researchers and their partners at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Colorado State University synthesized information about the atmospheric conditions that produced the floods, the potential role of climate change, and how these floods compared to others in the past. They released a 4-page handout at a public briefing and panel discussion. This rapid-response effort spurred additional WWA research projects to better understand Front Range flood risk, some of which are still ongoing – which is why the group was thrilled to find out that NOAA will support them with about $4 million for another five years.
The money comes from NOAA’s Climate Program Office, which has funded WWA since 1999. WWA, which focuses on Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, is one of ten teams under NOAA’s Regional Integrated Sciences & Assessments (RISA) program. It’s intended to help expand the country’s ability to deal with climate change by having scientists work with local and regional stakeholders and engage them as research partners.
For WWA, the NOAA agreement is invaluable. “NOAA’s support is our foundation,” said Dilling. “We are grateful for the recognition that our work in this intersection of environmental change and decision-making is relevant, important and timely.” In the last five years, WWA has issued a report examining how climate change in Colorado affects water resources, as well as a study on the state’s vulnerabilities to climate change: in tourism, recreation, education, public health and many other sectors. It also helped Salt Lake City, Utah evaluate the impact of a changing climate on their water supply. And WWA collaborated with the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) to create a report on climate change and the Navajo Nation.
In all of these projects, the goal has been to provide land managers, water managers and other officials with the best information possible so they can develop and enact effective policies.
Under this new round of funding, WWA plans to pursue three big research areas. One of those is to examine how the science developed by WWA and other research entities can be made more useful to decision-making. “We’re interested in enhancing the usability of science,” said Jeff Lukas, Research Integration Specialist with WWA. “We want to involve stakeholders in everything we do. And we want to spread our model of two-way dialogue and collaboration between scientists and stakeholders.”
Another big area of research over the next five years will be vulnerability and adaptation. WWA plans to focus on how Utah, Colorado and Wyoming are vulnerable to climate change, as well as how to design more adaptive and resilient systems, looking specifically at water supply.. Lukas also points out that adaptation and resilience aren’t just about infrastructure, like roads, buildings, and bridges. They’re also about getting organizations to think differently when it comes to climate change.
And, finally, in an extension of their work on the 2013 floods, WWA wants to better understand extreme weather and climate events and help to use that understanding to inform future decisions. “We need to glean all the information we can from the rich historical record,” says Lukas. “And also tease out what the climate models can really tell us about changes in these events going forward.”
“Every day, communities and businesses in the U.S. and around world are grappling with environmental challenges due to changing climate conditions and extreme events,” said Wayne Higgins, director of the NOAA Climate Program Office, which announced funding for WWA and other programs today. “People want timely and relevant scientific information about where and why climate is changing, and what impacts that has on human and natural systems. CPO’s competitive grants play a vital role in advancing understanding of Earth’s climate system and in transitioning our data, tools, information, and operations to applications the public can use to improve decision making.”
CIRES is a partnership of NOAA and the University of Colorado Boulder.
Only an estimated 2,000 gallons spilled Tuesday, amid efforts to open a collapsed portal. The impact on town water is expected to be minimal…
The Standard Mine, five miles west of Crested Butte and abandoned, has been designated an environmental disaster since 2005 and targeted for a superfund cleanup. It is one of an estimated 230 inactive mines in Colorado that state officials know to be leaking toxic heavy metals into headwaters of the nation’s rivers.
The spill happened at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, and the EPA said it immediately informed public works officials. Residents weren’t notified. Crested Butte Mayor Aaron Huckstep said he wasn’t notified until Thursday.
EPA officials on Wednesday, responding to Denver Post queries about the mine, didn’t reveal the spill. On Thursday afternoon, the agency issued a prepared statement saying that, based on neutral acidity and creek flow levels, Crested Butte didn’t close its water intakes.
“Subsequent investigation found no visible plume or signs of significant impacts in downstream locations,” the EPA said.
At the cleanup site, acidic wastewater laced with cancer-causing cadmium and other toxic heavy metals leaches out of the mine into Elk Creek, which flows into Coal Creek — a primary source of water for Crested Butte. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has determined that the levels of arsenic, cadmium and zinc in Coal Creek exceed state standards.
Huckstep requested EPA help testing water in Elk Creek, Coal Creek and in town.
“I want to make sure that the EPA’s work is being done in a diligent manner and that their contractors are following the right procedures. We’d like to see these types of events not happen,” Huckstep said.
“Obviously, after Gold King, there’s a high level of public concern and attention — rightfully so. … The EPA is willing to come in and do the work. We support that. But we want to make sure that these types of circumstances don’t happen.”
The local Coal Creek Watershed Coalition began additional water sampling along the waterways “to determine what the impact of the spill was,” director Zach Vaughter said.
“While this event is unfortunate, we have a great cooperation and partnership with the EPA working on our watershed. … From what I understand, they’ve kept town staff and the coalition in the loop.”
The EPA has been working toward installation of a long-planned bulkhead plug inside the mine, an effort to reduce the flow of acidic wastewater leaching cadmium, arsenic, lead and manganese from tailings and tunnels.
EPA crew members were drilling a new opening at the mine, parallel to a portal that is partially collapsed. They were using a vacuum truck to siphon water from a waste pond, but the truck “dipped too low,” the EPA’s statement said, causing grey-colored water from inside the mine and sediment to spill into Elk Creek.
The Town of Crested Butte has been notified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of a spill estimated at 2,000 gallons or less of water and gray-colored sediment from a holding pond at the Standard Mine.
According to the EPA, a contractor had been dewatering the pond containing un-mineralized sediment from drilling operations and water from the lower mine adit. The contents had been treated to a neutral PH of 7. The treated water from the sediment pond was being discharged into Elk Creek as part of a planned maintenance activity. A vacuum truck siphoning clear water from the surface of the pond accidentally dipped into gray-colored sediment leading to the accidental discharge of sediment and gray-colored water into Elk Creek. The discharged material contained a mixture of PH-neutral rock slurry and water from the mine.
Based upon the size and content of the spilled material as understood from the EPA, the flow levels downstream, and the 10 million gallon storage reservoir at the town’s treatment plant, the Town Department of Public Works has determined that any impact to the town’s drinking water would be negligible. The town has also hired an independent contractor to perform additional testing to ensure that there is no negative impact to the town watershed or drinking water.
Work on the holding pond is now complete.
The town is communicating and working closely with the EPA on this issue. The EPA has additionally contacted the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Gunnison County and the Coal Creek Watershed Alliance. The town is also in contact with these agencies.
Colorado’s first-ever formal water plan needs to offer specific, actionable, measurable goals that the state’s leaders can use to fill a massive gap in the amount of water the state will have to support a growing population, business leaders were told Thursday.
And it needs to be a bold plan, said Kelly Brough, president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.
Brough spoke at the chamber’s “2015 State of Water” forum held Thursday at Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center. Speakers included Jim Lochhead, CEO of Denver Water, former Colorado Agriculture Commissioner Don Ament, Colorado River District General Manager Eric Kuhn and Robert Sakata, owner of Sakata Farms in Brighton…
…the chamber would like to see more attention to innovative and market-based solutions to filling the gap.
Brough referred to one idea as “buy and grow,” a twist on the “buy and dry” scenarios common across Colorado — in which cities and towns buy water used by farmers, shift it to the city, and let the field dry out due to lack of irrigation.
A buy and grow concept might make cities an outside investor for farmers who want to conserve their water but don’t have the financial means to buy expensive, new equipment to do so. The cities could provide the money, and the farmer could share the water that’s saved with the city, Brough said.
Such an arrangement also ensures that the water right, which is a property right in Colorado, remains in the hands of the farmer, she said.
“The current draft plan calls for 400,000 acre feet of new water through conservation, that’s nice but we don’t think it’s enough,” Brough told the business leaders assembled at the forum.
“Colorado needs to do so much more, and move to a future — beyond conservation — to maximum economic use of this precious resource,” she said.
Business leaders Thursday said they hope to replace the practice of “buy-and-dry” with “buy-and-grow,” a plan that would allow farmers to share their water rights with municipalities.
The idea was proposed at a meeting in Denver with state and local water officials, hosted by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.
Kelly Brough, chief executive of the chamber, said “buy-and-grow” could usher in a new wave of water policy. The new plan could overshadow conversations about other controversial issues, such as transmountain diversion.
“By implementing measures that will streamline flexible water sharing between ag and urban areas, in ways that allow ag to continue to grow through using efficiencies, protect their water rights and reducing the transitional cost, while delivering water to an urban area,” Brough said of the plan…
“Buy-and-grow” would essentially boil down to sharing between urban and rural communities. Governments and private interests could help farmers with investments into water-conservation technology and other equipment, thereby helping farmers grow. The farmers would then turn around and share the water that they don’t need anymore because of the savings.
“They’re still growing, still producing, they’re more efficient and they don’t lose their water right,” Brough said.
Robert Sakata, owner of Sakata Farms in Weld County, who spoke at the meeting, acknowledged the reality of ag dry-up, pointing out that millions of acres stand to dry up by 2050.
“In order to feed the world, we’re going to need water,” Sakata said.
Colorado Water Plan website screen shot November 1, 2013
Mid-September 2015 Plume of ENSO predictions via the Climate Prediction Center Click here to read the discussion. Here’s an excerpt:
ENSO Alert System Status:El Niño Advisory
Synopsis: There is an approximately 95% chance that El Niño will continue through Northern Hemisphere winter 2015-16, gradually weakening through spring 2016.
During September, sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies were well above average across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. The Niño indices generally increased, although the far western Niño-4 index was nearly unchanged. Also, relative to last month, the strength of the positive subsurface temperature anomalies decreased slightly in the central and eastern Pacific, but the largest departures remained above 6°C. The atmosphere was well coupled with the ocean, with significant low-level westerly wind anomalies and upper-level easterly wind anomalies persisting from the western to the east-central tropical Pacific. Also, the traditional and equatorial Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) values became more negative (stronger), consistent with enhanced convection over the central and eastern equatorial Pacific and suppressed convection over Indonesia. Collectively, these atmospheric and oceanic anomalies reflect a strong El Niño.
All models surveyed predict El Niño to continue into the Northern Hemisphere spring 2016, and all multi-model averages predict a peak in late fall/early winter. The forecaster consensus unanimously favors a strong El Niño, with peak 3-month SST departures in the Niño 3.4 region near or exceeding +2.0°C. Overall, there is an approximately 95% chance that El Niño will continue through Northern Hemisphere winter 2015-16, gradually weakening through spring2016 (click CPC/IRI consensus forecast for the chance of each outcome for each 3-month period).
Across the United States, temperature and precipitation impacts from El Niño are likely to be seen during the upcoming months (the 3-month seasonal outlook will be updated on Thursday October 15th). Outlooks generally favor below-average temperatures and above-median precipitation across the southern tier of the United States, and above-average temperatures and below-median precipitation over the northern tier of the United States.
Click here to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:
Summary
Record rains and flooding inundated much of eastern and central South Carolina and extreme southeastern North Carolina as a very slow moving upper-air low over the Southeast funneled tropical moisture from Hurricane Joaquin (stalled over the central Bahamas) into the southern Atlantic Coast region for several days. More than 10 inches of rain fell on the eastern half of South Carolina, and well over 20 inches drenched east-central sections of the state. During the first 6 days of October, maximum Carolina storm amounts totaled 26.88 inches at Mt. Pleasant, SC, and 22.25 inches at Calabash, NC. Heavy rains (more than 2 inches) also fell across much of the eastern third of the Nation, easing or eliminating lingering short-term drought and dryness. An unsettled weather pattern in the West and High Plains also brought unseasonably heavy rains to parts of California, the Great Basin, Southwest, and northern third of the Rockies and Plains. Tropical moisture from former Pacific Hurricane Marty fueled heavy rains in New Mexico and west Texas. Wet weather continued across most of Alaska and Hawaii easing drought and dryness while light to moderate showers across southern Puerto Rico maintained conditions. In sharp contrast, mostly dry weather occurred throughout the Pacific Northwest, Great Plains, and Mississippi Valley. Ever since record wet May and June rains eliminated long-term drought in Texas and Oklahoma, very little precipitation has fallen in parts of the southern Great Plains and lower Mississippi Valley since early July, creating large short-term (at 2- and 3-months) deficits and extreme drought, especially from eastern Texas into central Mississippi…
California and Great Basin
With September and October normally one of the driest months in California, any significant rain (more than 0.5 inches) that falls during this time will usually produce large percentages. This was the case this week when a strong upper-air trough (low pressure) affected the West Coast, drawing in Pacific moisture to most of California and the Great Basin. Unseasonably heavy precipitation (0.5 to 1 inch, locally to 2 inches) was observed in extreme southwestern California (near San Diego vicinity), the Sierra Nevada, and most of northern and western Nevada including the Las Vegas area. Although the rains were welcome and aided in the suppression of wild fire conditions and increased topsoil moisture, it did little for the long-term drought and reservoir storages, thus no changes were made to the drought map. At the end of September, the water conservation efforts in California were noticeable when compared to last year. The amount of water saved came to about 705 KAF – so that this year’s major reservoir storage was only slightly below the storage from a year ago when there were no mandatory water restrictions…
Lower Mississippi Valley and Southern Plains
While the East Coast was getting soaked, a dry week throughout these two regions worsened short-term dryness and drought. The only exception was tropical moisture from remnants of Pacific Hurricane Marty that brought 0.5 to 2 inches of rain to extreme southwestern and western Texas and the Oklahoma Panhandle (which were mostly drought-free), although a small area of D0 and D1 in west-central Texas Panhandle (near Lubbock) was improved a category. Elsewhere, however, after much of Texas and Oklahoma endured record May and June rains and flooding that quickly erased the long-term (hydrological) drought, dry and warm weather since early July has rapidly brought back short-term (topsoil) drought. As a comparison, the Madill, OK Mesonet station measured 43.61 inches of rain from April 1-July 8, and only 1.16 inches in the 89 days since then. In Texas, Muenster (Cooke County) recorded 41.67 inches during April 1-June 30, 4.40 inches July 1-September 30, and only 1.91 inches since July 9. At the USHCN station Blanco (Blanco County), 8.55 inches fell on May 24, but only 0.48 inches since July 1 – so it seems likely that Blanco received as much rain in 14 minutes on May 24 as in the most recent 140,000 minutes (97 days). In Arkansas, several stations established new record lows (Minden 0.02”; Pine Bluff 0.03”; Shreveport 0.07”; and Little Rock 0.12”) for the driest September ever.
During the past 90-days, portions of central and northeastern Texas, southeastern Oklahoma, northern Louisiana, southern Arkansas, and west-central Mississippi have measured less than 2 inches, with several sites reporting under an inch. Normally, central Texas receives 6-8 inches, northeastern Texas and southeastern Oklahoma 8-10 inches, and northern Louisiana, southern Arkansas, and west-central Mississippi 10-15 inches during this 90-day period. This translates into a large area with less than 25% of normal precipitation, and deficiencies ranging from 4-6 inches (central Texas) to 8-12 inches in northern Louisiana and west-central Mississippi. Accordingly, widespread 1-category downgrades were made based upon the severity of the SPIs at 2- and 3-months, plus other products and indices. Fortunately, the record wet May and June in Texas has left statewide monitored reservoirs at 78.6% full as of October 7, although USGS average 28-day stream flows are generally below to much-below normal, as are river gauges in most of Louisiana, southern Arkansas, and Mississippi. According to USDA/NASS statewide statistics on Oct. 4, the percentage of topsoil/subsoil moisture short to very short was: Arkansas (81/74), Mississippi (80/76), Louisiana (69/60), Texas (67/64), and Oklahoma (50/54)…
Northern and Central Plains
A slow-moving frontal system, embedded with waves of low pressure and ample moisture to work with, produced unseasonably heavy precipitation from the Southwest northeastward into the northern Plains. The greatest amounts in the Plains included 1-2 inches in central Montana, western South Dakota, and north-central Nebraska. Most of this area, however, was drought free, except for D0 in eastern and central Montana and southwestern South Dakota where the abnormal dryness was reduced. In contrast, drier weather affected eastern sections, and D0 was expanded as short-term shortages increased (as mentioned in the Midwest summary for the eastern Dakotas and northeastern Kansas)…
Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies
Little or no precipitation fell across the Northwest as temperatures averaged close to normal. With much of the region in D2 or D3 and the rainy season normally commencing later this month and into November, no changes were made this week. In the north-central Rockies, however, the continued wet weather in southeastern Idaho and northern Utah was enough to warrant a 1-category improvement there, matching the water reservoir storage conditions of the Snake River. Slight improvements were made in the Boise basin due to a wet July and September that significantly helped preserve the reservoir storage within the basin, and which now has the best reservoir conditions in Idaho outside of the Bear River basin in the southeast…
Southwest
The same slow-moving storm system in the Great Basin and Rockies also dropped light to moderate (0.5-2 inches) rain across parts of northern and central Arizona and southern Utah while tropical moisture from the remnants of Pacific Hurricane Marty generated 0.5 to 3 inches of rain in central and eastern New Mexico and west Texas. Most of the significant rains fell on non-drought areas, although the 1-2 inches in southeastern New Mexico was enough to reduce or eliminate short-term deficits (one D0 area shrunk, one erased). Since it had been dry in central and northern Arizona for a while, the rains came in time to prevent degradation…
Looking Ahead
For the upcoming 5-day period (October 8-12), mostly light (0.25-0.75 inches) precipitation will occur in the eastern third of the Nation, with totals of up to 1-1.5 inches possible in the northern Rockies, Great Lakes region, central Appalachians, and eastern Florida. Farther west, heavy precipitation (1-3 inches) is expected in the southern High Plains and Rio Grande Valley, and 2-7 inches in western Washington. Elsewhere, little or no precipitation is expected. Temperatures across the lower 48 States will average above normal, especially in the West and Plains.
For the ensuing 5 days (October 13-17), the odds favor above-median precipitation from the Southwest northeastward into the central Corn Belt, and throughout the southern two-thirds of Alaska. In contrast, sub-median precipitation is favored in the Northwest and Southeast. A strong tilt toward above-normal temperatures is expected in the western half of the U.S., with lower but still above-normal odds in the eastern half of the nation. Alaska also favors above-normal temperature chances, especially in the south.
Here’s the release from the US Bureau of Reclamation (Lauren Meredith):
The Bureau of Reclamation is launching a $30,000 prize competition seeking improved methods to measure the food resources available for threatened and endangered fish. Advancing technology for monitoring how food is available for fish species can lower the cost and improve the effectiveness of fish recovery efforts.
“Protecting and restoring river systems are vital to ensuring that watersheds are healthy and can continue to meet the West’s water needs,” said Commissioner Estevan López. “Encouraging innovation and collaboration between the federal government and the private sector allows us all to do our jobs better.”
Millions of dollars are spent annually on restoration activities like changing flow regimes, reconstructing wetlands and adding natural structural elements. These efforts to improve and restore habitats are key to the recovery of salmon, trout and other critical fish species. A critical way to learn the effectiveness of habitat recovery is to measure the food resources available to fish species targeted for recovery and protection. Despite its importance, measuring food resources has proven difficult.
The top one to three submissions will receive $10,000 to $15,000 in prize money, totaling no more than $30,000. The winning solutions will help fish recovery managers evaluate the food available to impacted fish species under various habitat restoration strategies.
Reclamation is collaborating with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to lead this competition.
On October 7 and 8, the Obama administration is celebrating the five-year anniversary of Challenge.gov, a historic effort by the federal government to collaborate with members of the public through incentive prizes to address our most pressing local, national, and global challenges. True to the spirit of the President’s charge from his first day in office, federal agencies have collaborated with more than 200,000 citizen solvers—entrepreneurs, citizen scientists, students, and more—in more than 440 challenges, on topics ranging from accelerating the deployment of solar energy, to combating breast cancer, to increasing resilience after Hurricane Sandy. Read more here.
Catastrophic wildfires in the Western U.S. are often discussed in superlatives these days, with blazes burning land more violently and more frequently in recent years than at any point on record. Those changes are considered partly driven by global warming, and a new University of Wyoming study shows that even the smallest increase in average temperature — 0.5°C (0.9°F) — could bring a dramatic increase in wildfire activity at higher elevations.
The study also suggests that global warming may be ushering in an era of high-elevation wildfires unlike any seen in more than 1,000 years…
The new study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides more evidence that even a small amount of warming has a huge effect on wildfire.
University of Wyoming researchers studied charcoal samples representing 2,000 years of wildfire that were taken from lake beds in a subalpine forest — above 8,000 feet — in northern Colorado’s Mount Zirkel Wilderness near Steamboat Springs. With them, they were able to measure the increased wildfire frequency during a period of global warming similar to today.
That period, called the Medieval Climate Anomaly, or MCA, was about 1,100 to 1,200 years ago, when average temperatures in Northern Colorado were 0.5°C warmer than they were the preceding century, but moisture levels were not dramatically different.
Before the warm period, about 50 percent of the sites the researchers studied burned per century, increasing to 83 percent during the warm period and declining to 33 percent afterward. Most sites burned roughly at a rate of every 360 years prior to the warm period, increasing to every 120 years during the warm period — a 260 percent increase. Fire frequency declined before temperatures cooled, however, and the researchers think that happened because there was little forest left to burn.
The study is the first to discover how much land across an entire mountain range burned over a period of 2,000 years and shows that large wildfires similar to those burning today only occurred when temperatures increased like they have in recent years, the study’s lead author, University of Wyoming Ph.D. candidate John Calder, said.
“When we look into the past for evidence of these large wildfires we only see them one time when temperatures rose about 1°F,” he said. “Our study then adds more evidence that the recent increase in large wildfires is related to climate change because the only time we see these types of large wildfires in the last 2,000 years is when we had a similar amount of warming.”
The study only applies to dense high elevation forests, not those that have burned at lower elevations elsewhere in Colorado.
West Fork Fire June 20, 2013 photo the Pike Hot Shots Wildfire Today
Hewlett Fire May 5, 2012
Black Forest Fire June 2013 via CBS Denver
Weber Fire near Mancos June 2012 via MNGInteractive.com
Four Mile Canyon Fire September 6, 2010
Waldo Canyon Fire. Photo credit The Pueblo chieftain.
“A statement implying that the efforts that cities and water suppliers have used to plan for water supply projects is based on ‘blind hope’ instead of careful analysis is misleading and unacceptable,” wrote Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan to Gov. John Hickenlooper in response to the second draft of the plan, released in September.
The plan — which says that the state will run out of water for a fast-growing population by 2050 — presents a dizzying array of solutions for more water that include improving the permitting process, funding more storage and reducing the state’s projected 2050 municipal water demands by 400,000 acre-feet through conservation. That equates to a nearly 1-percent annual reduction in water use for the state’s cities and towns, according to the advocacy groups Conservation Colorado and Western Resource Advocates.
Joe Stibrich, a water resources policy manager with the city, said the plan also discourages more water diversions, stating Colorado watersheds and ecosystems cannot handle any more of them.
“In fact, new diversions and storage will be needed to develop collaborative, regional projects,” Stibrich and other Aurora Water staff wrote in a response to Hickenlooper about the plan.
Stibrich said Aurora Water is also concerned about the 400,000 acre-feet stretch goal because the number could overly burden Front Range cities.
“The concept itself is good but it’s a number that hasn’t been verified,” he said, adding that the stretch goal will not likely be achievable under current policies and with existing technology. Stibrich said he would like to see experts work with legislators to come up with an achievable range rather than a specific number.
A hearing on the plan in its second draft drew mostly advocacy groups to the Aurora Municipal Center in September. Those who testified at the meeting had concerns similar to those expressed by city officials.
Barbara Biggs, chair of the metro basin roundtable, also questioned the 400,000 acre-feet goal put into the plan at the meeting.
“Applying it in a one-size-fits-all goal makes us nervous. We think the stretch goal needs to recognize what different communities are going to be able to accomplish different things in their water conservation efforts,” she said…
Anne Castle, an expert with the University of Colorado’s Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment, testified that the second draft of the water plan remained too vast in its goals and vague in its action plan.
“We’re recommending the hundreds of action items in the plan be prioritized,” she said. “We need to prioritize those actions in order to have a practical implementation strategy. We can’t do everything at once.”
Castle recommended that the state’s water conservation board come up with a criteria for funding water projects and programs. Right now, the plan says the state will need $20 billion to pay for necessary water projects in the coming decades without specifically describing what those water projects are.
From the United States Geological Survey (Curt Meine):
Dr. Luna Leopold discusses the importance of bankfull discharge on the New Fork River near Boulder, Wyoming. Photo courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
No time seems more fitting than now – with the epic drought in California and major flooding from a nor’easter and Hurricane Joaquin – to pay tribute to Luna B. Leopold, the first chief hydrologist at the USGS. More so than any other scientist, he set the course for the USGS approach to understanding river flows, groundwater and surface water interactions and the value of long-term data collection. Today, the USGS is the world’s largest provider of hydrologic information with a mission to collect and disseminate reliable, impartial, and timely information that is needed to understand the Nation’s water resources.
Born on Oct. 8, 1915 in Albuquerque, Luna Leopold lived a rich life. From his renowned father, the biologist and author Aldo Leopold, he inherited a passion for outdoor life, a respect of craftsmanship, a highly disciplined curiosity, and an appreciation of the complex interactions of human society and natural systems. From his mother Estella, he inherited a deep connection to the semi-arid landscapes and watersheds of the American Southwest, a rich Hispanic cultural tradition, and a keen aesthetic sense. These qualities would meld and develop over time, across an extraordinary career in the earth sciences.
Luna Leopold via the USGS
According to the Virtual Luna Leopold Project, “He was trained as a civil engineer (B.S degree), meteorologist (M.S. degree) and geologist (Ph.D.) and his publications reflect that blending of fields. His first publication in 1937 was entitled Relation of Watershed Conditions to Flood Discharge: A Theoretical Analysis and his most recent publication in 2005 was Geomorphic Effects of Urbanization in Forty-one Years of Observations. Few have written papers spanning 68 years, and fewer still have had such an influence on a field or on society.”
Middle fork of the Salmon River near Shoup, Idaho
Luna Leopold’s creative intellect compelled him to explore the territory where science, policy, ethics, and environmental stewardship come together. In discerning the complex physical processes of stream formation and development, climate, precipitation, erosion, sedimentation, and deposition, he made connections to our human capacity to alter, or adapt to, hydrological realities. He understood that water science could not be separated from the water management and stewardship, which could not be separated from water ethics. On this he has been widely quoted: “Water is the most critical resource issue of our lifetime and our children’s lifetime. The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land.”
“The stream has to have change”
What he was referring to, of course, was our dominant historic tendency to reduce the inherent flux in stream systems, to manage flowing waters by controlling their dynamic variability. It is a fundamental lesson that several generations now of river managers and stewards have taken to heart and employed in restoration practice.
I suspect I highlighted that line in my notes, in part, because of its rich metaphorical potential. Luna Leopold understood change. He saw the reality of change and the need for change. He was himself an agent of change. In his field work, in his policy work, in his teaching and writing and consulting, he came to a view of rivers, of water, and of our future, that called for change. Through Luna’s understanding of science, history, and aesthetics, he came to perceive a “harmony in natural systems,” and held that “the desire to preserve this harmony must… be incorporated into any philosophy of water management, and I will call this, as did Herodotus, a reverence for rivers. If this is environmental idealism, then let it be said that I am an idealist.”
In the midst of a research expedition in Cataract Canyon, Utah, former USGS Chief Hydrologist Luna Leopold and eminent physicist Ralph Bagnold take a moment to rest
Wisdom from the past shapes the USGS today
Leopold was best known for work on the geomorphology of rivers, the study of land features and the processes that create and change them. He initiated a new era in the study of rivers, one that involved quantitative approaches that spread to the broader field of geomorphology. His research related meteorology and climatology to landscape process, a concept that has become a central feature of geomorphology. One of his better known papers, The Hydraulic Geometry of Stream Channels, published in 1953, initiated a new era in the quantitative study of rivers and stimulated quantitative approaches in geomorphology generally. Revealing an orderly framework of river behavior, the paper provided a basis for observing rivers worldwide through objective measurements and data collection.
Luna Leopold (3rd from left) visiting the USGS Wisconsin Water Science Center in 2002.
Leopold retired from the USGS in 1972, having had a distinguished 22-year career where his focus on research and interpretation of data made a profound impact on the earth sciences. His enthusiasm for rivers proved contagious, inspiring generations of colleagues and students to devote their talents to the pursuit of science and to its application for society. Following his USGS career, Leopold, became a professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics and the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. He passed away in 2006 at the age of 90.
Today, as our nation is faced with the challenge of balancing a finite freshwater supply among competing needs, including agriculture, drinking water, energy production, and ecosystem health, we can appreciate even more Luna Leopold’s combination of field knowledge, leadership, and wisdom. His reverence for rivers, his way of connecting head and heart, has continued to inform new generations of scientists, policy-makers, land stewards, and philosophers who are extending his insights, exploring new dimensions in water ethics, and putting that ethic into practice. The stream has to have change. The change that Leopold helped to initiate and inspire must come. It comes more predictably, perhaps, in natural systems than in human ones. But now, as we come to know how the human and natural inevitably flow together, we can perhaps allow reverence and knowledge to flow together as well—as they did through Luna’s life.
It’s one of those milestones that’s an entirely arbitrary result of the units we use to measure, but it’s probably nevertheless worth marking: for the first time since it was filled in the 1930s, Lake Mead ended the “water year” below 10 million acre feet of storage.
The finally elevation at midnight last Wednesday, Sept. 30, was 1,078.1 feet above sea level at the big Colorado River reservoir, which holds water for use in Nevada, Arizona, California, Sonora, and Baja. That translates to an estimated 9.854 million acre feet in storage, down from 10.121 maf a year ago. That is 38 percent of capacity.
Approving the 2016 budget, and electing officers for the Executive Committee are among the agenda items for the Republican River Water Conservation District Board of Directors’ regular quarterly meeting, Thursday, October 8, in Wray.
The meeting will be held at Cobblestone Inn & Suites on Highway 385 north of Wray beginning at 10 a.m. Public comment will be heard at 1 p.m.
A hearing will be held on the proposed 2016 budget, followed by consideration and approval of the budget.
It also is time for new terms for some of the 15-member board, as well as elect officers for the Executive Committee. New terms will begin for directors representing Washington, Sedgwick and Lincoln counties, as well as the W-Y, Central Yuma, and Plains ground water management districts.
The compact compliance pipeline will remain in the forefront. The board is scheduled to approve the application to the Central Yuma Ground Water Management District for the export of water from wells within the Central Yuma district for the pipeline. The board also is set to receive a a report from the State Engineer’s and Attorney General’s offices on negotiations with Kansas regarding the pipeline and the Bonny arbitrations. Some of that report might be in executive session if negotiation and litigation strategy is going to be discussed.
A special meeting is held each fall in Greeley. The board will be asked to approve a resolution to hold the special meeting.
Discussion of the 2016 Ogallala Aquifer Initiative will be held, as well as other matters. The board will hear reports from General Manager Deb Daniel, as well as from the district’s engineer and legal counsel.
Cobblestone Inn & Suites is located at 35952 Highway 385.
The District Engineer, U.S. Army Engineer District, Omaha, Nebraska is evaluating a Department of the Army Section 404 Permit application from Urban Drainage and Flood Control District, 2480 West 26th Avenue, Suite 156-B, Denver, CO 80211. Permits are issued under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (Section 404) which regulates the placement of dredged or fill material in the nation’s waters. Urban Drainage and Flood Control District (District) is requesting authorization for river channel work along approximately 3,000 linear feet of the South Platte River. The channel improvements are proposed to improve aquatic, wetland, and riparian habitat; provide boat passage through this section of river; and maintain flood conveyance and grade control. This reach of the South Platte River is part of a Flood Risk Reduction Project implemented by the Corps in the 1970s following the devastating flood of 1965. The reach has been channelized because of encroachment by development.
Click here to read the newsletter. Here’s an excerpt:
Eagle River Watershed Council has teamed up with the U.S. Forest Service for the inaugural year of our Citizen Science program. This program aims to identify creeks and streams on Forest Service land that currently house populations of native cutthroat trout or could in the future. Participants were trained to collect Environmental DNA samples and assess the physical habitat of streams.
We are no longer accepting new volunteers for the Citizen Science program this year, but there will certainly be ways to get involved in 2016! Email burchenal@erwc.org to sign up for next year or simply to find out more.
Denver Water is hosting two Public Availability Sessions this week to encourage residents in the area of Gross Reservoir to come and meet with Denver Water staff to address questions about DW’s Gross Reservoir Expansion Project.
Location: Coal Creek Canyon Community Center
31528 CO-72, Golden, CO 80403
While not sponsored by Boulder County, the county has offered to spread the word about the meetings as a way for county residents to come have their questions and concerns addressed by Denver Water staff. As one Denver Water official has stated, “We’re very hopeful that this availability session format allows us to talk more directly with individuals about their concerns.”
Gross Dam enlargement concept graphic via Denver Water
Gross Dam
Workers pose for a photo in the Moffat Water Tunnel in this 1930 photo.
West portal Moffat Water Tunnel
The plan includes environmental enhancements and protections to ensure the Fraser River will be better off with the Moffat Project than without it.
Denver Water’s collection system via the USACE EIS
South Boulder Creek near the East Portal of the Moffat Tunnel via Jason Lee Davis
Moffat Collection System Project/Windy Gap Firming Project via the Boulder Daily Camera
Click here to listen to the podcast. Here’s an excerpt from the Water Values website:
Recently retired from the Colorado Supreme Court, Justice Greg Hobbs joins The Water Values Podcast to share his knowledge of western water law, specifically the doctrine of prior appropriation and its impact on how the West developed. Justice Hobbs uses his deep and broad knowledge of water law to explain how the doctrine of prior appropriation developed, stretching his explanation of water in the West all the way back to the reservoirs the inhabitants of Mesa Verde used and up through the Spanish and Mexican influences in the West. He provides an eye-opening analysis of water law and contrasts differing versions of prior appropriation (Colorado with California; court adjudicated rights versus administratively granted rights). Finally, Justice Hobbs discusses his involvement with the Colorado Foundation for Water Education and its many programs.
From the League of Women Voters of Larimer County (Sarah Pitts) via the Fort Collins Coloradoan:
As part of its long history of studying and participating in public discussion on water and other environmental issues, the League of Women Voters of Larimer County delivered comments to the Army Corps of Engineers on the second draft environmental impact statement (SDEIS) for the proposed NISP/Glade Reservoir project. The league recommended the Corps defer issuing a permit for the project until the Corps corrects data inadequacies and omissions, addresses compatibility with the draft state water plan, and better defines and quantifies short- and long-term costs related to environmental impacts.
Inadequate data cited by the league include:
•Population growth projections are overstated because they fail to use the reliable and objective data provided by the Colorado State Demography Office.
•Per capita water consumption projections are overstated because they fail to factor in already implemented conservation measures (e.g., Fort Collins reduced per capita consumption from 188 gallons/day in 2003 to 140 now) as well as new and developing conservation initiatives.
•Water supply projections underestimate the potential for acquiring water from annexed farm land, from alternative agricultural transfers, and from growing supplies of reuse water.
•The SDEIS omits essential water quality and temperature models.
The SDEIS fails to analyze the project’s compatibility with the draft Colorado state water plan. It is also at odds with the South Platte River Basin Implementation Plan statement that the costs of building and maintaining reservoirs are questionable: “The basin, in a typical year, has little unappropriated water available for new uses. Unappropriated flows . . . come in sporadic, high peaks during wetter years, making the economics of building a reservoir to capture these supplies questionable because of the large carryover storage requirements.”
Unsubstantiated assumptions about long-term, as well as short term environmental impacts, call into question the SDEIS’s already insufficient disclosure as to the allocation, sources of funding and impact of costs to build and mitigate the effects of the NISP project.
A U.S. Bureau of Land Management proposal to expand the Blanca Wetlands could be left in the lurch by the expiration of a congressional conservation fund. Congress failed to renew the authority for the Land and Water Conservation Fund on Wednesday, the end of the federal fiscal year.
The expansion of the wetlands, which is a temporary home for dozens of songbirds and shorebirds that migrate through the San Luis Valley, had been paired with a project by the agency on the Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument.
The White House’s 2016 budget called for $18 million in permanent funding for the project and another $22 million subject to future appropriations by Congress.
Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell said in a statement that the fund, which draws off revenue from off-shore oil and gas drilling, faced a needlessly uncertain future.
“I’m extremely disappointed that, despite overwhelming bipartisan support, Congress has allowed this innovative and effective program to expire,” she said.
A spokeswoman for Jewell said Interior had given no instruction to the land-management agencies it oversees on whether to pursue other avenues of funding for their projects.
The BLM hoped to expand the wetlands through the purchase of 12,000 acres of private land from willing sellers.
The area targeted for expansion had included wetlands as recently as the 1940s but had dried up from drought or agricultural development.
The agency now maintains habitat at the 8,700-acre Blanca Wetlands by pumping groundwater into the marshes and ponds at the site.
The proposed funding for the national monument, which sits just south of the valley across the New Mexico state line, would have gone toward the protection of cultural and historic sites.
And while Jewell and a host of national conservation groups called for the reauthorization and full funding, many Republican congressmen from the Western U.S. called for reform of the program.
U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., whose district includes the valley, said those reforms should move the fund away from purchasing more land for federal agencies, although he did not object to its use for land exchanges with willing private landowners.
The fund would be better served by helping federal agencies manage the land they have, Tipton said in a written statement.
“LWCF reauthorization provides an opportunity for reforms that support addressing the growing maintenance backlogs for national parks, roads, trails and facilities,” he said.
Mayor Suthers released his proposed 2016 budget Monday. The big focus will be on storm water. A problem that’s plagued Colorado Springs for years.
“Several years ago, we had a storm water enterprise,” Suthers said. “With the demise of that, defunding of the storm water enterprise, for the most part we’ve been spending minimal amounts [of money] over the last several years in terms of storm water.”
The city is setting aside $16 million, with an additional $3 million from Springs Utilities for a total of $19 million.
That plan had some tax payers wondering why isn’t that money going toward the roads.
“There were times I felt like I was going to get pulled over for swerving so much even though it was just because of the pot holes,” Mackenzie Tennison said.
The mayor said through all their surveys, roads were the top priority for voters so he expects them to pass the proposed tax increase of 0.62 percent in November. That will give the city the money it needs to fix our roads.
“I don’t agree with, you know, us getting taxed more,” Leafner Tan said. “I’m pretty sure there’s enough money there, and I’m pretty sure there’s also money going somewhere we don’t need to spend money on.”
“You cannot do storm water and roads,” Suthers said. “Storm water is within reach because it’s a relatively less amount of money.”
Suthers added, that unlike previous years, he’s been working with city council on this budget and that nothing about it should surprise them.
There will be a meeting at City Hall on October 20 from 5-7:30 p.m.
The $268.1 million general fund budget is up $9.4 million, or 3.6 percent, but Suthers said that when adjusted for inflation, the city today spends $86 a year less on each resident than it did in 2000…
Suthers’ priority remains the city’s infamously atrocious roads, most of which need overlays or complete reconstruction. But the mayor is banking on passage of a Nov. 3 ballot issue to provide $50 million a year for five years through a 0.62 percent sales tax increase.
The other overriding need is stormwater projects to ameliorate Fountain Creek flooding effects on downstream Pueblo. Past city stormwater funds have been eliminated, and a federal lawsuit has been threatened by the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District.
If the issue isn’t addressed, it also could threaten the 1041 permit Colorado Springs Utilities got for its $829 million Southern Delivery System, soon to pump water from Pueblo Reservoir to Colorado Springs, Pueblo West, Fountain and Security.
So Suthers is squeezing $16 million out of the budget, which would be augmented by $3 million from Utilities, for stormwater projects…
In order to make ends meet, staffing requests, raises and capital projects were left unfunded, Suthers said.
Click here to read the Mayor’s news release and letter to City Council — via Pam Zubeck and the Colorado Springs Independent.
When State Engineer Dick Wolfe turned in a set of proposed groundwater rules and regulations to the division water court on Sept. 23, he channeled Yogi Berra.
“When you come to the fork in the road, take it,” he said, quoting the Hall of Fame Yankees catcher who passed away the day before.
But for nearly four decades, the San Luis Valley’s water users avoided any path that involved giving the state engineer the authority to shut down or limit pumping by the valley’s roughly 4,500 irrigation wells.
Two aquifers supply the water for those wells and help farmers irrigate valley staples such as potatoes, barley and alfalfa.
The shallower of the two, the unconfined aquifer, is fed by streams, seepage from irrigation canals and return flows from fields, and some upward leakage from a deeper aquifer.
The deeper aquifer, known as the confined aquifer, is fed by streams at the rim of the valley and is under artesian pressure.
Both aquifers are hydrologically connected to the valley’s surface streams to varying degrees, a fact that underlies complaints from surface-water users that their rights are injured by groundwater pumping.
Wolfe’s predecessor had proposed rules in 1975 only to see them shelved as the valley’s water users looked for another way to mitigate the impacts of well pumping on surfacewater users. And while this version still will have to gain approval from water court, enough had changed in the intervening decades to prompt a second stab at rules and regulations.
To begin, the federal Closed Basin Project, which pumps groundwater from the eastern edge of the valley for delivery to the Rio Grande, has been ineffective.
The valley’s water user groups signed an agreement in 1985 that divvied up how the project’s water would apply toward Colorado’s obligations to the Rio Grande Compact.
The move was regarded as an olive branch to surface-water users on the Conejos and Rio Grande rivers, since they alone carried the burden of complying with compact obligations.
Without the policing powers rules could give the state engineer, groundwater users faced no such burden.
The pact, commonly known as the 60-40 Agreement, also included a provision that kept valley surface-water users from going to court to shut down groundwater wells.
But since 2000, the amount of water produced by the project has never exceeded 20,000 acre-feet — far below envisioned amounts of up to 100,000 acre-feet when it was authorized by Congress in 1972.
Another change since the last rule proposals involved a pair of unsuccessful efforts in the 1990s to ship large amounts of the valley’s groundwater to the Front Range.
The proposals from American Water Development and later the Stockmen’s Water Company put all of the valley’s water users in the same boat, said Ralph Curtis, who managed the Rio Grande Water Conservation District for 25 years.
“We kind of just grew and grew together to realize we are neighbors,” he said.
Moreover, less was known in the 1970s about the two major groundwater bodies that sit beneath the valley floor. When the 1975 rules were proposed, a monitoring network that could measure levels in the unconfined aquifer in the north-central part of the valley still was a year away.
Exactly how much was pumped from the aquifers was not known either until 2006 when the engineer’s office implemented well-metering requirements.
Mac McFadden, who was the division engineer for the valley in 1975, and Steve Vandiver, who later would serve 24 years in the same post, both pointed to the development of the state’s groundwater computer model as an important advancement.
While that model could be a point of contention in court hearings for the current version of rules, it provides the basis for estimating how much instream losses are caused from well pumping Lastly, both Curtis and Vandiver point to the drought that began in 2002 as a pivotal point in the valley’s water politics and one that would pave the way to a new version of state rules.
“The drought of 2002 just tipped over the bucket of worms,” Vandiver said. “It was obvious then what the impacts of wells were on the (Rio Grande) — river just went away.”
The lowest flows ever recorded on the Conejos and the Rio Grande rivers where they enter the valley floor came in 2002.
And much of those meager flows were lost to aquifers that were being drawn on heavily by irrigators that had no surface supplies.
The division engineer’s annual report for that year estimated stream losses on the Rio Grande were as high as 40 percent at times, while on the Conejos they peaked as high as 60 percent.
“That provided the impetus for the surface-water users to say we’ve had enough,” Vandiver said.
Vandiver credited Manassa rancher Kelly Sowards and other surface-water users for creating the subsequent push to regulate wells.
Two years later, state lawmakers would pass a bill that created the framework for the current version of the rules and groundwater management subdistricts.
The first such subdistrict, which buys water to return to the Rio Grande and also pays ditch companies for losses caused by pumping, went into operation four years ago in the north-central part of the valley.
