The Julesburg Town Board may be changing directions on its waste water project after listening to Brad Simons with MMI Water Engineers. Simons told the board that after reviewing the plans previously provided to him, he is agreeing more with former Trustee Todd Blochowitz that the town may be putting the cart before the horse. Blochowitz had made the remarks earlier in the year at a public meeting. Simons said after reviewing the proposed wastewater project that the design may still not meet the state’s required effluent discharge.
He suggested that the town pause briefly and research reversing their priorities and focus on the water project which may have a larger effect on correcting the problem at the wastewater facility. The water project would include upgrading of the reverse osmosis equipment that is 20 years old.
Northern Water’s board of directors unanimously overturned the city of Fort Collins’ denial of infrastructure associated with the Northern Integrated Supply Project, clearing the way Wednesday for construction of a pipeline and Poudre River diversion in city limits.
Fort Collins’ Planning and Zoning Commission rejected a SPAR (site plan advisory review) application for NISP infrastructure in a 3-2 vote on June 30. But state law allows governing boards to overrule denials of SPAR applications for public infrastructure with at least a two-thirds majority vote.
The Northern Water board’s decision means the water district, after getting the necessary city permits, should be able to build a river diversion on the Poudre at Homestead Natural Area and about 3.4 miles of pipeline in city limits. The diversion and pipeline are part of Northern Water’s plan to release between 18-25 cubic feet per second of the project’s Poudre River diversions through a 12-mile section of the river in Fort Collins before piping it to NISP participants.
NISP would take water from the Poudre and South Platte rivers to deliver an estimated 40,000 acre-feet of water annually to 15 small municipalities and water districts in Northern Colorado, including Fort Collins-Loveland Water District and Windsor. The water would be stored in two new reservoirs: Glade Reservoir, with a capacity of 170,000 acre-feet located northwest of Fort Collins at the mouth of the Poudre Canyon, and Galeton Reservoir, with a capacity of 45,600 acre-feet located northeast of Greeley.
New plating at the Glenwood Springs water intake on Grizzly Creek was installed by the city to protect the system’s valve controls and screen before next spring’s snowmelt scours the Grizzly Creek burn zone and potentially clogs the creek with debris. (Provided by the City of Glenwood Springs)
Glenwood Springs mayor, staff express confidence in $3.2 million water system investment in wake of 2020’s Grizzly Creek Fire
Recent upgrades to Glenwood Springs’ water infrastructure likely prevented a July 31 and Aug. 1 deluge from overcoming the city’s water filtration system, Glenwood Springs Public Works director said.
The record-breaking rainfall, which dumped up to 2 inches of precipitation in an hour near Coffee Pot Road and caused severe mudslides, pushed a significant amount of sediment-laden water toward the city’s water intakes at Grizzly Creek/No Name Creek and Roaring Fork River within a matter of hours.
“The water we had simply wasn’t usable at that point,” Public Works Director Matt Langhorst said, explaining the water’s turbidity levels during the storms shot up to 4,000 Nephelometric Turbidity Units, a measurement of water cloudiness.
The city’s intakes typically experience a turbidity level of about 4-7 NTU in a system that treats about 4.5 million to 4.7 million gallons of water daily during the summer. It might have taken days to drain the storm-induced sediment out of the city’s settling tanks without the city’s $3.2 million infrastructure upgrade, Langhorst said…
Below is a look at the city’s upgrades at work during the storms:
• Bank armoring at the No Name and Grizzly Creek intakes stabilized the earth around the intakes during the heavy rain and mud events.
• The automated gate at No Name Tunnel quickly gauged elevated levels of sediment in the intake and closed off the pipeline to the water treatment plant, preventing water lines from becoming inundated with mud.
• The treatment plant’s stainless steel settling plates, which replaced plastic settling plates, increased the settling area square-footage by 28%, allowing the new sediment pumps to push sediment out of the water system at a much faster rate, according to Glenwood Springs spokesperson Bryana Starbuck and Water Treatment Plant Chief Operator Mike Hedrick.
New census data puts a number to how popular Colorado has become. The state expanded by more than 700,000 people from 2010 to 2020.
Denver and El Paso counties grew by more than 100,000 people in that same time frame, according to an analysis by 9Wants to Know. All of that is putting pressure on systems that were already stressed.
“Transportation systems, housing systems, food systems, water and energy,” said Brenna Simmons-St. Onge, Executive Director of the Alliance Center, which works on sustainability solutions.
As cost of living goes up, there are more developments farther out, which can mean longer commutes and more emissions.
More people are also settling down in the wildland urban interface, which becomes a problems with wildfire…
When it comes to water, resources from the Colorado River were already over-allocated from a pact dating back to the 1920s. Couple that with warming temperatures and drought, Assistant State Climatologist Becky Bolinger said that is adding more pressure.
July 2021 was the warmest July on record for the globe; global land surface was also record warm
The global temperature for July 2021 was the highest for July in the 142-year NOAA record, which dates back to 1880. The year-to-date (January-July) global surface temperature tied as the sixth highest on record. According to NCEI’s Global Annual Temperature Rankings Outlook, it is very likely that the year 2021 will rank among the 10 warmest years on record.
This monthly summary, developed by scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides to government, business, academia and the public to support informed decision-making.
Monthly Global Temperature
The July 2021 global surface temperature was 1.67°F (0.93°C) above the 20th-century average of 60.4°F (15.8°C) — the highest for July in the 142-year record. This value was only 0.02°F (0.01°C) higher than the previous record set in 2016, and tied in 2019 and 2020. The seven warmest Julys have all occurred since 2015. July 2021 marked the 45th consecutive July and the 439th consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average.
Climatologically, July is the warmest month of the year. With July 2021 the warmest July on record, at least nominally, this resulted in the warmest month on record for the globe.
The global land-only surface temperature for July 2021 was 2.52°F (1.40°C) above average and the highest July for the land-only surface temperature on record, surpassing the previous record set in 2020 by 0.31°F (0.17°C). The warmth across the global land surfaces was mainly driven by the very warm Northern Hemisphere land, which also had its highest July temperature at 2.77°F (1.54°C) above average.
During the month, temperatures were much warmer than average across parts of North America, Europe, northern and southern South America, northern Africa, the southern half of Asia, Oceania and parts of the western and northern Pacific, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Temperatures were cooler than average across parts of northeastern Canada, the south-central and southeastern contiguous U.S., southern Africa, northern Russia and the southeastern Pacific Ocean.
Regionally, Asia had its warmest July on record, besting the previous record set in 2010. Europe had its second-warmest July (tied with 2010) on record, trailing behind the record warm July set in 2018. Meanwhile, North America, South America, Africa and Oceania had a top-10 warm July on record.
July Tropical Cyclones
In the Atlantic basin, one named storm formed during July 2021. Hurricane Elsa, which formed on July 1, was the earliest-forming fifth named storm in the Atlantic basin. The Eastern North and Western Pacific basins each had three named storms. Overall, the global tropical cyclone activity from January-July was above-normal for named storms.
July Sea Ice
July 2021 Arctic (left) and Antarctic (right) sea ice extent maps
The July 2021 Arctic sea ice extent was 687,000 square miles below the 1981-2010 average and was the fourth-smallest July sea ice extent in the 43-year record, according to an analysis by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) using data from NOAA and NASA. Only Julys of 2012, 2019 and 2020 had a smaller sea ice extent in July. The 10 smallest July sea ice extents for the Arctic have occurred since 2007.
The Antarctic sea ice extent during July 2021 was above average. The July Antarctic sea ice extent was 6.32 million square miles — the largest July sea ice extent since 2015 and the eighth highest in the 43-year record.
Elwood Mead in 1928. By Underwood & Underwood – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID cph.3b30798.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15933145
Biological carbon sequestration is the long-term storage of carbon in soils and vegetation resulting from applications of compost and mulch to land. Soils hold more carbon than the atmosphere or plant and animal life combined. Climate experts say no strategy to reduce climate change is complete without using the vast carbon sinks available in the world’s soils. Over the centuries, human activities have degraded soil, resulting in the loss of a significant portion of their carbon content to the air. Graphic credit: Cal Recycle
