#Drought news: D4 (Extreme Drought) was expanded into northern Routt and northern Grand Counties

Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor.

US Drought Monitor November 3, 2020.

West Drought Monitor November 3, 2020.

Colorado Drought Monitor November 3, 2020.

Click here to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:

This Week’s Drought Summary

Hurricane Zeta made landfall near Cocodrie in southeastern Louisiana during the late afternoon on Wednesday, October 28, as a Category 2 hurricane with sustained winds estimate at 110 mph. With a fast northeastern track that took it off the mid-Atlantic Coast in about 24 hours, the rapid pace limited rainfall totals along its track to between 2 and 4 inches, with locally heavier amounts in southern Mississippi and Alabama of up to 8 inches. Unfortunately, the fast pace delayed the weakening of Zeta’s winds, and widespread wind damage and power outages occurred along Zeta’s path, even into the mid-Atlantic. In addition as the period started, an upper-air low over the southern Rockies slowly tracked eastward, becoming infused with tropical moisture from Zeta and the Gulf of Mexico. It dumped 1.5 to 3.5 inches of precipitation, locally to 5 inches, from the western Oklahoma and northern Texas Panhandles eastward across northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas, southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, and into the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys. Although the precipitation was very beneficial to the winter wheat crop and pastures, some of the precipitation fell in the form of snow and freezing rain in western Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, causing damage. Once the upper-air low and Zeta cleared the East Coast, much drier and colder air rushed into the Northeast and Southeast, with light snow accumulating across parts of western New England and upstate New York. Elsewhere, little or no precipitation occurred in the Far West, Southwest, Rockies, southern and northern Plains, and upper Midwest. Subnormal weekly temperatures enveloped the Midwest, southern and central Plains, and Northeast, while the West, Rockies, and Southeast experienced near to above-normal readings. Welcome showers fell across most of Puerto Rico while drought expanded across portions of Hawaii’s Big Island…

High Plains

With much of the region cold and dry this week, status-quo was the norm for most states that either received precipitation 2 weeks ago (Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas), or deteriorations were made (North Dakota). Unfortunately, southern Nebraska and northern Kansas missed out on precipitation during late October, thus some degradations were made there. With short-term (out to 90-days) SPIs much drier than D1, and 90-day precipitation less than half of normal – producing 4-6 inch deficits – D1 was extended across northern Kansas and into southeastern Nebraska. D2 was slightly expanded into northwestern Kansas and southwestern and northeastern Nebraska. Wetter conditions at 4-months limited the deteriorations made this week, along with a dry climatology during October and November. In contrast, the upper-air low that trekked from the southern Rockies to the mid-Atlantic and became infused with Gulf moisture courtesy of Hurricane Zeta dumped welcome and heavy precipitation (1-4 inches) across southern Kansas, effectively allowing a 1-category improvement across the southern third of the state. The middle third of Kansas remained unchanged…

West

Dry weather prevailed across the entire West, with only light precipitation (less than 2 inches) reported in western Washington and the extreme northern Cascades. Temperatures gradually increased during the week, with most locations averaging at or above-normal weekly anomalies. With beneficial precipitation falling the previous week (Oct. 21-27) across the Northwest and Rockies, no deteriorations were made this week where precipitation fell in late October. However, with two consecutive weeks of no precipitation, the wet season that should be in full swing by now, and lingering long-term impacts, some slight deterioration was made in Oregon (D2 and D3 expansions) and southwestern Idaho (Elmore County to D1). In northern Colorado, D4 was expanded into northern Routt and northern Grand Counties which missed significant precipitation 2 weeks ago, with SPIs, evaporative demands, and precipitation out to 6-months at D4 levels. No changes were made in the Southwest as October and November are climatologically dry. In contrast, additional investigations to last week’s precipitation called for improvements to central Idaho (D0 removed in Clearwater Basin) and south-central Colorado (D3 and D2 reductions) from recent precipitation and overall favorable impacts…

South

As the week started, the upper-air low over the southern Rockies tapped Gulf moisture, bringing welcome and beneficial precipitation (1.5-5 inches) to the south-central Plains. Unfortunately, the demarcation of the haves versus have-nots was sharp, with southern Kansas, the northern half and far eastern Oklahoma, and the Panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas coming out favorably. Accordingly, the copious precipitation resulted in 1- and 2-cat improvements, particularly in northwestern Oklahoma where 3-5 inches fell, including some light amounts the previous week. Western Texas, much of it in D3-D4, did receive some light precipitation (0.25-1 inch), but could have used a lot more, and improvements were minimal. In contrast, little or no precipitation fell on the southern half of Texas for the second consecutive week, resulting in additional degradation. October is normally one of the wetter months in south-central Texas, so with many locations measuring less than 25% of normal the past 30 days, short-term deficits have rapidly accumulated. USGS 7-day average stream flows have also picked up on the dryness, with many gauges in the much below category (less than tenth percentile)…

Looking Ahead

During the next 5 days (November 5-9), a change in the upper-air pattern should bring unsettled weather (cold and wet) to the West, including moderate to heavy totals (1-3 inches) to the Cascades, Sierra Nevada, and Rockies, according to WPC’s 5-day QPF. Light rain is expected in the upper Midwest, while moisture from the remnants (or reformation) of Hurricane Eta (currently in Central America) will soak southern Florida. The rest of the contiguous U.S. should be mostly dry. Temperatures during the next five days will average above-normal for much of the Nation (from the Rockies eastward), while cooler weather envelops the Far West.

The Climate Prediction Center’s 6-10 day outlook (November 10-14) favors above-normal precipitation across Alaska, the Northwest, Midwest, and East Coast. Subnormal precipitation was limited to the northern Plains, with equal chances elsewhere. Odds for subnormal temperatures are quite likely across the West, Rockies, and High Plains, while above-normal readings are strongly favored in the eastern third of the Nation.

US Drought Monitor one week change map ending November 3, 2020.

And just for grins here’s a gallery of early November US Drought Monitor maps for the last few years.

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Millions in new taxes approved for #WestSlope, #FrontRange #water districts — @WaterEdCO

From Water Education Colorado (Sarah Kuta):

Water won big in Colorado on Election Day as voters in two multi-county districts approved property tax increases to fund water projects and programs.

Voters in two local water districts — the Colorado River Water Conservation District on the West Slope and the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District on the Front Range — said yes to ballot measures that will generate millions of dollars in new money for conservation, water education, stream health, storage and agriculture.

Based on vote totals as of 4:30 a.m. this morning, 72 percent of voters in the Colorado River District approved ballot issue 7A, with nearly 28 percent voting against the measure.

Meanwhile, 69 percent of voters in the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District approved a separate ballot issue 7A, with 31 percent voting against.

Though statewide funding for water projects has historically been a tough sell for Colorado voters, local initiatives with a more direct connection to residents are finding more success at the polls in recent years. These 2020 water funding ballot measures come on the heels of similar successes in 2018, when voters in Denver, Eagle, Chaffee and Park counties approved tax increases, new taxes, and tax extensions for water and land-focused initiatives.

“Passing any type of fiscal measures statewide in Colorado is going to continue to be an extreme challenge but it’s a much different story on the local level and the regional level,” said Matt Rice, director of the Colorado Basin Program for American Rivers, which supported the Colorado River District measure. “People in Colorado like to make their own decisions locally about fiscal issues, but also about how we manage and protect and restore our rivers for the environment, for agriculture and for local economies.”

In deciding to ask voters for more money this year, the two districts’ leaders cited factors like growing demand for water, drought, higher temperatures, population growth, declining oil and gas revenue, and declining property tax levels under the state’s Gallagher Amendment.

Those reasons resonated with voters on both sides of the political spectrum across the state. On the West Slope, for example, voters in right-leaning counties like Mesa and Montrose and left-leaning counties like Pitkin and Summit approved the ballot measure. (Of note: Nearly 80 percent of voters in Pitkin County approved the ballot measure, despite opposition by three county commissioners and the county’s representative on the district’s board.)

“It’s really a testament to what can happen if people put aside partisan differences on water issues,” said Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River District. “Voters in Colorado are seeing the effects of rising temperatures, changing climate and the impact it’s having on water resources, and they know that we need to adapt and mitigate and that it’s going to cost money to do that.”

An angler casts a line on the Roaring Fork River upstream of Basalt in Pitkin County. West Slope voters said yes to millions in new taxes for the Colorado River District. Credit: Jerd Smith, Fresh Water News

West Slope says yes

In the large Colorado River District, which includes 15 counties and some 500,000 residents, voters approved a mill levy increase that will double the district’s budget by generating an additional $4.9 million every year starting in 2021.

The district spans an area that covers 28 percent of the state and encompasses the Colorado River and its major tributaries, which include the Yampa, the White, the Gunnison and the Uncompahgre rivers.

With the passage of the ballot measure, West Slope voters approved a median residential property tax increase of $7.03 per year for residents of Grand, Summit, Eagle, Pitkin, Garfield, Routt, Moffat, Rio Blanco, Mesa, Delta, Ouray, Gunnison and parts of Montrose, Saguache and Hinsdale counties. The increase represents an additional $1.90 per year for every $100,000 of home value.

The district, which has 22 employees, will use the new funding for projects related to agriculture, infrastructure, water quality, conservation, efficiency, and other key priority areas determined by local communities and river basin roundtables.

District leaders say they will also stretch the extra money further by using it to solicit matching funds from state, federal and private sources.

Water funding on the Front Range

It was also a historic night for the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District, where voters approved a property tax increase for the next 10 years. This is the first time in nearly 50 years — since its founding in 1971 — that the district has asked voters for more funding.

The district’s board thought long and hard about how best to approach voters — and whether this was the right year to do it. But in the end, their approach paid off.

“The discussions were good and essentially resulted in consensus and agreement with the board,” said Chris Smith, board vice president representing district 3, which encompasses northwest Longmont and parts of unincorporated Boulder County. “It was all done in a very thoughtful manner, which speaks a lot to having a board that represents, geographically, the entire watershed.”

Smith said he was happy to see the West Slope ballot measure pass, too.

“The people of Colorado have really keyed in on the importance of water,” he said. “There are so many new people moving to Colorado, it’s good to see that they’re carrying on that mantle of protecting our most important resource.”

The St. Vrain and Left Hand district encompasses some 500 square miles along the St. Vrain and Left Hand creeks in Boulder, Weld and Larimer counties. Voters agreed to a mill levy increase from 0.156 mills to 1.25 mills through 2030.

The tax increase will generate an additional $3.3 million per year for the district starting in 2021, up from the $421,000 generated annually by the current mill levy. On a $350,000 home, the tax increase represents an additional $2.61 per month; on a $500,000 commercial building, it’s an extra $15.10 per month.

District leaders say they will use the extra money for projects related to water quality, river and creek health, water education, agriculture, storage and conservation, among others.

Sarah Kuta is a freelance writer based in Longmont, Colorado. She can be reached at sarahkuta@gmail.com.

The South Platte River Basin is shaded in yellow. Source: Tom Cech, One World One Water Center, Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Map of the Colorado River drainage basin, created using USGS data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65868008

Water for #Colorado Coalition Applauds the Passage of $8 Million to Protect Colorado’s Rivers — Western Resource Advocates

Here’s the release from Western Resource Advocates (Jennifer Talhelm):

Today, the Water for Colorado coalition celebrates the passage of two key local ballot measures that will increase investment in Colorado’s rivers and streams. Together these measures will generate nearly $8 million annually to support critical water-related needs.

Voters approved a property tax increase for the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District, which will provide $3.3 million a year to protect water quality, safeguard drinking water, maintain healthy forests, rivers and creeks, plan ahead for dry years and grow food locally. The funds will be allocated using the District’s recently developed 5-Point Water Action Plan that will protect rivers, forests, and local water quality.

On the West Slope, voters approved a mill levy increase for the Colorado River Water Conservation District, which will bring in nearly $5 million a year to support healthy rivers, local agriculture, watershed health, and water quality in the 15 counties that make up the district. According to its Fiscal Implementation Plan, the District will allocate these funds through partnerships with water users and communities for priority projects identified by local communities and Basin Roundtables.

Local funding from both measures will support the types of solutions and water management projects outlined in Colorado’s Water Plan. The Water Plan, finalized in 2015, provides a blueprint to address the gap between water supply and demand across the state.

“Whether they’re on the Front Range or the West Slope, Coloradans know that water is essential for life; they value protecting our rivers and streams, and that’s why an incredibly diverse group of Coloradans unified in support of the two funding measures,” said Bart Miller, Western Resource Advocates’ Healthy Rivers Program Director. “The passage of these two ballot measures will mean communities will have $8 million more a year working to ensure there is enough water for everyone – for drinking, farming and ranching, recreation, and wildlife. But while we’re justifiably celebrating today, the wildfires that have been burning across the state this fall are a destructive reminder that climate change and drought will keep stressing our water, and we all need to keep working for full funding for Colorado’s Water Plan.”

“Both measures provide an essential blueprint to these river districts to better manage water supplies and, in turn, support the communities and economies that rely on them,” said Matt Rice, Director of the Colorado Basin Program for American Rivers. “Voters have clearly rallied around water as a shared priority and recognized the urgent need to safeguard our drinking water, protect forests that are critical to water supplies, and maintain healthy rivers and creeks.”

“Our economy depends on a healthy, reliable Colorado River System, and Colorado voters realized that in the passage of two ballot issues on water yesterday. Billions of dollars are generated every year in Colorado by river-related recreation, and we know that healthy rivers mean a thriving economy across our communities. The St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District can now implement their five-point plan to protect that area’s rivers and water sources, and the Colorado River District can continue its important, locally driven work throughout the 15 counties they serve,” said Molly Mugglestone, Director of Communications and Colorado Policy for Business for Water Stewardship.

“The passage of these measures comes as Colorado continues to grapple with extreme wildfires and ongoing drought conditions across the state. The water Coloradans use to drink, irrigate crops, recreate, and sustain our communities is water that we share with wildlife that depend on our rivers, streams, and lakes. In the face of a historic drought and the ongoing threat of climate change, these kinds of forward-looking investments in how we care for and sustain our water supplies are critical to ensuring the collective future of the people and wildlife of Colorado,” said Abby Burk, Western Rivers Regional Program Manager for Audubon Rockies .

“I want to applaud Coloradans who voted to keep our rivers healthy and flowing. The wise investment they approved will protect clean drinking water and iconic waterways now and for future generations,” said Kelly Nordini, Executive Director of Conservation Colorado.

Coloradans continue to prioritize water by voting to approve ballot measures that use tax revenues to invest in healthy rivers, clean drinking water, resilient agriculture, and a thriving recreation economy. This year’s double win marks another voter-approved effort to fund work that supports the Water Plan. In November 2019, voters passed Proposition DD to legalize sports betting and use the resulting taxes to help fund Colorado’s Water Plan.

However, the Water for Colorado Coalition will continue its efforts to fully fund the Water Plan. This is essential, because even though these local ballot measures will generate significant funding for water in Colorado, a larger funding gap for implementing Colorado’s Water Plan remains. The Water Plan estimates that $100 million dollars per year is needed to protect scarce water resources and to prevent future water shortages in the state.

About the Water for Colorado Coalition
The Water for Colorado Coalition is dedicated to ensuring our rivers support everyone who depends on them, working toward resilience to climate change, planning for sustained and more severe droughts, and enabling every individual in Colorado to have a voice and the opportunity to take action to advocate for sustainable conservation-based solutions for our state’s water future.

The community of organizations that make up the Water for Colorado Coalition represent diverse perspectives and share a commitment to protecting Colorado’s water future to secure a reliable water supply for the state and for future generations.

The Colorado River Water Conservation District spans 15 Western Slope counties. Voters across the district are considering a mill-levy increase that would raise the River District’s budget by $5 million, funding a variety of water-related projects. Colorado River District/Courtesy image

St. Vrain and Lefthand Water Conservancy District map.

Desalination: Industrial-strength brine, meet your kryptonite

Here’s the release from Rice University (Jade Boyd):

Boron nitride coating is key ingredient in hypersaline desalination technology

A thin coating of the 2D nanomaterial hexagonal boron nitride is the key ingredient in a cost-effective technology developed by Rice University engineers for desalinating industrial-strength brine.

Rice University’s Kuichang Zuo (left) and Qilin Li helped develop a highly efficient technology for desalinating industrial-strength brine with a salt content as much as 10 times greater than seawater. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

More than 1.8 billion people live in countries where fresh water is scarce. In many arid regions, seawater or salty groundwater is plentiful but costly to desalinate. In addition, many industries pay high disposal costs for wastewater with high salt concentrations that cannot be treated using conventional technologies. Reverse osmosis, the most common desalination technology, requires greater and greater pressure as the salt content of water increases and cannot be used to treat water that is extremely salty, or hypersaline.

Hypersaline water, which can contain 10 times more salt than seawater, is an increasingly important challenge for many industries. Some oil and gas wells produce it in large volumes, for example, and it is a byproduct of many desalination technologies that produce both freshwater and concentrated brine. Increasing water consciousness across all industries is also a driver, said Rice’s Qilin Li, co-corresponding author of a study about Rice’s desalination technology published in Nature Nanotechnology.

“It’s not just the oil industry,” said Li, co-director of the Rice-based Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment Center (NEWT). “Industrial processes, in general, produce salty wastewater because the trend is to reuse water. Many industries are trying to have ‘closed loop’ water systems. Each time you recover freshwater, the salt in it becomes more concentrated. Eventually the wastewater becomes hypersaline and you either have to desalinate it or pay to dispose of it.”

Rice University’s desalination technology for hypersaline brine features a central passage for heated brine that is sandwiched between two membranes. A stainless steel heating element produces fresh, salt-free water by driving water vapor through each membrane. A coating of the 2D nanomaterial hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) protects the heating element from the highly corrosive brine. (Image courtesy of Kuichang Zuo/Rice University)

Conventional technology to desalinate hypersaline water has high capital costs and requires extensive infrastructure. NEWT, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center (ERC) headquartered at Rice’s Brown School of Engineering, is using the latest advances in nanotechnology and materials science to create decentralized, fit-for-purpose technologies for treating drinking water and industrial wastewater more efficiently.

One of NEWT’s technologies is an off-grid desalination system that uses solar energy and a process called membrane distillation. When the brine is flowed across one side of a porous membrane, it is heated up at the membrane surface by a photothermal coating that absorbs sunlight and generates heat. When cold freshwater is flowed across the other side of the membrane, the difference in temperature creates a pressure gradient that drives water vapor through the membrane from the hot to the cold side, leaving salts and other nonvolatile contaminants behind.

A large difference in temperature on each side of the membrane is the key to membrane desalination efficiency. In NEWT’s solar-powered version of the technology, light-activated nanoparticles attached to the membrane capture all the necessary energy from the sun, resulting in high energy efficiency. Li is working with a NEWT industrial partner to develop a version of the technology that can be deployed for humanitarian purposes. But unconcentrated solar power alone isn’t sufficient for high-rate desalination of hypersaline brine, she said.

“The energy intensity is limited with ambient solar energy,” said Li, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. “The energy input is only one kilowatt per meter square, and the production rate of water is slow for large-scale systems.”

Adding heat to the membrane surface can produce exponential improvements in the volume of freshwater that each square foot of membrane can produce each minute, a measure known as flux. But saltwater is highly corrosive, and it becomes more corrosive when heated. Traditional metallic heating elements get destroyed quickly, and many nonmetallic alternatives fare little better or have insufficient conductivity.

“We were really looking for a material that would be highly electrically conductive and also support large current density without being corroded in this highly salty water,” Li said.

The solution came from study co-authors Jun Lou and Pulickel Ajayan in Rice’s Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering (MSNE). Lou, Ajayan and NEWT postdoctoral researchers and study co-lead authors Kuichang Zuo and Weipeng Wang, and study co-author and graduate student Shuai Jia developed a process for coating a fine stainless steel mesh with a thin film of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN).

Rice University engineers created a robust heating element for desalinating highly corrosive industrial-strength brine by adding a protective coating of the 2D nanomaterial hexagonal boron nitride to a commercially available stainless steel mesh. (Photo by Kuichang Zuo/Rice University)

Boron nitride’s combination of chemical resistance and thermal conductivity has made its ceramic form a prized asset in high-temperature equipment, but hBN, the atom-thick 2D form of the material, is typically grown on flat surfaces.

“This is the first time this beautiful hBN coating has been grown on an irregular, porous surface,” Li said. “It’s a challenge, because anywhere you have a defect in the hBN coating, you will start to have corrosion.”

Jia and Wang used a modified chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique to grow dozens of layers of hBN on a nontreated, commercially available stainless steel mesh. The technique extended previous Rice research into the growth of 2D materials on curved surfaces, which was supported by the Center for Atomically Thin Multifunctional Coatings, or ATOMIC. The ATOMIC Center is also hosted by Rice and supported by the NSF’s Industry/University Cooperative Research Program.

The researchers showed that the wire mesh coating, which was only about one 10-millionth of a meter thick, was sufficient to encase the interwoven wires and protect them from the corrosive forces of hypersaline water. The coated wire mesh heating element was attached to a commercially available polyvinylidene difluoride membrane that was rolled into a spiral-wound module, a space-saving form used in many commercial filters.

A coiled distillation membrane system for desalinating hypersaline brine. Rolling the system into a coil demonstrated the possibility of adopting a common space-saving, water-filtration format. (Photo by Kuichang Zuo/Rice University)

In tests, researchers powered the heating element with voltage at a household frequency of 50 hertz and power densities as high as 50 kilowatts per square meter. At maximum power, the system produced a flux of more than 42 kilograms of water per square meter of membrane per hour — more than 10 times greater than ambient solar membrane distillation technologies — at an energy efficiency much higher than existing membrane distillation technologies.

Li said the team is looking for an industry partner to scale up the CVD coating process and produce a larger prototype for small-scale field tests.

“We’re ready to pursue some commercial applications,” she said. “Scaling up from the lab-scale process to a large 2D CVD sheet will require external support.”

NEWT is a multidisciplinary engineering research center launched in 2015 by Rice, Yale University, Arizona State University and the University of Texas at El Paso that was recently awarded a five-year renewal grant for $16.5 million by the National Science Foundation. NEWT works with industry and government partners to produce transformational technology and train engineers who are ready to lead the global economy.

Ajayan is Rice’s Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Engineering, MSNE department chair and a professor of chemistry. Lou is a professor and associate department chair in MSNE and a professor of chemistry.

The research was supported by NSF. Additional co-authors include Hua Guo and Ruikun Xin, both of Rice; and Menachem Elimelech and Akshay Deshmukh, both of Yale.