Day: September 10, 2023

The #ColoradoRiver is significantly declining due to #ClimateChange — ScrippsNews.com #COriver #Aridification

Updated Colorado River 4-Panel plot thru Water Year 2022 showing reservoirs, flows, temperatures and precipitation. All trends are in the wrong direction. Since original 2017 plot, conditions have deteriorated significantly. Brad Udall via Twitter: https://twitter.com/bradudall/status/1593316262041436160

Click the link to read the article on the ScrippsNews.com website (Dan Grossman). Here’s an excerpt:

Rising temperatures have sucked more than 10 trillion gallons of water out of the Colorado River Basin between 2000 and 2021.

“Water in western Colorado is not a partisan issue,” said Andy Mueller, the executive director for the Colorado River District. “We have some of the most liberal counties in America, but we also have some of the most conservative counties in America, and yet when they come together — their representatives who employ me — 90% of the time they agree on water policy issues. And it is the one area in today’s really divided political discourse where we see some united discussion.”

A new study out of UCLA shows the Colorado River has lost 10% of its water since the 1950s due to rising temperatures. Along parts of the Colorado, that loss is due to lessened snowpack as the area becomes more arid, but in others it’s due to evaporation as the temperatures cause the water to change to a gas more quickly.

Map credit: AGU

Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District rate study update — The #PagosaSprings Sun

The springs for which Pagosa Springs was named, photographed in 1874. By Timothy H. O. Sullivan – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17428006

Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Josh Pike). Here’s an excerpt:

At its Aug. 24 meeting, the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Board of Directors heard a presentation from Carol Malesky of Stantec on the rate study Stantec is performing for the district. Malesky explained that the rate study being presented to the board is the first part of the study Stantec is working on and that the study aims to evaluate what the district’s water and wastewater funding needs will be over the next 10 years…

She stated that the water and wastewater funds were analyzed as separate utilities, which she noted is a “sound” management practice, and that the study attempts to mini- mize impacts on PAWSD customers…

Following further discussion of the details of the CIF calculation, Malesky explained that, if PAWSD does nothing, water rate revenue will increase at the speed of growth from just below $5 million in 2024 to approximately $5.95 million in 2032. She noted that this growth in revenues would be eclipsed by the revenue demands for the district, with the water fund projected to fall below the reserve requirement in 2027 and to go into the negative in 2028…

Malesky then presented the pro-

posed water rate changes, with a 6 percent increase for 2023, 3 percent annual increases between 2024 and 2027, 3.5 percent annual increases between 2028 and 2030, and no increases between 2031 and 2032. She stated that these increases would take an average monthly water bill for 6,000 gallons of water from $54 in 2023 to $60.74 in 2027 to $67.35 in 2030.