Oil and gas infrastructure is seen on the Roan Plateau in far western Colorado. (Courtesy of EcoFlight)
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Seth Klamann and Nick Coltrain). Here’s an excerpt:
April 29. 2024
Leading Colorado Democrats and the state’s oil and gas industry announced a preemptive armistice Monday — one that seeks to defuse the latest round of dueling ballot initiatives and legislation aimed at the industry and its environmental impacts. The proposals, described to reporters by Gov. Jared Polis and legislative leadership, include imposing a new per-barrel production fee on the industry and enacting new environmental standards. In exchange, the industry, lawmakers and several environmental groups agreed to abandon recent attempts at regulatory legislation and ballot initiatives…
A key part of the deal takes the form of two new bills set to be introduced in the coming days — roughly one week before the end of the legislature’s 2024 session. One bill would institute a fluctuating production fee on oil and gas that is expected to generate roughly $138 million annually, based on returns from recent years. Much of that money would go toward supporting transit in Colorado, potentially including metro Denver’s Regional Transportation District. The state also would set aside a slice to help restore public lands impacted by oil and gas production. The second bill would seek to reduce emissions and improve air quality via new permitting and enforcement authority. It would include funding to plug orphan wells and strategies to help communities that are disproportionately impacted by the oil and gas industry, Polis and legislative leaders said at Monday’s late-afternoon news conference.
More problematic: All those declines are more or less concentrated in the power sector, and we need to make more rapid progress with transportation, industry, and buildings (as well as non-energy emissions from agriculture).
South Catamount is one of three reservoirs owned and operated by Colorado Springs Utilities in the North Slope Recreation Area (NSRA) of Pikes Peak. The dam structure, constructed in 1936, requires a major rehabilitation project to enhance its safety and performance. Project work includes resurfacing of the dam’s steel face and replacement of infrastructure in and around the dam. Photo credit: Colorado Springs Utilities
Dam work will restrict access to parts of the North Slope Recreation area this season. The area opened May 1, but critical work continues on the dam at South Catamount Reservoir and will limit access. The reservoir, which holds drinking water for Colorado Springs, is undergoing a major rehabilitation project on its 87-year-old dam. Project work is expected to last through 2025. The water in the reservoir was lowered significantly last year and will remain nearly empty during construction. The reservoir is not available for public recreation during this time…
The reservoir was built in 1937 and features a dam face constructed of steel, a unique feature that is exhibited in only four other reservoirs in the country, including Crystal Creek Reservoir on Pikes Peak. The steel must be resurfaced periodically to protect it from corrosion. Project work includes face resurfacing, and replacement of dam infrastructure and underground pipes.
Colorado River Research Group (CRRG) members Jack Schmidt, Eric Kuhn and John Fleck submitted an “alternative” to the post-2026 EIS process entitled: “Managing the Powell/Grand Canyon/Mead ecosystem after 2026.” In a nutshell, the alternative suggests that the Secretary of Interior be empowered to employ an adaptive management approach allowing releases from Powell to Mead to “be optimized to meet environmental, recreational, and cultural goals while retaining an interstate accounting system that still meets water-supply objectives.”
(CN) — Conservationists lost an appeal to the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday as they attempted to force the federal government to reconsider climate change studies in managing the Glen Canyon Dam and Colorado River.
Save the Colorado, Living River and the Center for Biological Diversity initially asked the U.S. Department of the Interior to consider emerging climate science and the severe potential of climate change in updating its management plan in 2016 for the Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell, which has a water level 3,564 feet above sea level. Experts say the dam will lose hydropower if the water level drops below 3,490 feet.
During the groups’ February appeal hearing, Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Mary Murguia and U.S. Circuit Judge Anthony Johnstone, both Joe Biden appointees, questioned whether the Interior’s absent response violated the National Environmental Policy Act itself and scrutinized the Interior’s historical water flow modeling.
However, neither of the judges’ skepticisms outweighed their conclusion that the Interior did not violate environmental law when developing its 20-year plan for managing water releases from the dam or the plan’s accompanying environmental analysis.
“Appellants contend that Interior impermissibly elevated hydroelectric power generation in its purpose and need statement. We disagree,” the panel wrote in the unpublished memorandum.
The Bureau of Reclamation and the National Park Service, two sub-agencies of the Interior, eventually developed and considered seven alternative plans to manage water releases from Lake Powell through the Glen Canyon Dam. But the agencies ignored alternative proposals that the conservationists say better account for future climate change.
The conservationists sued in 2019, four months after sending the Interior a letter detailing new research, which still hasn’t been answered. In December 2022, a federal judge sided with the Interior in a summary judgment finding the groups didn’t prove the federal agency hadn’t analyzed the effects of climate change.
U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Hawkins, a Bill Clinton appointee, joined Judges Murguia and Johnstone in denying the groups’ appeal.
The panel found that the Interior selected a management plan that adequately juggled its obligations under the Grand Canyon Protect Act of 1992 with other relevant regulations, such as the Colorado River Storage Project Act of 1956.
The judges explained how the groups’ proposals would have either reduced or eliminated hydropower generation at the dam or run afoul of the long-term management plan’s limited purpose: to create monthly, daily and hourly water release schedules.
And since the Interior’s plan controls the timing of water releases from the dam — not the volume of water it must release annually — the panel ruled that the Interior “reasonably focused its climate-change analysis on comparing the performance and effect of each of the seven alternatives under various climate change conditions, rather than providing a full-fledged assessment of water availability in the Colorado River Basin.”
By ignoring the groups’ demand for a supplemental environmental analysis, the panel decided, the Interior made a harmless error.
“Because there is no indication that the studies contain information ‘not already considered’ or that would ‘materially affect the substance of [Interior’s] decision’ regarding the timing of water releases from Glen Canyon Dam, no prejudice resulted from Interior’s failure to respond to appellants’ letter.”
In an email on Wednesday, Center co-founder Robin Silver acknowledged the loss while indicating that the organization’s fight against federally operated dams is far from over.
Silver wrote, “We lost. But operations of Glen Canyon Dam still need to be modified, whether it’s by prevention of the movement of exotic fish (mostly bass) through the dam, and the dam’s dysfunction owing to the river outlet works falling apart resulting in the increasing need to use the penstocks which will further increase movement of exotic fish thus jeopardizing downstream native fish further.”
“Stay tuned,” he added, “there will obviously be more litigation as BuRec continues to ignore River health to provide for subsidized power production.”
Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.
In Colorado, my home, we are already living with the effects from climate change – from record flooding, early snowmelt and unheard-of winter wildfires. These impacts have serious implications for communities as well as birds in the region like Lark Buntings and Mountain Chickadees. In fact, roughly half of bird species in Colorado are threatened with extinction if we don’t slow global temperature rise.
Recent reports have warned that the effects of climate change will continue to intensify, and to avoid the worst impacts we need to quickly reduce carbon pollution. In the U.S., this includes building more wind and solar energy infrastructure and increasing transmission capacity to get that energy safely and effectively from high resource areas to population centers.
That’s why Audubon released the Birds and Transmission report in August 2023—and why I joined the organization’s clean energy team earlier this year.
Our commitment to advocate for responsibly sited clean energy and transmission infrastructure is central to reaching our climate goals. We know that any infrastructure can pose risks to birds and there is no such thing as impact-free energy development, but our report shares ways that developers can easily avoid, minimize, or offset those impacts.
Here are some solutions for reducing transmission risks to birds:
Avoid high conservation value lands, with special attention to migratory pathways, wildlife corridors, and areas important for species of high risk like prairie-chickens.
Upgrade existing lines or expand within existing rights of way. This alone could meet up to half of all additional transmission needs.
Increase line visibility through marking devices or illumination with UV lights that birds can readily detect. This method has been shown to reduce collision rates at Audubon’s Rowe Sanctuary in Nebraska.
Investing in meaningful engagement with communities, especially from the outset, will help secure buy-in and reduce the increasing pushback that has stalled transmission projects. In our report, we were able to identify and map priority areas for birds that coincide with existing, planned, and potential transmission build-out. That way, Audubon and other stakeholders can strategically engage early and often with developers as projects are proposed and reviewed.
It’s clear that to act on climate, we need to get transmission projects across the finish line sustainably and at the scale needed to meet the moment. As the build-out continues, Audubon will be a voice for birds and our planet, making sure that infrastructure includes science-based solutions so we can build the grid birds need.
Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (John Aguilar). Here’s an excerpt:
May 2, 2024
Larimer County’s board of commissioners will decide the fate of the 70-mile, half-billion-dollar infrastructure project as soon as Monday [May 6, 2024]. As now proposed, the pipeline would follow an alignment that’s different from the one rejected in 2019…Ultimately, the commissioners will have to balance Thornton’s demands for water to support much-needed housing in the city of 145,000 against calls by county residents and environmentalists for an alternative that avoids putting the Poudre’s water in a pipe in the first place. They contend other outcomes would maintain the health of the river.
Colorado’s sixth most populous city wants to move 14,000 acre-feet of Poudre water to the city annually, via a 42-inch-diameter pipe.
It’s possible a final vote by the commissioners could be delayed until Wednesday, depending on how much more public comment there is Monday…
Carolynne White, an attorney representing Thornton, noted during the hearing that the city has owned its shares in the Poudre River for decades. It’s been diverting that portion of water into reservoirs northwest of Fort Collins, for use on farms in the area. Those water shares are the ones Thornton would send directly to the city through the pipe, rerouting water that does not flow through Fort Collins currently.
“This project does not reduce the river flows in the Poudre River,” White said.
