There were clearly great difficulties during the 1930s &1950s in growing winter wheat, produced mainly on the central and southern Plains. H/T Brad Rippey @usda_oce
Click the link to read the article on the Sky-Hi News website (Kyle McCabe). Here’s an excerpt:
Smith Creek Crossing and Sun Outdoors residents started making public comments at Granby Board of Trustees meetings in April expressing concerns about their water rates increasing from $10 per thousand gallons to $50 per thousand gallons. At the second meeting with public comments dominated by residents of the Sun Outdoors’ properties, the trustees decided to hold a workshop session during their May 9 meeting to discuss the West Service Area water system, which serves Sun Outdoors and its residents.
Town Manager Ted Cherry included a memo in the board’s meeting packet that outlines the history of the West Service Area and its water rates. When Sun bought its property from the town in 2018, it agreed to make necessary improvements, including to the water system, Cherry said…Cherry’s memo states the agreement also requires Sun to cover all the costs involved with operating the West Service Area system…In February 2021, SGM, the town’s engineers, completed a draft rate study for the West Service Area. It used estimates for water usage and total cost of operation provided by Sun, according to Cherry. Those figures came in at 69,562,125 gallons and $527,900 for 2023, respectively. SGM used the number to estimate that 2023 potable water rates in the West Service Area would be $7.59 per thousand gallons. When Sun later applied for initial acceptance of its water system improvements, it prompted a final rate study, which SGM completed in August 2022. Cherry wrote in his memo that the study used updated figures for water usage and total cost of operation based on data collected by the town.
I’m heading up to the Colorado River headwaters with Mrs. Gulch this morning for the start of a few days of touring next to the river. Posting may be intermittent if I’m too awestruck to doomscroll on the Web. There’s also a chance we may find ourselves driving some of the tribs.
Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.
Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:
This Week’s Drought Summary
A complex, slow-moving storm system delivered heavy rain across much of the nation’s mid-section, but largely bypassed some of the country’s driest areas in southwestern Kansas and western Oklahoma, as well as neighboring areas. Still, the rain broadly provided much-needed moisture for rangeland and pastures, immature winter grains, and emerging summer crops. Significant rain spread into other areas, including the southern and western Corn Belt and the mid-South, generally benefiting crops but slowing fieldwork and leaving pockets of standing water. Excessive rainfall (locally 4 to 8 inches or more) sparked flooding in a few areas, including portions of the western Gulf Coast region. Little or no rain fell across much of the remainder of the country, including southern Florida, the Northeast, the Great Lakes region, and an area stretching from California to the southern Rockies. Warmth in advance of the storm system temporarily boosted temperatures considerably above normal across parts of east-central Plains, western Corn Belt, and upper Great Lakes region. Meanwhile, record-setting heat developed in the Pacific Northwest, setting several May temperature records…
High Plains
Phenomenal rainfall totals led to significant reductions in drought coverage, especially from eastern Colorado and northwestern Kansas into western North Dakota. Goodland, Kansas, received consecutive daily-record totals of 1.50 and 1.12 inches, respectively, on May 10 and 11. Daily-record totals topped 3 inches on the 11th in Imperial, Nebraska (3.56 inches), and Colorado Springs, Colorado (3.18 inches). That marked the wettest May day on record in Colorado Springs, toppling 2.34 inches on May 30, 1935. In Denver, Colorado, where 2.92 inches fell on the 11th, it was the wettest calendar day since May 6, 1973, when 3.27 inches fell. Denver’s storm total (4.40 inches from May 10-12) represented more than 30 percent of its normal annual precipitation. During the week ending May 14, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported double-digit improvements in topsoil moisture rated very short to short in several states, including Nebraska (from 66 to 46%), South Dakota (from 38 to 19%), and Colorado (from 45 to 35%). The rain also helped to revive winter wheat and benefited emerging summer crops. Still, even with the rain, Kansas led the nation on May 14 with 68% of its winter wheat rated in very poor to poor condition. In addition, the rampant storminess largely bypassed some of the extreme to exceptional drought (D3 to D4) areas in a strip extending from southwestern Kansas into eastern Nebraska…
West
Aside from some heavy precipitation in the central Rockies and environs, much of the West experienced warm, mostly dry weather. As a result, there were only minor Western changes to the drought-depiction, some due to further assessment of the impact of cold-season precipitation as the snow-melt pace accelerated. Indeed, a Northwestern heat wave—rare for this time of year—resulted in multiple monthly record highs, starting on May 14. On that date in Oregon, both Astoria and Seaside attained 93°F. Astoria tied a monthly record, originally set on May 16, 2008, while Seaside toppled its monthly mark of 86°F, attained most recently on May 19, 1978. Notably, Portland, Oregon, achieved highs of 90°F or greater on 4 consecutive days, from May 12-15. Prior to this year, Portland’s May record of three 90-degree readings occurred in 1947 and 1987, with only the latter being observed on 3 consecutive days (May 6-8, 1987). Meanwhile in Washington, Hoquiam (91°F on the 14th) posted a monthly record high, shattering the standard of 87°F originally set on May 29, 2007. With a high of 92°F on the 14th, Quillayute, Washington, tied a monthly record first achieved on May 7, 1987. Elsewhere, Western reservoir storage as a percent of average for the date reflected varying degrees of drought recovery. As May began, California’s 154 primary intrastate reservoirs held 28.6 million acre-feet of water, 104 percent of average. However, storage on that date in the Colorado River basin was 15.5 million acre-feet, just 48 percent of average. Still, the surface elevation of Lake Mead has risen nearly 9 feet since setting an end-of month record low of 1,040.92 feet in July 2022…
South
Most of the region remained free of drought, but moderate to exceptional drought (D1 to D4) persisted in parts of central and western Texas and across the northwestern half of Oklahoma. During the drought-monitoring period, ending on the morning of May 16, extremely heavy rain drenched the western Gulf Coast region, especially near the central Texas coast. On May 10, Palacios, Texas, measured 6.21 inches of rain—part of a very wet stretch that included an additional 3.93 inches on May 13-14. Heavy showers extended northeastward into southeastern Oklahoma, northern Louisiana, Arkansas, and western Tennessee. By May 14, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that topsoil moisture was rated 30% surplus in Arkansas, along with 29% in Louisiana. Farther west, however, serious drought impacts persisted, despite spotty showers. Statewide in Texas, rangeland and pastures were rated 51% very poor to poor on May 14. Any rain was generally too late for the southern Plains’ winter wheat, which is quickly maturing. More than half of the wheat—52 and 51%, respectively, in Texas and Oklahoma—was rated very poor to poor by mid-May. A recent estimate by the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicated that 32.6% of the nation’s winter wheat will be abandoned—highest since 1917—including 70.1% of the Texas crop…
Looking Ahead
Showers and thunderstorms will linger for the next couple of days across the lower Southeast, in the vicinity of a weakening cold front, with an additional 1 to 3 inches of rain possible in some areas. Meanwhile, another cold front will race eastward across the northern U.S., generating showers before reaching the Atlantic Coast on Saturday. Rainfall associated with the Northern cold front will be short-lived, with most locations receiving less than an inch. However, late-week thunderstorms may become heavy along the tail of the cold front, with 1 to 3 inches of rain possible in central and southern sections of the Rockies and Plains. Elsewhere, little or no precipitation will fall during the next 5 days along and near the Pacific Coast. The NWS 6- to 10-day outlook for May 23 – 27 calls for the likelihood of near- or above-normal temperatures and precipitation across most of the country. Cooler-than-normal conditions will be confined to parts of the South, while drier-than-normal weather should be limited to the Pacific Northwest and an area stretching from the mid-South and lower Midwest into the Northeast.
Click the link to read the article on The Washington Post website (Joshua Partlow). Here’s an excerpt:
After nearly a year wrestling over the fate of their water supply, California, Arizona and Nevada — the three key states in the Colorado River’s current crisis — have coalesced around a plan to voluntarily conserve a major portion of their river water in exchange for more than $1 billion in federal funds, according to people familiar with the negotiations. The consensus emerging among these states and the Biden administration aims to conserveabout 13 percent of their allocation of river water over the next three years and protect the nation’s largest reservoirs…But thorny issues remain that could complicate a deal. The parties are trying to work through them before a key deadline at the end of the month, according to several current and former state and federal officials familiar with the situation…
State officials have suggested they could make a deal on their own and are resisting a May 30 deadline to comment on the alternatives the federal government has laid out in that process, according to people familiar with the talks. The review process is intended to define Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s authority to make emergency cuts in states’ water use, even if those cuts contradict existing water rights. These developments represent a new phase in the long-runningtalks about the future of the river. For much of the past year, negotiations have pitted California against Arizona, as they are the states that suck the most from Lake Mead and will have to bear the greatest burden of the historic cuts that the Biden administration has been calling for to protect the river. But these states now appear more united than ever and are closing their differences with the federal government, even as significant issues remain unresolved…
Some water authorities in the West want to ensure that any deal that emerges would entail binding commitments among the Lower Basin states, which draw from Lake Mead and consume more of the river each year than the states of the Upper Basin: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
“We want to support the Lower Basin if they have significant additional reductions, verifiable, binding and enforceable,” said Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s commissioner for the negotiations. “Are we going to make a choice to do better? If we don’t want the secretary to manage us, can we show we can manage ourselves?”
[…]
But the bleak reservoir levels outlined in that review date back to September and the weather has improved markedly since then. Abundant snow cloaked the Rocky Mountains over the winter and atmospheric rivers doused California’s drought. Water levels in the big reservoirs have started to rise. Colorado River experts have grown increasingly confident that the most draconian cuts in fact wouldn’t be needed, at least this year. And the $4 billion in federal funding from the Inflation Reduction Act pledged to this problem meant that those that voluntarily gave up their rights to water would be well-compensated for it. Those conditions helped the Lower Basin negotiators come up with a plan to volunteer about 3 million acre-feet of cuts total until 2026, when a major renegotiation of the rules of the river is scheduled to begin. This scale of cuts is smaller than some of the most dire scenarios outlined in the environmental review if reservoirs had continued to plummet.
Click the link to read “Western states and feds are closing in on a landmark deal to prevent Lake Mead from plummeting further” on the CNN webslite (Ella Nilsen). Here’s an excerpt:
Top water negotiators from California, Arizona and Nevada have discussed leaving 3 million acre-feet of water in Lake Mead over the next four years, the sources said – while cautioning negotiations with the US Interior Department were fluid and could change. The tentative amount would be around 10% of the states’ normal water allocation and would be in addition to previously agreed-to cuts that were negotiated in 2019 and 2007. The federal funding being offered for water cuts was part of $4 billion in drought relief funding passed in the Inflation Reduction Act. States and the US government are trying to clinch a framework agreement ahead of May 30, the end of the comment period for a dramatic environmental analysis released by federal officials last month. That analysis could force the three states to cut nearly 2.1 million additional acre-feet of their Colorado River usage in 2024 alone. At the time, top federal officials said publicly they hoped their proposal would spur discussion among states who have spent the past year sparring over cuts. Even though the states have struck an agreement among themselves, finalizing the details with the federal government could prove tricky. Outstanding issues include a proposal that some of the water cuts go uncompensated by the feds, and whether the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming will go along with the agreement…
Western water officials say a key goal this year is to build water elevation at Lake Mead. Some of that will be refilled naturally from the good winter runoff, but state officials said more should come from farmers, cities and tribes reducing their water use in exchange for federal dollars.
“What I’m hoping happens is people who were considering putting their water into the (federal water cut) program still do,” Arizona’s top water official Tom Buschatzke told CNN in April. “It’s a bit easier to do the conservation when you can be compensated and when it’s really wet, versus when it’s really dry and you’re looking at forced cuts – a lot more uncertainty about how far down Lake Mead could go and how big those cuts might get.”
[…]
Before this month’s breakthrough, California, Arizona and Nevada struck an agreement among themselves, which was unveiled to Deputy Interior Sec. Tommy Beaudreau and Touton at an April 21 meeting in Nevada, one source told CNN. But some new tensions between the states and feds have cropped up over the analysis produced by the Interior Department last month. States were hoping their plan for voluntary, compensated cuts could essentially happen in the place of federal action on the river, an idea federal officials pushed back on, according to one source familiar with the meeting. And there has also been haggling over what level Lake Mead would have to drop to in order for the federal government to be able to step in and make additional unilateral cuts.
Click the link to read the release on Governor Polis’ website:
BOULDER – Today [May 17, 2023], Governor Polis is signing bills into law today to protect Colorado’s water resources and pollinators.
“With these exciting new laws, Coloradans will now have the opportunity to save water at their home, while also saving money, doing their part to be stewards of our environment with composting and recycling, and protect our pollinators,” said Gov. Polis. “We are also continuing to boost Colorado’s role as a national leader in the advanced industries sector, providing bold support to companies that find cures to deadly diseases, innovative solutions to the climate crisis, and keep Colorado at the epicenter of the aerospace industry.”
This morning in Boulder at Harlequin’s Gardens, Governor Polis was joined by First Gentleman Marlon Reis, state lawmakers and advocates as he signed the bipartisan SB23-178 Water-wise Landscaping In Homeowners’ Association Communities sponsored by Senators Sonya Jaquez Lewis and Perry Will, Representatives Karen McCormick and Mandy Lindsay to remove HOA barriers to water-wise landscaping, and giving Coloradans opportunities to save water with the way they plan their yards.
Also this morning, at Long’s Gardens, Governor Polis was joined by First Gentleman Reis, legislators, and advocates as he signed into law SB23-266 Neonic Pesticides As Limited-use Pesticides sponsored by Senators Kevin Priola and Sonya Jaquez Lewis, Representatives Kyle Brown and Cathy Kipp to protect pollinators from harmful toxins. Taking action to save consumers and local governments money and making it easier for consumers to understand what are and are not compostable products, Governor Polis signed into law SB23-253 Standards For Products Represented As Compostable sponsored by Senator Lisa Cutter, Representatives Meg Froelich and Karen McCormick. He also signed SB23-191 Colorado Department Of Public Health And Environment Organics Diversion Study, which directs the agency to examine how to improve the diversion of organic materials away from landfills. That bill was sponsored by Representatives Junie Joseph and Cathy Kipp, and Senator Lisa Cutter.
Later this afternoon at MSU Denver’s Advanced Manufacturing Sciences Institute, Governor Polis will sign the bipartisan SB23-066 Advanced Industry Acceleration Programs sponsored by Senators Cleave Simpson and Chris Hansen, Representatives Shannon Bird, and Mike Lynch to ensure Colorado continues to lead the advanced industry sector, extending the successful Advanced Industry Acceleration programs for a decade. This high-impact initiative provides critical support to advanced industry companies in Colorado so that they can innovate and develop new products and services.
Click the link to read the article on the Water Education website (Caitlin Coleman):
The Colorado Supreme Court heard this month the case, years in the making, of an angler seeking river access that could have wide-reaching implications for public access to wade and fish certain river stretches in Colorado.
Beyond expanding or restricting fishing access, the court’s decision could also have “monumental consequences for water rights in Colorado,” according to an April 2022 brief from Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. The state argues that the case could open the door to what’s known as the public trust doctrine, a move that could upset years of water law and impact how water rights are administered.
The lawsuit pits the State of Colorado and water users against the recreation industry and thousands of people in Colorado who believe that the public should have access to streams, even through segments on private lands.
The case, The State of Colorado v. Roger Hill, was initiated more than a decade ago, after Hill waded into the Arkansas River to fish. But private landowner Mark Warsewa, who, with Linda Joseph, owns the land adjacent to that stretch of river, pelted Hill with small stones, shooing him away from fishing on their land. Upon return to his car, Hill found a note threatening that if he returned to the stream, he would be arrested for trespassing on the property.
In 2018, Hill sued Warsewa and Joseph in federal court for Arkansas River access where the river flows past their property, arguing that the state owns the riverbed, and the public has a right to wade, walk, stand and fish there. The case moved to Colorado district court, where it was initially dismissed. But it was heard by the Colorado Court of Appeals in January 2022, and that court agreed that Roger Hill does have standing and sent the case back to the lower court.
Concerned, Weiser weighed in, asking the state’s Supreme Court to intervene in the suit. According to Weiser’s memo, if the state’s high court upholds the Court of Appeals’ decision, it could “disrupt settled agreements for the use of state rivers,” “threaten statewide collaborative efforts providing public fishing access,” upset the “settled expectations” of landowners and water right holders, and “encourage dangerous behavior.”
In December 2022, the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and to look at one question only: Whether Roger Hill has the right to even bring the lawsuit, a principal known as standing. The court heard oral arguments on May 2[, 2023].
“We’ve been focusing on standing for five years now,” said Hill’s attorney Mark Squillace, a University of Colorado law professor, last month during a talk at the University of Denver Water Law Review’s 2023 Symposium. “The argument we’re making is that Roger Hill has the right to stand on the bed of the river which is held by the state in trust for the people if the court is able to determine, which we think it will, that the Arkansas River at this particular location is navigable for title.”
This is the federal “equal footing doctrine,” which says that upon entering the union, a state gains title to the beds of streams that are navigable. For Colorado that means looking at navigability in 1876.
To be considered “navigable for title,” a river must have been used for commerce at the time of statehood using the type of boat or watercraft that would have been used at that time, Squillace said. This “trust” idea comes in if, indeed, the river was navigable in 1876, in which case, the state should be holding the riverbed “in trust” for the people.
During oral arguments, Supreme Court justices focused much of their questioning not on navigability but on the public trust doctrine.
The doctrine is a common law principle which provides that a state hold “in trust” for the public, the public right to navigable waters and the lands beneath them — it must be adopted at the state level.
“The Colorado Supreme Court has held, multiple times, that there is no public trust doctrine,” said Eric Olson, who represented the state on May 2 for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. Olson has since left the AG’s office.
Establishing a public trust doctrine would require either an amendment to the state constitution or a change in how the Supreme Court interprets the constitution. This case could introduce a public trust doctrine in Colorado.
The Colorado Water Congress, a group that represents water interests in Colorado, opposes any move toward establishing a public trust doctrine because it could undo the way in which the state constitution has been interpreted and interfere with the state’s prior appropriation system of water rights. The state constitution says that water is the property of the public and is subject to appropriation — currently, Coloradans also have a private property right to put water to beneficial use.
According to a fact sheet by the Colorado Water Congress, establishing a public trust doctrine would threaten the state’s “first in time, first in right” prior appropriation system, placing more emphasis on the public’s ownership of water rather than the rights of private water users. The Colorado Water Congress also argues that a public trust doctrine could prohibit or limit the consumptive use of water, alter the timing of diversions, and could invalidate or interfere with existing water rights.
If the court sides with Hill, it would be “destabilizing” said Steve Leonhart, an attorney with the firm Burns, Figa and Will who represents Colorado Water Congress.
“Common law public trust is problematic in itself. If standing is allowed [in State of Colorado v. Hill], what kind of a can of worms could it open for other litigation?” Leonhart asked. “It would just be the beginning of potential litigation up and down the Arkansas River, potential litigation on other streams, potential litigation on land rights but also on water rights,” he said.
But Squillace said other states have public trust doctrines that allow more public access to streams.
“In virtually every other state in the country, the state enjoys broad access rights,” Squillace said during oral arguments. “We’re worse than any other state. One of the things the state is doing in this case is protecting wealthy private landowners. If the public is entitled to have access to those waterways, that’s something the court should protect.”
Groups who filed briefs in support of Hill include American Whitewater, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, and Colorado River Outfitters Association. Those who filed briefs in support of the state’s arguments include Colorado Water Congress, the landowners, the Colorado Farm Bureau, and the Pacific Legal Foundation.
When Colorado’s high court will rule on the case isn’t clear yet, but attorneys said a decision could come by the end of the year.
Caitlin Coleman is a contributor to Fresh Water News and is editor of Water Education Colorado’s Headwaters Magazine. She can be reached at caitlin@wateredco.org.
Click the link to read the article on the Fort Collins Coloradoan website (Sady Swanson). Here’s an excerpt:
Council members voted 6-1 to approve the proposed “1041 regulations” during their meeting on May 2. Council member Shirley Peel voted against adopting the regulations, which must pass a vote on Tuesday, May 16, to be implemented. Adopting these 1041 regulations gives “the city a tool in our toolbox to have a binding review of a certain set of major infrastructure projects,” Community Development and Neighborhood Services Director Paul Sizemore said during a City Council meeting in February. These projects include major new water or wastewater systems and new highway or interchange projects….Council placed a moratorium on these projects through June 30. The Northern Integrated Supply water delivery project is an example of a project that would be impacted by 1041 rules.
The city’s stated goals for the regulations include:
- Address deficiencies with the city’s Site Plan Advisory Review (SPAR) process, which is the current tool used for such projects.
- Establish predictability for applicants.
- Establish a meaningful public process.
- Incentivize project designs that avoid impacts to critical natural habitats and cultural resources.
Water providers and leadership from surrounding communities criticized the 1041 regulations for hindering regional collaboration on current and future water projects, while representatives from environmental groups asked council to adopt the regulations and continue to look at ways to further protect the city’s natural areas and resources.
Click the link to read the article on the Audubon website (Sam Draper, Arizona Policy Manager, Audubon Southwest):
**Este artículo se puede encontrar en español.**
Throughout the Colorado River Basin, it’s been a wet winter. There is great snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, where the Colorado River and many of its tributaries begin. And in Arizona, the Salt and Verde Rivers benefited from the above average winter precipitation. This spring, Phoenix Valley residents received a beautiful reminder that there is a river running through the heart of the region—the Salt River, or Rio Salado.
The river, which is typically dry due to damming and water demands in the Valley, has been flowing through the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and the cities of Mesa, Tempe, and Phoenix since late March. The Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center sits on the south bank of the river, just two miles south of downtown Phoenix.
Spring flooding used to be a regular occurrence before dams were built in the 1900s on the Verde and Salt Rivers. Indigenous communities have thrived in the region for millennia thanks to these rivers. Spring floods benefit the ecosystem by hydrating the soil, germinating riverside plant seeds, replenishing groundwater, and attracting birds like Great Egrets and Green Herons.
Here are some questions asked and answered about the Salt River/Rio Salado:
- Why is the Salt River flowing now?
- The Salt River Project (SRP) manages the Salt and Verde reservoir systems that bring water into the Phoenix region. This winter created an impressive snowpack that resulted in a special occurrence—the SRP reservoirs filled up to near-capacity. In early March, to prepare for spring’s rising temperatures and increasing snowmelt, SRP began releasing water—from the Verde River through Bartlett Dam and on the Salt River through Roosevelt Dam—to create additional storage capacity within the reservoirs to safely capture the upcoming snowmelt and river runoff.
- How much water has flowed down the river so far?
- According to SRP, more than 700,000 acre-feet of water from the Salt and Verde Rivers has been released from their reservoirs downstream. This has meant there is enough water to flow to the Gila River, and the Gila River has rejoined with the Colorado River near Yuma. One acre-foot of water can provide for approximately 3.5 Arizona households per year.
- Will the Salt River flow like this every time we have a wet winter?
- It depends. When there is more water than the reservoir systems can hold, SRP has to release water into the riverbed (yay!). SRP is also planning infrastructure projects to raise the height of Bartlett Dam to increase the water storage capacity in Barlett Reservoir. This will capture and store more water on the Verde River, for delivery to water users. This could also mean less water released downstream into the Salt River, depending on rain and snowfall amounts.
- Will this wet winter bring us out of drought?
- While this winter provided relief to our short-term drought conditions in Arizona and throughout much of the Colorado River Basin, it would take many years of greater-than-average snow and rainfall to recover from the record-breaking megadrought we are experiencing. To stabilize Lake Mead and Lake Powell, we need to use less water.
- What can we do to support birds, people, habitat, and rivers?
- We can turn towards our waterways—by reinvesting and revitalizing key stretches of rivers with habitat restoration projects to bring back the trees and plants that once thrived, creating not only habitat, but green spaces, bike paths, and community amenities as well.
- We can also manage groundwater throughout all of Arizona. Right now, in more than 80% of the state (outside of the “Active Management Areas”), a landowner can drill a well and pump unlimited amounts of groundwater, even if it causes declines in or dries up neighboring wells; even if it leads to the depletion of a nearby community’s water supplies; and even if the pumping depletes the water flowing in connected rivers.
- Where can I enjoy the Salt River near downtown Phoenix?
- You can visit the Rio Salado Audubon Center at no cost. Located along the Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Area, you can use the accessible trails. Come experience native plants and wildflowers, wildlife like racoons and beavers, and of course, birds—more than 200 species of birds have been sighted along the area. Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and Abert’s Towhees are frequent visitors to the Rio Salado Audubon Center.
We are grateful for years like this one when we see the Salt River come back to life. And while we don’t expect years like this all that often, it reminds us of the importance of rivers, lakes, and steams—for people and birds.
Watch the recent local news coverage of the flowing Salt River / Rio Salado near the Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center:
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Noelle Phillips). Here’s an excerpt:
Environmental advocates said the Democrat-controlled General Assembly created some new policies that should help chip away at air pollution, but the legislators missed out when making changes that could have a sweeping, long-term impact. The successes included a push toward expanded use of electric-powered cars and trucks, lawn equipment and home appliances that should eliminate some greenhouse gas emissions as the state weans itself from a reliance on fossil fuels. But the failures, environmentalists said, hurt the state’s overall goal to get into compliance with the federal Clean Air Act by reducing ozone pollution. The Front Range is listed by the Environmental Protection Agency as being in “severe non-attainment” for failing for years to meet federal clean air standards. On that front, HB23-1294, a bill that would have closed loopholes for new oil and gas permits, was gutted in order to win over Gov. Jared Polis’ support. And a massive land-use bill, which would have benefitted the environment by building more dense housing projects and encouraging people to drive less, failed…
The land-use bill, which would have reshaped how the state plans housing development, was mostly discussed as an answer to Colorado’s affordable housing issues. But SB23-213 was backed by environmentalists, who believed it would reduce sprawl and eliminate people’s reliance on cars by building more dense housing around places where people live, work and play. Denser development also means buildings use less energy and water, said Matt Frommer, senior transportation associate at Southwest Energy Efficiency Project. Frommer said he was so disappointed in the bill’s failure that he had to step away from talking about it for a few days after the session ended…
Kirsten Schatz, a clean air advocate for the Colorado Public Interest Research Group, was pleased that the legislature approved tax credits of up to 30% for Coloradans who buy electric-powered lawn and garden equipment…
SB23-016: Greenhouse gas emissions reduction measures
This lengthy bill created multiple measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and changes the goals for how fast the state must meet certain benchmarks between 2035 and 2045. The bill created a 30% tax credit for electric lawn and garden equipment and added regulations to how the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission regulates greenhouse emissions from fracking. Polis signed the bill on Thursday.
HB23-1294: Pollution protection measures
This bill requires the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to conduct a rulemaking to define, evaluate, and address the cumulative impacts of oil and gas drilling by April 2024. It also updates the complaint process by requiring the commission to respond to public complaints within 30 days, requiring the commission to consider credible evidence of pollution violations.
The bill eliminates a statute of limitations loophole as well as what’s known as the “start-up, shutdown and malfunction” loophole. It also establishes an interim legislative committee to craft more comprehensive legislation tackling these air pollution problems.
The bill is awaiting the governor’s signature and proponents believe he will do so.
HB23-1272: Decarbonization tax credits
The bill creates a package of tax credits for consumers who buy climate-friendly technology such as electric cars and trucks, electric bicycles and heat pumps. Polis signed the bill on Thursday.
HB23-1161: Environmental standards for appliances
The bill sets tougher emissions standards for new gas furnaces and water heaters sold in Colorado, phases out the sale of fluorescent light bulbs that contain mercury and sets new energy- and water-saving standards for appliances. The bill is on the governor’s desk but has not been signed.
HB23-1233: Electric vehicle charging and parking requirements
This bill accelerates the implementation of new electric vehicle charging requirements for new buildings, increasing the availability of charging stations at apartment buildings and condominiums. It also created a standard definition of disproportionately impacted communities to guide the state in establishing environmental programs in the areas that need them the most. The bill has not been signed.
SB23-291: Utility regulation
The bill’s goal was to lower utility bills for Coloradans but environmentalists liked it because it pushes the state further away from a reliance on natural gas. It prohibits utility companies from charging their customers to subsidize natural gas service for new construction projects and requires the Public Utilities Commission to stop charging customers who choose to stop using natural gas. Polis signed the bill on Thursday.
HB23-1134: Electric options in home warranties
A homeowner with a warranty contract can opt for electric alternatives to gas-fueled equipment such as heat pumps. The governor signed the bill on March 31.
HB23-1234: Solar permitting
The bill streamlined solar permitting and cut red tape to accelerate the use of solar energy. Polis signed the bill on Thursday.
SB23-253: Compost labeling
The bill creates a standard for labels on products that can be composted, such as trash bags, paper plates, disposable cups and utensils. The bill has not been signed by the governor.
SB23-266: Pesticide restrictions
This bill limits the sale of neonic pesticides, which are harmful to bees and other pollinators. The bill is awaiting the governor’s signature.
HB23-1252: Thermal energy
The bill advanced the adoption of clean geothermal energy heating and cooling systems. Polis signed it on Thursday.
Click the link to read the article on the Sterling Journal-Advocate website (Jeff Rice). Here’s an excerpt:
According to a statement issued by Logan County Emergency Management Officer Jerry Casebolt Monday afternoon, the river level at the Atwood Gauge had peaked at 7.45 feet, nearly two feet below any level requiring action.
Casebolt said the high water had made it to the Crook bridge on County Road 55 early Monday, with river flow rising from 323 cubic feet per second on Sunday to 2,180 cfs on Monday. He said the Fort Morgan gauge was reporting 12.11 feet on Monday afternoon, down from 13.72 ft yesterday at this time. Meanwhile, the gauge at Kersey also had leveled off at 5.45 ft, which is down from its peak of 8.41 ft on Saturday morning. The high water was caused by nearly two days of continuous rain along the Front Range, The hardest rainfall seemed to occur in the central metro area, with Aurora recording 5.1 inches of rain between May 9 and May 12. In that same time period Denver reported 5 inches, Boulder 2.5 inches, Longmont 2.3 inches, Broomfield 3.5 inches, Loveland 2.4 inches, Fort Collins 2.25 inches and Greeley 4 inches.
While the runoff will subside over the next day or so, it will be followed by snowmelt as temperatures become warmer in the coming week. Daily highs along the Front Range should be in the upper 60s and upper 70s the rest of the week, with periods of possible thunderstorms at the end of the week.
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
It’s avalanche season! It’s flood season! It’s fire season! And it’s happening all at the same time in a relatively small geographical area. I mean, so far there aren’t fires setting off avalanches, or avalanches dousing fires, at least not that I’ve heard of, but still.
Big Water: We filled you in on some of the flooding and its consequences last week. Parachute, Colorado, was partially inundated at around the same time. The Yampa River in northwestern Colorado cranked up to nearly 20,000 cubic feet per second, which isn’t a record or anything but is still impressive. The San Juan River near Bluff got up to 5,800 cfs and is likely to go significantly higher in the second half of the month, as Navajo Dam operators start releasing 5,000 cfs — yeehaw! — beginning May 15. That will combine with high-elevation snowmelt to make for some fast and fun rafting, I reckon. Inflows into Lake Powell (from the San Juan, Colorado, Dirty Devil, and Escalante Rivers) have totaled more than 56,000 cfs at one time during the last couple of weeks, causing the reservoir’s surface level to shoot up about 12 feet since it’s mid-April low-point. And flows in the Virgin River in southwestern Utah are hovering above 1,000 cfs, making it likely that the popular Narrows area in Zion National Park may not be open for a while.
There’s more water on its way. While the snow has completely melted from most low- and mid-elevation areas, the mountains still hold a substantial amount of frozen water. In fact, it’s enough to form harmful or deadly …
… Avalanches: Twenty-five people have been killed by sliding snow in the U.S. so far this season, with 12 of the fatalities coming in March, April, and May. Eleven of the fatalities were in Colorado, making this season among the state’s deadliest since 1951. While the big snow may have contributed to the high numbers, it should be noted that the deadliest avalanche year was 2020-21, when the snowpack was generally pathetic. The number of fatalities in any given year are more likely a function of the number of people in the backcountry combined with the snowpack’s stability, no matter how much of it there is.
One of the more dramatic accounts of an avalanche doesn’t end with a fatality, thankfully, although it sounds like it was darned close. It occurred on King Solomon Mountain near Silverton, Colorado, earlier this month, when a group was getting in some spring skiing. First one skier set off a slide, escaping relatively unscathed. Then another did the same, with graver consequences. Connor Ryan, the first skier, described the harrowing events in an Instagram post:
“I was caught & carried a few hundred feet and left in an exposed place with tremendous overhead hazard and additional avalanche risk. My friend Ryan (@rymcc199) was caught and carried over 1600 feet and suffered a severe compound fracture of his femur, which separated his leg almost entirely at the knee.”
Ouch. Thanks to the efforts of Connor and their companions along with the Silverton search and rescue folks, all ended as well as one could hope, given the circumstances. Read about it in Connor’s Instagram post by clicking below. Be sure to watch his videos, too — if you want to be eternally terrified of skiing, that is:
But hanging out up high in the snow probably will keep you safe from … Fires: Yes, it seems that even with the big winter snows and the wet spring and all the water in the rivers the landscape in some places remains flammable. The Las Tusas Fire in San Miguel County, New Mexico, reportedly was sparked around mid-day on May 10 and reported that afternoon. By that evening it had blown up to 1,000 acres and burned several structures with zero containment. The fire is near the burn scar of last year’s massive Hermit Peak-Calf Canyon blaze.
Random Real Estate Room
Last week I wrote about Bluff, Utah, getting gentrified. What I failed to mention is the effort to mitigate some of that gentrification. So let’s re-up this one, since these folks still need to raise more funds for this important purchase:
The Wildlands Conservancy has launched an effort to acquire a 320-acre private parcel at the lower end of Cottonwood Wash near Bluff, Utah, and at the far southeastern edge of Bears Ears National Monument. Why bother with 320 acres when you’ve got a 1.3 acre national monument right next to it? Because if it remains in private hands, the parcel — through which Lower Cottonwood Wash is accessed — could be developed, disturbing cultural sites in that stretch of canyon, and/or closed off to passers-through, potentially putting an important chunk of public land off-limits to the public. The effort needs a lot of cash to buy this valuable parcel. To learn more about the project and to donate, check out the Cottonwood Wash Acquisition site.
Tidbits
- Remember the Land Desk dispatch about Rico and the land-sale there? If so, you might also remember the mention of Atlantic Richfield, the mining company doing reclamation there, suing the corporate descendants of other mining companies to get them to foot a bit of the hefty ($63 million or more) cleanup tab. The court finally handed down a decision and it’s not so good for Atlantic Richfield: Quite simply, they waited too long to sue, so the only relief they’ll get is reimbursement of a $400,000 payment to the EPA. I gotta say, that kind of sucks. I mean, it’s true that Atlantic Richfield knowingly took on liability for the site when it purchased it back in the 1970s. But they never actually mined it; most of the mess was made by their predecessors. So shouldn’t the predecessors have to help out a bit? Probably so. But I guess the law doesn’t agree.
- Last October, at the same time that President Biden designated Camp Hale National Monument, he also announced a proposal to ban new oil and gas development or mining on 220,704 acres along Western Colorado’s Thompson Divide. Biden’s proclamation was all that was needed for the national monument to become official, thanks to the Antiquities Act. But the Thompson Divide mineral withdrawal requires a more lengthy process, which got under way earlier this month. The Forest Service will be accepting public comments until June 16.
- Enchant Energy just won’t give up on its quest to keep Four Corners area coal plants cranking out juice and polluting indefinitely. Enchant is the startup that emerged in 2019 for the sole purpose of taking over the San Juan Generating Station in northwest New Mexico and spending $1.6 billion to install carbon capture and keep operating the plant for years into the future. That effort fell through and the San Juan plant stopped mucking up the air last September. So now Enchant has just shifted its plans about a dozen miles to the south, to the Four Corners coal plant on the Navajo Nation. The U.S. Energy Department has selected the Navajo Transitional Energy Company — which owns a small percentage of the power plant — “to begin award negotiations” to vie for federal subsidies for its carbon capture proposal. This project would have all of the same drawbacks as the San Juan proposal. So …
Foto Friday
Satellite photos, that is, along with some snowpack charts that show:
- How much more snow there still is in the high country to feed runoff;
- How much more show there is now than there was one or two years ago;
- What a snowpack chart looks like on the ground, if you will.
Let’s start with the summit of Wolf Creek Pass and surrounding areas. Here’s the snowpack chart. You can see that they in late-March/early-April the snowpack was reaching the highest levels on record. But it started to melt off very quickly — possibly in part due to dust on the snow — and it looks like a few warm days could bring it down to median levels or even below. Still, significantly more snow remains than at this same time in 2022, boding well for the San Juan River and the Rio Grande.
Now we fly our satellite to the west, and zoom in on the La Plata Mountains and the surrounding lowlands. This time the comparison is between this year and 2021, which was especially dismal in the La Platas, snow-wise, leading to one of the driest summers for farmers in recent memory. It’s probably safe to say the ditches won’t run dry this year. While snow levels didn’t get into record-breaking territory, they were substantial (poking into the 90th percentile), and the snowmelt seems to be a bit slower than usual, thanks to cooling and a bit of new snow in the last couple of days.
The Land Desk is a reader supported publication. You know what that means, right? Upgrade or sign up for a paid subscription now and get access to all of the archives, unlock premium content and feel darned good about yourself.
Click the link to go to the Cottonwood Wash Acquisition Project website (The Wildlands Conservancy):
Your donation today directly supports The Wildlands Conservancy’s acquisition and stewardship of a 320-acre private property at the mouth of Cottonwood Wash. Its location at the southern boundary of Bears Ears National Monument controls access to tens of thousands of acres and dozens of miles of Cottonwood Wash and its tributaries. This important inholding is a crucial piece of the puzzle for protecting the larger landscape.
If the property is not acquired for conservation, it could be developed for private use, locking tribal members, researchers, scientists, and the public out of a critical portion of Bears Ears National Monument. Such a disastrous loss of access would prevent cultural site stewardship and ceremony, archaeological research, outdoor education, ecological restoration, spiritual refreshment, and world-class recreation.
Successful acquisition of Cottonwood Wash will result in the conveyance to each of the five Tribes in the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition a conservation and cultural use easement, ensuring that the property is never developed and that the Tribes will have access to the property’s unique cultural resources in perpetuity.
Together, we can protect this beautiful section of Cottonwood Wash, leveraging a small conservation acquisition into greater protections for and access to the third largest national monument in the lower 48 states.
One hundred percent of your donation supports the acquisition and stewardship of Cottonwood Wash.
Click the link to read the article on the Wyofile website (Dustin Bleizeffer):
KEMMERER—Despite the engineering, finance and permitting challenges that have dogged the U.S. nuclear power industry for decades, Wyoming can count on the successful launch of the Natrium nuclear power plant here, according to TerraPower officials and the company’s owner, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates. The plant is slated to begin operation in 2030.
“I look forward to coming and seeing this plant as it becomes reality,” Gates told a packed room of local and state leaders at the Best Western Plus Fossil Country Inn & Suites on Friday. “We’ll have lots of challenges building this in real life, but we’ve put a lot of innovation in it to keep it simple and to make sure that we don’t run into any surprises as we move along.”
Gates and a team of TerraPower leaders held several meetings with state and local officials to provide an update on the project touted as an economic boon that will help Kemmerer, Diamondville and other regional communities shift to a lower-carbon energy economy.
The $4 billion Natrium demonstration project is part of Gates’ vision for an “advanced” nuclear energy design that can be replicated throughout Wyoming and the world — a vital investment desperately needed to meet the global challenges of climate change and growing demand for electricity, according to Gates.
“This is a design 12 years in the making,” Gates said. “This is a pioneering move that would be a big part of how we keep electricity reliable and keep the United States at the forefront of providing energy technology.”
Natrium project
The promise of TerraPower’s Natrium design is its small industrial footprint combined with a liquid-sodium cooled “fast reactor,” according to the company. The Natrium plant will generate 345 megawatts of steady electric generation and includes a power storage component that allows it to “flex” up to 500 megawatts for short periods.
The design requires less water and produces less nuclear fuel waste, according to TerraPower. The company says the reactors are ideal for plugging into existing coal-fired power plant infrastructure — a critical solution for communities reliant on coal plants that are slated for retirement.
That’s why TerraPower chose to site its first Natrium reactor near the Naughton power plant outside Kemmerer. One of three coal-burning units at Naughton has already been converted to natural gas, and PacifiCorp plans to convert the other two units to natural gas in 2026.
Once the Natrium reactor is in operation, PacifiCorp plans to include the plant in its power generation fleet. TerraPower and PacifiCorp are considering adding five more Natrium reactors at existing coal-fired power plants in Wyoming and Utah.
‘This is real’
TerraPower’s selection of Kemmerer to launch its Natrium fleet has created a lot of anticipation for a region of the state that’s suffered from the decline in coal power. Financing and licensing new nuclear reactors is a notoriously difficult feat. Although TerraPower promises to clear those hurdles, the company already has had to push back its planned in-service date by two years due to a fuel supply snag.
The Natrium design requires high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel. TerraPower cut ties with the Russian state-owned Tenex — the only facility in the world with the capacity to supply commercial volumes of HALEU — after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Although TerraPower was already working with Congress and the Department of Energy to expand the U.S. commercial HALEU supply chain, the Natrium project may now depend on how quickly the federal government can “downblend” enough weapons-grade uranium, according to the company.
Despite the challenge, TerraPower expects to begin to receive its first HALEU fuel deliveries in 2025. Construction on the non-nuclear portions of the plant will begin in 2024.
“We’re going to start that activity as soon as we get the environmental permits because we really want to show you all that this is real,” TerraPower President and CEO Chris Levesque said…
Dustin Bleizeffer is a Report for America Corps member covering energy and climate at WyoFile. He has worked as a coal miner, an oilfield mechanic, and for 25 years as a statewide reporter and editor primarily… More by Dustin Bleizeffer
Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Monica Nigon). Here’s an excerpt:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently made re- visions to its Lead and Copper Rule, which will require the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) to take steps to verify that water pipes of homes, businesses, schools and child care facilities aren’t made of lead. District Engineer/Manager Justin Ramsey explained this could include inspecting meter pits or questioning homeowners…
Ramsey added that PAWSD has been taking 120 samples per year for the last five to six years and has never found a detectable amount of lead in any homeowner’s or business’ water. Yet the new update requires the pipes in every home and business to be verified to be lead-free. PAWSD can do this by visual inspections or asking the homeowner, Ramsey explained…
He added that to verify the mate- rial of pipes, PAWSD can look at the meter pit or a crawl space. If it is still unable to verify the material or the structure owner is unsure of the material of their pipes, PAWSD may have to dig up lines to verify that they are made from a material other than lead. Under the update, Ramsey ex- plained, PAWSD will be required to test schools and child care facilities, which was not mandated before.
Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Website (Monica Nigon). Here’s an excerpt:
As of 2 a.m. on May 10, the San Juan River at Pagosa Springs was flowing at 238 percent of normal at 2,940 cubic feet per second (cfs), measured at 9 feet at the gage, according to the San Juan River Basin SNOTEL site, which measures snowpack and river flows and is operated by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
A graph from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) clocks the snow water equivalent (SWE) on Wolf Creek Pass at 135.5 percent of normal as of May 10.
The inflow of water into [Navajo Lake] was 5,791 cfs, as opposed to May 9, 2022, when the inflow was 2,575 cfs…Furthermore, the Navajo River near Chromo sits much higher than average, running at 239 percent of normal as of May 10.
“The reservoirs are full,” said District Manager Justin Ramsey of the Pagosa AreaWater and Sanitation District (PAWSD), “and there’s still a lot of snow up there. I think it will probably be a good year.”
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
On Colorado’s North Fork Valley, Mark Waltermire can grow hundreds of varieties of vegetables. He hopes to soon add electricity to his community offering.
At his 16-acre Thistle Whistle Farm on Colorado’s Western Slope, Mark Waltermire has become skilled at converting sunshine into useful products.
He grows several varieties of sweet corn and potatoes, 100 types of hot peppers, close to 50 varieties of sweet peppers, and more than 150 varieties of heirloom tomatoes on his farm near Hotchkiss, in the North Fork Valley. For good measure he also grows ground cherries, bitter melons and long beans. His is a museum of agricultural productivity and possibilities.
By May of 2024, he also hopes to be producing a half-megawatt of electricity in synergy called agrivoltaics.
Thistle Whistle is part of an agrivoltaics project that has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, one of 25 grants handed out as part of the National Community Solar Partnership. The program was launched in January in an attempt to further community-based solar projects.
Denver-based SunShare LLC also won a $50,000 award for expansion of a project in New Mexico. It has community solar gardens in Colorado and several other states.
The two Colorado-based programs will be eligible to win grants of up to $200,000 in the next round of the competition. Yet a third stage will offer grants of up to $150,000. The program altogether has $10 million in funding.
In the North Fork Valley project, another small farm is yet to be incorporated. The rules require projects of a megawatt of generation or more and preferably in more than one location. Total production capacity is capped at five megawatts, still well short of the 20 megawatts that defines the lower limit of utility-scale solar.
Waltermire had community goals in mind when he began talking about inserting solar panels amid his rows of vegetables and fruits. He believes in the idea of locally generated electricity and at modest scales.
Personal frustration also drove his quest to pursue agrivoltaics. Sunshine, his benefactor, can be an abuser.
“There are several things I would like to grow but don’t because of the intensity of the sunlight and the heat,” he says. “Agrivoltaics, if set up properly, will enable me to grow things that I love to grow but shy away from in the middle of summer, especially.”
Greens, such as for salads, have been difficult during summer in a valley where mid-summer temperatures often exceed 90 degrees. As for sweet peppers, they grow well but tend to blister when ripening. Waltermire thinks a bit of shade might create what he calls “more gentle” growing conditions.
What does survive the blistering summer sun gets offered at farmers’ markets from Telluride to Aspen and beyond to the Front Range.
Pete Kolbernschlag, director of the Paonia-based Colorado Farm & Food Alliance, the lead in the application, said he hopes to create a model in Delta County for rural climate action.
This is from Big Pivots 74. Please consider subscribing or passing this story along
In growing plants and harvesting electricity, there can be tradeoffs, he says, but the goal here is to figure out where exactly those tradeoffs are maximizing production but also maximizing production of electricity.
“Those are the types of questions we are interested in examining. What are the benefits to both—and where are the tradeoffs, and how do you manage the systems to try to get the best returns from either of those systems?” explains Kolbernschlag.
Water ranks high among the questions that team members hope their project can answer. Specifically, how much can the shade of solar panels aid in retention of soil moisture? And how can soil moisture help cool panels and make them more productive?
Brad Tonnesson, a research scientist at the Rogers Mesa Research Station, has agreed to conduct research into these questions about agrivoltaics.
Whether this project goes forward, though, still remains in doubt. It all comes down to costs and revenue. Can Waltermire and other small farmers create enough revenue to offset their investments? The local electrical cooperative, Delta-Montrose Electric, will accept the electricity, but still to be determined is how much it will pay.
Waltermire says he also needs to get funding before he can realistically start planning what he will grow next year.
This project must be seen as a decidedly small-scale venture with an emphasis on local and community. Larger projects have provoked animosity.
For example, an October 2022 story in the Guardian (‘It got nasty’: the battle to build the US’s biggest solar power farm) told a story from Indiana where 13,000 acres of prime farmland have been targeted for solar panels. A wealthy landowner has set out to defeat the proposal, and—well, the headline sums it up.
“The ongoing fight is a sobering reminder of how (President Joe) Biden’s ambitions for a mass transition to renewables, aimed at averting the worst ravages of the climate crisis, will in significant part be decided by the vagaries and veto points of thousands of local officials, county boards and (organized) opposition (by wealthy landowners) across the U.S,” the Guardian says.
That same article points to both sources of tensions and irony amid these fields of primarily corn.
One of the farmers who wants to lease 1,750 acres of his land for the solar project sees “solar is an evolution of farming rather than a betrayal of it. He already harvests the sunlight for his crops, he reasons. He considers fears of food shortages taking land out of production overblow given that 40% of all U.S. corn is already mashed up for another form of energy—ethanol, which is added to gasoline. Farmers are also routinely paid by the federal government to keep tracts of land free from crops, in order to bolster the price of corn.”
As for local economic benefits, that same farmer In Indiana says he will make five times more from leasing his land for harvesting and converting sunlight into electricity than he gets for growing corn.
Colorado has no large-scale plans at the same stage for solar. NextEra Energy and a corporate farmer, Crossroads Agriculture, recently announced their plans for one gigabyte of energy, although on dryland and not irrigated farmland. See: “A gigawatt of solar in Colorado’s wheat country.”
Xcel Energy has been taking bids and very likely has some other interesting and ambitious proposals for solar farms along its 550- to 600-mile (and $1.7 to $2 billion) high-voltage transmission line looping around eastern Colorado.
In Delta County, a far, far smaller proposal ignited controversy. That 80-megawatt project on Garnett Mesa was vetoed by county commissioners in response to opposition from neighbors who objected to industrial power production in an agricultural setting. Guzman Energy and others, agreed to run sheep amid the panels, and the commissioners approved it.
The North Fork team envisions something much smaller a megawatt or two instead of 80 or 8,000.
“It will take a lot of different approaches to get the energy we need from renewables, and where we locate them and how we can co-locate them with other uses will be super important questions,” says Kolbernschlag.
This is not the only model, he explains, but rather one that is community scale and with direct community benefits.
“Innovative solar projects involving agrivoltaics and community ownership models promise significant benefits for rural agricultural communities, and there isn’t a better place than the Western Slope to demonstrate that potential and to provide a model that can be replicated,” says team member Alex Jahp, who works at Paonia-based Solar Energy International, which trains solar installers.
Jahp also points to Delta County’s warming climate. “Delta County is one of the places facing the worst effects of climate change in terms of temperature rise,” he points out.
At his farm, which he has been working for 18 years, Waltermire says he hasn’t necessarily detected warming and aridification trends. What he is confident he has sene is greater variability. “Just crazy weather events seem to be more common,” he says.
What drew him to farming? “It does seem like I have found my passion, and the challenge is to make it work. I would be unhappy if I didn’t have a challenge in life,” he says. He also has found that being part of a community and playing a supportive role in that community is crucial to his happiness.
In that, making electricity just might complement growing eggplants.
Allen Best is a Colorado-based journalist who publishes an e-magazine called Big Pivots. Reach him at allen.best@comcast.net or 720.415.9308.
Click the link to read the article on The Deseret News website (Amy Joi O’Donoghue). Here’s an excerpt:
After years of drought, Mother Nature came through this year, and came through big, delivering record snowpack, and with that comes record runoff in many locations.
“We never quite thought we would see this,” Hess added. “It is crazy to think about how much snow is piled up in the mountains.”
[…]
[Darren] Hess said Pineview Reservoir has already been sending water to the Ogden River, which meets up with the Weber River around 12th Street in Ogden. Any flooding that has happened downstream has been the result of controlled releases, he added, as operators are jockeying to make room for more water. The basin is trying to keep Pineview as empty as possible, although that is difficult with an over-the-brim Causey Reservoir upstream that is at capacity. It empties into Pineview…
And Quick emphasized strongly this is not a guessing game for any of the water associations, system operators or anyone else involved in the intricate game of managing water that many people don’t understand — in times of drought and times like this year.
“They are not doing this willy-nilly. Just about every scenario has been analyzed.”
But consider this reality that keeps reservoir operators up at night, with a bottle of antacids at their side:
Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Public Radio website (Michael Elizabeth Sakas and Rachel Estabrook). Here’s an excerpt:
Over the past year, CPR news worked on “Parched,” a podcast about the Colorado River and some of the brightest and boldest ideas to save it. We looked at the history of the river, the 1922 compact, and how the rover has allowed millions of people to live in the West…
How long is the Colorado River and where does it start?
The river is 1,450 miles long and originates near Grand Lake, Colorado, in Rocky Mountain National Park…
How many people depend on the Colorado River?
The Colorado River system supplies tens of millions of people across the West with water to drink, shower, and work, and it irrigates around 5 million acres of farmland…
Is the Colorado River drying up?
In short, yes…
Click the link to read the article on The Washington Post website (Scott Dance). Here’s an excerpt:
A wet and snowy weather pattern for much of the West brought at least a brief reprieve this winter. In the upper river basin, snowpack peaked at more than 150 percent of normal. While that was not as dramatic as what accumulated in California’s Sierra Nevada after a winter of repeated storms, snowfall set records in some parts of southwestern Colorado. The snow was slow to melt in early spring, with colder-than-normal temperatures and periods of mountain snow extending into late April. But early May warmth has triggered a surge of snowmelt. Temperatures rose into the 70s for several days early in the month in the mountains of western Colorado and eastern Utah…
After Lake Powell’s surface dropped to about 3,520 feet above sea level in mid-April, it has been largely rising. That accelerated to an increase of more than a foot per day over the past week, according to data from the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which owns and operates Glen Canyon Dam. The lake’s height reached about 3,533 feet above sea level on Tuesday. And the lake is forecast to rise 70 to 71 feet, in all, by the fall. That allowed the bureau in late April to release torrents of water from Lake Powell downstream as part of an experiment exploring potential rehabilitation of river wildlife and ecosystems along the Grand Canyon…
The water flows into Lake Powell are substantial, but in context, are not reason for celebration, Leeflang said. The forecasted 70-foot rise translates to the lake’s stores of water increasing from about 20 percent of its capacity to 30 percent, he said. [ed. Luke Runyon says that this
From email from Reclamation (Erik Knight):
May 12, 2023
The May 1st forecast for the April – July unregulated inflow volume to Blue Mesa Reservoir is 830,000 acre-feet. This is 131% of the 30 year average. Snowpack in the Upper Gunnison Basin peaked at 138% of average. Blue Mesa Reservoir current content is 434,000 acre-feet which is 52% of full. Current elevation is 7470.4 ft. Maximum content at Blue Mesa Reservoir is 828,00 acre-feet at an elevation of 7519.4 ft.
Based on the May forecasts, the Black Canyon Water Right and Aspinall Unit ROD peak flow targets are listed below:
Black Canyon Water Right
The peak flow target is equal to 6,400 cfs for a duration of 24 hours.
The shoulder flow target is 810 cfs, for the period between May 1 and July 25.
Aspinall Unit Operations ROD
The year type is currently classified as Average Wet.
The peak flow target is currently 14,300 cfs and the duration target at this flow is currently 2 days.
The half bankfull target is currently 8,070 cfs and the duration target at this flow is currently 20 days.
Pursuant to the Aspinall Unit Operations ROD, releases from the Aspinall Unit will be made in an attempt to match the peak flow of the North Fork of the Gunnison River to maximize the potential of meeting the desired peak at the Whitewater gage, while simultaneously meeting the Black Canyon Water Right peak flow amount. The latest forecast for flows on the North Fork of the Gunnison River shows a high peak flow occurring near the middle of next week. Flows in the tributaries downstream of the North Fork confluence are also very high, which will help with meeting the flow targets on the lower Gunnison River at the Whitewater gage.
Therefore ramp up for the spring peak operation will begin on Friday, May 12th, with the intent of timing releases with this potential higher flow period on the North Fork of the Gunnison River. Releases from Crystal Dam will be ramped up according to the guidelines specified in the EIS, with 2 release changes per day, until Crystal begins to spill. The release schedule for Crystal Dam is:
The current projection for spring peak operations shows flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon peaking at 6400 cfs in order to achieve the desired peak flow and duration at Whitewater. Actual flows will be dependent on the downstream contribution of the North Fork of the Gunnison River and other tributaries. Higher tributary flows will lead to lower releases from the Aspinall Unit and vice versa.
Click the link to read the article on the InkStain website (John Fleck):
The Bureau of Reclamation is currently blasting water out the bottom of Glen Canyon Dam as Lake Powell rises with this year’s big snowmelt.
(The big spike is an experimental flow pulse.)
Lake Mead, as a result, is rising for the first time in a while, with the wrecked speedboats disappearing – and with it, the apparent sense of urgency about cutting our water use.
Downstream the big ag districts and municipalities are taking advantage of the wet year to put off decisions about how, in the long term, to bring water use into balance with available supply.
THE LOWER BASIN STRUCTURAL DEFICIT, CIRCA 2023
The classic Reclamation “structural deficit” slide put the gap between available water and use when the Upper Basin meets its legal delivery requirement, and folks in the Lower Basin take their full allotment, at 1.2 million acre feet per year.
Under the latest official Reclamation forecast, the Lower Basin states are reducing their use by 756,000 acre feet below their nominal 7.5 million acre foot allotments. Yay for using less water! But it still falls short of the 1.2 million acre feet needed to close the structural deficit, and is far less than the amount that might be needed to refill a bit, to provide a safety cushion against a run of bad years. The only reason Lake Mead is projected to rise this year is thanks to a big snowpack and a bunch of resulting bonus water from the Upper Basin.
Here are the numbers, with officially forecast 2023 use in millions of acre feet as of May 10, 2023
2023 pct California 4.196 95.4% Arizona 2.334 83.4% Nevada 0.214 71.3% In other words, the pattern of Lower Basin water users putting off hard decisions about reducing their use, depending instead on Upper Basin bonus water, continues. (See “Hookers and Blow on the Lower Colorado River” – this has been going on a while.)
It is possible that Lower Basin use is gonna drop more this year than the official forecast suggests, that the current talking now underway will yield more water use reductions. I keep hearing that. I keep not seeing it in the official numbers.
UPPER BASIN WATER USE REDUCTION EFFORTS
According to the Denver Post’s Conrad Swanson, quoting the Upper Basin’s Chuck Cullom, the Upper Basin’s system conservation program hasn’t come up with much water either
PLEASE TELL US YOUR PLAN
That’s it. That’s my ask of the Colorado River Basin leadership community.
Tell us your plan.
Inkstain will always be free, and is reader supported.
Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
A few months ago a reader and Western water expert clued me in on recent developments related to the Low Flow Conveyance Channel. Had she told me this in person I probably would have blushed and fumbled around for an intelligent response before finally resigning and asking:
Say, what?!
Because, well, I had no friggin’ idea what she was talking about.
And yet, I should have known, because the Low Flow Conveyance Channel — or LFCC — is a classic example of how folks in the West try to engineer their way out of the region’s aridity and, ultimately, fail.
The LFCC might be considered the infrastructure love-child from the coupling of the Rio Grande Compact and, well, silt — a lot of it. The compact, signed in 1938, divided the waters of the Rio Grande between Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Whereas the Colorado River Compact allocates a set amount of water to each group of states, the Rio Grande Compact uses a more complicated distribution formula based on flows at specific river gages.
Among other things, it requires New Mexico to deliver a certain percentage of the Rio Grande’s flow to Elephant Butte Reservoir, where it is stored for Texas. This is strange, I know, because the reservoir is in New Mexico, not Texas, and not even that close to the latter state. But these water compacts can be like that. New Mexico can accrue up to 200,000 acre feet of water debt to Texas and still be in compact compliance, giving the upstreamers some breathing room during dry years.
The Compact went into effect in 1939, a dry year on the Rio Grande; 1940 was similarly meagre, with a peak streamflow under 3,000 cfs at the Otowi Bridge gage. But the Rio flooded, big time, in 1941 and 1942, peaking above 22,000 cfs at Otowi. That kind of big water tends to pick up big silt — especially from the Rio Puerco, a Rio Grande tributary — and when the river started losing energy at the slackwater above Elephant Butte Reservoir, the sediment fell out of the flow, accumulating on the river bed. If you’ve ever rafted the lower San Juan River, you’ve experienced a similarly silty phenomenon below Slickhorn Canyon.
The silt filled in and plugged the existing river channel, sending the water out across a much wider, shallower plain, and forced the railroad to raise its tracks repeatedly along a section that crosses the river. During ensuing low-water years, the river was so spread out that most of it evaporated or seeped into the silt or was sucked up by encroaching tamarisk before reaching the reservoir. Before long, New Mexico was deep in water-debt to Texas, and in 1951 owed the downstream state 325,000 acre-feet, putting New Mexico out of compliance with the compact.
This is where the engineers come in. In order to get the river to Texas they would divert it around the river bed, kind of like providing fish passage around dams for salmon. And they would do this by building a deep, narrow, 75-mile long ditch from San Acacia to the reservoir that would carry water and silt more efficiently and result in less evaporation. It would be called the Low Flow Conveyance Channel because it would convey the river during low flow. Construction began in 1951 and the LFCC went into operation in 1959.
For the next two decades, the LFCC did what it was supposed to do: Carry up to 2,000 cfs of the river’s flow around the river, itself, and deposit it in Elephant Butte Reservoir, where it was stored for Texas. New Mexico’s substantial water debt slowly shrank, finally disappearing in 1972. Despite the channel’s name, during this time it carried most of the river’s water during high flows and low, thus depriving the riparian zone of its life-giving river and altering the ecosystem.
The 1980s were notoriously wet years for most of the Southwest and somewhat perilous times for the infrastructure built to help states comply with water compacts. Glen Canyon Dam, constructed primarily to allow Upper Colorado River Basin states to deliver the obligated amount of water to the Lower Basin, was pushed to the brink by massive snowmelt in 1983 and, to a lesser extent, in 1984.
The Rio Grande ran large during those years, too. Elephant Butte Reservoir filled up completely, inundating the lower reaches of the LFCC. Silt happens, it turns out. When the reservoir levels declined several years later, the last 15 miles of the channel had essentially disappeared under a thick layer of sediment. No longer able to carry water to the reservoir, the LFCC was shut down in 1985 and hasn’t been used to convey the Rio Grande since.
But the first 60 miles or so of the LFCC remains, running alongside the Rio Grande like its more linear twin, separated by an earthen levee built to keep a flooding river from inundating and wrecking the canal. Bizarrely, the river channel is about 10 feet or more above the canal, due to all of that sedimentation over the years, making flooding more likely. And that means more engineering, and maintenance dollars, are required to protect the engineered canal. In a weird Anthropocene-esque twist, the canal now serves an environmental purpose: It catches and conveys irrigation runoff and groundwater to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, keeping the wetlands there wet.
As Rio Grande flows continue to decline and New Mexico piles up water debts to Texas, the possibility of reopening the LFCC grows. The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, which acquired the northern end of the channel from the feds, has talked about using it again to get more river water downstream to Texas (thereby freeing up more Rio Grande water for New Mexico irrigators). And the state engineer’s office asked lawmakers to budget $30 million for the LFCC.
But it would take far more than that to clean out, rehabilitate, and extend the lower section so it could reach the shrinking reservoir. And even then, it could only be used on a limited basis, since diverting the entire flow of the river would run up against endangered species laws and other environmental concerns. Elizabeth Miller wrote a strong piece for NM In Depth about efforts to reopen the channel and environmentalists’ concerns. It’s well worth a read.
For now, however, the Low Flow Conveyance Channel will stand as a reminder that while engineering our way out of a short-term drought may be somewhat effective, it usually doesn’t work in the long-term. To survive ongoing aridification we must dispense with dams and canals and rethink our relationship to this landscape and overhaul the way we use diminishing amounts of water.
This forecast has evolved over the past few months. Notice the huge jump in the April forecast due to a historically wet March
Click the link to read the release on Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s website (Lawrence Pacheco):
May 11, 2023 (DENVER) — The Colorado Natural Resources Trustees today approved a $5 million settlement with the federal government to resolve natural resource damages claims at the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund Site, including damages from the 2015 Gold King Mine blowout.
The United States’ alleged liability stems from two different sources. The U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management manage federal lands within the Bonita Peak Mining District where mining activity historically occurred. Federal law imposes liability for natural resources injuries on owners of sites where they occur. In addition, the trustees alleged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was partly liable for the Gold King Mine release.
The Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety began reclamation efforts at the Gold King Mine in 2008. Beginning in 2014, EPA initiated Superfund response activities focused on assessing a blockage in an adit at the Gold King Mine. On August 5, 2015, while EPA contractors were scraping away material from above the blockage, acidic pressurized water began leaking from the mine. The flow quickly increased in volume and released three million gallons of acid mine-impacted water that had been impounded behind the blockage. The contamination then released into downstream waters including the Animas and San Juan Rivers. EPA immediately conducted an emergency response to address the discharging Gold King mine with an interim water treatment plant.
The EPA listed the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund Site encompassing several dozen abandoned mines on the National Priorities List in September of 2016 and is currently taking response actions to assess and respond to releases of hazardous substances into surface water from historic mining activities within the site. To date, the EPA has spent over $75 million on response efforts at the site.
The $5 million settlement with the federal government announced today will enable the trustees to fund projects to restore damaged natural resources from the spill and other releases of hazardous substances within the Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund Site. The trustees will consult with regional stakeholders—including local governments, not-for-profit groups, and community members—to solicit proposals, and allocate the money for environmental restoration projects.
“The damage to Southwestern Colorado natural resources remains a matter of great concern. In this action, we are securing valuable funds to address these damages and invest in the restoration of natural resources in this part of our state,” stated Attorney General Phil Weiser, chair of the Colorado Natural Resources Trustees. “We have vigilantly pursued claims for natural resource damages and will work hard to invest the funds we have recovered to best serve the affected communities.”
“Inactive and abandoned mines that operated before Colorado had mining laws continue to have unfortunate and ongoing impacts to Colorado’s waters and landscape. The issues surrounding Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund site remain challenging and I appreciate the cooperation among the trustees and the federal government in settling our State’s natural resource damage claims,” said Dan Gibbs, a trustee and the executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. “The Department of Natural Resources and our Division of Reclamation Mining and Safety will continue to work with our federal partners and other entities to reduce the impacts of legacy mining in our state.”
“Preserving our natural resources so we can protect the environmental and public health of Colorado communities is a top priority for our department,” said Jill Hunsaker Ryan, a trustee and the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment. “These funds will support the restoration of natural resources impacted by these damages, help Southwestern Colorado recover, and help us build a healthier state for all. We will continue to take necessary action to protect Colorado’s rivers, lakes, and groundwater from harmful pollutants.”
Colorado’s Natural Resources Trustees have recovered natural resources damages for the site several times in the past.
- In December of 2021, the trustees approved a $1.6 million settlement agreement with Sunnyside Gold Corporation (SGC) to resolve claims that the company caused or contributed to releases of acidic, metals-laden mine wastewater into the Upper Animas River watershed. SGC operated the Sunnyside Mine from 1986 until 1991.
- The trustees received approximately $230,000 in natural resource damages from a 2011 claim against the Standard Metals company regarding its operations at the mining district.
- The State settled with the Blue Tee Corporation in 2018 for $468,000, which can go toward the Superfund cleanup within the mining district or to restoring injured natural resources.
These damages will likely be pooled with the recent settlement money as the trustees solicit proposals for projects from local stakeholders.
For more information about the trustees and the work they do on behalf of Colorado, please visit: coag.gov/office-sections/natural-resources-environment/trustees/.
Click the link to read the article on The Deseret News website (Amy Joi O’Donoghue). Here’s an excerpt:
With the turn of a wheel, 650 milliongallons of water a day will eventually travel from Willard Bay to the ailing Great Salt Lake. Although the lake has risen four feet since its historic low reached in November of last year, four feet is not nearly enough to make the Northern Hemisphere’s largest saline lake recover from years of drought and over diversion from its tributaries…The Weber Basin Water Conservancy District is using its “flood rights” over the course of the next two to four weeks, and in total will deliver 71.6 billion gallons of those water rights to the lake. This is part of the 2.5 billion gallons of water per day flowing past the Willard Canal into the Great Salt Lake.
At the same time, the move will relieve pressure on the Weber River, help to stave off flooding in some areas and give a boost to the lake’s struggling ecosystem which is home to thousands upon thousands of birds…Marcelle Shoop, director of the saline lakes program for the National Audubon Society and executive director of the Great Salt Lake Enhancement Trust, said this is an important step to help connect the bays along the lake, including Bear River, Ogden and Gilbert.
“All these flows are going to the Great Salt Lake to help raise the lake level,” she said, adding that is a good thing for the wildlife that depends on its briny water for sustenance.
Scott Paxman, general manager of the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, said this release happens every 10 years or so and serves a dual purpose as flood control and to help the lake.
Julia Kuzovkina, University of Connecticut and John Campanelli, University of Connecticut
Spring is planting time for home gardeners, landscapers and public works agencies across the U.S. And there’s rising demand for native plants – species that are genetically adapted to the specific regions where they are used.
Native plants have evolved with local climates and soil conditions. As a result, they generally require less maintenance, such as watering and fertilizing, after they become established, and they are hardier than non-native species.
Many federal, state and city agencies rank native plants as a first choice for restoring areas that have been disturbed by natural disasters or human activities like mining and development. Repairing damaged landscapes is a critical strategy for slowing climate change and species loss.
But there’s one big problem: There aren’t enough native seeds. This issue is so serious that it was the subject of a recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The study found an urgent need to build a native seed supply.
As plant scientists who have worked on ecological restoration projects, we’re familiar with this challenge. Here’s how we are working to promote the use of native plants for roadside restoration in New England, including by building up a seed supply network. https://www.youtube.com/embed/S98HAyDfOwY?wmode=transparent&start=0 Landscapers and land managers explain the benefits of planting native plants.
Many stressors can damage and degrade land. They include natural disasters, such as wildfires and flooding, and human actions, such as urbanization, energy production, ranching and development.
Invasive plants often move into disturbed areas, causing further harm. They may drift there on the wind, be excreted by birds and animals that consume fruit, or be introduced by humans, unintentionally or deliberately.
Ecological restoration aims to bring back degraded lands’ native biological diversity and the ecological functions that these areas provided, such as sheltering wildlife and soaking up floodwater. In 2021, the United Nations launched the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to promote such efforts worldwide.
Native plants have many features that make them an essential part of healthy ecosystems. For example, they provide long-term defense against invasive and noxious weeds; shelter local pollinators and wildlife; and have roots that stabilize soil, which helps reduce erosion.
Restoration projects require vast quantities of native seeds – but commercial supplies fall far short of what’s needed. Developing a batch of seeds for a specific species takes skill and several years of lead time to either collect native seeds in the wild or grow plants to produce them. Suppliers say one of their biggest obstacles is unpredictable demand from large-scale customers, such as government and tribal agencies, that don’t plan far enough ahead for producers to have stocks ready.
Most drivers give little thought to what grows next to highways, but the wrong plants in these areas can cause serious problems. Roadsides that aren’t replanted using ecological restoration methods may erode and be taken over by invasive weeds. Ecological restoration provides effective erosion control and better habitat habitats for wildlife and pollinators. It’s also more attractive.
For decades, state transportation departments across the U.S. used non-native cool-season turfgrasses, such as fescue and ryegrass, to restore roadsides. The main benefits of using these species, which grow well during the cooler months of spring and fall, were that they grew fast and provided a quick cover.
Then in 2013 the New England Transportation Consortium – a research cooperative funded by state transportation agencies – commissioned our research team to help the states transition to native warm-season grasses instead. These grasses grow well in hot, dry weather and need less moisture than cool-season grasses. One of us, John Campanelli, developed the framework for selecting plant species based on conservation practices and identified methods for establishing native plant communities for the region.
We recommended using warm-season grasses that are native to the region, such as little bluestem, purple lovegrass, switchgrass and purpletop. These species required less long-term maintenance and less-frequent mowing than the cool-season species that agencies had previously used.
To ensure sound conservation practices, we wanted to use seeds produced locally. Seeds sourced from other locations would produce grasses that would interbreed with local ecotypes – grasses adapted to New England – and disrupt the local grasses’ gene complexes.
At that time, however, there was no reliable seed supply for local ecotypes in New England. Only a few sources offered an incomplete selection of small quantities of local seeds, at prices that were too expensive for large-scale restoration projects. Most organizations carrying out ecological restoration projects purchased their bulk seeds mainly from large wholesale producers in the Midwest, which introduced non-local genetic material to the restoration sites.
Many agencies are concerned that lack of a local seed supply could limit restoration efforts in New England. To tackle this problem, our team launched a project in 2022 with funding from the New England Transportation Consortium. Our goals are to increase native plantings and pollinator habitats with seeds from local ecotypes, and to make our previous recommendations for roadside restoration with native grasses more feasible.
As we were analyzing ways to obtain affordable native seeds for these roadside projects, we learned about work by Eve Allen, a master’s degree student in city planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For her thesis, Allen used supply chain management and social network analysis to identify the best methods to strengthen the native seed supply chain network.
Her research showed that developing native seed supplies would require cooperative partnerships that included federal, state and local government agencies and the private and nonprofit sectors. Allen reached out to many of these organizations’ stakeholders and established a broad network. This led to the launch of the regional Northeast Seed Network, which will be hosted by the Massachusetts-based Native Plant Trust, a nonprofit that works to conserve New England’s native plants.
We expect this network will promote all aspects of native seed production in the region, from collecting seeds in the wild to cultivating plants for seed production, developing regional seed markets and carrying out related research. In the meantime, we are developing a road map for new revegetation practices in New England.
We aim to build greater coordination between these agencies and seed producers to promote expanded selections of affordable native seeds and make demand more predictable. Our ultimate goal is to help native plants, bees and butterflies thrive along roads throughout New England.
Julia Kuzovkina, Professor of Horticulture, University of Connecticut and John Campanelli, PhD Student in Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Connecticut
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
From email from Reclamation (Erik Knight):
The May 1st forecast for the April – July unregulated inflow volume to Blue Mesa Reservoir is 830,000 acre-feet. This is 131% of the 30 year average. Snowpack in the Upper Gunnison Basin peaked at 138% of average. Blue Mesa Reservoir current content is 434,000 acre-feet which is 52% of full. Current elevation is 7470.4 ft. Maximum content at Blue Mesa Reservoir is 828,00 acre-feet at an elevation of 7519.4 ft.
Based on the May forecasts, the Black Canyon Water Right and Aspinall Unit ROD peak flow targets are listed below:
Black Canyon Water Right
The peak flow target is equal to 6,400 cfs for a duration of 24 hours.
The shoulder flow target is 810 cfs, for the period between May 1 and July 25.
Aspinall Unit Operations ROD
The year type is currently classified as Average Wet.
The peak flow target is currently 14,300 cfs and the duration target at this flow is currently 2 days.
The half bankfull target is currently 8,070 cfs and the duration target at this flow is currently 20 days.
Pursuant to the Aspinall Unit Operations ROD, releases from the Aspinall Unit will be made in an attempt to match the peak flow of the North Fork of the Gunnison River to maximize the potential of meeting the desired peak at the Whitewater gage, while simultaneously meeting the Black Canyon Water Right peak flow amount. The latest forecast for flows on the North Fork of the Gunnison River shows a high peak flow occurring near the middle of next week. Flows in the tributaries downstream of the North Fork confluence are also very high, which will help with meeting the flow targets on the lower Gunnison River at the Whitewater gage.
Therefore ramp up for the spring peak operation will begin on Friday, May 12th, with the intent of timing releases with this potential higher flow period on the North Fork of the Gunnison River. Releases from Crystal Dam will be ramped up according to the guidelines specified in the EIS, with 2 release changes per day, until Crystal begins to spill. The release schedule for Crystal Dam is:
Crystal Dam will be at full powerplant and bypass release on May 15th. Crystal Reservoir will begin spilling by May 16th and the peak release from Crystal Dam should be reached on May 18th. The flows in the Gunnison River after that date will be dependent on the timing of the spill and the level of tributary flow contribution. Estimates of those numbers will be determined in the upcoming days.
The current projection for spring peak operations shows flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon peaking at 6400 cfs in order to achieve the desired peak flow and duration at Whitewater. Actual flows will be dependent on the downstream contribution of the North Fork of the Gunnison River and other tributaries. Higher tributary flows will lead to lower releases from the Aspinall Unit and vice versa.
Words and music by Anke Summerhill
Quiet beauty surrounds you
So does the wind the whole year, too
Your red rock canyons are a shelter
From many storms that I’ve been through
Canyons so deep
You can see the stars at noon
It’s a paradise I’m thinking of
Dreaming comes easy
As I’m held within these walls
And the river gently sings her lullaby
Sometimes the silence overwhelms me
Perhaps it’s something in the air
I wish that I could go more often
For I find peace and comfort there
Canyons so deep
You can see the stars at noon
It’s a paradise I’m thinking of
Dreaming comes easy
As I’m held within these walls
And the river gently sings her lullaby
Tiny flowers in the springtime
Where cold water swirls around late frost
This canyon serves as a reminder
Of so much wilderness that’s lost
Canyons so deep
You can see the stars at noon
It’s a paradise I’m thinking of
Dreaming comes easy
As I’m held within these walls
And the river gently sings her lullaby
Dreaming comes easy
As I’m held within these walls
And the river gently sings her lullaby
Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website:
Extreme weather strikes: Seven billion-dollar disasters so far in 2023
Key Points:
- As of May 8, seven billion-dollar weather and climate disasters were confirmed this year. These disasters consisted of five severe storm events, one winter storm and one flooding event.
- Much of the eastern U.S. had a warm start to 2023. For the January–April period, seven states were record warmest with 21 additional states experiencing a top-10 warmest event for this period.
- The average temperature of the contiguous U.S. in April was 51.4°F, which is 0.3°F above average, ranking in the middle third of the 129-year record.
- April precipitation for the contiguous U.S. was 2.40 inches, 0.12 inch below average, ranking in the middle third of the historical record.
Other Highlights:
Temperature
Generally, temperatures were below average from the Northwest to the central Rockies and northern Plains and parts of the southern Plains. Temperatures were above average from the central Plains to the Great Lakes, along the East and Gulf coasts and in parts of the Southwest and southern Plains. Maryland and Delaware ranked second warmest on record for April while New Jersey ranked third, with nine additional states ranking among their top-10 warmest April on record. Conversely, North Dakota ranked 10th coldest on record for the month.
The Alaska statewide April temperature was 16.3°F, 7.0°F below the long-term average. This ranked as the fourth-coldest April in the 99-year period of record for the state. Temperatures were below average across almost the entire state with near-normal temperatures in parts of the Southeast and Aleutians during the month.
For the January–April period, the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 40.9°F, 1.8°F above average, ranking in the warmest third of the record. Temperatures were above average across much of the eastern U.S. with near- to below-average temperatures from the northern Plains to the West Coast. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida each had their warmest January–April period on record. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, West Virginia and South Carolina each had their second warmest, while 14 additional states ranked among their warmest 10 year-to-date periods on record. Nevada and California both ranked 17th coldest on record for this four-month period.
The Alaska January–April temperature was 11.7°F, 1.4°F above the long-term average, ranking in the middle third of the record for the state. Much of the state was near-normal for the four-month period while temperatures were above-average across much of the North Slope and in parts of the southeast and Aleutians.
Precipitation
Precipitation was above average across portions of the Northwest, along the Gulf and East coasts and Upper Midwest and below average from California to the Ohio River Valley and in parts of the northern Rockies and Maine. Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska and New Mexico ranked third to sixth driest on record, respectively. Conversely, Delaware ranked seventh wettest, North Carolina ranked eighth wettest and New Jersey had its 10th-wettest April on record.
Across the state of Alaska, the average monthly precipitation was 2.01 inches, ranking in the middle third of the 99-year record. Conditions were wetter than average across much of the North Slope, eastern Interior and in parts of the Panhandle. Much of the central Interior to the West Coast and parts of the Southeast were near average, while parts of the Aleutians and Northwest Gulf experienced below-average precipitation for the month.
The January–April precipitation total for the contiguous U.S. was 10.22 inches, 0.74 inch above average, ranking in the wettest third of the 129-year record. Precipitation was above average across much of the Southwest and Great Lakes, and in parts of the southern Mississippi Valley, Southeast and Northeast. Wisconsin ranked wettest on record while Michigan ranked fourth and Utah ranked seventh wettest on record, respectively. On the dry side, precipitation was below average across parts of the Northwest, central and northern Plains, Mid-Atlantic and Florida during the January–April period. Maryland ranked 13th driest on record for this four-month period.
The January–April precipitation ranked in the wettest third of the 99-year record for Alaska, with above-average precipitation observed across much of the eastern Interior, North Slope and in parts of the Panhandle while the West Coast was much wetter than average. The central Interior and parts of the Southwest and Southeast were near average while south central Alaska and parts of the Aleutians experienced below-average precipitation during this period.
Billion-Dollar Disasters
There have been seven confirmed weather and climate disaster events, each with losses exceeding $1 billion this year. These disasters consisted of five severe storm events, one winter storm and one flooding event. The total cost of these events exceeds $19 billion, and they have resulted in 97 direct and indirect fatalities. The number of disasters so far this year is the second-highest number recorded during the first four months of a year. Only 2017 and 2020 had more, with eight separate disasters recorded in January-April. The first four months of 2023 places the total, direct costs of the confirmed billion-dollar events ($19.0 billion) in second place behind the first four months of 2021 ($36.1 billion mostly driven by the historical Feb. 2021 winter storm and/ cold wave that crippled the Texas energy grid).
The U.S. has sustained 355 separate weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including CPI adjustment to 2023). The total cost of these 355 events exceeds $2.540 trillion.
Other Notable Events
In less than a 24-hour period, more than 25 inches of rain fell at the Fort Lauderdale Airport on April 13. The event, deemed a 1000-year event by the National Weather Service, smashed the previous one-day record of 14.59 inches of rain set on April 25, 1979.
Several notable weather systems produced severe thunderstorms and a number of tornadoes that impacted portions of the U.S. in April.
- On April 1, a 700-yard-wide EF-3 tornado touched down in Delaware, becoming the widest tornado in the state’s history and tying as its strongest.
- A tornado outbreak occurred across areas of the southern and central Plains on April 19. A total of 29 tornadoes, including two EF-3 tornadoes, was confirmed by the National Weather Service, causing heavy damage and loss of life.
- On April 30, a state of emergency was declared after a rare EF-3 tornado touched down in Virginia Beach, destroying more than 100 structures.
Portions of the Upper Midwest and parts of the mountainous West received additional snowfall in April, adding to an already record- to near-record snowfall season.
- Duluth, Minnesota had its snowiest season on record with 140.1 inches of snow, besting 1995-96 by nearly 5 inches.
- Alta Ski Area in Utah surpassed 900 inches of snowfall on April 25—the most snowfall ever recorded at this ski resort.
- Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming set a new snowfall record with 595 inches this season.
During late April, record winter snowfall across the northern Plains and Upper Midwest quickly melted due to a warm spell, causing the Mississippi River to crest and flood towns in the Upper Mississippi Valley.
According to the National Interagency Fire Center situation report released on April 28, more than 8,000 wildfires have burned more than 250,000 acres across the Southern U.S. this year. This is nearly two-thirds of all fires and acres consumed across the U.S. to date in 2023.
Drought
Monthly Outlook
According to the April 30 One-Month Outlook from the Climate Prediction Center, areas from the Northwest to central Rockies, New England, Florida Peninsula and northern Alaska favor above-normal monthly mean temperatures in May, with the greatest odds likely to occur along eastern Washington to western Montana and southern Florida. The best chances for below-normal temperatures are forecast from California to southwestern New Mexico, Ohio and Tennessee River valleys and parts of the Southeast as well as across southeast Alaska. California to southern Idaho and states along the Gulf Coast, as well as parts of western Alaska, are favored to see above-normal monthly total precipitation. Below-normal precipitation is most likely to occur from the northern Plains to the Great Lakes. Drought improvement or removal is forecast across portions of the southern Plains, Mid-Atlantic and Florida, while persistence is more likely in portions of the West, the Northern to Central Plains and western Puerto Rico. Drought development is likely across the central parts of the Plains and Mississippi River Valley regions and in northwest Puerto Rico.
According to the One-Month Outlook issued on May 1 from the National Interagency Fire Center, portions of western Texas have above-normal significant wildland fire potential during May, while portions of the Southwest and northern Plains are expected to have below-normal potential for the month.
This monthly summary from 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. For more detailed climate information, check out our comprehensive April 2023 U.S. Climate Report scheduled for release on May 11, 2023. For additional information on the statistics provided here, visit the Climate at a Glance and National Maps webpages.
Click on a thumbnail graphic to view a gallery of drought data from the US Drought Monitor website.
Click the link to go to the US Drought Monitor website. Here’s an excerpt:
This Week’s Drought Summary
A strong area of mid-level low pressure, near the West Coast, resulted in anomalously wet weather during the first week of May throughout the Pacific Northwest, Northern Rockies, Great Basin, and California. Scattered thunderstorms brought pockets of heavy rainfall (more than 2 inches), from May 2 to 8, to parts of Texas, central Nebraska, and the Midwest. However, much of Kansas, Missouri, and southern Nebraska missed out on this beneficial rainfall. Following a wet end to April across the East, drier weather prevailed this past week from the Mid-Atlantic south to Florida. 7-day temperatures, ending on May 8, averaged below-normal across most of the East along with California, the Great Basin, and Desert Southwest. Weekly temperatures averaged above-normal across the Great Plains…
High Plains
Convective rainfall, typical for early May, occurred this past week across parts of Kansas and Nebraska. In areas such as central Nebraska, that received more than 2 inches of rainfall and there was a lack of support from SPI at various time scales and NDMC’s objective drought blends, a 1-category improvement was made. However, in areas that missed out on this rainfall, a 1-category degradation was necessary for parts of southern Nebraska and central to eastern Kansas. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 64 and 68 percent of the pastures and ranges for Kansas and Nebraska, respectively, are rated poor to very poor. Abnormal dryness (D0) was expanded westward near and along the Colorado Rockies based on SPIs at various time scales, while an increase in severe drought (D2) coverage was justified for parts of the High Plains of eastern Colorado that missed out on the recent heavier precipitation. Based on multiple indicators including Condition Monitoring Observer Reports, abnormal dryness (D0) was reduced across northern parts of North Dakota…
West
Anomalously wet, cool weather prevailed across the West at the beginning of May. A 1-category improvement was made to parts of northern California after the wet start to the month and this improvement was also consistent with 24-month SPI, NDMC’s long-term drought blend, and NASA’s GRACE groundwater. It should be noted that Trinity reservoir in northern California remains at half of its historical average. A 1-category improvement was also warranted for parts of Oregon based on 24-month SPI, GRACE 1-meter soil moisture, and the wet first week of May. A decrease in abnormal dryness (D0) across parts of Washington was supported by SPI at multiple time scales, 28-day streamflow, and GRACE soil moisture. Based on 60-day SPI and longer time scales, moderate drought (D1) was reduced in coverage across southwestern Wyoming. D1 was changed to long-term abnormal dryness (D0) in northeast Montana based on SPI at multiple time scales and a favorable soil moisture response this spring down to 20 inches. Severe drought (D2) was removed from central Utah due to a lack of support from long-term indicators…
South
A mix of degradations and improvements were made this past week to the Southern Great Plains, western Gulf Coast, Lower Mississippi Valley, and Tennessee Valley. Severe drought (D2) was slightly expanded in southeast New Mexico, based on 90-day SPI and USGS 28-day average streamflows falling below the 10th percentile along parts of the Black River. Based on declining soil moisture indicators, extreme drought (D3) was expanded westward across the Edwards Plateau. More than 1.5 inches of rainfall this past week resulted in a 1-category improvement to parts of central and northwest Texas, the Texas Panhandle, and central Oklahoma. According to NDMC’s long-term objective drought blend, there remains a sharp gradient between extreme to exceptional drought (D3-D4) in northwest Oklahoma to anomalously wet conditions in southeast Oklahoma. An increase in abnormal dryness (D0) was warranted for parts of northwest Arkansas based on increasing 30-day precipitation deficits and 28-day average streamflows below the 30th percentile. The D0 coverage was modified across Tennessee after central parts of the state received more than 1.5 inches of rainfall. However, D0 was expanded to include more of western and northeastern Tennessee, based on 30 to 60-day SPI and 28-day average streamflows. Recent heavy rainfall and 120-day SPI supported elimination of D0 in coastal Mississippi and a slight D0 decrease in southeastern LA. Also, the coverage of moderate drought (D1) decreased across southeastern Louisiana. A small area of D0 was added to central Louisiana where 30 to 60-day precipitation deficits are increasing…
Looking Ahead
During the next five days (May 11 – 15, 2023), widespread moderate to heavy rainfall (1 to 5 inches, locally more) is forecast across the Great Plains with the heaviest amounts expected to occur from southwestern Oklahoma south to the Middle Rio Grande Valley. Lighter amounts are predicted for southeastern Nebraska, northeastern Kansas, and the Middle Mississippi Valley. Rainfall amounts are expected to vary throughout the Midwest and Southeast, while the Northeast remains mostly dry. Compared to the start of May, much drier weather is forecast for the West.
The Climate Prediction Center’s 6-10 day outlook (valid May 16-20) depicts a highly amplified pattern with anomalous mid-level high pressure over the Northwest. Therefore, large probabilities for above-normal temperatures are forecast throughout the West. Associated with a wetter pattern likely for the south-central U.S. during mid-May, below-normal temperatures are favored for the Southern Great Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley. Below-normal temperatures are also favored across the Great Lakes, Eastern Corn Belt, and Northeast, while above-normal temperatures are more likely across the Southeast. Above-normal precipitation is favored across the southern tier of the U.S. with the largest probabilities forecast for the Southwest which is typically dry during this time of year. Elevated probabilities for below-normal precipitation are forecast across the Northern to Central Great Plains, Upper to Middle Mississippi Valley, and Corn Belt.
From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):
May 10th, 2023
In order to begin moving sediment in advance of the spring peak release, and to slow the reservoir rise, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled in the release from Navajo Dam from 500 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 1200 cfs for the evening of Friday, May 12th , and from 1200 cfs to 2000 cfs on Monday, May 15th, where it will remain for much of the week. The release changes will occur as per the following schedule:5/12 (Friday)
10:00 PM: Increase from 500 to 700 cfs
5/13 (Saturday)
12:00 AM: Increase from 700 to 900 cfs
2:00 AM: Increase from 900 to 1100 cfs
4:00 AM: Increase from 1100 to 1200 cfs
5/15 (Monday)
8:00 AM: 1200 to 1400 cfs
10:00 AM: 1400 to 1600 cfs
12:00 PM: 1600 to 1800 cfs
2:00 PM: 1800 to 2000 cfs
This increase is being made in advance of the ramp up to the spring peak release, which is still scheduled to begin at the end of next week. PLEASE STAY TUNED FOR UPDATES AS THIS OPERATION IS DEPENDANT ON ON-THE-GROUND CONDITIONS AND WEATHER.If you have any questions, please contact Susan Behery (sbehery@usbr.gov or 970-385-6560), or visit Reclamation’s Navajo Dam website at https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html
Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website (Theo Stein):
In the thrall of a 22-year megadrought, the record snowpack that built up in southwestern Colorado was a welcome break in a string of dry winters.
For a pair of NOAA scientists, part of a team conducting an intensive two-year study of how precipitation forms in the East River watershed near Crested Butte, the softening spring snows provided just a little extra challenge for a scheduled ski and snowshoe trek into the rugged mountain valley in late April.
“Ski conditions were not great,” said Janet Intrieri, a research scientist with NOAA’s Physical Sciences Laboratory. “In the morning it was super crusty, in the afternoon it was super mashed-potato-y. But we got what we needed.”
When scientists from PSL and CIRES installed a comprehensive, state-of-the-art observing network in the East River watershed in the fall of 2021 to study how precipitation forms in the complex, high-altitude terrain, they couldn’t have imagined a year like this. As storm after storm plastered the mountains with snow this winter, the network of radars, instrumented towers, and meteorological sensors measured temperatures, precipitation amounts, soil moisture and snowpack properties. Complementing this array were two stations installed nearby by Global Monitoring Laboratory field engineers and researchers consisting of sophisticated radiometers, ceilometers, a total sky imager, a cloud optical depth sensor, and other meteorological instruments.
The mountains of data collected by the study, dubbed SPLASH, will be analyzed alongside data collected by an adjacent field campaign directed by the Department of Energy and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. The findings help improve several important NOAA models, including the Unified Forecast System, Rapid Refresh Forecast System, and National Water Model. The ultimate goal of this project will be more accurate weather and river flow forecasts in watersheds critical to the southwestern U.S. water supply.
“We’re simultaneously studying all of the aspects of the lower atmosphere and hydrometeorology that we can,” Intrieri said. “That’s kind of what the special sauce is.”
On the to-do-list that day for Intrieri and fellow PSL scientist Chris Cox was collecting bags of snow at regular intervals from the side of an eight-foot deep pit they dug. One of the layers was marked by a thin line of fine dust blown in from the red desert soils to the southwest. In spring, dust-on-snow events hasten the melt, the dynamics of which are important for water managers who rely on mountain snowpack to fill the reservoirs to understand. The snow was bagged for researchers at Purdue University to analyze.
Cox said one of the main goals for this particular research station is to learn about how sunlight, temperature and the presence of dust particles influence whether snow turns to meltwater or evaporates directly into the atmosphere. Sometimes, there’s a big gap between how much water is in the snowpack and how much water ends up in reservoirs and streams.
“Improving our understanding of these physical processes will help us give water managers more accurate forecasts of how much runoff they can expect from Colorado’s snowpack each spring,” he said.
This winter’s abundance was a marked change from 2021-2022, which started off dry, peaked with a monstrous New Year’s storm known locally as the “Santa Slammer,” then quieted down through spring, resulting in an average year.
“Capturing the extremes is always great,” said Gijs deBoer, a CIRES scientist working at PSL. “That’s where a lot of action is when it comes to water supply issues.”
Since 2000, waves of drought have depleted the flow of the Colorado River, relied upon by six states and 40 million people from Denver to Los Angeles, by as much as 20 percent, causing water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell to fall to critically low levels. Climate change is projected to further reduce flows by another 10 to 50 percent in the next few decades.
The long-term drought has forced the six basin states to wrestle with the realization that there’s simply not enough water in the Colorado River system to satisfy all uses, which adds a sharp urgency to efforts to improve precipitation estimation and runoff forecasts.
For now, meltwaters are rushing off the surrounding West Elk mountains into the East River Valley, replenishing – for this year at least – soils and streams, and promising scientists a bounty of data to examine.
“It’s stunningly beautiful back there, and we picked a great weather window,” Intrieri said. “Great conditions, we got what we needed: thumbs up all around.”
For more information, contact Theo Stein, NOAA Communications, at theo.stein@noaa.gov.
For more information, please see the Emergency Disaster Designation and Declaration Process fact sheet at https://fsa.usda.gov/Assets/USDA-FSA-Public/usdafiles/FactSheets/emergency_disaster_designation_declaration_process-factsheet.pdf
Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Larry Morandi):
Colorado lawmakers approved seven major new water bills this year, including one that approves millions in more funding for the Colorado Water Plan, another that makes restoring streams easier, and a third that creates a high-profile Colorado River task force.
The 2023 General Assembly, which adjourned May 8, also approved four others that address water wise landscaping, water use in oil fields, “don’t flush” labels for the disposable wipes that plague water systems, and one giving more muscle to an interim legislative committee whose job is to evaluate water problems and propose laws to fix them.
Two of the bills, the labeling requirement, as well as the legislative committee changes, have been signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis. The five remaining bills await his signature.
Funding Water Projects
Each year the Colorado General Assembly considers the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) “projects bill,” which this year—Senate Bill 177—appropriates $95 million from three sources: CWCB’s construction fund, severance taxes on oil and gas production, and sports betting revenue. No general fund tax dollars are used. An important part of the funding goes to support grants for projects that help implement the state water plan.
A major difference in this year’s bill is the amount of money coming from sports betting. Last year’s bill appropriated $8.2 million from that source, the first time since the passage of Proposition DD in 2019, which legalized sports betting and authorized the state to collect up to $29 million in taxes on gambling proceeds, with over 90% of that going for water. SB 177 triples that amount, appropriating $25.2 million to fund projects that help implement the state water plan. Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Avon, a bill sponsor, noted that sports betting revenue provides critical funding “that never existed before for water.” As he pointed out, “that number keeps growing every year which is positive for our water future.”
Stream Restoration
Senate Bill 270 allows minor stream restoration activities to proceed without having to secure a water right. Its intent is to promote the benefits natural stream systems provide—clean water, forest and watershed health, riparian and aquatic habitat protection—by mitigating damages caused by mining, erosion, flooding and wildfires. Minor stream restoration activities include stabilizing stream banks and beds, installing porous structures that slow down water flow and temporarily increase surface water area, and rechanneling streams to recover from wildfire and flood impacts.
At the bill’s initial hearing in the Senate Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee, Sen. Roberts, committee chair and a bill cosponsor, emphasized that stream restoration activities “help promote recovery from natural disasters like fires and floods.” He also noted the bill could “help access federal dollars that are available in sort of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity right now that could be used for these very valuable projects.”
Another bill cosponsor, Sen. Cleave Simpson, R-Alamosa, a water right holder and water conservation district manager, recognized “the value and importance of healthy rivers and streams and what it means to all water users.”
As introduced, SB 270 would have created a “rebuttable presumption” that a stream restoration project does not cause material injury to a vested water right. It was amended in committee after testimony by several witnesses who expressed concern over the bill’s potential impacts on water rights—loss of water due to evaporation and infiltration into soils, and delayed timing of delivery downstream. They all expressed support for the concept of stream restoration and with the amendments adopted, pledged to work together in the future to strike a balance between stream restoration benefits and protecting water rights.
Colorado River Drought Task Force
Faced with two decades of drought in the Colorado River Basin, Senate Bill 295 creates a task force to make legislative recommendations that will help water users most directly affected by drought and aid the state in meeting its commitments under the Colorado River Compact. The task force’s focus is on reducing water demand and on ensuring that any effort to achieve that goal by fallowing irrigated farmland must be done on a voluntary, temporary and compensated basis.
The task force is made up of 17 voting members representing agricultural, municipal, industrial, conservation, environmental and tribal stakeholders from across the state, with the state engineer serving in an advisory capacity. It includes a sub-task force to study and make recommendations on tribal matters comprised of five members, including representatives from the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. The task force and sub-task force must report any recommendations, which are to be made by majority vote, to the General Assembly’s Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee by Dec. 15, 2023.
Testimony in the Senate Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee raised concern with the bill’s timing. Several Front Range municipal water providers said the state’s primary focus should be on supporting federal efforts to force lower basin states—primarily California and Arizona—to reduce their river use since they have consistently exceeded their compact allocations while the Upper Basin states have never fully utilized theirs. Sen. Roberts, the bill’s sponsor, acknowledged that but emphasized “There is drought happening in Colorado right now … The purpose of the task force isn’t just to consider interstate obligations, it’s also to make recommendations surrounding drought mitigation and drought security.”
Others worried that the bill might split the state’s West Slope and East Slope water users, but lawmakers pledged the task force would seek cooperative solutions. “This bill is going to codify a collaborative path forward on some difficult issues facing the Western Slope and the entire state,” said Rep. Marc Catlin, R-Montrose.
Water-Wise Landscaping
Senate Bill 178 is designed to reduce barriers to residents in homeowner association (HOA)-governed communities (roughly half the state’s population) who want to plant landscapes that use less water than bluegrass lawns. To encourage HOAs and owners of single-family detached homes to work together in planting landscapes that conserve water, improve biodiversity, and expand the amount of food grown in private gardens, SB 178 requires HOAs to adopt three pre-planned water-wise landscape designs that homeowners can install if they want to replace non-native turf. It doesn’t preclude other designs with HOA approval. Although the bill removes some aesthetic discretion, HOAs retain the authority to reject designs for safety, fire or drainage concerns.
Water Conservation in Oil and Gas Operations
House Bill 1242 seeks to reduce freshwater use in oil and gas operations and increase recycling and reuse of produced water, which is water in or injected into the ground and coproduced with oil or natural gas extraction. It is often disposed off-site but can be recycled and reused if properly treated.
The bill requires oil and gas well operators to report periodically to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission on the volume of freshwater and recycled or reused produced water used, produced water removed for disposal, and produced water recycled or reused in another well and removed for recycling or reuse at a different location. The commission will use this data in adopting rules by July 1, 2024 to require a statewide reduction in freshwater use and a corresponding increase in recycled or reused produced water in oil and gas operations.
The bill also creates the Colorado Produced Water Consortium in the Department of Natural Resources to make recommendations to the General Assembly and state agencies by Nov. 1, 2024 on legislation or rules necessary to remove barriers to recycling and reuse of produced water. The consortium consists of 28 members that will work with state and federal agencies, research institutions, colleges and universities, non-government organizations, local governments, industries, environmental justice organizations and members of disproportionately impacted communities in conducting its work and making recommendations.
Disposable Wipes and Water Quality
Aimed at reducing sewer backups and water pollution in Colorado, Senate Bill 150 requires a manufacturer of disposable wipes sold or offered for sale in the state, and a wholesaler, supplier or retailor responsible for labeling or packaging those products to label them “Do Not Flush.” Disposable wipes include baby, cleaning and hand sanitizing wipes made of materials that do not break down like toilet paper when flushed. They end up clogging pipes and releasing plastics into waterways, costing water utilities a lot of money to fix.
Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee
Senate Bill 10 turns the interim Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee into a year-round committee. The committee will meet at the call of the chair, conduct hearings and vet issues as they come up instead of having to wait until after each session adjourns. It will not duplicate the functions of existing standing committees, but will continue to recommend bills to the Legislative Council, which will refer them to relevant committees for action.
Larry Morandi was formerly director of State Policy Research with the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, and is a frequent contributor to Fresh Water News. He can be reached at larrymorandi@comcast.net.
Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website (Michelle L’Heureux):
Given the relatively high probabilities for El Niño in our team’s April 2023 ENSO update, I decided to team up with some of my scientific colleagues, Antonietta Capotondi (NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory and University of Colorado, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences) and Aaron Levine (@afzlevine, University of Washington, Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies), to explain why making ENSO forecasts during the Northern Hemisphere springtime generally makes us want to skip the forecast. But we, of course, cannot because if a decent-sized El Niño is going to form, it is probably going to form in the spring or summer. Which means as much as we’d like to punt on ENSO forecasts in the spring, we have to issue Watches when the tropical Pacific starts pushing in that direction (as we recently did, footnote #1).
This is not the first blog
rantpost on the lower predictability of springtime ENSO forecasts (here, here, here). And it will probably not be our last! Researchers in the ENSO community are well aware of the forecasting challenges during the spring and are hard at work trying to better understand precursor patterns and fix model biases that may make it easier to predict ENSO in the future.So, what’s the big deal in the spring? Especially when it comes to predictions of El Niño? It comes down to uncertainty in two of the main ingredients that give rise to El Niño.
- In the spring, it is difficult to know whether surface west-to-east (“westerly”) wind anomalies across the tropical Pacific Ocean will continue through the summer and persist long enough to reinforce the developing El Niño.
- The heat in the subsurface tropical Pacific Ocean is a necessary precursor for El Niño but it is not always sufficient.
Let’s focus on #1 first: the persistence of the surface winds. Dr. Capotondi has published research exploring the relationship of surface winds across the tropical Pacific with ENSO. She used a very detailed satellite-based wind dataset for her analysis and found that the interannual changes in the surface winds are the key ingredient for triggering El Niño (footnote #2). Without persistence of these tropical winds, many El Niño events struggle to achieve lift off and can fizzle. It is this interannual wind variability that determines whether you get a major El Niño (e.g. 1997-98) or an El Niño “bust” (e.g. 2014).
Let’s examine the figures below to visualize this. Starting in March 1997, westerly wind anomalies (warm colors) began to form over the western tropical Pacific Ocean (left panel). In the 1997 case, the interannual variability in the winds (middle panel) was especially strong and long lasting, extending over a year and shifting very gradually eastward with time. A major El Niño event formed and peaked during the 1997-98 winter.
Now let’s look at the same period of months during 2014, which, in the spring, was predicted to be a potentially major El Niño event. Right on cue, similar to 1997, the westerly wind anomalies began early in the calendar year and lasted through April (left panel below). However, for some unknown reason, the westerly winds began dissipating and the interannual wind variability was very weak-to-nonexistent for the rest of 2014 (middle panel below).
Bottom line: if the surface westerly wind anomalies fizzle out and do not continue to recur and intensify throughout the year (the interannual variability), then El Niño can similarly fail to get going. Unfortunately, we can only see this interannual wind variability after the year is over (and we are looking back at the previous year). In the midst of the spring/summer, we do not know whether these winds are random-random or are going-somewhere-random (they are considered mostly forecastable out to 7-10 days). Not ideal, we know.
This brings us to #2: The presence of above-average oceanic heat in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Dr. Levine recently started a 3-year NOAA Climate Program Office (CPO) funded research project on the topic of El Niño false alarms, which are El Niño events that were confidently predicted to happen, but then failed to do so for some mysterious reason. Dr. Levine provided the figure below which displays the many different climate forecasting models that are part of the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME).
Each panel in the figure shows 9 different ENSO forecasts made during the month of April. These forecasts all have one major thing in common, which is the presence of above-average temperatures within the subsurface (0-500 meters below the surface) of the tropical Pacific Ocean (footnote #3). The majority, or 6 of the 9 April forecasts, had elevated chances of El Niño events developing later in the year. Another way to express this is that enhanced oceanic heat in the spring can make it more likely an El Niño could form, but it’s not a guarantee either.
Now let’s look closer at those 6 April forecasts that were predicted to become El Niño events (1982, 1990, 1997, 2014, 2015, 2018). Out of that group, 4 of the 6 became El Niño events and 2 failed to form (1990, 2014). Interestingly, of the ones that became El Niño events, the ultimate strength was mostly underestimated, meaning that the El Niños ended up becoming stronger in the winter than the majority of model ensembles predicted in April. So, while bust potential is a risk, there is also limited evidence that models can still be somewhat conservative with forecasting peak intensity!
On the net, while the tropical Pacific precursors of El Niño are currently evident this spring, there is a certain amount of forecast uncertainty that will not go away. Come this summer/fall, we will see whether the conditions we’re seeing this spring were, in fact, sufficient to become a bona fide El Niño (and potentially a significant one). Watch this space.
Footnotes
(1) So, if spring forecasting is such a challenge, then why do the current probabilities seem so high? As Emily laid out in her recent blog post and in the official ENSO discussion, we are currently seeing some of the required precursors of El Niño: (a) recurrence of westery wind anomalies across the equatorial Pacific and (b) emergence of above-average ocean heat content. Morever, many of the state-of-the-art climate models we consider (such as those in the NMME) are providing peak chances of El Niño in excess of 90%. However, because we know the objective model guidance tends to be overconfident this time a year (here and here), the chances in the official outlook are slightly lower (peaking in the mid-80%).
(2) What are these interannual winds? Interannual in our lingo are the “year-to-year” changes. Retrospectively, we can examine the part of the winds that were the most persistent, lasting over a span of at least 8 months (greater than 250 days in this study).
(3) Aaron is examining the 9 cases with the largest April tropical Pacific subsurface ocean heat content anomalies since 1980 via the NOAA PMEL website showing measurements from the TAO buoys.
Click the link to read the briefing on the Western Water Assessment website:
May 8, 2023 – CO, UT, WY
As of May 1, snow-water equivalent (SWE) values remain above to much-above normal for the majority of the region, especially in Utah. April precipitation and temperatures were below to much-below normal for the region. Streamflow volume forecasts are above to much-above average for the Upper Colorado River and Great Basins, and the inflow forecast for Lake Powell is 172% of average, continuing to provide much-needed water after record-low water levels. Regional drought conditions significantly improved during April and now drought covers only 32% of the region, driven by wetter conditions in Utah. Neutral ENSO conditions are expected to persist throughout the spring, and there is an increased probability of above average temperatures for parts of Utah and Wyoming during May, and parts of Utah and Colorado from May-July.
April precipitation was below normal for much of the region. Less than 50% of normal April precipitation occurred in northern Wyoming, particularly in Big Horn County, eastern Utah, particularly in Carbon and Emery Counties, and northeastern Colorado. Record-dry conditions occurred in east-central Utah, mostly in Carbon County. Areas of above normal precipitation occurred in southwestern to central Wyoming from the Upper Green River to western North Platte Basins, and southeastern Colorado along the Arkansas River Basin. An area of much-above normal precipitation occurred in Lincoln and Uinta Counties in southwestern Wyoming.
Regional temperatures during April were below normal. Large portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming experienced much-below normal temperatures, particularly in Wyoming where temperatures were 6 to 10 degrees below normal. Record-cold temperatures for April occurred in the Upper Green River region of southwestern Wyoming and northernmost Utah, mostly in Rich County.
Regional snowpack is near to much-above normal for the entire region except for the Arkansas River Basin where May 1 SWE is slightly below normal at 81%. Much-above normal SWE exists for much of the region, including northeastern Wyoming, southwestern Colorado, and all of Utah, with a staggering 1,256% of normal SWE for the Six Creeks Basin on the Wasatch Front and 953% of normal SWE for the Southeastern Utah Basin. Extremely high percent normal SWE is driven by continued deep snowpack at low elevation sites. For example, the Louis Meadows SNOTEL site (6,700 feet) in the Six Creeks Basin is at 9,933% of normal because May 1 median SWE is 0.3” and current SWE is 29.8”. Statewide percent median SWE was 139% for Colorado, 249% for Utah, and 140% for Wyoming. As of May 1, snowpack is generally near normal east of the Continental Divide in Colorado and in northern Wyoming, and above normal on the West Slope of Colorado and in southern Wyoming.
Seasonal streamflow volume forecasts are above average to much-above average for most regional river basins. Streamflow forecasts are highest for the Great Basin where forecasted volumes are 132-451% of average. Below normal (60-90%) seasonal streamflow volumes are forecasted for the South Platte and Arkansas Basins, and near-normal (90-110%) volumes are forecasted for the Big Horn, Powder, Snake, Upper Colorado (mainstem), and Yellowstone River Basins. Above normal seasonal streamflow (110-130%) is forecasted for the Rio Grande and Upper Green River Basins, and much-above normal streamflow (>130%) is forecasted for the remaining regional river basins, with streamflow forecasts reaching above 300% for sites in the Provo/Utah Lake, Sevier, Six Creeks, Virgin, and Weber River Basins. Seasonal streamflow forecasts for most large Upper Colorado River Basin reservoirs are much-above normal, leaving only Fontenelle with an above normal forecast of 113% and Green Mountain with a below normal forecast of 84%. The inflow forecast for Lake Powell is 172% of normal.
Regional drought conditions were mixed, with improvement throughout most of Utah and degradation throughout the Front Range and south-central portion of Colorado. At the end of April, drought covered 32% of the Intermountain West, down from 45% at the end of March. Drought conditions significantly improved in Utah; drought covered 65% of the state at the end of March, decreasing to 19% at the end of April. Drought conditions slightly improved in Wyoming, from 37% to 30% coverage by the end of April. Drought conditions worsened in Colorado, increasing in coverage from 36% to 44% by the end of April. Pockets of extreme (D3) drought remain in southeastern Wyoming and Colorado and developed in south-central Colorado. Exceptional (D4) drought continues in southeastern Colorado’s Baca County.
Neutral ENSO conditions continued in April and are expected throughout the spring. In some regions of the Pacific Ocean, sea surface temperatures warmed to above average, indicating a shift towards El Niño in the coming months. There is a 62% chance of El Niño developing during May-July, and a greater than 80% chance of El Niño by the fall. There is an increased probability of above normal temperatures during May in western Wyoming and northern Utah. The May-July NOAA seasonal forecasts predict an increased probability of above normal temperatures in southeastern Utah and southern Colorado.
Significant April weather event. Little Cottonwood Canyon (LCC) experienced a historic avalanche cycle in early April caused by historically deep snowpack (903” of snowfall at Alta), intense snowfall, and rapid warming. From 4/3 – 4/5, upper LCC received 63” of snow with 4.5” of SWE. Temperatures were very cold during the storm, including a record minimum temperature at the Alta Guard site of 1F on 4/6. By 4/10, the maximum temperature warmed to 56F, a daily record. A daily record temperature of 56F was also set on 4/11 and concluded a full three days without below freezing temperatures, which increases the risk for wet slab avalanches.
High snowfall and warm temperatures caused very dangerous avalanche conditions, resulting in the closure of LCC Road from 4/2 – 4/13 with a brief opening on the morning of 4/7 to allow people to leave the canyon. The length of this canyon closure is unprecedented. Two distinct avalanche cycles occurred during the 12-day canyon closure. The first avalanche cycle occurred during and immediately after the storm. The second avalanche cycle was a wet avalanche cycle that began around 4/9 and was caused by rapidly warming temperatures and the lack of below freezing conditions at night. Many dozens of avalanches occurred naturally or as a result of avalanche mitigation efforts in avalanche paths that impact the road or infrastructure in LCC. Avalanches buried the road in 15-20 locations up to 30 feet deep and several hundred yards wide. Some paths hit the road multiple times. Many avalanche paths that ran have a historical avalanche frequency of more than 50 years and these paths enlarged their run-out zones, mowing down mature aspen, fir, and oak trees. One path, Coalpit #4, ran so large that the avalanche crossed Little Cottonwood Creek and traveled upslope to hit the road. Another slide occurred on 4/6 where a slide path across the road from Snowbird slid naturally and buried the edge of the beginner ski slope while the ski area was open. Snowbird immediately closed the resort and performed a probe line search of the area to ensure no one was buried. Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident.
From email from Reclamation (Susan Novak Behery):
BUREAU OF RECLAMATION
NAVAJO UNIT FORECAST FOR
SPRING OPERATIONS
May 9, 2023
High snowpack in the San Juan River Basin this year has led to an above-average inflow forecast into the Navajo Reservoir. The latest most probable inflow forecast from the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center has increased to 160% of average inflows due to snowmelt runoff from April through July.
The forecast now allows for a spring peak release as recommended by the San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program (SJRIP). The release will ramp up slowly, peaking at 5,000 cfs for 21 days before ramping back down. The currently planned schedule is below. As this operation is entirely dependent on weather, inflows, and on-the-ground conditions, please stay tuned for updates and changes.
The current schedule for planned changes is below. A notice will be sent out prior to each release change.
Date Day End of Day Release (cfs) Notes 5/9/2023 Tue 500 5/13/2023 Sat 800 5/15/2023 Mon 1200 5/18/2023 Thu 2000 Begin ramp up 5/19/2023 Fri 3000 5/22/2023 Mon 4000 5/23/2023 Tue 4600 5/24/2023 Wed 4800 5/25/2023 Thu 5000 Hold at 5,000 cfs for 21 days 6/14/2023 Wed 4800 Begin ramp down 6/15/2023 Thu 4500 6/16/2023 Fri 4000 6/17/2023 Sat 3000 6/18/2023 Sun 2800 6/19/2023 Mon 2500 6/20/2023 Tue 2000 6/21/2023 Wed 1500 6/22/2023 Thu 1200 6/23/2023 Fri 1000 6/24/2023 Sat 800 6/25/2023 Sun 500 This operation is subject to changes in river flows and weather conditions and will be coordinated daily with local, state, and federal agencies to ensure objectives are met in a safe manner.
Areas in the immediate vicinity of the river channel may be unstable and dangerous. Please use extra caution near the river channel and protect or remove any valuable property in these areas.
For more information, please see the following resources below:
Bureau of Reclamation:
- Susan Behery, Hydrologic Engineer, Reclamation Western Colorado Area Office: sbehery@usbr.gov or 970-385-6560
- Navajo Dam website: https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/crsp/cs/nvd.html
- Navajo Dam Release Notices: https://www.usbr.gov/uc/wcao/water/rsvrs/notice/nav_rel.html
- Colorado River Basin Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/coloradoriverbasin
San Juan County, New Mexico, Office of Emergency Management:
- Website: https://www.sjcoem.net
- SJOEM River Page: https://www.sjcounty.net/river
- Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/oemsjc
San Juan County, Utah, Office of Emergency Management:
- Website: https://sanjuancounty.org/emergency-management
- San Juan County Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/SanJuanUtah/
Navajo Nation Department of Emergency Management:
- Website: https://ndem.navajo-nsn.gov/
- Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/nndem2020/
Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):
Colorado lawmakers may pass a stream-restoration bill this session, but it won’t be the one proponents and environmental groups were hoping for.
A bill aimed at making it easier for stream-restoration projects that mimic beaver activity to take place has been gutted after stakeholders couldn’t reach an agreement, underscoring how difficult it is for environmental interests to gain a toehold under Colorado’s system of water law.
An original draft of Senate Bill 270 clarified that restoration projects do not fall under the definitions of a diversion, storage or a dam; are presumed to not injure downstream water rights; and do not need to go through the lengthy and expensive water-court process to secure a water right or augmentation plan.
Project proponents would have had to file an information form with the Division of Water Resources (DWR) showing that projects would stay within the historical footprint of the floodplain before it was degraded and didn’t create new wetlands. Anyone, including downstream water users who believed the project would injure their water rights, could then challenge the project plans by filing a complaint.
The types of projects that the original bill aimed to address are known as low-tech, process-based restoration and include things such as beaver-dam analogs (BDAs). These temporary wood structures consist of posts driven into the streambed with willows and other soft materials woven across the channel between the posts.
By pooling water on small tributaries in the headwaters, these process-based restoration projects act as if rehydrating a dry sponge and restore watersheds to a more natural condition before they were degraded by human activities. These projects can improve water quality, raise the water table, and create a buffer against wildfires, drought and climate change. The idea is that by creating appealing habitat in areas that historically had beavers, the animals will recolonize and continue maintaining the health of the stream.
But the watered-down version of the bill that made it out of committee and is up for a second reading in the House on May 3 no longer addresses these types of projects. After amendments removed language referring to these projects, the bill now only includes minor stream-restoration activities such as bank stabilization or restructuring a channel to recover from wildfire or flood impacts.
“The stuff that got taken out was the projects that would reconnect the channel and the floodplains and push water out of the channel in a way that would saturate the meadow and potentially change the hydrology,” said Kelly Romero-Heaney, assistant director for water policy at the Colorado Department of Natural Resources (DNR). “Those projects are very much intended to maximize the ecological uplift from a stream restoration project. They are also the projects that gave the most heartburn to the water community.”
DNR staff and environmental groups were the proponents of the original legislation. If stream-restoration projects were required to secure a water right and spend money on an expensive augmentation plan, in which water is released to replace depletions that it causes, it could discourage these types of projects. Currently, proposals are evaluated by division engineers, who determine whether an augmentation plan is needed.
Agricultural concerns
Some agricultural water users were concerned that keeping water on the landscape for longer could potentially injure their downstream water rights by slowing the rate of runoff and creating more surface area for evaporation.
“Any time you’re talking about water and changing things in the water system, you run the risk of impacting water rights and the doctrine of prior appropriation, which is my guiding star when it comes to water issues,” state Sen. Cleave Simpson, a Republican, said at a Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee hearing April 13. Simpson, a sponsor of the bill, is a rancher who represents District 6.
Prior appropriation is the cornerstone of Colorado water law in which the oldest water rights have first use of the river.
Austin Vincent, general counsel and director of public policy for the Colorado Farm Bureau, said the original bill would have placed an unfair and expensive burden on water rights holders to file a complaint and prove they were being injured by a stream-restoration project.
“It takes money to get an attorney and an engineer to prove your water right was injured,” he said. “The Farm Bureau is happy we are having this conversation, but we need to make sure this policy is done right. With the prior appropriation system being the law of the land here in Colorado, we need to make sure that’s not eroded.”
Pitkin County Commissioner Kelly McNicholas Kury testified at the committee hearing, expressing the county’s strong support for the original draft of the bill.
“Our western rivers are the lifeblood of our state and they are in crisis,” she said. “We should all be committed to restoring our rivers to a healthy and thriving state.”
Pitkin County has funded a summer program with the U.S. Forest Service for a beaver inventory in the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River, which could be the first step toward reintroducing the animals.
During negotiations on bill amendments, some groups had floated the idea of a cap that would place a limit on how much new surface area of water that restoration projects were allowed to create. But a too-small cap didn’t appeal to environmental groups.
“The cap became the dynamite stick in the water community dialogue,” said Abby Burk, western rivers region program manager for Audubon Rockies. “If we had gone forward with these caps, we would have caged stream restoration, so it was better to pause.”
Legislators have said they plan to revisit the issue in the interim committee and perhaps again next session with a new bill addressing process-based restoration projects.
Eagle County project
Staff from Eagle County Open Space learned firsthand the issues that can arise with stream-restoration projects, when they planned for 13 beaver-dam analogs to restore a half-mile section of Brush Creek that had seen intense ranching and grazing. The creek had been straightened and disconnected from its floodplain, and the riparian and aquatic habitat was impaired.
County staff submitted their plans to DWR, which told them they would have to get a plan for water replacement, or augmentation, to replace the water that would be evaporated from the small ponds created by the project.
“It appears the BDAs associated with this project will result in a series of impoundments in ponds/pools that will result in additional evaporation from increased surface area that will injure downstream water rights,” the response from DWR reads.
Getting an engineer to model the amount of water lost, then implementing a plan to replace that water was cost-prohibitive for the county, said Peter Suneson, open-space manager for Eagle County.
“Modeling a leaky beaver dam is doable, but you’re going to end up throwing a lot of money at it and you still have to find water to put back in the creek,” he said.
Instead of the BDAs, Eagle County instead moved forward with another low-tech, process-based project that DWR did not have a problem with: post-assisted log structures (PALS). These mimic large woody debris — a downed cottonwood tree, for example — that is affixed to a streambank and extends into the channel but does not span the entire waterway.
According to DWR, as long as PALS do not funnel water away from a diversion structure such as an irrigation headgate and do not impound water, they will not injure downstream users.
“We got 13 PALS in last fall and we are going to do that again this fall,” Suneson said.
It was exactly these types of projects that drafters of the original bill were hoping to make exempt from the water-court process, but which remain evaluated on a case-by-case basis by division engineers. But as drought and climate change have tightened their grip on Colorado, resulting in less water to go around, even restoration projects that everyone agrees are beneficial to the environment can be contentious.
“The entrenched interests like to see the status quo protected and preserved and those newer types of water uses, whether it be recreational or environmental, are at the end of the line,” said Drew Peternell, director of Trout Unlimited’s Colorado Water Program. “It’s a tough uphill battle to pass legislation that allows water to be used for those newer values.”
Aspen Journalism is a nonprofit, investigative news organization that covers water, environment and social justice.
Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website (John Bateman):
So far, 2023 stands out for the remarkable warmth that covered many parts of the U.S., with some states seeing their warmest January–April period on record.
The first four months of the year have also been marked by seven separate billion-dollar disasters that have struck the nation, according to scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
Below are more takeaways from NOAA’s latest monthly U.S. climate report:
Climate by the numbers
April 2023
The average April temperature across the contiguous U.S. was 51.4 degrees F (0.3 of a degree above the 20th-century average), ranking the month in the middle third of the 129-year climate record.
Maryland and Delaware ranked second warmest on record for April while New Jersey ranked third warmest on record. Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia each saw their top-10 warmest Aprils on record.
Conversely, below-average temperatures covered the Northwest to the central Rockies and northern Plains, and parts of the southern Plains. North Dakota ranked 10th coldest on record for the month.
The average precipitation for the month was 2.40 inches — 0.12 of an inch below average, which places the month in the middle third of the historical record.
Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska and New Mexico saw their third-to-sixth driest Aprils on record, respectively. Meanwhile, Delaware ranked seventh wettest, North Carolina eighth wettest and New Jersey saw its 10th-wettest April on record.
Year to date | January through April 2023
The average U.S. temperature for the year to date (YTD) was 40.9 degrees F (1.8 degrees above average), ranking in the warmest third of the climate record.
Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia each had their warmest January–April YTD on record. Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina and West Virginia each had their second-warmest such YTD, while 14 additional states ranked among their warmest 10 January-to-April periods on record.
The average precipitation for the first four months of 2023 was 10.22 inches (0.74 of an inch above normal), ranking in the wettest third of the January–April record.
Wisconsin saw its wettest such YTD on record, while Michigan ranked fourth wettest and Utah ranked seventh wettest. On the dry side, Maryland ranked 13th driest on record for this four-month period.
Other notable climate events in this report
Seven separate billion-dollar disasters struck this year: Through the end of April 2023, the U.S. was struck with seven separate weather and climate disasters, each with losses exceeding $1 billion, including:
- Five severe weather events.
- A Northeastern winter storm/cold wave.
- A California flooding event.
The total cost of these events exceeds $19 billion and resulted in 97 direct and indirect fatalities. The number of billion dollar disasters so far in 2023 is significant. Only 2017 and 2020 had more during this timeframe, with eight separate disasters recorded in the January-April period.
An active severe weather month: Several notable weather systems produced severe thunderstorms and a number of tornadoes that impacted portions of the U.S. in April 2023:
- April 1: A 700-yard-wide EF-3 tornado that touched down in Delaware was the widest tornado in the state’s history. The same tornado was equal in strength to one that struck Delaware on April 28, 1961— the strongest tornadoes recorded in the state.
- April 19: A tornado outbreak occurred across areas of the southern and central Plains. A total of 29 tornadoes, including two EF-3 tornadoes, was confirmed by the National Weather Service, causing heavy damage and loss of life.
- April 30: A state of emergency was declared after a rare EF-3 tornado touched down in Virginia Beach, destroying more than 100 structures.
Parts of Florida inundated with flooding: In less than a 24-hour period, more than 25 inches of rain fell at the Fort Lauderdale Airport on April 13. The event, deemed a 1,000-year event by the National Weather Service, smashed the previous one-day record of 14.59 inches of rain set on April 25, 1979.
Click the link to read the release from the Town of Parachute on the Glenwood Springs Post Independent website (Ray K. Erku). Here’s an excerpt:
Waters from a creek in Parachute continue to rise and threaten nearby residences, a town official said.
Town Manager Travis Elliott said Thursday [May 4, 2023] morning that the flow of Parachute Creek is currently at its highest it has been in nearly 50 years. The creek runs from the high country north of town into the Colorado River.
During a high runoff season in 1976, the creek reached a depth of 9.47 feet. As of 11 a.m. Thursday, a monitor showed the creek had reached a depth of 9.42 feet deep. The creek also reached a flow of 1,120 cubic feet per second, as of 3 p.m. Thursday.
The rising water level has caused flooding in multiple spots throughout town, which is threatening up to 16 buildings and residences. This includes neighborhoods along Cardinal Way, near Grand Valley High School, Cottonwood Park and Russey Avenue on the north side of Interstate 70.
“In some places it looks like the swamplands of Louisiana,” Elliott said. “But, overall, I think we are in good shape thanks to the generosity and resiliency of our community members.”
There have so far been no indications of evacuations. Community members have spent this past week setting up sandbags and barriers in the hopes of keeping the rising water levels at bay.
“We’ve gone through about 1,000 sandbags,” Elliott said.
Structures being directly threatened by water include sheds, shops and various outbuildings, as well as homes. One residential basement is already flooded in three feet of water, Elliott said.
The city is also concerned the rising waters could reach the bottom of local bridges while the city is monitoring its sewer lift station at the wastewater treatment plant.
One Cardinal Way resident, Brandon Renck, said his backyard is currently being threatened by water.
“That’s definitely swirling around our house,” he said. “Some of the neighbors down the street have it worse than us. It’s definitely scary.”
Renck said his backyard is adjacent to Parachute Creek and the water damaged his landscaping. He also said he had a “really nice fence that got swept away.”
“We have a row of sandbags on our property,” he said. “If it gets high onto our grass, it would get to our back door.
We have friends we can stay with. Other than that, there’s not a whole lot that we can do.”
Mayor Tom Rugaard said, instead of going to practice, he brought members of his wrestling team to help put up sandbags. The Grand Valley Fire Protection District, Grace Bible Church, other high school kids and various residents have helped with mitigation efforts. The Garfield County Sheriff’s Office, its emergency manager, and the city of Rifle have made it clear they’re on standby, ready to help when necessary, the town said.
On Tuesday, the town had at least 40 volunteers helping fill sandbags, some as young as six as well as senior citizens.
“It’s been really cool, and I’m really proud of the people in our area who have come out of the woodwork to help the people in need,” Rugaard said.
“It’s really nice to be a part of a community that jumps in and helps others out.”
While the help has been nice, Rugaard did express some frustrations over the lack of data keeping for creeks and other elements.
“We have all these agencies that watch the Colorado River for us, but as far as tributaries? There’s not a lot of information out there,” he said. “There’s tools out there, but it would be nice to know how much snowpack is left and how that’s going to affect us yet.”
Elliott said there’s cooler weather in the forecast, which can hopefully help bring down the rising levels of Parachute Creek.
“We know there’s a lot more coming,” he said. “It’s all a matter of how fast it melts.”
Here’s a drone video of the flooding:
Garfield County is providing sandbags to residents in unincorporated areas who may be at risk of flooding as the local snowpack melts and rivers and streams rise. Up to 20 filled sandbags may be available on site at Garfield County Road and Bridge locations or residents can pick up 50 empty sandbags that they can fill off site.
The bags area available from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Rifle Road and Bridge campus, 0298 County Road 333A, and by appointment only from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Glenwood Springs facility, 7300 Highway 82. Residents of unincorporated western Garfield County can also pick up unfilled sandbags at the De Beque Fire Protection District station, 4580 U.S. Highway 6. Those bags can be filled at the Cowboy Chapel at the corner of county roads 204 and 211, just north of De Beque.
Residents living within cities or towns should contact those municipalities directly for assistance with issues related to potential flooding. Contact Garfield County Road and Bridge at (970) 625-8601 for more information or to schedule an appointment to pick up sandbags at the Glenwood Springs location.
Visit garfield-county.com for local updates on flood conditions and possible impacts and sign up for Garfield County Emergency Communications Authority (GarCo911) alerts at garco911.com/.
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Poste website (John Meyer). Here’s an excerpt:
The Dolores River in southwestern Colorado can be one of the best rafting destinations in the country when it has enough water. It offers gorgeous scenery in the high desert of the Colorado Plateau and history dating back to the ancient Anasazi, who used it as a highway to and from Mesa Verde not far to the south. There are many years when the Dolores is not runnable for commercial rafting outfitters because of insufficient water, though. When they can operate there, as they will this year thanks to Colorado’s abundant mountain snowfall this past winter, rafters and outfitters rejoice. The last time the Dolores could support rafting was in 2019…
When snowpack is meager, runoff from the upper Dolores is stored in McPhee Reservoir near the town of Dolores for agricultural needs. This year, thanks to the great snowpack at its headwaters in the shadow of the 14,246-foot Mount Wilson near Telluride, there will be some left over for recreation, which happens down river from the reservoir…
With rafting season beginning this week for many outfitters in the state, the snowpack in nearly every Colorado river basin is near normal or above, some way above normal. The San Miguel, Dolores, Animas and San Juan basin this week stood at 88% above normal, and the adjacent Gunnison River basin was 71% above normal. Drainage in the northwest part of the state — which includes the Yampa, White and Green rivers — is 41% above normal, and the Colorado River headwaters is 24% above normal. Colorado rafting companies are expecting good things. The Arkansas basin’s overall snowpack stands at only 78% of normal, but its flows can be augmented by diversions from places in the high country where snowpack is better. Those water management decisions are made primarily for other purposes, such as agriculture, but rafters get to recreate on that water first. The Arkansas is Colorado’s most popular river for rafting by far…The Blue River, north of Silverthorne, may be runnable this year.
Click the link to read the release on the USDA website:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the State of Colorado are continuing and strengthening their Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) partnership to support and empower Colorado’s agricultural producers and landowners in reducing consumptive water use and protecting water quality, while conserving critical natural resources. Specifically, the newly revised Colorado Republican River CREP project, now available through USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) and the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, will offer producers a dryland crop production practice on eligible cropland. This option will give producers meaningful tools to continue farming as they work toward permanently retiring water rights and conserving the Ogallala Aquifer for future generations.
“This project is an example of how targeted and thoughtful federal-state partnerships can help address local natural resource concerns,” said FSA Administrator Zach Ducheneaux. “The Colorado Republican River Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) will help us meet an intertwined and complex set of challenges head-on, providing opportunities for producers to keep working lands working while reducing their water use and adapting climate-resilient agricultural practices. With the new dryland crop production practice provided through this agreement, producers with eligible land will have both the authority and access to the necessary technical assistance to successfully transition away from irrigated production while maintaining soil health and wildlife habitat. I am deeply grateful for the State of Colorado’s commitment to not just reaching an agreement but reaching the right agreement and strengthening a long-term partnership that will support Colorado producers into the future.”
Through the revised Colorado Republican River CREP, USDA and the State of Colorado will make resources available to program participants who voluntarily enroll in CRP for 14-year to 15-year contracts. This CREP provides participants with two ways to enroll eligible land. Producers can enroll eligible land in “CP100, Annual Crop Production, Non-Irrigated.” This practice transitions irrigated cropland to non-irrigated crop production and establishes complimentary wildlife habitat in and along the cropland. Additionally, participants within the Republican River CREP project area may enroll eligible land in “CP2, Permanent Native Grasses,” “CP4D, Permanent Wildlife Habitat,” and “CP23 or CP23A, Wetland Restoration.” These conservation practices remove cropland from agricultural production and convert the land to an approved conservation cover.
Through both enrollment options, producers will earn an annual rental payment and cost share on eligible components of the practice.
The dryland crop production practice is unique because producers will be able to keep these lands working while they implement conservation-minded agricultural practices including no till farming, cover crop installation and wildlife-friendly harvesting. USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will work with eligible producers to develop conservation plans which include an approved annual crop rotation, minimum crop residue requirements, and management practices that support erosion mitigation and wildlife habitat. Unlike continuous and general CRP enrollment, participants with land enrolled in the CP100 may earn additional income from crops harvested from this acreage.
“By leveraging this CREP program, we can combine significant long-term reduction of consumptive water use and conservation-based dryland crop production when drought and water conservation resource concerns exist, as they so currently do,” said Kent Peppler, FSA’s Colorado State Executive Director. “This approach showcases that when we work to promote both production and conservation hand-in-hand, we have the capacity to create unique partnerships that benefit our economies, landscapes, and communities.”
Dan Gibbs, Executive Director, Colorado Department of Natural Resources, highlighted the positive impact this agreement will have on conservation efforts in the basin. Gibbs said, “We are excited about the outcome of this collaborative effort with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency. This agreement will help Colorado continue to advance its conservation efforts that are leading the basin toward a sustainable future in agriculture. The dryland production alternative provides more options that attract greater participation in the reduction of irrigation while helping preserve the economy and culture of the local region.”
“Through partnership with DNR and USDA, Colorado farmers and ranchers will have the opportunity to continue production while focusing on conservation efforts,” said Kate Greenberg, Colorado’s Commissioner of Agriculture. “This agreement dovetails with CDA’s STAR Soil Health program, which helps bring financial and technical assistance to producers interested in expanding or introducing new climate smart practices into their operations,” said Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture Kate Greenberg. “Farmers and ranchers are experiencing first-hand the impacts of drought and climate change. Tools such as dryland CREP that focus on farmer-led solutions to healthy soils and water conservation are key to mitigating these effects in agricultural landscapes and providing producers options.”
Interested farmers, ranchers, and agricultural landowners are encouraged to contact FSA at their local USDA Service Center to learn more or to participate. Find contact information at farmers.gov/service-locator.
More Information
Currently, CREP has 35 projects in 27 states. In total, more than 784,800 acres are enrolled in CREP. The Colorado Republican River CREP is part of USDA’s broader effort to leverage CREP as an important tool to address climate change and other natural resources challenges while expanding opportunities for producers and communities, especially those historically underserved by USDA. In December 2021, USDA announced improvements to the program as well as additional staff to support the program.
USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. Under the Biden-Harris administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit usda.gov.
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Conrad Swanson). Here’s an excerpt:
One way to save massive amounts of water from the drying Colorado River — state and federal officials had hoped — was to effectively buy water this year from farmers and ranchers with a $125 million conservation program. But very few are taking the offer. Or those willing to sell were turned away.
“It’s a comical mess,” Shaun Chapoose, chairman of northeast Utah’s Ute Indian Tribe, said. “They ain’t fixing nothing.”
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, which make up the river’s upper basin, launched the System Conservation Pilot Program late last year, offering money to farmers and others willing to forgo their water use this year, restarting a water-saving initiative that ran just a few years ago. This time around, though, the program is slated to spend twice as much to save a fifth less water, Colorado River officials say. Between the four states, 88 applications came in offering to save some water, Chuck Cullom, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission, said. The commission approved more than 80% of them…
If each of the program’s approved applications works out as expected the upper-basin can expect to save about 39,000 acre-feet at a cost of about $16 million, Cullom said. That’s less than 2% of the smallest amount of water federal officials hope to save. Cullom said the program came together quickly because of dire conditions on the river. That timing made it difficult for farmers to participate. And he said potential participants weren’t clear on how best to apply or what kind of money they could expect in return for their water…
The concept is fairly simple. A farmer, rancher or even a city holds the rights to a certain amount of water that they’re allowed to draw from the Colorado River (or its tributaries) in a given year. The System Conservation Pilot Program had $125 million to dole out, offering them to use less. A farmer growing corn will use a certain amount of water in a typical year. But if they’re willing to grow barley instead, which might use two-thirds as much water, the state could pay them for the difference they’ve saved. Or they could offer not to grow anything, saving more water and theoretically earning even more money from the program. Expand that offer throughout each of the four upper-basin states and the hope is that enough people sign up to conserve a substantial amount of water. The more water left in the Colorado River, the higher the levels stay at lakes Powell and Mead, the more water that’s available to generate hydroelectricity, irrigate crops in Arizona and California and flow into major cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix.
Click the link to read the article on the University of Washington website (Brooke Fisher):
A single snowflake hadn’t yet fallen when a team of civil and environmental engineering snow researchers descended on a small town in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains this past fall. But that was intentional — they were preparing for the coming winter’s mission to answer a longstanding research question: What happens to snow after it falls?
The researchers are investigating a phenomenon known as sublimation, which is the transition of snow directly from a solid state into water vapor, skipping the liquid stage. This is similar to the behavior of dry ice, in which frozen carbon dioxide vaporizes. Currently the largest source of uncertainty in snow modeling, sublimation has the potential to be an important insight for water resources management, especially estimating future water reserves.
“Sublimation is an extremely hard thing to measure. Lots of people have tried and come to different conclusions,” says Professor Jessica Lundquist, who is co-leading the Sublimation of Snow (SOS) project. “This will be the first time it’s been looked at with this level of detail in a mountain region.”
In one of the largest efforts to date — the combination of three field campaigns, plus additional research organizations — the UW team is collaborating with researchers around the country to leverage expertise and equipment. In early October, Lundquist and graduate students Danny Hogan and Eli Schwat arrived at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), located north of Crested Butte, Colorado. They deployed equipment and planned for data collection, which the graduate students will conduct on-site this winter.
“It takes this kind of effort to solve something this difficult. It’s a question of scale — we need both tiny and big measurements,” Lundquist explains. “It’s exciting when you see so many different people and agencies come together and say ‘We’ll work together as a team.’”
Funded by a National Science Foundation grant, the SOS project is led in collaboration with alumna Julie Vano (CEE Ph.D. ’13), research director for Aspen Global Change Institute. In addition to SOS, participating field campaigns are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s SPLASH project and the U.S. Department of Energy’s SAIL project. Also involved are the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Earth Observing Laboratory, the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (SLF), and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL).
The Colorado River watershed is an ideal site to study sublimation, as the phenomenon occurs more often in dry climates. In recent years, there have also been unexplainable decreases in the river’s flow, which people in seven states depend upon for drinking water. In 2021, the Colorado River snowpack was estimated at 80% of average, but streamflows ended up being only 30% of average. The researchers speculate that the discrepancy may in part be explained by sublimation.
“Forty million people depend on the Colorado River, and snow is the biggest input in the water resource equation,” Hogan says. “We don’t really know how much water is being lost from sublimation definitively.”
Current models used to predict sublimation rely on a fundamental theory, developed in flat cornfields in Kansas in the 1950s, that has proven to be inaccurate in more complex terrain, such as mountainous regions. Models based on this theory vary widely in terms of how much snow is predicted to sublimate, ranging from 10-90%.
“A simple way to explain why the theory in the prairie doesn’t apply in complex terrain is to imagine a river flow — it behaves well over smooth ground, but if you introduce bumps to the river bed, the flow becomes complicated,” Schwat says.
To improve future models, the researchers are working to better understand the precise combination of conditions that lead to sublimation, which tends to occur during low temperatures, low humidity and when both strong sunlight and wind are present. Since sublimation impacts snow on the surface and likely the snowflakes blowing above, the researchers will be paying close attention to the top layer of snow. They’ll also be investigating the characteristics of the turbulent air motions above — which can fluctuate widely depending on wind and other conditions.
“Studies show that when snowflakes are picked up by the wind and blown around, they may sublimate, so blowing snow is not necessarily just deposited elsewhere,” Schwat explains.
In a mountain valley located about a mile from RMBL, the UW team deployed an array of sensors, including “snow pillows,” which weigh the snow to monitor the amount of water in the snowpack. Four towers, up to 65 feet tall, were installed by collaborators for meteorological measurements, such as wind speed. Other instrumentation includes X-Band Radar, Doppler Lidar and terrestrial laser scanners to measure and track blowing snow.
“Few studies have the unique combination of instruments that we have here, both in terms of variety and sheer quantity,” Hogan says. “We’ll be able to see how well the theoretical equations and relationships play out when we have measurements at so many levels.”
Winter observations
In January, the graduate students will return to Colorado to oversee field observations through mid-March. They will stay on-site in cabins, as RMBL is only accessible via cross-country skiing during winter months.
“It’s a unique spot where we are staying, about four miles from the town of Crested Butte, so it’s ski in and ski out, which makes for more of an adventure feel to the field work,” Hogan says.
In addition to maintaining the field equipment, the graduate students will gather measurements during various weather conditions. In late January, the students will be joined by Lundquist, Vano and collaborators for two weeks of intensive observations. In addition to better understanding the process that leads to sublimation, the researchers hope to discern what types of measurements and instrumentation can best predict snow sublimation in a mountain valley.
To highlight the importance of the project to people whose water comes from mountain regions, as well as the larger science community, Vano and her team at the Aspen Global Change Institute are already working on outreach. Through the creation of videos and other educational materials, they hope to bring more visibility to the often overlooked topic.
“It’s in this intersecting space between hydrology and atmospheric sciences,” Vano says. “Hopefully through this work there will be a greater awareness of what snow sublimation is and the value and excitement of doing this type of research.”
