Here’s the release from the Bureau of Reclamation (Peter Soeth):
The Bureau of Reclamation has launched a new prize competition seeking solutions to provide direct current power of up to 20 watts for electronic instruments on hydropower generating units’ rotating shafts. Power sources for electronics on rotating shafts presently available include batteries and contact solutions. However, existing technologies for these types of power sources are limited with respect to operation, installation, maintenance or other factors. Thus, new solutions are needed to power these instruments, which will be installed permanently on the rotating shaft to collect continuous data of generator operation and performance.
Reclamation is making a total award pool of $250,000 available for this competition. After the competition deadline, Reclamation will select solutions for experimental validation in a laboratory or field-scale demonstration. The solvers selected for this validation will share up to $50,000, with no award smaller than $5,000. Final awards will be granted from the remaining award pool through critical analysis of the demonstration results by Reclamation and its panel of judges.
Solutions for this prize competition can be novel approaches or can build upon existing methods and technologies. The solver should submit a white paper that describes a device for providing direct current power to instruments on rotating shafts as defined in the solution requirements. It should be accompanied by a well-articulated rationale supported by literature and/or patent precedents.
Reclamation is the second largest producer of hydropower in the country, operating 53 power plants. The generating units at these plants are expected to safely and reliably produce the power that is delivered to the western electric grid. Monitoring the generating units is a critical advancement toward keeping these units operational.
Submissions for this competition must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. EST on December 8, 2018.
Reclamation is partnering with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bonneville Power Administration on this prize competition.
The White House on Friday announced plans to appoint Jayne Harkins, executive director of the Colorado River Commission of Nevada, to head the U.S. side of the cross-border treaty organization.
Harkins said she was recommended for the post by Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.; Dean Heller, R-Nev.; Cory Gardner, R-Colo.; and John Barrasso, R-Wyo.
The International Boundary and Water Commission regulates such thorny issues as the location of the border and the allocation of water in the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers. The commission also oversees flood control, sanitation and other water quality issues impacting the two nations.
“It’s important. All the work is very important,” Harkins said. “I think I have the background to help with those disputes.”
Harkins has held the top job at the state agency responsible for managing Nevada’s water and power resources from the Colorado River since 2011. During that time, she participated in international talks that led to a series of agreements over Mexico’s use and conservation of water from the Colorado.
Before that, the registered professional engineer spent 27 years with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, where she eventually served as deputy director of that agency’s Lower Colorado River Region.
Harkins said her appointment is expected to become official in a few weeks, after which she will report for work at the boundary and water commission’s U.S. headquarters in El Paso, Texas. The Mexican section of the commission is located in the neighboring city of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua.
Click here to read the paper. Here’s the abstract:
The Colorado River is the primary surface water resource in the rapidly growing U.S. Southwest. Over the period 1916‐2014, the Upper Colorado River Basin naturalized streamflow declined by 16.5%, despite the fact that annual precipitation in the UCRB over that period increased slightly (+1.4%). In order to examine the causes of the runoff declines, we performed a set of experiments with the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrology model. Our results show that the pervasive warming has reduced snowpacks and enhanced evapotranspiration (ET) over the last 100 years; over half (53%) of the long‐term decreasing runoff trend is associated with the general warming. Negative winter precipitation trends have occurred in the handful of highly productive sub‐basins that account for over half of the streamflow at Lee’s Ferry. We also compared a mid‐century drought with the (ongoing) post‐Millennium Drought, and find that whereas the earlier drought was caused primarily by pervasive low precipitation anomalies across UCRB, higher temperatures have played a large role in the post‐Millennium Drought. The post‐Millennium Drought has also been exacerbated by negative precipitation anomalies in several of the most productive headwater basins. Finally, we evaluate the UCRB April‐July runoff forecast for 2017, which decreased dramatically as the runoff season progressed. We find that while late winter and spring 2017 was anomalously warm, the proximate cause of most of the forecast reduction was anomalous late winter and early spring dryness in UCRB, which followed exceptionally large (positive) early winter precipitation anomalies.
Since 2000, the amount of water flowing in the Colorado River has dropped 19 percent below the average of the past century, a decline that has left the Southwest on the brink of a water shortage.
Now, new research indicates that a large portion of that decline isn’t due to less rain and snow falling from the sky, but to warmer temperatures brought on by climate change.
Scientists from the University of California-Los Angeles and Colorado State University found that about half the trend of decreasing runoff from 2000-2014 in the Upper Colorado River Basin was the result of unprecedented warming across the region.
“A good chunk of the decline we’re seeing right now is temperature-related. And as the Earth continues to warm, we’re going to see less flow in the river,” said Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University who co-authored the research. “We need to prepare for a river that has significantly less water in it.”
Udall, together with UCLA researchers Mu Xiao and Dennis Lettenmaier, used a hydrologic model to examine the streamflow in the Upper Colorado River Basin from 1916 through 2014. They found the flow declined by 16.5 percent over the past century.
They calculated that 53 percent of the trend was linked to warming, which has shrunk the average snowpack in the mountains, boosted the uptake of water by plants and increased the amount of water that evaporates off the landscape.
“We separated the effect of different factors and determined the influences,” said Xiao, the study’s lead author and a doctoral student in UCLA’s Geography Department. “Aside from warming temperature, the precipitation also contributed to the drought. This was not obvious to us as the precipitation in the Upper Basin doesn’t show a significantly decreasing trend.”
The researchers attributed the remaining 47 percent of the decrease in the river’s flow to shifts in precipitation patterns, with less rain and snow falling in four areas of Colorado that tend to be especially productive in feeding tributaries in the Rocky Mountains.
“The precipitation is falling in different places, places that aren’t nearly as effective in generating runoff,” Udall said. “It’s the heat and it’s also this changing pattern in precipitation from areas that are really productive in generating runoff, like the state of Colorado, to areas that are much less effective, like the deserts of Utah.”
Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) Macroscale Hydrologic Model
Colorado State University researcher Brad Udall co-authored the study with UCLA scientists Mu Xiao and Dennis Lettenmaier…
Warming temperatures throughout the Colorado River watershed accounted for more than half the decline in flows, Udall says. Other factors include changes to precipitation patterns and loss of snowpack in high altitudes.
“The impacts of temperature are very large on this river and if you believe temperatures are going to increase — as every reputable scientist now does — you then have to conclude that the future of the river is going to be a future with much less water in it,” Udall says.
The amount of precipitation increased by about one percentage point during the last 100 years, but it didn’t end up in areas that would boost the river’s flow in significant ways.
Udall says most water managers agree that climate change is fundamentally altering how the river functions. Officials in Arizona, California and Nevada are currently negotiating a new plan to voluntarily cut back how much water they take from the river to avoid mandatory reductions. Federal officials have given the states until the end of the year to craft a plan.
The latest study builds on a 2017 study Udall published with University of Michigan researcher Jonathan Overpeck that compared flows in the Colorado River during a period of hot and dry conditions in the basin starting in 2000 to long-term average flows. From 2000 to 2014 flows in the river averaged 19 percent below those recorded the previous 93 years.
He notes too that the current drought conditions in the basin differ from droughts in the recent past. An extended drought from 1953 to 1968 was mostly driven by lack of precipitation, whereas the 21st century drought is being driven by increasing temperatures, a product of climate change.
“It’s disturbing,” Udall says. “I think we’re going to see a very different world as the 21st century unfolds with all these climate change impacts.”
“Those of us here in the Lower Basin are so focused on Lake Mead, but what’s propping up Mead is Lake Powell, and Lake Powell is going down, too,” Flessa said.
A total of about 11 million acre-feet of the extra water has been sent from Powell to Mead since 2000, the report says. That’s more than seven years’ worth of CAP water. Powell has dropped 94 feet since 2000. Had all that water stayed in Powell, that lake wouldn’t have dropped at all since 2000, the report says.
“The math suggests that, without these extra releases, we could today have a full Lake Powell and an empty Lake Mead. We are certainly not saying that would be a ‘better’ outcome; that would be chaos,” said another researcher involved in the report, Douglas Kenney, director of the University of Colorado’s Western Water Policy Program.
“What we are saying is that it’s important to understand that the actions taken to keep Lake Mead out of shortage have had real impacts upstream at Lake Powell, and all users dependent upon Lake Powell now face risks associated with looming Lake Powell shortages.”
The scientists say “the status quo (of reservoir management) is untenable,” and that a crisis on Lake Powell may already be at hand.
“It is impossible to keep a bathtub full while the drain is left open,” the report says.
It’s hard to fill a bathtub when the drain is open; it’s even harder when the tub is shaped like a bowl said Doug Kenney, who led the Colorado River Research Group study.
He said visitors to Lake Mead and Powell who measure the water levels by the bath-tub-like rings on the canyon walls see only part of the problem.
“As the reservoir gets lower and lower, it gets narrower at the bottom,” he explained. “So, what looked like a 10-foot decline one year, might look like a 30-foot decline the year after.”
Lake Mead is currently only 38-percent full, but draws its water from Lake Powell, which was last measured as 48-percent full.
If Lake Mead relied solely on its own winter runoff, Kenney said, “It would be a dry river bed now.”
[Hoover] dam is a proud place, built by thousands of hands and with 5 million barrels of concrete. Its golden elevator doors, Gotham-esque pillars, and stoic guardian angel statues line the lofty walkways atop the structure. A U.S. flag beating patriotically over the desert gets swapped out every few days, and then put out for sale in the visitor center.
Yet, in the 80 years since the great dam’s completion, the 1,450-mile Colorado River – which sustains some 40 million Americans in places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles — has been gradually growing weaker, and the water level beyond the noble dam has fallen considerably over the last two decades. The writing is easily spotted on the steep rocky walls of the Lake Mead reservoir, where a bathtub-like ring shows where the water once sat during more fruitful times.
Today, however, the water sits 150-feet below that line, and human-caused climate change is a major reason why.
Over the last century, the river’s flow has declined by around 16 percent, even as annual precipitation slightly increased in the Upper Colorado River Basin — a vast region stretching from Wyoming to New Mexico.
New research published in the journal Water Resources Research argues that over half of this decline is due to sustained and rising temperatures in the region, which ultimately means more water is evaporated from the river, diminishing the flow.
But it’s really been in the last twenty years that matters have deteriorated into a major drought, edging the region toward a potential water-rationing crisis.
It’s the worst drought in Colorado River history.
“The river since 2000 has been in an unprecedented decline,” Brad Udall, coauthor of the new study and senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, said in an interview.
“There’s no analog, from when humans started gauging the river, for this drought,” said Udall.
FromThe New Mexico Political Report (Laura Paskus):
a new study shows that even though annual precipitation increased slightly between 1916 and 2014, Colorado River flows declined by 16.5 percent during that same time period. That’s thanks, in large part, to “unprecedented basin-wide warming.” Warming reduces snowpack and increases the amount of water plants demand.
Using experiments and a hydrology model, the trio of authors from the University of California-Los Angeles and Colorado State University, found that 53 percent of the decrease in runoff is attributable to warming; the rest to reduced snowfall within regions that feed into the system.
One of the study’s authors, Bradley Udall, co-authored an earlier paper with Jonathan Overpeck showing a drop in river flows. What’s striking about the new study, Udall explained, is how much of the decline is due to warming relative to precipitation.
“Climate change isn’t in the future: it’s here now, it’s affecting all of us, and it will become increasingly worse as time goes on,” said Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at the Colorado Water Institute at Colorado State University. “Climate change is in our face right now: It’s western fires, it’s drought, it’s river flows.”
He cautioned that the study’s results are based on one model and one data set.
“That said, I think the model is telling us something that’s really valuable,” he said. “The feedback loop—self-reinforcing cycles, where dryness begets heat, which further begets dryness—is probably at the root cause of what’s causing these 50 percent declines.”
In short, he said, the model points toward the further aridification of the region.
The model also shows how sensitive the Colorado River Basin is to shifts in precipitation patterns. Not only does it matter whether precipitation falls as snow or rain, it matters where it falls. Snowfall in Colorado, he explained, contributes more to the river’s flows than if it falls in Utah. Unfortunately, the researchers noted a decline in snowfall within four important sub-basins of the river, all within the state of Colorado.
The paper, he said, is also a reminder that we need respond to climate change right now.
Blue Mesa Reservoir
From email from Reclamation (Erik Knight):
Releases from the Aspinall Unit will be decreased by 75 cfs on Sunday, September 9th. Releases are being decreased in order to bring flows in the lower Gunnison River closer to the baseflow target while conserving storage in Blue Mesa Reservoir. The actual April-July runoff volume for Blue Mesa Reservoir was 237,500 AF of inflow, which is 35% of average.
Flows in the lower Gunnison River are currently above the baseflow target of 890 cfs. River flows are expected to stay above the baseflow target for the foreseeable future.
Pursuant to the Aspinall Unit Operations Record of Decision (ROD), the baseflow target in the lower Gunnison River, as measured at the Whitewater gage, is 890 cfs for September.
Currently, diversions into the Gunnison Tunnel are 1000 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon are around 575 cfs. After this release change Gunnison Tunnel diversions will still be 1000 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon will be around 500 cfs.
Many Indian reservations are located in or near contentious river basins where demand for water outstrips supply. Map courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation.
A recent ruling could settle the unresolved groundwater rights of nearly 240 tribes.
BACKSTORY
The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, in California’s dry Coachella Valley, relies on a rapidly dropping aquifer. In 2013, the tribe sued the Coachella Valley Water District to halt its groundwater pumping. Four years later, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the tribe has priority rights to groundwater beneath its land — a precedent-setting decision (“A tribe wins rights to contested groundwater in court,” HCN, 4/5/17).
FOLLOWUP
An August study published in Science clarified how much groundwater could be at stake. Nearly 240 Western tribes have unresolved groundwater rights, largely in Arizona, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah. The Stanford University study also noted, “This ruling establishes a new standard throughout nine Western states within the (9th circuit) court’s jurisdiction.” As water supplies dwindle with climate change and serious conflicts arise with other users, tribes will have major leverage in determining how Western water is allocated.
Yesterday afternoon Dr. Katharine Hayhoe gave a presentation about communication as one of CIRES Distiguished Lecturer Series. It was a real treat for me since I had never had the opportunity to see her in person and she is one of my heroes in the climate change world.
She is one of Coyote Gulch’s favorite climate science communicators. Her series with PBS, Global Weirding, takes on the myths and arguments against the reality of climate change in a clear and understandable way.
I’m in the water business and we are very worried about the fact that stationarity is dead. Stationarity can be characterized by the statement, “The past predicts the future,” but when the water cycle is changing due to global warming there is uncertainty about using historical hydrological data to predict future streamflow. We’re seeing the effects of higher temperatures on snowpack and runoff here in the West.
Dr. Hayhoe explained stationarity in one Global Weirding episode in this way [Paraphrasing]:
She lives in west Texas where there is a lot of flat land and open spaces. It’s possible to drive down the highway and steer your car by keeping the road in view by looking in your rear view mirror. Problems arise when the road has a turn in it. You are likely to crash if you haven’t been looking ahead of you.
She detailed some of the experiences that helped shape her approach to climate education, from the very first lecture, full of charts and graphs and detail, when, at the end, she called on a questioner, and he said, “Are you a Democrat?” She learned from subsequent speaking engagements that it was very hard or impossible to connect with a majority of folks by presenting the data. She also showed a series of slides that tracked climate change views by political affiliation which clearly illustrated the divide in the U.S. in 2018.
Dr. Hayhoe is an accomplished speaker telling stories and using humor to make a point.
The first step in communicating, she says, is to create a bond with the audience.
Below is her communication template.
Thanks CIRES and Dr. Hayhoe for a great presentation. Note to Hayhoe: I left feeling inspired.
Tomorrow is Rise for Climate with events all over the world. Acting on climate is essential as is voting for the environment.
Click here to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:
Summary
While subnormal temperatures overspread the Northwest, a strong and persistent Bermuda high over the Atlantic Ocean kept the East unseasonably warm and humid while hindering cold fronts from advancing eastward into the region. As a result, stalled fronts over the Nation’s mid-section became a focal point for widespread heavy showers and thunderstorms, especially from the central Great Plains northeastward into the western Great Lakes region. Parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan saw over 5 inches of rain for the week, with locally 10-15 inches of rain in southern Wisconsin. Needless to say, major improvements were made in the Midwest. Tropical showers also occurred along the Gulf Coast, and later in the week Tropical Storm Gordon formed in the eastern Gulf and tracked northwestward toward Mississippi. Scattered showers also fell on parts of the Four Corner Region, the northern Plains, upper Midwest, mid-Atlantic, and western New England. Little or no rain was observed in the West, northern and central Rockies, north-central High Plains, across sections of the interior Southeast, eastern Corn Belt, and coastal New England…
Early in the week, a trough of low pressure brought scattered showers and thunderstorms to the central and western Gulf, dumping 2-6 inches of rain along the coast, with locally over 10 inches. The rains were enough to eliminate short-term deficits and improve the D0-D1 areas in southern Louisiana and western Mississippi by a category. Scattered showers (1-2 inches) also fell on northwestern Louisiana, shrinking some of the D2 and D3 areas near Shreveport. The Gulf rains also provided relief across southeastern Texas, while heavy Day7 rains (3-8 inches) between Laredo and San Antonio fell on a large D2-D3 area, putting a substantial dent into the drought. North-south bands of scattered showers were observed in portions of central and northeastern Texas, slightly decreasing the D2 and D3 areas. In western Texas, a calibration between the radar-based precipitation totals (AHPS) versus gauge-based (ACIS) and other indices showed a wet bias in the radar-based precipitation, thus some additional deterioration was shown in this region, with more areas of D2 and D3 depicted. A spot of D4 was added near Amarillo. In addition, the fifth warmest summer on record for Texas exacerbated the dryness. In Oklahoma, spotty rains (1-2 inches) eased drought in the extreme western Panhandle, and in southwestern and northeastern sections. Similarly, scattered rains in extreme northern and eastern Arkansas erased some D0 there…
Rainfall amounts were either lacking or light across most of the High Plains, except for very heavy rains (2-6 inches, locally higher) in eastern Kansas and southeastern Nebraska (associated with the copious rains in the Midwest), and light to moderate (0.5-2 inches) in parts of the Dakotas and southeastern Colorado. In Kansas and southeastern Nebraska, 2-8 inches of rain caused a 1-2 category drought improvement across southeastern Nebraska and northeastern and southeastern Kansas, while 1-3 inches of rain in far western Kansas was good for a 1-category reduction. Unfortunately, the core D3-D4 drought area in east-central Kansas received much lower totals (less than an inch), and little or no improvements were made there. Farther north, drier weather this week and out to the last 60-days has slowly increased short-term deficits, resulting in some minor deterioration in northeastern Montana, northern North Dakota, central and northeastern South Dakota. While continuing rains eased drought in southeastern Colorado into northeastern New Mexico, worsening conditions in west-central Colorado slightly expanded the D4 there. Monsoonal showers were widely scattered across eastern Arizona and most of New Mexico, but most areas were unchanged…
A drier than normal Water Year during the cold season (October 2017-April 2018) with less mountain snow than normal in the southern two-thirds of the West (used for spring and summer snow melt runoff), combined with a very warm and exceptionally dry summer (May-August 2018), has produced numerous negative impacts. This was most notable in Oregon where the combination of a poor winter snowpack and a hot and dry summer have produced widespread poor pasture and range conditions and very low stream flows and livestock ponds, and required water hauling, supplemental hay, and delayed forest harvesting, along with reduced livestock herds. The 4-month (May-Aug) SPEI, which takes into account temperatures and evapotranspiration with the precipitation, was below -1.5 in western Washington and Oregon by the end of August, and also in parts of eastern Oregon, northern Washington, and northern California. But since the cold season WY (Oct-Apr) was wetter and snowier in Washington and northeastern Oregon, most of the expanded D2 and D3 was added to areas with both a poor 4-month (summer) and 11-month (Oct-Aug) SPEI, namely central Oregon. Based upon the SPEI, D1 was also expanded in northwestern Washington, and D2 increased into southwestern Washington, southeastern Oregon, extreme northern California, northwestern Utah, and extreme northern Idaho where very low stream flows were occurring in the latter area. In contrast, some isolated heavy rains in southeastern Arizona (Graham County) slightly improved D2 to D1 where a short-term surplus existed…
Looking Ahead
For the ensuing 5 days (September 6-10), heavy rain is expected from the southern Plains northeastward into the mid-Atlantic, with the Midwest drought area once again targeted for additional copious rainfall. Most of Texas and Oklahoma should also see substantial totals, as should the Ohio Valley and mid-Atlantic. Moisture from the remnants of Tropical Storm Gordon will contribute to some of these large precipitation amounts. Most of the West, northern Rockies and Plains, parts of the interior Southeast, and coastal New England are forecast to get little or no rain. 5-day temperatures should average below-normal in the Nation’s midsection where the rain is expected, while above-normal readings return to the West.
For the CPC 6-10 day extended range outlook (Sep. 11-15), the odds favor above normal precipitation along the Gulf and Atlantic Coast States, the Pacific Northwest, northern Plains, and upper Midwest. In contrast, subnormal rainfall is likely in the central U.S. and western Great Lakes region which should be welcome after heavy rains that have fallen and are expect to occur in the next 5 days. The southern half of Alaska is favored for subnormal precipitation. Most of the Nation from the Rockies eastward (and Alaska) should see above-normal temperature, with odds for subnormal readings limited to the Northwest, Texas, and eastern Alaska.
Debris flow from 416 Fire. Photo credit: Twitter #416Fire hash tag
FromThe Durango Herald (Jonathan Romeo) via The Cortez Journal:
A fish count in the Animas River on Tuesday found populations have been drastically affected by deadly runoff from the 416 Fire burn scar.
Fish kills because of ash and dirt washing into the river started in mid-July, but a massive rain event around July 17 likely killed most of the fish in the waterway, wildlife officials said at the time.
The dirty runoff lowers the oxygen content in water, suffocating fish, which have been further stressed by abnormally low flows and high water temperatures.
For the first time since the 416 Fire runoff events, wildlife managers with Colorado Parks and Wildlife conducted a fish survey to better understand the extent of the fish kill.
Usually, CPW will use an electrofishing device from a raft to stun fish to survey two 1,000-foot sections of the Animas River: from Durango High School to the Ninth Street Bridge and from Cundiff Park to the High Bridge.
This year, low flows forced wildlife managers to use an electrofishing device from the banks and from in the river.
Jim White, an aquatic biologist for CPW, said in a normal year, a survey will find somewhere around 40 brown trout and 40 rainbow trout in the stretch from Cundiff Park to the High Bridge.
This year, CPW found one brown trout and one rainbow trout in that stretch and no molted sculpin, a small native species of fish that’s a key food source for trout.
In the stretch of river between Durango High School and the Ninth Street Bridge, CPW found four brown trout and two rainbow trout, as well as some molted sculpin, bluehead suckers and speckled dace.
“Normally, we’d catch 10 times that,” White said.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife fish count Animas River August 2018: Photo credit: Joe Lewandnowski
From the U.S. Energy Information Administration (Laura Singer):
U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2017 fell to 5.14 billion metric tons, 0.9% lower than their 2016 levels, and coal emissions were the primary driver behind the decline. U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions have declined in 7 of the past 10 years, and they are now 14% lower than in 2005.
Both coal and natural gas consumption in the United States were lower in 2017 than in 2016, and as a result, coal- and natural gas-related CO2 emissions decreased 2.6% and 1.5%, respectively. Natural gas consumption has displaced coal consumption in the electric power sector in recent years, and total U.S. emissions from natural gas first surpassed emissions from coal in 2015. U.S. petroleum consumption increased in 2017, contributing to a 0.5% increase in energy-related CO2 emissions from petroleum, but this increase was offset by the decrease in coal and natural gas emissions.
The electric power sector was the only U.S. sector in which energy-related emissions decreased in 2017, and the 4.6% decline was enough to offset increases in all other sectors. In recent years, the generation mix has shifted away from coal and toward natural gas and renewables. The shift toward natural gas from coal lowers CO2 emissions because natural gas produces fewer emissions per unit of energy consumed than coal and because natural gas generators typically use less energy than coal plants to generate each kilowatthour of electricity. Electricity generation from renewable energy technologies has increased; these technologies do not directly emit CO2 as part of their electricity generation. In EIA’s emissions data series, emissions from biomass combustion are excluded from reported energy-related emissions according to international convention.
In addition to reduced CO2 emissions as a result of utilization of less carbon-intensive generation sources, CO2 emissions were also lower in 2017 because of lower electricity sales, which in 2017 experienced the largest drop since the economic recession in 2009. The decline in CO2 emissions in the residential and commercial sectors was largely attributable to milder weather. Cooler summers reduce electricity consumption for cooling, and warmer winters reduce electricity consumption for heating (and also reduce heating-related consumption of natural gas and petroleum). Electricity sales to the industrial sector were also lower in 2017, despite an overall increase in manufacturing output.
Energy-related CO2 emissions trends are often related to trends in energy consumption and economic growth. Trends in energy consumption and related CO2 emissions relative to economic activity can be measured in several ways. Energy intensity is the amount of energy consumed relative to economic activity, measured in British thermal units per dollar of gross domestic product. Carbon intensity of energy consumed relates CO2 emissions to the amount of energy consumed in a year, measured in metric tons of CO2 per billion British thermal units.
From 2005 to 2017, the U.S. economy grew by 20%, while U.S. energy consumption fell by 2%. Energy-related CO2 emissions also decreased during that time period, and as of 2017, they were 14% lower than their 2005 levels. Compared with the levels in 2005, U.S. economic growth in 2017 was 29% less carbon-intensive, and overall U.S. energy consumption was 12% less carbon-intensive.
The mine spill temporarily closed down recreation in the river and forced farmers to shut off irrigation to their crops. But life in the river? It didn’t change much. The bugs and fish survived and showed no signs of short-term harm. The fish had been living with heavy mineralization of the water for decades.
Crisis averted — until this year…
The Animas began the summer with record low water because of drought and a warm winter. That primed the nearby mountains for a big wildfire. The 416 Fire ended up burning about 55,000 acres around the drainage basin for Hermosa Creek, a tributary of the Animas. Now when it rains over the burn area, a thick sludge washes into the river.
Horn says official surveys haven’t been conducted, but it’s likely the first few ash-laden runoff events killed 100 percent of the fish in a 30 mile stretch of the river.
“You could literally see the fish coming to the banks gasping for air. It physically smothered their gills and their ability to breathe,” Horn says. “So there it was, it didn’t look as bad. It came from a, you could argue, natural source and did way more damage.”
Many western rivers are stressed. They’re pressured by drought, pollution, overuse by cities and farmers and runoff from wildfires. The Animas acts as the perfect poster child.
“It certainly is unlucky,” says Scott Roberts, a researcher with the Mountain Studies Institute, a non profit research group based in nearby Silverton. “It’s unlucky now. And it’s been unlucky for throughout time really.”
The river’s facing problems that show themselves, Roberts says, like a vibrant orange smear or a chocolate brown sludge. Or like earlier this summer when the river’s water all but disappeared within Durango’s city limits, recording its record lowest flow in 107 years of data.
But there are many others that don’t draw intense public attention. Before the Gold King Mine spill, and even now, the river receives acidic water laden with heavy metals from the region’s numerous abandoned mines. Adding insult to injury, in July 2018 a truck carrying waste material from the mine site crashed into Cement Creek, another Animas tributary.
“It’s being stressed by drought, being stressed by warmer temperatures. It’s being stressed by runoff from wildfires, being stressed by elevated metal concentrations, being stressed by bacteria, by nutrients,” he says.
Roberts points to studies that showed samples of the river’s water with high levels of bacteria commonly found in humans, likely leached from underground septic tanks.
“I don’t think that the problems that are plaguing the Animas today are unique to the Animas,” says Trout Unlimited’s Ty Churchwell, based in Durango…
In fact, Churchwell says, all these issues are increasingly common throughout the West. Drought, ash-laden runoff and mine pollution are often the norm in western watersheds. The Animas has just experienced the extremes of all three in a short period of time…
But it could be another five to ten years before the Animas is back to its former self, according to water quality specialist Barb Horn.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife has found cutthroat trout that are unique to the San Juan River Basin in southwest Colorado. The photo below is of a museum specimen found in the Smithsonian via Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Here’s the release from Colorado Parks and Wildlife (Joe Lewandowski);
Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists have discovered a unique genetic lineage of the Colorado River cutthroat trout in southwest Colorado that was thought to be extinct. The agency will continue to evaluate the findings and collaborate with agency partners to protect and manage populations of this native trout.
The discovery was officially recognized earlier this year thanks to advanced genetic testing techniques that can look into the basic components of an organism’s DNA, the building blocks of life. This exciting find demonstrates the value of applying state-of-the-art genetic science to decades of native cutthroat conservation management and understanding.
“Anyone who just looked at these fish would have a difficult time telling them apart from any other cutthroat; but this is a significant find,” said Jim White, aquatic biologist for CPW in Durango. “Now we will work to determine if we can propagate these fish in our hatcheries and reintroduce them into the wild in their historic habitat. It’s a great conservation effort and a great conservation story.”
Eight small populations of these trout have been found in streams of the San Juan River Basin within the San Juan National Forest and on private property. The populations are in isolated habitats and sustained through natural reproduction. U.S. Forest Service staff and landowners have been cooperative in CPW’s efforts; they will also be instrumental in further cutthroat conservation efforts.
In August, north of Durango, crews from CPW and the U.S. Forest Service hiked into two small, remote creeks affected by the 416 Fire and removed 58 fish. Ash flows from the fire could have severely impacted these small populations.
Cutthroat trout originated in the Pacific Ocean and are one of the most diverse fish species in North America with 14 different subspecies. Three related subspecies are found in Colorado: Colorado River cutthroat trout found west of the Continental Divide; Greenback cutthroat trout in the South Platte River Basin; and the Rio Grande cutthroat trout in the San Luis Valley. A fourth, the yellowfin cutthroat trout native to the Arkansas River Basin, went extinct in the early 1900s. Cutthroats from each of these areas have specific and distinctive genetic markers. CPW propagates the three remaining subspecies, and actively manages their conservation and recovery throughout the state.
White and other biologists ‒ including Kevin Rogers, a CPW cutthroat researcher based in Steamboat Springs, and Mike Japhet, a retired Durango CPW aquatic biologist ‒ have been surveying remote creeks in southwest Colorado for more than 30 years looking for isolated populations of cutthroat trout. They found some populations in remote locations long before advanced genetic testing was available. The biologists understood that isolated populations might carry unique genetic traits and adaptations, so they made sure to preserve collected samples for genetic testing later. Significant advances in genetic testing technology over the last 10 years were instrumental in finding the distinct genetic markers that identify the San Juan lineage trout as being unique.
In 1874, naturalist Charles E. Aiken collected and preserved samples of fish found in the San Juan River near Pagosa Springs. Two trout were deposited in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. These samples were forgotten until 2012 when a team of researchers from the University of Colorado was hired by the Greenback Trout Recovery Team to study old trout specimens housed in the nation’s oldest museums. When the researchers tested tissue from those two specimens they found genetic markers unique to the San Juan River Basin. Armed with the knowledge of these genetic “fingerprints”, CPW researchers and biologists set out to test all the cutthroat trout populations they could find in the basin in search of any relic populations.
“We always ask ourselves, ‘What if we could go back to the days before pioneer settlement and wide-spread non-native fish stocking to see what we had here?’” White said. “Careful work over the years by biologists, finding those old specimens in the museum and the genetic testing gave us the chance, essentially, to go back in time. Now we have the opportunity to conserve this native trout in southwest Colorado.”
Developing a brood stock of these trout so that they can be reintroduced into San Juan River headwaters streams will be a key conservation strategy for increasing their distribution into suitable habitat and help their long-term stability. Protecting the fish from disease, other non-native fish, habitat loss and over-harvest are important factors that will be considered in a conservation plan that will be developed over the next few years. While that might seem like a long time, the discovery of this fish goes back more than 100 years.
Over the decades, CPW has worked with many partners throughout the state to find and conserve distinct cutthroat populations. Many of these efforts were conducted with assistance from the U.S. Forest Service, conservation groups and private property owners. CPW also works on projects with both the Colorado River Cutthroat Trout and Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout conservation teams.
All native cutthroats have been adversely affected by a variety of issues, including reduced stream flows, competition with other trout species, changes in water quality and other riparian-habitat alterations. Consequently, the various types of native cutthroats are only found in isolated headwaters streams. To ensure continued conservation of Colorado’s cutthroats, CPW stocks only the native species in high lakes and headwater streams. That stocking practice started in the mid-1990s.
CPW has also conserved cutthroats in headwaters streams by working with the U.S. Forest Service to build barriers to prevent upstream migration of non-native trout, removing non-native trout and subsequently stocking them with native trout. The conservation group, Trout Unlimited, has provided valuable assistance with many of these projects.
John Alves, Durango-based senior aquatic biologist for CPW’s Southwest Region, said the discovery shows the dedication of CPW aquatic biologists.
“These fish were discovered because of our curiosity and our concern for native species,” Alves said. “We’re driven by scientific inquiry that’s based on hard work and diligence. This is a major discovery for Colorado and it shows the critical importance of continuing our research and conservation work.”
Governor Matt Mead has appointed Lynne Boomgaarden to the Wyoming Supreme Court. Boomgaarden replaces Justice William U. Hill, who has been on the Supreme Court since 1998 – over 19 years. Justice Hill will retire on February 17, 2018.
Boomgaarden is currently a partner with Crowley Fleck and has been with the firm for the past four years. She has been in private practice in Cheyenne since 2010. She has extensive legal experience gained over a long, distinguished career, which includes service as career clerk for 10th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Wade Brorby, as Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Wyoming College of Law, and as Director of the Wyoming Office of State Lands and Investments from 2003-2010. She was editor-in-chief of the Law Review, admitted to the Order of the Coif, and ranked at the top of her UW law school class.
“The appointment of a Supreme Court Justice has a lasting impact on Wyoming. It is a big decision – one that I take most seriously and one that is very hard to make. I had three exceptional candidates to choose from, and I thank the Judicial Nominating Commission for that,” Governor Mead said. “Lynne Boomgaarden has worked with the best, including Judge Brorby and Governor Freudenthal. She has extensive experience chairing the Wyoming Oil and Gas Commission and in natural resource law, in private practice and state administration, and with legal writing and teaching – all impressive. She will serve Wyoming and its citizens well on the Supreme Court.”
In reacting to her appointment, Boomgaarden stated: “I appreciate the importance of Governor Mead’s decision and am honored to accept his appointment as the next Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court. I will work extremely hard in service to the Court and Wyoming citizens.”
If voters approve the proposed 0.25 percent countywide sales tax at the November general election, a portion of funds would be used to treat forest lands.
The U.S. Forest Service currently treats about 1,200 acres per year. With additional funding, that number would grow to 4,000 acres annually, nearly triple the number of acres that could see mitigation.
The sales tax would generate about $1 million per year and would be used to:
• Strengthen forest health;
• Conserve and support working ranches, farms and rural landscapes; and
• Manage impacts of growth in outdoor recreation.
Cindy Williams, co-lead with County Commissioner Greg Felt of Envision Chaffee County, the entity that is the impetus behind the proposal, said the goal would be to treat 2 percent of forested public lands, about 4,000 acres, in the county each year.
Responsibility for maintaining public lands in the county rests with the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Managment and state of Colorado. But, Felt said, the agencies do not have the budget or the staff to properly maintain lands under their jurisdiction.
An example of how funding would be used is the current project on Monarch Pass. In concert with the U.S. Forest Service, a number of entities have joined forces in an effort to remove beetle-killed dead standing trees to improve forest health, reduce the danger of wildfires and protect water supplies.
Williams said various entities, including the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District, Monarch Mountain, Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District and Pueblo and Colorado Springs water utilities, are supporting the project.
Monarch Pass is the headwaters of the South Arkansas River, which is a source of water for the city of Salida and dozens of irrigators.
Mitigation work, she said, would protect towns, water supplies, water infrastructure, the recreation economy, wildlife and wildlife habitat.
Felt said Chaffee County has contributed $48,000 from the Conservation Trust Fund to the program.
The idea behind this element of the sales tax, he said, “is to leverage interests of other water-related organizations” who have an interest in water quality and the resource.
If the county puts $500,000 from the proposed conservation tax toward forest mitigation work, Felt said the goal would be to generate an additional $5 million from other sources.
“The goal,” Felt said, “is not to spend a million dollars a year on conservation, but to leverage that into $5 million” to benefit the county.
He said if there is local interest, the county will be able to do more by drawing money from other organizations and agencies…
Williams said the net result of the tax would be to bring additional dollars through grants and participating partners into the county to be used to benefit county resources.
Williams said representatives of agencies and foundations she has talked to about the county conservation project have said they typically do not see communities coming together like this, including governments, businesses and citizens.
The Gates Family Foundation, she said, is monitoring the county as a possible development model with new tools for other Western states.
Felt said Envision has “blown out of the water” representatives of foundations and government agencies who have become aware of the project and now want to play a part in the program as it evolves.</blockquote.
Please join us for this very informative annual Water 101 and 201 Seminar, taking place this year at the First Park Community Center in Nucla, CO. on September 18 & 19, 2018.
Sponsored by the Water Information Program and Tri‑State Generation and Transmission.
Topics include Colorado water law, drought contingency planning, stream management planning, state and local water agency perspectives, water rights, administration, and development. The Water 201 will review more advanced water concepts, issues, and topics. This event is open to everyone.
The Yampa River in northwestern Colorado has closed again. Ongoing drought has drastically reduced water levels.
Colorado Park and Wildlife instituted restrictions on commercial and public activity on the Yampa River this week. An earlier closure ended just 10 days previously.
Commercial tubing companies have been instructed to suspend operations. Officials are requesting that public river users, including tubers, swimmers and anglers, adhere to the “voluntary closure” and stay out of the river.
Chela is a Nairobi based visual artist who specializes in graffiti and fine art. Chela has gained extensive experience experimenting on the streets of Nairobi. Chela has managed to successfully train some young people on how to use art as a tool for social change. Graphic via: RiseForClimate.org From RiseForClimate.org:
Artists from six continents have made artworks that people can use to #RiseforClimate. They included the Rise unifying symbols of an orange Cross for what we need to put a stop to, and a Sun for the solutions we need. You can use images from other continents, showing how truly global the movement is.
People are rising up around the world on September 8th to demand real climate leadership from every level of government. Together, we’ll show that people everywhere are committed to a just transition away from fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy for all.
Storm drain and open channel improvements between the East Rail Line (38th & Blake Station) and the South Platte River (Globeville Landing Outfall), Stormwater detention/conveyance between the East Rail Line (38th & Blake Station) and Colorado Blvd, (Montclair Basin) Stormwater detention/ conveyance immediately east of Colorado Blvd. (Park Hill Basin).
Old Denver pulsed with H2O, water that snaked through the creeks and irrigation canals crisscrossing Colorado’s high prairie before 150 years of urban development buried most of them or forced them into pipes.
New Denver wants those waterways back.
City leaders are ramping up what they describe as a massive, restorative “daylighting” of buried water channels wherever possible — cutting through pavement and re-engineering old streams and canals to create up to 20 miles of naturalistic riparian corridors. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been committed. Eventual costs are expected to top $1 billion over several decades. This work reflects increased interest worldwide in harnessing water and natural processes to make cities more livable.
Starting in 1858 with the discovery of gold in Colorado’s mountains, Denver developers focused on filling in creeks to make way for the construction of railroads, streets, smelters and housing — all laid out across a grid imposed on the natural landscape. The 184-page Green Infrastructure Implementation Strategy that Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration issued this summer reverses that approach with an inventory of high-priority projects aimed at — to the extent that booming growth and development will allow — reopening and revitalizing waterways.
“It is like undoing history,” project manager Patrick Riley said last week along a newly formed 1,000-foot stretch of Montclair Creek — already attracting geese as big trucks beeped and contractors in neon green vests re-contoured the urban terrain.
The Montclair Creek project marks Denver’s most ambitious and controversial daylighting so far, a $298 million revival of a waterway that flows 9 miles from high ground at Fairmount Cemetery (elevation 5,485 feet) under the north half of the city. Work crews are excavating and rerouting water, digging holes for ponds, and planting native grasses and perennials in four areas: the 130-acre City Park Golf Course, the Park Hill Golf Course, a 1.2-mile greenway along 39th Avenue, and a landscaped “outfall” through a 5-acre Globeville Landing park near the South Platte River (elevation 5,274 feet) west of the Denver Coliseum.
City engineers say that, by reconstructing the urban landscape where possible, they’ll slow down water, filter it through vegetation to remove contaminants, control storm runoff and nourish greenery to help residents endure the climate shift toward droughts and rising temperatures…
While a lack of open land and neighborhood resistance can limit daylighting of long-squelched creeks and canals, increasing volumes of storm runoff — the result of the paving of more and more of the city — require action.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has supported daylighting, recognizing that pipes and concrete channels typically can’t handle surges the way natural creeks and floodplains once did before development…
Other projects in the works:
— Re-exposing a southern branch of Montclair Creek that flows under an area extending from City Park across Colorado Boulevard and eastward along Hale Parkway.
— A $77 million removal of concrete and widening of the Weir Gulch that runs through southwestern Denver from South Sheridan Boulevard to the South Platte River.
— A $26 million revitalization of Harvard Gulch in south-central Denver.
— The $249 million enhancement of the South Platte, reshaping and widening river banks between Sixth and 58th avenues, to create an ecosystem healthy enough for trout to reproduce through Denver.
— Converting portions of the 71-mile High Line Canal irrigation system, built in 1883 and owned by Denver Water, into a greenway and refuge.
— Other waterway projects that city officials are discussing involve naturalistic re-engineering of concrete trapezoidal channels in Montbello, flood-prone gullies in Globeville, the southwestern Sanderson Gulch, and buried channels citywide where alluvial sediment indicates creeks once flowed before settlers arrived.
Denver innovations include installing an ultraviolet water-cleaning station at the Montclair Creek outfall to boost natural processes in zapping chemical contaminants, an expanding array from antibiotics to antidepressants, before water reaches the South Platte.
Along Brighton Boulevard north of downtown, city crews also built 56 cement boxes, designed to hold native grasses and flowers in a replaceable soil mix that includes ground-up newspaper, to filter runoff water so that less pollution reaches the South Platte…
Dealing with floods by trying to funnel more and more runoff into culverts and pipelines has become increasingly costly and ineffective, city officials said. A recent city study estimated that dealing with worsening storms by installing more pipelines would cost taxpayers $1.4 billion.
But it’s unclear whether a new approach of embracing waterways will be cheaper in the long run.
As work crews neared completion of the Montclair Creek outfall by the South Platte, project manager Riley said recreational benefits and a need for places “where water could percolate out naturally” — rather than costs — are driving this push that has unified support from city leaders.
“You have to do what is right for the health of rivers. That’s part of the health of the city,” Riley said. “You are going to see a return to natural processes.”
The California Court of Appeal for the Third Appellate District has issued an important decision declaring that California’s powerful public trust doctrine applies to at least some of the state’s overtaxed groundwater resources. The court’s opinion also rejects the argument that California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) displaces the public trust doctrine’s applicability to groundwater resources.
The Court of Appeal’s opinion in Environmental Law Foundation v. State Water Resources Control Board decides two key issues of first impression for California water law: first, whether the public trust doctrine applies to California’s groundwater resources; and, second, if it does, if application of that doctrine has been displaced and superseded by the California Legislature’s 2014 enactment of SGMA. A unanimous appellate panel answered the first question in the affirmative, the second in the negative.
The facts of the Environmental Law Foundation are straightforward and undisputed: the Scott River is a tributary of the Klamath River and itself a navigable waterway located in the northwestern corner of California. The Scott River has historically been used by the public for recreational navigation and serves as essential habitat for migrating salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Critically, there are groundwater aquifers adjacent to the Scott River in Siskiyou County that are hydrologically connected to the surface flows of the Scott River. Local farmers and ranchers in recent years have drilled numerous groundwater wells and pumped ever-increasing amounts of groundwater from those aquifers. As a direct result, the surface flows of the Scott River have been reduced, at times dramatically. Indeed, in the summer and early fall months, the Scott River has in some years been completely dewatered due to the nearby groundwater pumping. The adverse effects on both the Scott River’s salmon fishery and recreational use of the river have been devastating.
Environmental groups and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, relying on California’s venerable public trust doctrine, initially responded to this environmental crisis by petitioning Siskiyou County and the State Water Resources Control Board to take administrative action to limit groundwater pumping in the Scott River watershed. Both the Board and the County declined to do so.
Plaintiffs responded by filing suit, arguing that groundwater resources that are interconnected with the surface water flows of the Scott River are subject to and protected by the state’s public trust doctrine. Siskiyou County disputed that claim, arguing that the public trust doctrine is wholly inapplicable to groundwater and that the country has no duty to limit groundwater pumping, even in the face of the resulting environmental damage to the Scott River ecosystem. (The Board, by contrast, eventually reconsidered its position, ultimately adopting plaintiffs’ view that groundwater resources interconnected with surface water flows are indeed subject to the public trust doctrine.)
The trial court concluded that the public trust doctrine does apply to the groundwater resources of the Scott River region. While the litigation was pending there, however, the California Legislature enacted SGMA, which for the first time creates a statewide system of groundwater management in California, administered at the regional level. Siskiyou County seized upon that legislation to argue that even if the public trust doctrine would otherwise apply to the County’s groundwater resources, the doctrine was automatically displaced and made inapplicable to groundwater as a result of SGMA’s allegedly “comprehensive” statutory scheme. The trial court rejected this backstop argument as well, and the County appealed.
The Court of Appeal’s decision today resoundingly affirms the trial court on both issues. On the threshold public trust claim, the justices rely heavily on the California Supreme Court’s landmark public trust decision, National Audubon Society v. Superior Court. In National Audubon, the Supreme Court held that the public trust doctrine, a foundational principle of California natural resources law, fully applies to the state’s complex water rights system. Specifically, National Audubon found that the City of Los Angeles’ diversion of water from the non-navigable, freshwater streams flowing into Mono Lake, which were reducing the lake level and causing environmental damage to the lake ecosystem, could be limited by state water regulators under the public trust doctrine.
The court in the Environmental Law Foundation concluded that the rationale and holding of National Audubon are fully applicable to the facts of the Scott River case. Rejecting the County’s argument that extractions of groundwater should be treated differently from the diversions of surface water that were found in National Audubon to be causing environmental damage to Mono Lake, the Court of Appeal declares:
“The County’s squabble over the distinction between diversion and extraction is…irrelevant. The analysis begins and ends with whether the challenged activity harms a navigable waterway and thereby violates the public trust.”
Accordingly, the Environmental Law Foundation court concludes that the public trust doctrine fully applies to extractions of groundwater that adversely affect navigable waterways such as the Scott River.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s $23 million budget will be transferred to the United States Treasury next fiscal year, impacting the continued health of the Colorado River and the many entities that depend on it.
The funds originally come from the power revenue created by the Glen Canyon Dam, which was then retooled by the bureau to ensure the safety of the water downstream. Without funding, the water, aquatic life and archaeological sites in the Colorado River area will be left unprotected and unmonitored. This change could affect Native American tribes including Havasupai, Hualapai, Hopi and Navajo, seven states of the Colorado River Basin and two states in Mexico — all places that the river runs through.
The Office of Management and Budget initiated the movement of funds from the bureau to the treasury.
In the meantime, the bureau is examining options to support their projects until a permanent solution is found.
“Reclamation is not going to walk away from these programs,” said Marlon Duke, spokesperson for the Bureau’s Upper Basin Region. “We’re working with our stakeholders and our partners to find ways to continue to do the work to find a more permanent solution.”
According to the Bureau, the Grand Canyon Protection Act of 1992 originally diverted the $23 million from the treasury to the Glen Canyon Dam. In diverting the money, the dam was intended to “protect, mitigate adverse impacts to and improve the values for which Grand Canyon National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area were established.”
Staff at Frisco Bay Marina are trying to keep up with water levels that are dropping about one inch per day.
“And so an inch a day going down means the water line is moving 10 feet out every day, so we have to keep chasing it and moving the docks, which is definitely a lot of work,” said Tom Hogeman, the marina’s general manager…
Hogeman said he hasn’t seen the water this low since 2012 and it will only continue to go down as we head into the fall. The marina is typically open for rentals through mid-October but this year the season could end early.
From the City of Grand Junction via The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel:
The perhaps unprecedented mandatory outdoor water use restrictions, announced by the city of Grand Junction in August for all of the city’s domestic water customers, go into effect [Septmeber 1, 2018].
Starting today, Grand Junction residents can only water twice a week. Beginning in October, the restrictions are tightened to just once a week.
City officials have dubbed the water program 3-2-1 to help residents remember to scale back the weekly days of water usage as the year unfolds.
“Don’t forget to re-program your sprinkler timer,” the city advised in a reminder on Friday.
The restrictions on the city’s 9,700 domestic water customers apply only to outdoor watering. Indoor water use is not restricted. Residents can choose which days of the week to water outdoors.
Despite Grand Junction’s decision, other water providers including the Ute Water Conservancy District, the town of Palisade and the Clifton Water District have not followed suit. Officials with those agencies did express their support for Grand Junction’s decision, announced Aug. 21.
Low reservoir water levels, extreme drought and extended hot weather conditions, combined with less monsoonal wet weather usually seen this summer contributed to Grand Junction’s decision to call for mandatory water restrictions, city officials said at the time.
Grand Junction and other Grand Valley water providers called for voluntary water restrictions in early May.
Grand Junction officials cannot enforce mandatory water restrictions, but may intervene in “egregious” situations, officials said.
The city is hoping to avoid drought water pricing, which charges a premium for water use above certain levels.
Grand Junction, like other local water providers except the Clifton Water District, obtains its water from Grand Mesa. Grand Junction receives most of its water from Kannah Creek, which typically runs at 60 cubic feet per second. The creek now is running at just a fraction of that.
The program for the 2018 Upper Colorado River Basin Water Forum: Bridging Science, Policy and Practice, Nov 7-8 at CMU in Grand Junction, continues to fill in. Check it out and register here! Sponsorship opportunities are also available.
The Dolores River, below Slickrock, and above Bedrock. The Dolores River Canyon is included in a proposed National Conservation Area. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism.
A view of the Dolores River below Slickrock.
August 16, 2017: Colorado ParksWildlife and John Sanderson found imperiled bluehead sucker fry on Dolores River — a hopeful sign.
San Miguel River from CO 141.
Ponderosa Gorge, Dolores River. Boating is popular on the Lower Dolores River, which is being considered as a National Conservation Area. Photo credit RiverSearch.com.
Dolores River Campground September 2016.
The Dolores River shows us what’s at stake in the fight to protect the American West — Conservation Colorado
Photo via the Sheep Mountain Alliance
Dolores River watershed
Dolores River south of Lizard Head Pass
Dolores River near Bedrock
Dolores River
Dolores River above Dolores
Dolores River Canyon near Paradox
FromThe Walton Family Foundation (Peter Skidmore):
In the Colorado River Basin, RiversEdge West leads a coordinated effort to restore critical habitat
Doug King’s family has been ranching the lands around the Dolores River in Southwest Colorado since the 1930’s. “It’s beautiful−I call it John Wayne country,” Doug says, proudly. “I’m the third generation on the land, my son will be the fourth generation, and his son will be the fifth.”
Over the decades, Doug experienced firsthand the steady, relentless creep of invasive plant species like tamarisk and Russian olive and its impact on the land he has cared for his whole life. The damage has been extensive, threatening the larger riparian—or river bank—habitat that in the Colorado River Basin ultimately supports more than 40 million lives across two nations.
As the unwelcome vegetation pressed in on essential farmland and fish and wildlife habitat, Doug and many others in the region understood it was time to lock arms and push back.
Originally conceptualized in 1999 to discuss strategies for addressing invasive plant species along rivers in western Colorado, the then-named Tamarisk Coalition was fueled by a desire to shape a landscape-scale solution. The group had observed that conventional site-by-site eradication simply wasn’t able to move quickly enough.
“People were getting grants to do five acres or half a mile” of tamarisk removal, recalls Tim Carlson, the coalition’s first executive director. “That wasn’t going to solve the problem. We started with a bold approach: If we were going to solve this problem, it’s got to be a regional solution.”
The introduction of the tamarisk is a story of unintended consequences. Long thought to prevent erosion along the banks of western rivers, its presence was so valued in earlier days that Boy Scouts would receive badges for planting it. But the persistent shrub with scale-like leaves took to its adopted habitat like a parasite, displacing native vegetation.
Restoring and sustaining the overall health of the Colorado River Basin has been a primary goal of the Walton Family Foundation’s Environment Program since its inception nearly a decade ago. And, the program’s first grant to the Tamarisk Coalition in 2009 supported its restoration efforts along the San Miguel and Dolores river systems. Gradually, the foundation expanded its support to also include work along the Escalante, Verde and Gila systems.
“We have a great relationship with the foundation where we present innovative ideas, and they help us scale up these efforts. The investment affects a vast landscape, bolsters our work and has helped us promote best practices to other organizations,” says Cara Kukuraitis, outreach and education coordinator for the organization now known as RiversEdge West.
The organization changed its name in 2018 to reflect its broader work in Western riparian areas and the surrounding communities. But it retains its unique and core operating model—to facilitate collaboration and information-sharing across diverse groups and individuals to accomplish riparian restoration at a larger scale than any one partner can attain on its own. As a result, RiversEdge West now supports 20 ambitious multi-stakeholder partnerships encompassing federal, state, and community organizations throughout the American West, teaching best practices to over 300 local public and private restoration organizations and successfully restoring some 11,500 acres—and counting—of riparian habitat.
The state of Colorado is among the group’s core partners.
“Our relationship with RiversEdge West has allowed Colorado Parks and Wildlife to more effectively meet our mission of improving the wildlife habitat within the state,” explains Peter Firmin, manager of the James M. Robb-Colorado River State Park.
“The networking and training opportunities provided by RiversEdge West allow us to leverage intellectual and financial resources to improve habitat along the Colorado River. As a group, we are able to accomplish more than we could as individuals.”
The work of RiversEdge West and its growing network is bolstered by an array of technical tools. For example, a multi-partner geodatabase stores and shares data with land managers, so they can see how their projects connect and positively impact the landscape over time.
“The data helps us establish and measure progress against quantitative goals, so the project can jump from removing tamarisk by just cutting trees to collecting data on the extent of the problem and promoting ways to encourage the ecosystem’s overall health,” says Cara.
It is a testament to the organization’s enduring value that its annual conference attracts upwards of 200 representatives from Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, California, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah and Mexico to connect on riparian restoration science.
The organization also is working to convey the broad importance of these efforts through its ongoing “Riverside Stories” web series, which tells the personal stories of people who call this land home and are working to restore this habitat for future generations. Among them is Doug and his family.
“I have a theory that we should leave the land better than how we got it,” Doug notes in sharing his story. “The Colorado River is soon going to be the most important resource in the West. We are just caretakers. You are only going to be here 50-60 years, and then somebody else is going to have this land.
Grand Junction back in the day with the Grand Mesa in background
The new “re-regulating” reservoir in the service area of the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District, which helps the district manage water deliveries more effectively. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Grand Mesa rises in the distance above a street running through Olathe, Colorado. Photo credit: Emily Benson/High Country News
Grand Mesa mudslide May 2014 via The Denver Post
Click here to read the newsletter. Here’s an excerpt:
Student Water Field Conference
Join us September 21-23, 2018 on Grand Mesa in Western Colorado. Spend a September weekend in the aspens on western Colorado’s Grand Mesa learning about water management, snow science and aquatic ecosystems with college students from across the state! A registration fee of $20 covers lodging in cabins at Vega Lodge as well as some meals.
For registration, itinerary, and event details Click Here
The dam that forms Ruedi Reservoir, above Basalt on the Fryingpan River. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
From email from Reclamation (Peter Soeth)
The release from Ruedi will be increased Tuesday morning by approximately 45 cfs. After this change, the flow at the Fryingpan River gage below Ruedi Reservoir will increase from 178 cfs to approximately 223 cfs.
This flow increase was requested by the USFWS to support fish recovery efforts in the 15-Mile reach of the Colorado River.
This release rate will continue until further notice.
At their regular meeting Tuesday, the Sterling City Council approved a resolution asking voters to take out a loan of up to $37 million to replace aging infrastructure and address “inflow and infiltration” issues. The interest rate on the bond would not exceed 3.25 percent.
City Manager Don Saling assured the council that the actual debt and interest rates should be less than the city is asking for, but the cost of the project has not been completely nailed down, and interest rates are also fluctuating. Because of that, he said, “limits were set conservatively.”
Repaying the wastewater bond will require city sewer rates to go up, but how much has not been identified. The council has been awaiting the results of a rate study for water and sewer services that looked at infrastructure needs, debt service and operational costs, but an evaluation of the wastewater treatment system done in 2016 by engineering firm Mott MacDonald suggested they go up $23. Since then, the city has implemented flat rate hikes annually, in anticipation of higher rates to pay for the required system upgrades.
The ballot question specifies infrastructure improvements that include changes to the headworks building, which suffered extensive flood damage in 2013; replacing the existing force main and constructing a redundancy in case of failures; modifications to the main plant; lift station replacements and corrective measures for the collection system. One of the problems the system has is leaks from the storm sewer system that can flood the wastewater lines and disrupt the treatment process after heavy rain events.
Failure to make the improvements could result in hefty fines from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, as much as $10,000 from the date of the first violation in November 2017.
Here’s the release from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Mary Carlson):
Several Bureau of Reclamation reservoirs in New Mexico will end this summer with minimal pools of water, after having done exactly what they are intended to do – provide water stored during wet times for use in dry periods. Through most of this summer, the reservoirs have released water for farmers, municipalities, industrial use, and recreation.
Due to water stored in previous years, farmers along the Rio Grande received irrigation water, municipalities received water and hundreds of thousands of people enjoyed recreational benefits in New Mexico in spite of a hot, dry summer that followed one of the driest winters on record.
Heron Reservoir in northern New Mexico stores water as part of the San Juan-Chama Project for various municipal and agricultural uses including the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority and Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. Heron is currently holding approximately 101,000 acre-feet of water, which is 25 percent of its capacity. That quantity will decrease steadily through the end of the year as San Juan-Chama Project contractors use their supplies or move them downstream.
El Vado Reservoir reached a low point of about 5 percent of capacity at 9,344 acre-feet earlier this summer before the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District ran out of storage in the reservoir. El Vado is currently holding only San Juan-Chama Project water, and should remain relatively steady until next spring.
Elephant Butte Reservoir is expected to reach a low of about 49,000 acre-feet at the end of September when irrigation releases for the Rio Grande Project and deliveries to the Republic of Mexico conclude. That content would be the lowest in Elephant Butte since 1971. This would be less than 3 percent of the reservoir’s capacity. The reservoir is then expected to start gaining storage through the winter. Caballo Reservoir is expected to end the season with about 25,600 acre-feet of water, which is 11 percent of its capacity.
Water levels at these reservoirs are on track with Reclamation forecasts presented this spring, when Reclamation shared expectations for a year with one of the lowest snowpacks and spring runoffs on record.
“It’s important that we recognize that these reservoirs stored water in 2017 and earlier years, when we had better supplies, and released it in 2018 when there was very little natural flow in the Rio Grande,” said Albuquerque Area Manager Jennifer Faler. “We know that our reservoirs are low as we head into September, but they have provided water throughout the summer, and there are still great recreation opportunities such as fishing, boating and camping to be had at all of our reservoirs. Rafting flows on the Rio Chama are also expected to remain good into mid-September.”
In 2018, our conference will focus on “The Color of Water: Exploring the Spectrum.” Our theme this year intends to tap into the creativity of our community and investigate how diverse watershed interests interact. Water touches us all from forests to farms. We’ve branched out this year to delve into water for environment, agriculture, recreation, mining, energy, forest health, city water, rural water, source water, recycled and reuse water. We even have an acronym, ROYGBIV:
Red Tape – Improving policy/permitting processes locally or nationally to get good projects on the ground
Opportunities – Finding the funding and identifying new collaborators that can make projects possible
Yielding Results – Innovative design in watershed restoration that’s proving effective on the ground
Green vs Gray – Advances in stormwater management practices that utilize natural infrastructure
Barrier Busting – Going beyond philosophical divides and building political will for good solutions
Industry Voices – Forest, agriculture, mining and energy practices to meet multiple stakeholder priorities
Vulnerability – Addressing drought, floods, fire and climate change uncertainties to better inform planning
Installing pipe along the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project. Photo credit: USBR
Here’s the release from the US Bureau of Reclamation (Marlon Duke):
The Bureau of Reclamation awarded a $74.6 million financial assistance agreement with the Navajo Nation for the design and construction of a portion of the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project. The project will provide a long-term, sustainable water supply to 43 Navajo Chapters; the City of Gallup, New Mexico; and the southwestern portion of the Jicarilla Apache Nation. “Completion of the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project is essential to meeting impending water demands and this agreement goes a long way towards achieving that milestone,” said Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman. “The reliable water that will be delivered by the facilities in this agreement will allow the Navajo Nation to meet both current and future demands for water, and will allow for economic development throughout this area of the Navajo Reservation.”
This agreement will enable the Navajo Nation to complete the Crownpoint Lateral (also known as the Beacon Bisti/N-9 (BBN9) Lateral) and Reach 12.3. The Crownpoint Lateral will be located along Navajo Route 9 between Twin Lakes and Crownpoint, New Mexico, and will provide water to the Navajo communities of Coyote Canyon, Standing Rock (Tse’ii’ahi), Nahodishgish (Dalton Pass), Crownpoint, Becenti, and Littlewater. The lateral will consist of approximately 40.2 miles of pipeline, ranging in diameter from 16 inch to 6 inch, pumping plants, chorlination buildings and storage tanks.
Reach 12.3 will serve the communities of Window Rock, Saint Michaels, and Fort Defiance, Arizona, and will consist of 5.3 miles of 24-inch-diameter pipe, a chorlination building and a water storage tank. Design and permitting work is anticipated to begin in late 2018 and construction is scheduled to begin in late 2020, and be completed by 2024.
Reclamation has the overall responsibility for the design and construction the project, but has entered into agreements with the Navajo Nation, the City of Gallup and the Indian Health Service for the design and construction for selected portions.
The Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project is the cornerstone of the Navajo Nation Water Rights Settlement in the San Juan River Basin in New Mexico. The project consists of two separate branches, Cutter and San Juan Laterals; approximately 300 miles of pipeline; two water treatment plants; and several pumping plants and storage tanks. The entire project is scheduled to be completed by 2024.
Like many Westerners, giant sequoias came recently from farther east. Of course, “recent” is a relative term. “You’re talking millions of years (ago),” William Libby said. The retired University of California, Berkeley, plant geneticist has been studying the West Coast’s towering trees for more than half a century. Needing cooler, wetter climates, the tree species arrived at their current locations some 4,500 years ago — about two generations. “They left behind all kinds of Eastern species that did not make it with them, and encountered all kinds of new things in their environment,” Libby said. Today, sequoias grow on the western slopes of California’s Sierra Nevada.
Like many Westerners, giant sequoias came recently from farther east. Of course, “recent” is a relative term. “You’re talking millions of years (ago),” William Libby said. The retired University of California, Berkeley, plant geneticist has been studying the West Coast’s towering trees for more than half a century. Needing cooler, wetter climates, the tree species arrived at their current locations some 4,500 years ago — about two generations. “They left behind all kinds of Eastern species that did not make it with them, and encountered all kinds of new things in their environment,” Libby said. Today, sequoias grow on the western slopes of California’s Sierra Nevada.
Now, it may be up to humans to move sequoias and their close relatives, coast redwoods, to new homes. As temperatures rise and the world’s climate rapidly changes, many plants and animals may not be able to relocate fast enough on their own — including the Klamath Mountains’ Brewer spruce, which grows on windswept peaks, and the New Mexico ridge-nosed rattlesnake, which can be found marooned on just a few isolated mountaintops. But the prospect of mixing and moving species alarms scientists, because of the risks involved — both to the new ecosystem, and to the species themselves.
Plants often move on the geologic timescale of landforms. After all, trees don’t simply uproot and stroll away from stressful conditions. Instead, whole populations shift, as individuals in one part of the range die out and saplings in other places grow. But ecosystems are changing on a human timescale now. That’s a problem for the West’s iconic giant trees.
Coast redwoods, which are the world’s tallest trees, and sequoias, which are the most massive, are exceptionally adaptable: The oldest living trees have withstood cold spells, drought and fire. But today’s extraordinary rate of climate change — along with habitat destruction and fire suppression — may be too much for them to survive. “If we expect them to make a big migration in one century, that’s asking a lot,” Libby said. Populations of both sequoias and coast redwoods are dwindling, and the trees are already considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Scientists fear climate change could drive them to extinction.
These trees are among the slowest travelers in North America, in part because of how they reproduce. Coast redwood seeds are moved by wind or rain, while insects and rodents move sequoia seeds. But few seeds germinate successfully. Instead, for the most part, clonal sprouts grow up from the shallow, stretching roots of a mature tree. In the case of coast redwoods, deceased elders can leave behind a “fairy ring” of surrounding younger trees, just a few feet from where the parent stood. In order to outpace hotter conditions, this gradual process may need a human nudge.
While Westerners already relocate plants and animals — for species reintroductions, hunting, agriculture and more — there is still no consensus on rescuing organisms from climate change this way. In a 2006 opinion piece, two well-known ecologists, Anthony Ricciardi and David Simberloff, dismissed assisted migration as “planned invasions,” a “new bandwagon,” and “ecological gambling.” The risks that introduced species might pose to plants and animals already living in a region are too unknown, hard to predict, and potentially disastrous to be worth it, they said. They concluded that conservation biologists should focus on breeding rare species in captivity, restoring habitat and ending human-caused climate change.
Past experiences with introductions gone awry make scientists nervous. In the 1940s, the federal government introduced buffelgrass, a drought-hardy African forage, to Arizona to help cattle survive dry spells. The grass spread, filling in the spaces between desert plants, replacing natural firebreaks with ready fuel and turning swaths of desert across the Southwest into fire-prone grasslands. In 2010, the National Park Service warned that buffelgrass covered about 2 percent of Saguaro National Park and was increasing by 35 percent annually.
Few U.S. scientists have tried experimental assisted migrations, and in Canada and Mexico, the results of experiments have been mixed. In 2015, Canadian researchers studied Douglas fir trees that were moved more than 40 years previously throughout coastal British Columbia for reforestation research. They found that transferred trees sometimes did not grow as well as local trees, because they didn’t form symbiotic relationships as effectively with local soil and root fungi, which help trees absorb nutrients. Mexican researchers found that when they moved three species of Mexican pines to higher elevations and colder temperatures, two species struggled to survive in locations more than a few hundred feet above their current ranges.
These findings speak to one broad concern about moving species around to save them: It can cause unnecessary suffering, eat up limited conservation funding, and ultimately fail. In one recent example, 11 black rhinos were relocated in Kenya. All 11 perished from salt poisoning, dehydration and, in one case, a lion attack on a weakened animal, according to the Daily Nation. Mary Williams, an ecologist who has researched assisted migration as a climate adaptation strategy, cautioned against the “extreme” movement of plants. She recommended instead that seeds be taken from the warmer parts of a plant’s existing range, to be grown in cooler parts of its range. Then, when those cooler areas warmed, the plants would already be adapted to the new conditions.
Because a species’ resilience comes from its genetic diversity, spreading the clones or seeds of too few plants could also doom an assisted migration project. Connie Millar, a senior scientist with the U.S. Forest Service who studies how mountain ecosystems are responding to climate change, recommends mixing the gene pools of the trees used for assisted migration projects by collecting seeds and clones from different locations. “Then, natural selection 50 years in the future can sort it out, and we don’t have to predict (survivors), which we’re very bad at doing,” she said.
Agencies in the U.S. have toyed with the idea of assisted migration, but no projects are currently in the works. To make tree transplants work, federal agencies would have to find the money for the prolonged follow-up work needed to keep them alive: artificial watering, fertilizer feedings, protective fencing to keep out hungry deer. “Just like in a garden, when you transplant, there’s usually transplant shock,” Millar said. “It takes a while for roots to get down. … It’s not like they’re happy all of a sudden.” Similar constraints would limit animal introductions. In many cases, for agencies, shifting species would also require new regulations, such as those that govern post-wildfire replanting.
The biggest unknown about assisted migration may come down to human behavior: Without knowing how much fossil fuel people will keep burning, researchers can’t say for sure how much the climate will change, or where a particular organism’s optimal neighborhood will be in the year 2100.
As scientists fret, some members of the general public are already forging ahead. Michigan-based Archangel Ancient Trees Archive is attempting to plant thousands of nursery-grown coast redwoods and sequoias in the West, without waiting for more scientific research. Sequoias and coast redwoods, founder David Milarch said, are “magical” trees. “People all over the planet love those trees.”
Now in his 80s, Milarch dedicated himself to saving these species — and many other imperiled trees — a quarter-century ago, after his own near-death experience. Milarch recalled an archangel turning him back from the gates of heaven because he still had work to do on Earth: He had to save tree species. So Milarch focused his fourth-generation nursery business on trying to conserve many of the world’s disappearing tree species through assisted migration.
In many ways, this Noah’s Ark approach to conservation flies in the face of scientific understanding: In addition to planting trees far from their current range, Archangel also chooses the oldest, biggest trees — which Milarch calls “champions” — to clone, a sensible-seeming approach that actually masks assumptions about how those trees got that way. Sometimes, seedlings grow into strapping adults because of dumb luck: Maybe they dug into particularly rich soil, or it rained buckets during their first decade, or they happened to germinate near a gap in the forest canopy that let in lots of light. Clones of those trees may wither without the same help in a new location. Archangel tries to take genetic diversity into account by growing genetically diverse seedlings as well as sprouts cut from “champion” tree clones, but its collection overall still lacks the diversity of a natural population.
Still, Archangel inspires volunteers around the world. Perhaps that’s because it offers hope, pulling believers into the boughs of ancient sequoias on climbing expeditions and insisting that concerned people can do their part to end climate change simply by planting trees.
Milarch likes to point out that Archangel has been able to grow cuttings from trees thousands of years old, something he says scientists told him was impossible. Driven by his faith, Milarch offers a solution to climate change that doesn’t require watershed changes in politics — or in how people use fossil fuels. “Climate change can be reversed,” he said, noting the carbon-storing capacity of the West’s giant trees. “We don’t have to be saddled with such a dubious future for our children, our grandchildren, if we all would plant two or four trees.”
Particularly for beloved species such as coast redwoods and sequoias, there may be more rogue rescue efforts in the future. And while scientists worry about unintended consequences, Williams sees the advantages of shaking off political drag. “Sometimes, in situations like this, there may be some really great things that come out of it,” she said. “You just need to take a risk and see what happens.”
Maya L. Kapoor is an associate editor at High Country News.
Boulder County biologists studying Preble’s meadow jumping mouse and fish populations along the St. Vrain Creek have been encouraged this summer by signs of species rejuvenating since their habitats were altered by the 2013 flood…
Restoration efforts also have been conducive to bolstering populations of certain “transition zone” fish that need shady habitat and water temperatures between the colder sections of stream at higher elevations and the warmer sections through Longmont and east of the city.
Fish trends promising, concerns remain
As Boulder County wildlife biologist Mac Kobza has tallied fish caught by his team of six research assistants this summer along the St. Vrain, he’s chalked up seven species, an improvement in the river’s fish diversity over the past five years.
White suckers, brown trout and minnows like johnny darters and longnose daces were among those caught and documented Tuesday, adding to the counts of fish in the area tracked this summer and for the past five years by Kobza…
Diversion dams and other irrigation ditch structures that pull water from the St. Vrain to deliver it to other water rights holders since the flood have been redesigned in some places to allow easier fish passage, but some ditch companies have hesitated to modify their apparatus.
“I think they’re resistant because it can be expensive. Colorado Parks and Wildlife is trying to work with those ditch companies and provide some of the funding to allow (more fish passage) to happen,” Longmont Land Program Administrator Dan Wolford said.
Lake Nighthorse and Durango March 2016 photo via Greg Hobbs.
Click here to read the newsletter. Here’s an excerpt:
First Lake Nighthorse Water Use Celebrated with Pipeline Completion
La Plata West Water Authority held the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony to commemorate completion of the Phase 0 Raw Water Project. The ceremony was held at the Booster Pump Station located on County Road 210, at the entrance to the access road for the raw water intake structure at Lake Nighthorse. The event was attended by 32 guests all celebrating their efforts in making the project possible and come to fruition.
The new rural domestic water pipeline is a four-way partnership between La Plata West, Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Tribes, and Lake Durango. The process of this massive and costly construction design had to be laid out in multiple phases.
Phase 0 of the pipelines’ goal is to provide a supply of raw water from the La Plata reservoir up to Lake Durango.
For micro farms like Lost Creek Farm, devastating storms can easily put them out of business, since crop insurance isn’t available for the small producers you usually see at farmers’ markets. The reason it’s so hard for these family plots to get insurance comes down to numbers and policies that center around insuring not the entire acreage, but each individual crop. For example, you would have to get separate coverage for cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, corn, peppers, cucumbers, melons and so on.
Mark Guttridge, who runs Ollin Farms in Longmont with his family, grows 7,000 pepper plants, which may seem like a lot, but in reality only take up one acre. When you are dealing with a farm that grows twenty to thirty acres of one crop, he says, one acre is nothing. Unless, of course, you lose all of that in a storm, which happened at Ollin Farms on August 18.
“We are unable to get insured, and that’s crazy,” says Guttridge. “There’s no crop insurance that’s available for these diversified farms.”
The last storm was the fourth or fifth to cause damage at Ollin Farms, but while the others destroyed a little here and there, none had the impact this last one did. One reason the damage proved so great was because the plants were doing so well.
“After the first ones, I nurtured the plants back to health and built that biological system again and got the plants healthy again,” says Guttridge. “They were getting fully loaded and ready to hit their peak season. Then the storm came last week, and the pea-sized hail came with so much wind, it was like horizontal hail, and it dissolved all of the plants.”
Overall, Guttridge says he lost 80 percent of his tomatoes and peppers. Over the last week, he and his workers have been pruning the plants, plucking off dead and rotting produce and harvesting the few peppers that were protected through the storm. This week he will start on the tomatoes.
The High Plains Aquifer provides 30 percent of the water used in the nation’s irrigated agriculture. The aquifer runs under South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.
Click here to read the report (R. Q. Grafton, J. Williams, C. J. Perry, F. Molle, C. Ringler, P. Steduto, B. Udall, S. A. Wheeler, Y. Wang, D. Garrick, R. G. Allen). Here’s an excerpt:
Reconciling higher freshwater de- mands with finite freshwater re- sources remains one of the great policy dilemmas. Given that crop irrigation constitutes 70% of global water extractions, which contributes up to 40% of globally available calories (1), governments often support increases in irrigation efficiency (IE), promoting ad- vanced technologies to improve the “crop per drop.” This provides private benefits to irrigators and is justified, in part, on the premise that increases in IE “save” water for reallocation to other sectors, including cities and the environment. Yet substantial scientific evidence (2) has long shown that increased IE rarely delivers the presumed public-good benefits of increased water availability. Decision-makers typically have not known or understood the importance of basin-scale water accounting or of the be-havioral responses of irrigators to subsidies to increase IE. We show that to mitigate global water scarcity, increases in IE must be accompanied by robust water accounting and measurements, a cap on extractions, an assessment of uncertainties, the valuation of trade-offs, and a better understanding of the incentives and behavior of irrigators.
Scorching temperatures broke heat records around the world last month, which ranked as the fourth warmest July on record. Excessive warmth during the first seven months of 2018 made it the fourth warmest year to date for the planet.
July 2018
The average global temperature in July was 1.35 degrees F above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees. This was the fourth highest for July in the 139-year record (1880–2018). Last month was also the 42nd consecutive July and the 403rd consecutive month with temperatures above average.
The year to date // January through July
The year-to-date average global temperature was 1.39 degrees F above average of 56.9 degrees. This is 0.48 of a degree lower than the record high set in 2016 for the same YTD period.
An annotated map of the world showing notable climate events that occurred in July 2018. For details, see the bulleted list below in our story and on the Web at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2018/07. (NOAA NCEI)
Other notable climate facts and stats
Record warmth spanned continents and oceans
The globally averaged land-surface temperature was fifth highest on record for July and the fourth highest for the YTD (January–July) period.
The globally averaged sea-surface temperature was sixth highest on record for July and the fourth highest for the year to date.
Areas around the world experienced record warmth, including Scandinavia and the surrounding Arctic Ocean, northwest Africa, parts of southern Asia and southwest United States. Europe had its second-warmest July on record.
Record warm YTD temperatures prevailed across parts of the world’s oceans and Mediterranean Sea, New Zealand, as well as smaller areas of North and South America and Asia. Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania had TYD temperatures that ranked in the sixth highest on record.
Polar sea ice coverage remains smaller than normal
The average Arctic sea ice coverage (extent) in July was 13.2 percent below the 1981–2010 average, making it the ninth-smallest extent for July on record.
The Antarctic sea ice extent last month was 1.9 percent below average, the eighth smallest on record for July. Antarctic sea ice coverage did expand at a rate faster than average during the first half of July, but slowed later in the month.
Click here to read the report (Stephen Saunders and Tom Easley). Here’s the Introduction:
This report summarizes existing information on how climate change may affect the snow and water resources of six Colorado counties that include the headwaters of the Colorado River and its tributaries. These headwaters counties are Eagle, Grand, Gunnison, Pitkin, Routt, and Summit counties.
The water and snow resources of this six-county region are essential ingredients of its spectacular natural resources, opportunities for recreation and tourism, local economies, and quality of life, all of which are treasured locally and worldwide. To begin with, there is the Colorado River itself—starting here, draining one- twelfth of the contiguous United States, providing the largest source of water in the country’s driest region, but still being diverted beyond its basin to meet other needs across the West. Altogether, the Colorado provides drinking water for 22 of the 32 largest cities across the West1 and irrigation water for some of America’s most productive growing areas.
Another hallmark of the headwaters counties is their 16 ski resorts, which include seven of the 10 most- visited ski areas in the nation. One quarter of the nation’s s on Colorado slopes,2 and most of that in the headwaters counties.
Truly, the water and snow resources of these counties are something special.
But as this report documents, the water and snow of the headwaters counties and the many economic and social values that depend on them are at risk as the climate changes.
Temperature. In Colorado, all but one of the last 40 years have been hotter than the 20th century average and this century has had seven of the state’s ten hottest years on record. Mid-century temperatures are projected to average 1.5° Fahrenheit* to 6.5° hotter than in 1971–2000, and late-century temperatures 1.5° to 9.5° hotter, depending on future levels of heat-trapping emissions.
Precipitation. To offset the impacts of higher temperatures on snow and water resources, there would need to be large increases in total precipitation and snowfall. But only the wettest 10 percent of climate projections suggest that Colorado precipitation amounts could increase by even six to nine percent.
Water and snow resources. Across the West, less winter precipitation is falling as snow and more as rain, snowpacks are declining, and snowmelt is occurring earlier. Colorado’s mountains, with the highest terrain in the West, are buffered somewhat against the larger changes happening at lower elevations, but changes are happening in the headwaters, too. The flows of the Colorado River, fed mostly by mountain snow, have recently been the lowest in the past century—driven in large part by the evaporative effects of higher temperatures. Projections are that these changes will become more pronounced, with greater shifts from snowfall to rainfall, earlier snowmelt, decreased river flows, and increased likelihood of water restrictions and curtailments.
Impacts on winter recreation and tourism. If Colorado snowfall and snowpacks decline as projected, the state’s skiing, snowboarding, and other opportunities for snow-dependent winter recreation could suffer. This could have economic consequences throughout the state, as the skiing/snowboarding industry alone contributes about $5 billion to the state’s economy.
Impacts on warm-season recreation and tourism. If climate change projections materialize, fishing, boating, rafting, and other warm-season, water-dependent outdoor recreation could be adversely affected by hot temperatures, low water levels, and other manifestations of climate change.
Impacts on water quality. Climate change may lead to decreases in water quality, including violations of water quality standards that specify maximum stream temperatures to protect fish and other resources. Further, climate change is projected to lead to major increases in wildfires, which in turn can increase flooding and sedimentation from burned areas.
On these topics, this report primarily summarizes existing information to document what has happened and what could happen in the headwaters counties as a result of climate change and what is at stake there if projected changes materialize. (One piece of new analysis is of headwaters snowpack levels.) The report’s emphasis is on presenting, as much as possible, local, specific information focused on the headwaters region.
This report follows up on a 2011 report, Water and Its Relationship to the Economies of the Headwaters Counties, prepared for the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments by Coley/Forrest, Inc.3 NWCCOG commissioned this new report because of the importance of potential climate change impacts on the resources and values identified in that earlier report.
Figure 1 below shows the six headwaters counties, addressed both in the 2011 report and in this one.
A “get well soon” balloon floats in the contaminated waters of the Animas River flowing through Durango on Monday afternoon August 10, 2015 — photo The Durango Herald, Shane Benjamin
The study looked at 200 river-water samples and almost 200 sediment samples, as well as more than 100 private wells from Durango to Silverton, testing for 13 different heavy metals and other possible contaminants, the health department said.
Some findings, according to San Juan Basin Public Health:
Water quality, except in Cement Creek, is better than the minimum standards set to protect aquatic life and human uses.
Additional sampling performed as part of this study revealed that natural variability in river flows produces occasional “spikes” in certain metals that may have been missed in less-frequent sampling.
Sediment in the Animas River, including beach sediment at six popular Durango recreation sites, poses no risk to human health if common-sense precautions are followed.
About one-quarter of Animas Valley drinking water wells had naturally-occurring bacteria present, and all wells should receive filtration or treatment.
About 5 percent of Animas Valley wells had more serious contamination from heavy metals, nitrates or other forms of bacteria. Heavy metal contamination in these wells arises from the natural geology of the Animas Valley aquifer.
Aaron Million styles himself as a western maverick. At a Fort Collins, Colorado coffee shop he’s dressed in a cowboy hat, denim, plaid, pulled together by a shiny belt buckle. During our conversation he quotes both Chuck Norris and the 1995 movie Braveheart. More than twice he referenced a six-shooter.
Million’s name is synonymous with a water pipeline he’s been pushing for almost a decade. On a wire cafe table, he unfurls a map and points out the features of his latest proposal.
With his finger Million traces the route of his new iteration, billed as a renewable energy project. It would start in Utah on the Green River, then snake across Wyoming before dropping down into Colorado’s populated Front Range, generating electricity as the water moves from one side of the Continental Divide to the other. Million says it would cost about a billion dollars to build.
“It’s a bigger project, but they get done every day,” he says. “I mean we built the Transcontinental Railroad last I remember.”
In 2012 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission quashed a different water pipeline proposal from Million. He wanted to construct a 500-mile pipeline from Wyoming’s Flaming Gorge reservoir to Colorado’s Front Range. FERC regulators at the time said the proposal was incomplete.
“Keep in mind we’ve been in the saddle for a while,” Million says. “And you know we got knocked off pretty hard. I know people thought I was dragged to death, but I’m pretty tough, raised in the Utah desert.”
Both pipelines, old and new, take advantage of an historical fluke. The 1922 Colorado River Compact — which divvies up its water — was written when the river was flowing at a record high. But for the past 18 years, high temperatures, drought and overuse have sapped the river’s flow.
Aaron Million says that’s more of an Arizona, California and Nevada problem.
“People say there’s no water left in the system,” Million says. “Well, when California has drained, and Nevada and Arizona have drained the river and then cry foul because Lake Powell and Mead are low, again I’ll reiterate: Had they not their drained and over taken their share they’d be full by four or five times. Those are the facts. You can run the numbers.
Million says the river’s Upper Basin, which includes the states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico, haven’t fully developed their share, while those in the Lower Basin have gone above and beyond what they’re entitled to. His pipeline is just one more plan among many to fully develop the river’s water, he says.
According to the complaint filed this week, commissioners approved the floodway expansion over the resistance of local residents, who said the re-mapping would limit development on their private properties — some of which are functioning farms — and cause their flood insurance rates to skyrocket…
The re-drawing was performed by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, with assistance from Boulder County staff, and was approved last month 2-0 by commissioners. Commissioner Cindy Domenico was absent. When the change officially takes effect Oct. 1, it will substantially widen the floodway along portions of Lower Boulder Creek northwest of Erie.
A floodway is a narrow channel where, in the event of a flood, water will be flowing. A floodplain is where shallow water is likely to be during the event of a flood, though shallower and flowing at a lower volume, if at all, than water in a floodway.
The former, by definition of Boulder County’s standards, is more heavily regulated than a floodplain. Land regulated under floodway status is often limited to very specific redevelopment.
According to the complaint, plaintiffs’ efforts to have the hearing delayed to learn more about proposed expansion went unheeded…
The Colorado Water Conservation Board in 2015 changed the definition of a floodway, triggering a review of flood-hazard areas across the state. Wheeler Open Space, however, was not reassessed, given the lack of residential buildings on the land, Boulder County Senior Assistant Attorney Kate Burke said earlier this year.
In light of the planned oil and gas development on the site, a modeling with the new standards was performed. Under the new guidelines, the entirety of well site Section 1, which is in the open space, is within a floodway, according to documents Boulder County submitted in mid-April with its formal comments to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
The USGS’ stream gauge at Embudo is the oldest in the country, measuring streamflow in that area between Española and Taos since 1889. August is typically the driest time of the year for the river.
“The impacts are real,” said Fleck of the ongoing drought conditions. “The people downstream who need to use water have less. All of us – Santa Fe, Albuquerque, farmers across the Rio Grande (and) the ecosystem; the plants, the fish, the birds.”
The low flows are a direct result of poor snowpack in the San Juan Mountains upriver in southern Colorado, said both Fleck and Royce Fontenot, senior service hydrologist in Albuquerque’s National Weather Service office and part of the New Mexico Drought Monitoring Working Group.
According to Fontenot, drought conditions in that area this season mirror those experienced in 2002, when there was also D4 – or “exceptional” – drought conditions.
Fontenot added that the Rio Grande, especially in its northern section that includes Embudo, is a snowmelt-driven river.
“So when you have a very poor winter like this one, you’ll see these low flows,” with the possibility of just “spikes and bumps” with heavy rainfall, said Fontenot. Despite the big monsoon storms in Santa Fe, Fleck said there hasn’t been enough heavy rain up to the north to make a substantial impact.
Heavy farming in the San Luis Valley at the Rio Grande’s head also means less water in the river, noted Fleck, who added that the low discharge is also an effect of climate change.
“You get a bad snowpack, but also because the temperatures are so warm, (there is) increased evaporation or increased use by plants,” he said. “For a given amount of snow, we get less water in our rivers. This is climate change.”
Fontenot, though, says the main driver of 2018’s dryness is this past winter’s La Niña, the ocean-atmosphere phenomenon which he noted typically results in warm and dryer winters in New Mexico, rather than climate change.
“Depending on when you’re up there, there’s either no flow … or just drips,” Telluride resident Amy Levek said…
Last weekend was the famous Mushroom Festival in Telluride. Damp woods, from monsoon rains, are a normal breeding ground for shrooms. Not this year, though.
“Two weeks ago, I went out and found a few, and that is very early for mushrooms, and then last weekend when I went out there was nothing, absolutely nothing,” Levek said…
To find the last time southwest Colorado had drought this exceptional, you must go all the way back 15 years to August 2003…
The San Miguel, the San Juan, and the Las Animas rivers have all hit record low steam flows at some point this summer, just to name a few. Many other creeks and rivers are running below 10 percent of normal this August…
Municipalities are starting to implement water restrictions. The city of Aspen announced they are going to stage 2 watering restrictions for the first time in their history.
Stagecoach Dam and Reservoir via the Applegate Group
The Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District is releasing water from the Stagecoach Reservoir to supply the needs of Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association’s Craig Station, which started on Thursday, Aug 16.
The released water will be protected by the Colorado Division of Water Resources Division 6 engineer Erin Light and her staff according to the Water Conservancy’s release. They will make sure the 80-mile section of the Yampa River Between Stagecoach Reservoir and Craig Station’s intake remains in the river and not diverted by other water users.
The Colorado Water Trust will continue releasing water to support the health of the Yampa River.
Upper Yampa Water manager Kevin McBride said, “Upper Yampa is pleased to release water to our customers, Tri-State and the Colorado Water Trust during this drought. These releases, for an industrial and environmental purpose individually, will combine to have a great beneficial effect for all of us in the valley.”
During droughts, Senior manager of communications and public affairs at Tri-State Lee Boughey said, it is critical to have water storage in the Yampa River basin. Working with Upper Yampa and the Colorado Water Trust will ensure power generation continues while improving the health of Yampa.
The release from Stagecoach Reservoir is the Upper Yampa’s largest release so far and includes up to 70 cubic feet per second of water from Tri-State’s leased water pool. The release will be reevaluated in the next week and could be reduced depending on the river conditions and forecasts.
Pagosa Area Water and Sanita- tion District (PAWSD) custom- ers remain in voluntary drought restrictions, but mandatory restrictions may be just around the corner.
According to a report made by PAWSD District Manager Justin Ramsey, as of Monday, the current and total cumulative available lake water for treatment and delivery sits at 72.5 percent.
If that total drops to 70 percent, stage 1 mandatory drought restric- tions will be put in place for all PAWSD customers.
Those restrictions would limit outdoor irrigation to the hours be- tween 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. and trigger a drought surcharge of $7.68 per equivalent unit.
Ramsey notes in his report that PAWSD may be entering into stage 1 mandatory drought restrictions at the end of this week or possibly next week…
Within his report, Ramsey also describes that Lake Hatcher is 57 inches from full, while Lake Stevens is 121 inches from full.
“They dropped a little bit, kind of expected,” Ramsey said.
Additionally, Ramsey’s report notes that Lake Pagosa is 23 inches from full, Lake Forest is at 10 inches from full and Village Lake sits at 9 inches from full.
PAWSD’s water use this past week was down quite a bit, Ramsey noted.
“This is the first time that we’ve used less water in the same week than we did in 2017,” Ramsey said.
Algae occur naturally in most bodies of freshwater and saltwater. It’s normally fairly harmless, but the right combination of warm water, high nutrient levels, and adequate sunlight combined can cause a harmful algae bloom. These blooms can damage aquatic ecosystems by blocking sunlight and depleting oxygen that other organisms need to survive. Some algae, like red algae and blue-green algae, can produce toxins that damage the human nervous system and the liver (and they also stink — literally).
Recently, there has been an increase in algae blooms globally, and climate change may be playing a role. Warmer water allows some harmful types of algae to grow faster than other, more benign varieties. This warmer surface water also prevents water from mixing vertically, allowing algae to grow thicker and faster. This sets up a feedback loop: water made darker by the presence of the blooms absorbs more sunlight, warming even more, and enhancing the conditions for more blooms.
Graphic credit: Climate Central
Global warming takes place in the ocean too, and rising ocean temperatures have been found to be partially responsible for more intense algae blooms in the North Atlantic, while warming lakes have played a role in the increased frequency of algae blooms in some inland waters of the U.S.
Increasing heavy precipitation — another impact of climate change — can wash more agricultural fertilizers into bodies of water, providing nutrients for the algae to thrive. And in a supercharged water cycle, the droughts that follow heavy precipitation will allow more water to evaporate from the surface, concentrating the nutrients and giving the algae the opportunity to survive longer and multiply more.
The blooms don’t just smell bad, they impact human health both directly and indirectly. The toxins produced by certain algae can cause eye and lung irritation and worsen asthma. Fish and shellfish can become contaminated, and when eaten, can cause gastrointestinal pain or even neurological illnesses.
In 1922, Federal and State representatives met for the Colorado River Compact Commission in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Among the attendees were Arthur P. Davis, Director of Reclamation Service, and Herbert Hoover, who at the time, was the Secretary of Commerce. Photo taken November 24, 1922. USBR photo.
Hoover Dam dedication September 30, 1935. Photo credit U.S. Bureau of Reclamation via the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
Elwood Mead memorial at Hoover Dam photo via Greg Hobbs
Hoover Dam during construction via Historical Photos.
Herbert Hoover presides over the signing of the Colorado River Compact in November 1922. Members of the Colorado River Commission stood together at the signing of the Colorado River Compact on November 24, 1922. The signing took place at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover presiding (seated). (Courtesy U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation)
President Franklin Roosevelt at dedication of Boulder (now Hoover) Dam, September 30, 1935
Part of the memorial to Wayne Aspinall in Palisade. Aspinall, a Democrat, is a legend in the water sector, and is the namesake of the annual award given by the Colorado Water Congress. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
Wayne Aspinall Memorial — Palisade
Back of Hoover Dam prior to first fill photo via Reclamation.
Hoover Dam during construction
Rarely seen back of the Hoover Dam prior to first fill
Hoover Dam during construction
Colorado River, Black Canyon back in the day, site of Hoover Dam
The 2017–2018 runoff from the Upper Colorado River Basin into Lake Powell is history and it turned out to be on the short side coming in at 42% of normal. The six major tributaries that feed the waters of Lake Powell are currently running anywhere from 5% to 36% of normal. The result is that the levels of both Lake Powell and Lake Mead continue to drop and the risk of a shortage call in 2019 or 2020 is increasing daily.
Some would argue that this is exactly why the reservoirs were built and are so important — to help the region get through droughts. That logic is predicated on the assumption that we are in a drought and not a significant shift in the overall climate, weather, and hydrologic conditions. Droughts are short term events that have a start and an end point. What we are in now, with near unanimous concurrence from scientists across the United States, is a long term shift in the nature, amount, shape and mobilization of the runoff in the Upper Colorado River Basin. A new baseline centered on the concept of aridification of the American Southwest requires a more long-term strategic approach.
So what does this mean to the potential for a shortage call on the Colorado River?
First, some background. The management of the Colorado River is accomplished through the delicate act of balancing the Law of the River with available reservoir storage and actual runoff. Up until 2000–2002 there had always been adequate supply to meet the demand in both the Upper and Lower Colorado River basins. In fact in most years there was more water available then needed and extra water (surplus) was available to the states and water users. In 2001 the Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, signed guidelines on how the three lower basin states could use surplus Colorado River water. How quickly times changed.
In 2002, without any fanfare or marching bands, Colorado System Demand surpassed available water supply. In 2002 the basin states realized that shortages in the future were possible. They also realized that with normal levels of inflow and release a structural deficit of over a million acre feet per year would continue to drive the reservoir elevations down. These facts prompted the basin states, at the urging of Secretary of Interior, to establish criteria for avoiding a shortage call — the result was the 2007 Shortage Criteria. Renegotiation on the 2007 Shortage Criteria are due to begin in 2020.
The 2007 Shortage Criteria set the elevations where action is required in both reservoirs Powell and Mead. The basin states and Reclamation developed a formula and set of decision points for when, the quantity, and how water would be moved from Lake Powell to Lake Mead.
1,075′ and its implications
There are three Lake Mead elevation trigger points (1,075, 1,050 and 1,025 feet) with the 1025 ft. elevation requiring mandatory consultation to identify and implement additional actions to keep Lake Mead functioning. As Lake Mead continues to fall more severe restrictions are implemented for the Lower Basin states and Mexico. The first of these elevation trigger points is when Lake Mead hits elevation 1,075 ft or lower on January 1st. Passing 1,075 on January 1 opens the door for the federal government to exert more control over management of the Lower Colorado River. Something the states do not want to have happen.
In order to avoid the issues of federal direction of Colorado River management the seven states have been working to develop Drought Contingency Plans to supplement the 2007 Shortage Criteria. The intent of the Drought Contingency Plans is to avert shortage declarations and to voluntarily share any cuts in water releases from Lake Mead. The problem is that while some additional water can be squeezed from conservation and efficiency, the large volumes of water needed to make up for the continual decline in supply simply are not readily available. What is required is a rethinking of how we live with the available water supply in the Colorado River Basin.
