Click the link to read the article on the Climate.gov website (Michon Scott and Rebecca Lindsey):
In many watersheds in the western United States, more water is stored in the mountain snowpack than in the region’s human-built reservoirs. As climate has warmed, spring snowpack across the American West has declined by nearly 20 percent on average between 1955 and 2020—and by significantly more at some individual locations, according to an analysis by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency.
Observed change in April snowpack—historically the month of peak snow volume—across the western United States from 1955–2020. Locations where April snowpack has increased appear in blue, with larger dots for bigger increases. Locations where April snowpack has decreased appear in brown, with larger dots indicating bigger declines. Map by NOAA Climate.gov based on USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service snow data provided by the EPA.
Changes in snowpack mean changes in streamflows, which affect millions of Americans who rely on snowpack for drinking water and crop irrigation. Declining snowpack also increases fire risk and impairs hydropower production.
“From 1955 to 2020, April snowpack declined at 86 percent of the sites measured,” according to the EPA summary. “Decreases have been especially prominent in Washington, Oregon, northern California, and the northern Rockies. In the Northwest (Idaho, Oregon, Washington) all but four stations saw decreases in snowpack over the period of record.”
Observed changes in the timing of peak snowpack from 1982–2020. Locations where snowpack is peaking earlier in the year appear in pink, and locations where snowpack is peaking later in the year appear in green. Map by NOAA Climate.gov based on USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service snow data provided by the EPA.
One way to think about the Western snowpack is that it’s like a five-year old’s Halloween candy. If you are five years old and control that candy yourself, there’s a good chance it will be gone in days. If your mom holds on to it for you, she will dole it out to you slowly and responsibly, making it last a lot longer. In the West, precipitation that falls as snow and persists in mountain snowpack is like mom-managed candy: it remains available months later to keep rivers and streams flowing through dry summer months.
In many places, however, it’s not just the amount of snow that’s changing; it’s also the timing of the melt. When the melt starts and finishes early, streamflow may be out of sync with both human water demands and ecological processes like fish spawning. According to the EPA:
“About 81 percent of sites have experienced a shift toward earlier peak snowpack… .This earlier trend is especially pronounced in southwestern states like Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Across all stations, peak snowpack has shifted earlier by an average of nearly eight days since 1982…, based on the long-term average rate of change.”
[…]
These maps are based on an annual climate change indicator from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Supported with funding from the Climate Observations and Monitoring Division in NOAA’s Climate Program Office, the indicator is based on analysis of snow observations kept by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resource Conservation Service for more than half a century. The indicator is one of dozens the agency uses to track the U.S. impacts of global warming and climate change.
The Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute tribes of Southwest Colorado are fighting for water, including an effort to reclaim rights flowing downstream to other users. Ute Mountain Chairman Manuel Heart and Southern Ute Council member Lorelei Cloud presented their perspectives and plans for water management during a session of the Southwestern Water Conservation District’s annual meeting last week in Durango…
Native Americans did not gain U.S. citizenship until two years after the 1922 Colorado River Compact divided Colorado River water between upper and lower basins. Now, the 1922 compact is under review for water management changes in the mega-drought era and has a 2026 deadline for new interim guidelines. This time, tribes are asserting their water rights and demanding to be included in negotiations about how Colorado River Basin water is divided…
From the 2018 Tribal Water Study, this graphic shows the location of the 29 federally-recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin. Map credit: USBR
Thirty tribes within the Colorado River Basin hold 25% of the water rights, but some of the water has not been available for use or has not been recognized as tribe-owned.
“When the laws were made, we were not included; we were an afterthought. We know (tribes) have 25% or more of that water,” Cloud said. “If tribes were to put that water to use, it will be a major impact for those downstream who have been using it for free. As tribes put our water to use, there will be less water down river.”
Cloud said the Southern Ute Tribe has 129,000 acre-feet per year of federally reserved water rights on seven rivers that run through its reservation, but it only has the capacity to divert 40,600 acre-feet per year. The tribe stores water in Vallecito, Lemon and Lake Nighthorse reservoirs…
Ute Mountain Ute Chairman Manuel Heart said his tribe is also continuing its fight for water rights. He is chairman of the 10 Tribe Partnership, a coalition of tribes working to protect their water rights and provide input on Colorado River Basin water management.
2022 Ark Basin Water Forum returns to the Salida Steam Plant “Risk and Resilience in the Arkansas Basin” restores in-person event after 2-year pandemic pause”
The 26th episode of the Arkansas River Basin Water Forum, the basin’s premiere water event, will feature the state’s top water experts discussing critical issues facing all segments of water users – agriculture, municipal, recreation, environmental and industrial – and engage attendees in seeking solutions to the many challenges faced in planning for a secure water future for the largest of Colorado’s river basins.
Taking place Thursday and Friday, April 28-29, the 2022 Arkansas River Basin Water Forum will focus on “Risk and Resilience in the Arkansas Basin,” exploring topics that include the effect of Colorado River policies on the Arkansas River, ongoing drought and potential aridification in the southwestern United States, the impact of wildfires on water supplies, and much more (see attached draft program).
Keynote presentations will be provided by Dan Gibbs, Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, and Chris Sturm, Watershed Program Director, Colorado Water Conservation Board.
The Forum format continues to evolve, influenced by attendee needs and the resources available to provide interactive experiences for attendees. In addition to expert presentations and panel discussions in the morning sessions, a variety of outdoor field trips will be offered on the afternoons of both days of the Forum. Full information on registering for the Forum, including afternoon field trips, is online at http://www.arbwf.org.
Registration costs for the Forum remain an excellent value:
Two-day full registration, including lunches – $200
One-day registration, either Thursday or Friday, including lunch – $100
Percolation and Runoff networking dinner – $20
Plan on joining us Thursday evening for what is, hands-down, one of the funnest parts of the Forum. Not to be missed, the Percolation and Runoff social networking event is designed to raise money for our college scholarship fund. The $20 cost includes a delicious dinner, drinks and sparkling conversation. You won’t find a better dinner and drinks deal in Salida. All proceeds from this event support the scholarship fund, helping us to help students and working professionals in their education and research in water resources, watershed studies, hydrology, natural resources management and other water-related fields.
For more information, contact Jean van Pelt, Forum Coordinator, at arbwf1994@gmail.com
Denver Water field crews measure how much water is frozen in the snow near Winter Park on March 29. The utility’s teams take these kind of measurements at 13 sites every month during the winter and early spring. Photo credit: Denver Water.
Water news seems dreadful these days, with a megadrought in the Colorado River Basin, hydropower at risk in a fast-draining Lake Powell and a warming climate assuring these issues will only get worse.
So, amid these calamities, Denver Water wants to cite a small measure of good news: Soil moisture levels in parts of Colorado have improved.
Yes, this may only be a temporary blip on a downhill slide, but let’s celebrate what we can.
Soil moisture is a key indicator of drought conditions and has a big impact on water supplies. That’s because dry, thirsty soils can drink up a lot of the snowmelt that otherwise would flow into rivers and reservoirs.
Here’s an example from Denver Water’s own system: In 2021, snowpack above Dillon Reservoir peaked at 88% of normal. It wasn’t a banner year for snowpack, but it wasn’t terrible either. But dry soils made the lower snowpack levels far worse — runoff was only 57% of normal.
“The low soil moisture soaked up a lot of the melting snow before it reached rivers and reservoirs,” explained Nathan Elder, water supply manager for Denver Water.
The 2019-20 water year told a similar story, when snowpack peaked at 124% in the South Platte Basin but runoff came in at just 54% of average at one key measuring point.
Low soil moisture can soak up snow runoff, leaving less for rivers and reservoirs. Image credit: Denver Water.
This year, water forecasters expect a better scenario. That’s because a big monsoon season on the West Slope and in the mountains last summer brought soil moisture levels up. Snowstorms on the Front Range throughout the winter helped soils here, too.
“This year, with soil moisture better, we are expecting more runoff from the snowpack,” Elder said.
Nathan Elder, water supply manager for Denver Water, in April 2019, standing in a snowpit dug to gauge the snow’s temperature, depth,
Currently, snowpack above Dillon is 87% of normal and, because of greater moisture within the soil, streamflow forecasts are higher too — 82% of normal, a big improvement from last year.
Evidence of the improvement in soil moisture comes thanks to data from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency that closely tracks such matters.
The numbers can be complicated, but one way to understand the impact of the soil moisture is in what Denver Water’s water supply managers call “runoff efficiency.”
In a year when soil moisture numbers are just slightly below normal — such as this year — you can expect runoff volumes to be 10% to 15% less than the peak snowpack number.
In a year when soil moisture conditions are worse, as we’ve seen in several recent cases, the dry soils can reduce runoff efficiency by 15% to 20%. That can translate to a big cut in water supply.
Colorado Drought Monitor map April 5, 2022.
Another key measure comes from the U.S. Drought Monitor map. That map shows the Denver metro area — as well as much of Denver Water’s collection area — in “abnormally dry” conditions. That may sound bad, but it is actually a marked improvement from recent months when much of the state was in various stages of drought.
A year ago, the region’s drought levels ranged from “moderate” to “extreme” drought.
Things can still change, of course.
Should we get a long spell of warm, dry weather this spring, the situation could become worse. But, at this point in early spring, things look a bit better than in recent years.
“We’ll obviously be watching our watersheds and the weather closely,” Elder said. “But we take the good news where we can get it and, at least for the moment, we’re happy to see these conditions.”
April brought heavy rain to parts of the Midwest, South, and Southeast leading to broad areas of drought improvement in these regions. Meanwhile, drought expanded and intensified in the West with many locations setting records for the driest 3-month period (January to March). The High Plains remained largely unchanged this week with small pockets of improvements and degradations…
South-central Colorado saw a reduction in severe (D2) and extreme (D3) drought. Last week’s precipitation continued a trend of wetter-than-normal conditions that’s been in place since the start of the year. Short- and long-term indicators including precipitation, snowpack, soil moisture, and stream flow are responding to the excess moisture. Severe drought also decreased in southwest Wyoming for similar reasons. Kansas saw drought worsen in the west and improve in the east. D3 expanded in southwest Kansas, where precipitation deficits are less than 10 percent of normal over the last 60 to 90 days. Other indicators supporting this assessment include increased evaporative demand and soil moisture. In eastern Kansas, the map depicts a continuation of improvements made last week. In south-central Nebraska, moderate drought expanded in response to increasing precipitation deficits, dry soil moisture indicators, and reports of low stock ponds. The rest of the region remained unchanged this week. State drought monitoring teams have all noted the increasing dryness across the region…
Colorado Drought Monitor one week change map ending April 5, 2022.
Parts of the Northwest saw a healthy dose of precipitation and mountain snow during the past week. In most cases, this precipitation fell over areas free from drought or simply wasn’t enough to bring relief to drought impacted areas. Only southwest Oregon saw improvement with a small decline in moderate drought (D1). Oregon also saw an expansion of drought of severe (D2) and extreme (D3) drought. Water-year-to-date (October 1 to April 5) precipitation fell short and warmer-than-normal temperatures caused rapid and early melt out to the state’s snowpack. Soil moisture and shallow groundwater indicators are reflecting the worsening conditions. In the southeast part of the state, the drought monitoring team noted impacts including extremely dry soil conditions, a lack of surface water, and poor pasture forage conditions. Central Washington, Idaho, and northwest Montana also saw increases in drought extent or severity as short-term dryness continues to build upon long-term moisture deficits extending back to last year. Many parts of southern Idaho, and the rest of the West, have set records for the driest 3-month period (January to March) going back 100 years or more. Meanwhile near record warmth increased evaporative demand from plants and soils. Farther south, extreme drought (D3) expanded in parts of California, Nevada, and New Mexico while moderate (D1) and severe (D2) drought expanded across Arizona. In California, Cooperative Extension reports impacts to agriculture including reduced forage, livestock stress, decreased water allocation, and the selling livestock earlier than normal. Data such as reduced stream flows and declines in satellite-based vegetation health and soil moisture indicators confirm these reports…
Like last week, the South saw drought worsen across west and south Texas and the Oklahoma Panhandle. Above-normal temperatures combined with below-normal precipitation and high winds exacerbated conditions. Drought indicators supporting the degradations include increasing precipitation deficits, dry surface and root zone soil moisture and low stream flow. One-category improvements were made to drought conditions across east Texas, southern Arkansas, north and central Louisiana and Mississippi as the effects of the recent wet pattern propagated through indicators such as streamflow, soil moisture, and vegetation. Note that the heavy, solid black line separating the part of the region experience short-term drought was modified to reflect the effects of the recent rain…
Looking Ahead
The National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center (valid April 7 – April 9) calls for another storm system to move across the eastern half of the Lower 48. Multi-day snow is expected over the long-term drought areas in the Upper Midwest. Drought areas in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic are expected to see rain. Meanwhile, dry weather is expected across much of the drought-stricken Plains and West. An approaching front moving into the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies will bring rain and snow. Moving into the weekend, the forecast (valid April 9 – 13) calls for rain and high elevation snow and well below normal temperatures across the West. The colder temperatures, rain, and snow will reach into the northern and central Plains by early next week. At 8 – 14 days, the Climate Prediction Center Outlook (valid April 14 – 20) calls for below normal temperatures over much of the western and central U.S. and Alaska. Above normal temperatures are predicted over the east and west coasts. Near to above normal precipitation is favored for the Central Rockies eastward. Below normal precipitation is favored over California, Nevada, southeastern New Mexico, and southwestern Texas.
US Drought Monitor one week change map ending April 5, 2022.
Here’s a gallery of early April US Drought Monitor maps for the past few years.
March consisted of fairly typical spring weather across the region and featured both warm/dry periods that generated snowmelt and more active cool/wet periods that brought rain to lower elevations and snow to higher elevations. Much of the region received moisture during March, but monthly precipitation totals were generally below average. January-March has been very dry across the region, with precipitation ranking in the bottom five of the historical gage record at most SNOTEL sites across Utah, southwest Wyoming, and western Colorado during the three-month period.
Below average March precipitation across much of the region led to declines in percent of normal SWE values across most basins over the past month. April 1 snow water equivalent (SWE) conditions generally range between 75-105% of normal across the Upper Colorado River Basin and 65-85% of normal across the Great Basin. Snow across the Lower Colorado River Basin has mostly melted out with the majority of SNOTEL stations across Arizona reporting less than an inch of SWE.
Water supply forecast volumes decreased over the past month across most of the Great Basin and Colorado River Basin as a result of below normal March precipitation. Upper Colorado River Basin water supply forecasts generally range between 40-100% of the 1991-2020 historical April-July average. Great Basin water supply forecasts are 30-80% of average. Lower Colorado River Basin January-May water supply runoff volume forecasts are 10-65% of the 1991-2020 historical median.
April 1 water supply forecast ranges (percent of normal) by basin:
April-July unregulated inflow forecasts for some of the major reservoirs in the Upper Colorado River Basin include Fontenelle 435 KAF (59% average), Flaming Gorge 520 KAF (54%), Green Mountain 230 KAF (82%), Blue Mesa 530 KAF (83%), McPhee 152 KAF (60%), and Navajo 390 KAF (62%). The Lake Powell inflow forecast is 4.1 MAF (64% of average), which is a five percent decrease from March.
Warm and dry conditions are expected across the region through the start of this weekend. A shift into an active weather pattern is expected later this weekend into next week. Most of the region will see several periods of precipitation next week, with higher terrain likely to receive over an inch of precipitation.
Upper Colorado, Great, Virgin River Basins April 2022 April-July forecast volumes as a percent of the 1991-2020 average (50% exceedance probability forecast)Lower Colorado River Basin (AZ/NM) April 2022 January-May forecast volumes as a percent of 1991-2020 median (50% exceedance probability forecast)
For specific site water supply forecasts click here
March Weather/Precipitation
March consisted of fairly typical spring weather across the region and featured both warm/dry periods that generated snowmelt and more active cool/wet periods that brought rain to lower elevations and snow to higher elevations. Two periods of above normal temperatures near the beginning (March 1-3) and end (March 26-29) of the month led to snowmelt below around 9,500 feet, which is not uncommon for this time of year. March minimum temperatures were mostly above average across the region while March maximum temperatures were near average.
March minimum temperature (left) and maximum temperature (right) departure from the 1991-2020 average.
Much of the region received moisture during March, but monthly precipitation totals were generally below average. Across western Colorado March precipitation was around 70-90% of average. A few small areas received near to above average monthly precipitation, most notably along the western interior of Colorado and around the Utah-Wyoming-Colorado border near the confluence of the mainstem of the Green River with the Duchesne/White/Yampa Rivers. SNOTEL stations in the eastern Uintas reported March precipitation values around 100-150% of average, however the Wyoming Range just north of this area in southwest Wyoming received much less precipitation during March with SNOTEL stations generally 30-50% of average and ranking in the driest five on record for the month. The Upper Green River Basin in southwest Wyoming has had a very dry extended period, with precipitation during February and March ranking as the driest on record at most SNOTEL stations in the Upper Green River Basin.
March precipitation was mostly below normal across the Great Basin and generally ranged between 50-80% of average at SNOTEL stations. Precipitation during February and March ranked in the driest three at most SNOTEL locations across the northern Great Basin.
March precipitation across the Lower Colorado River Basin was variable with most basins receiving below average monthly precipitation. Virgin River Basin March precipitation was 40-65% of average. A number of SNOTEL stations across central Arizona along the divide of the Verde/Salt/Little Colorado basins received near average precipitation during March. March precipitation across the Upper Gila River Basin in west central Arizona was below normal (30-50% of average).
March 2022 percent of normal precipitation. (Averaged by basins defined in the CBRFC hydrologic model)
Water Year Precipitation
Water year precipitation has been highly variable from month-to-month and is shown in the image below. October and December precipitation was above to much above average over most of the region while November, January, February, and March precipitation was below to much below average. After a very wet December, the January-March three month period has been very dry across the region. January-March precipitation was around 35-55% of average across Utah, southwest Wyoming, and Arizona, and around 50-85% of average across western Colorado. Furthermore, January-March precipitation ranks in the bottom five of the historical gage record at most SNOTEL sites across Utah, southwest Wyoming, and western Colorado.
Water Year 2022 percent of normal precipitation. (Averaged by basins defined in the CBRFC hydrologic model)
Snowpack
April 1 snow water equivalent (SWE) conditions are generally near to below the 1991-2020 normal (median) across the region and are summarized in the below table. Below average March precipitation and snowmelt across much of the region led to declines in percent of normal SWE values in most basins over the past month.
Upper Colorado River Basin April 1 SWE conditions range from 75-105% of normal and did not change significantly in the past month. Upper Colorado River Basin SWE conditions continue to be most favorable along the divide of the Roaring Fork and Gunnison River Basins in western Colorado, where SWE conditions are around 105% of normal. SWE conditions are 80-90% of normal in the Duchesne, White/Yampa, Dolores, and the headwaters of the Upper Colorado River. The very dry January-March weather across southwest Wyoming has led to a steady decline in snowpack conditions across the Upper Green River Basin, where April 1 SNOTEL SWE conditions are around 75% of normal and ranked in the bottom five of the historical gage record.
Below average March precipitation across the Great Basin led to modest declines in SWE conditions over the past month. April 1 SWE conditions range from 65-85% across the Great Basin, with conditions generally increasing from north to south and faring the best across the Sevier River Basin in south central Utah. Northern Great Basin (Bear, Weber, Provo/Utah Lake) early April snowpack conditions are poor with April 1 SWE values generally below the 25 th percentile.
Snowpack conditions across the Lower Colorado River Basin are more variable and tend to fluctuate more frequently over time, with April 1 SWE conditions often based on just a few SNOTEL stations that haven’t melted out. Early April snow across the Lower Colorado River Basin has mostly melted out with the majority of SNOTEL stations across Arizona reporting less than an inch of SWE. Most of the remaining SWE across the Lower Colorado River Basin exists in the Virgin River Basin in southwest Utah, where April 1 SWE is near normal. There are also a few higher elevation SNOTEL stations along the divide of the Verde and Little Colorado basins in central Arizona reporting greater than five inches of SWE.
The images below show observed snow conditions and CBRFC hydrologic model snow conditions.
SNOTEL percent median observed SWE – April 6, 2022.CBRFC hydrologic model percent median SWE – April 5, 2022.
For updated SNOTEL information refer to click here For CBRFC hydrologic model snow click here
For CBRFC hydrologic model snow click here
Soil Moisture
CBRFC model fall soil moisture conditions impact early season water supply forecasts and the efficiency of spring runoff. Above average fall soil moisture conditions have a positive impact on early season water supply forecasts while below average conditions have a negative impact. The impacts are most pronounced when soil moisture conditions and snowpack conditions are both much above or much below average. The timing and magnitude of spring runoff is ultimately a result of SWE conditions, spring weather (precipitation/temperature), and antecedent soil moisture conditions.
A wet monsoon season and above average October precipitation improved soil moisture conditions, especially across Utah and Arizona. Fall (antecedent) soil moisture conditions are improved from a year ago but remain below average across many of the major runoff producing areas. Larger than normal antecedent soil moisture deficits exist across much of western Colorado and are expected to negatively impact early spring runoff efficiency. Fall model soil moisture conditions are closer to normal across southwest Wyoming and Utah and even above normal in parts of the Duchesne River Basin.
Comparison of November 2020 (left) and November 2021 (right) CBRFC hydrologic model soil moisture conditions entering the winter season.
Soil moisture conditions tend to fluctuate more in the Lower Colorado River Basin of Arizona and New Mexico in the winter due to the frequency of rain events and possibility of melting snow. Soil conditions in the fall are less informative than they are in the northern basins that remain under snowpack throughout the winter season. Basins with above average soil moisture conditions can be expected to experience more efficient runoff from rainfall or snowmelt while basins with below average soil moisture conditions can be expected to have lower runoff efficiency until soil moisture deficits are fulfilled.
Model soil moisture conditions across the Lower Colorado River Basin have improved from a year ago as a result of above average monsoon season precipitation and storm activity that has occurred during the water year. However, below normal January-March precipitation across Arizona and southwest New Mexico has led to declines in soil moisture conditions over the past several months. Early April model soil moisture conditions are mostly below normal across the Lower Colorado River Basin.
Lower Colorado River Basin (AZ/NM) model soil moisture – April 5, 2022.
Upcoming Weather
Dry and warm conditions are expected across the region through the start of this weekend due to an upper-level ridge over the western US. By the end of this weekend, this ridge will move east, allowing for a shift into an active weather pattern next week. Most of the region will see several periods of precipitation next week, with higher terrain likely to receive over an inch of precipitation. Elsewhere will likely receive between 0.25 to 0.50 inches of precipitation. Below average temperatures will accompany this period of active weather. In the long range forecast beyond next week, a return to drier weather is likely to occur as another ridge is favored to set up over the Eastern Pacific, though temperatures should remain below average across the region.
NWS Weather Prediction Center precipitation forecast for April 6-13, 2022.NWS Climate Prediction Center precipitation and temperature probability forecasts for April 13-19, 2022.
Click the link to read the article on the Pueblo Chieftain website (Tracy Harmon). Here’s an excerpt:
New water tap sales in Pueblo West could be limited to 400 this year to try to slow explosive growth in the face of a dwindling water supply, Pueblo West Metro District officials said at a meeting Tuesday.
The district’s water team proposed that around 1,050 water taps should be sold over the next three years, a middle-ground figure between FCS Group consultant Jason Mumm’s estimate that Pueblo West will have enough water to serve about 2,771 new water taps and a more conservative estimate from Alan Leak at RESPEC who estimated the district has enough water for about 695 new taps. District water officials recommended the sale of 400 water taps this year, 400 next year and just 100 in 2024. The remaining 150 taps should be “held in reserve for sale at the board’s discretion,” they proposed.
Last year, Pueblo West sold 538 water taps, said Jeffrey DeHerrera, deputy director of utilities. The recommendation to scale back sales isn’t set in stone and can be reevaluated as the district obtains more water resources, he said. Director of Utilities Jim Blasing agreed, pointing out his team is aggressively seeking what water rights it can get on behalf of Pueblo West. The board will reach a recommendation when it meets Monday and water tap sales could resume the next day, after being suspended since Jan. 24…
Pueblo West Metro District Board President Doug Proal said staff are working on a plan to roll out taps fairly. The board’s recommendations, along with what new water taps will cost and by how much water and sewer rates will increase, are expected to be decided on at the board’s meeting on Monday at 5 p.m. at Fire Station 3, 729 E. Gold Drive.
Whatever words and phrases the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may have been parsing late into Sunday night, its new report, issued Monday, boils down to yet another dire scientific warning. Greenhouse gas emissions need to peak by 2025 to limit global warming close to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), as targeted by the Paris Agreement, the report says.
In a way, it’s a final warning, because at the IPCC’s pace, the world most likely will have burned through its carbon budget by the time the panel releases its next climate mitigation report in about five or six years.
Even with the climate clock so close to a deadline, it’s not surprising that the IPCC struggled to find consensus during the two-week approval session, said Paul Maidowski, an independent Berlin-based climate policy researcher and activist. The mitigation report may be the most challenging of the three climate assessments that are done every five to seven years under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, he said.
The first two reports of each IPCC assessment cycle, one on the physical basis of climate science, and another about impacts and adaptation, are mostly based on unyielding physics, like how much global temperature goes up for every added increment of CO2, and how fast and high sea level will rise based on that warming.
But the mitigation report, which outlines choices society can make to affect the trajectory of climate change, has to reconcile those scientific realities with economic and political assumptions that are not constrained by physics, Maidowski said. Other researchers have described the IPCC report as a mechanism to determine what is politically possible, he added. If those assumptions—for example about future availability of carbon dioxide removal technology—don’t materialize, “then you are left with illusions, essentially,” he said.
The IPCC has “blinded itself” to deeper questions of sustainability and is thus asking the wrong questions, like how to decouple economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions, he added. Instead, it should be more up front about acknowledging the physical limits of the planet, and start asking how to downscale current resource consumption to a sustainable level.
The report found that “without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach.”
[…]
On the hopeful side, the panel noted that renewable energy costs have dropped by as much as 85 percent in the past decade, and that new policies in many countries have accelerated deployment of wind and solar power…
An Unrealistic Leap of Faith
The contradictions between scientific reality and hopeful political assumptions identified by Maidowski are clear in the new report, which says, on the one hand, that greenhouse emissions need to peak in the next three years, while also finding that average annual greenhouse gas emissions from 2010 to 2019 were higher than in any previous decade.
Believing that emissions can peak by 2025 on that trajectory requires an enormous and unrealistic leap of faith, and many climate scientists, including NASA researcher Peter Kalmus, are not buying it.
“This IPCC report is absolutely harrowing. Wake up everyone,” Kalmus wrote on Twitter. “Brief summary of the new IPCC report: We know what to do, we know how to do it, it requires taking toys away from the rich, and world leaders aren’t doing it,” he continued.
The Platte River is formed in western Nebraska east of the city of North Platte, Nebraska by the confluence of the North Platte and the South Platte Rivers, which both arise from snowmelt in the eastern Rockies east of the Continental Divide. Map via Wikimedia.
A proposal to build a canal that would divert South Platte River water from Colorado to Nebraska under a 1923 interstate compact advanced to the final round of debate March 29 after senators amended it to include conflict-of-interest provisions…
LB1015, introduced by Sen. Mike Hilgers of Lincoln, would authorize the state Department of Natural Resources to develop, construct, manage and operate the canal and its associated storage facilities, called the Perkins County Canal Project, under the terms of the compact.
Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha introduced an amendment on select file that would prohibit the department’s director, employees and their immediate family members from having a direct or indirect financial interest in any entity that is party to a contract or from having a financial interest in the ownership or lease of any property relating to the development, construction, management or operation of the project. Senators voted 44-0 to adopt the amendment.
A second Cavanaugh amendment, adopted 44-0, would extend the conflict-of-interest provision to members of the Legislature and elected officials in the executive branch of state government…
After adopting the amendments, lawmakers advanced LB1015 to final reading by voice vote.
Colorado snowpack sub-basin filled map April 6, 2022 via the NRCS.
Click the link to read the article on the CBS Denver website (Spencer Wilson). Here’s an excerpt:
“(The) snowpack is fairly decent,” Assistant State Climatologist Becky Bolinger said. “I wish it were a little bit better. I would feel more comfortable if we were, you know, above average at this point. But we’ve been keeping along with average a little bit, lagging behind occasionally, but then getting up there.”
Bolinger said the focus now becomes making sure there’s an even temperature for the snowpack to melt, if it melts too quickly, we could lose some of that hard-earned moisture. More late-season snowstorms would be good too… but not if it’s too stormy.
Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map April 5, 2022 via the NRCS.
Leprino Foods headquarters in North Denver April 22, 2020.
Click the link to read the article on the 303 Magazine website (Ellie Sullum). Here’s an excerpt:
Every year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) honors companies nationwide for significant progress in pollution prevention This year, the EPA awarded four Colorado-based companies for their contributions to the state’s sustainability efforts…
Taco Star
A Thornton staple, family-owned Taco Star now has four locations in the Denver Metro Area. The Colorado fast-food chain updated its infrastructure to feature LED lighting, low-flow sink aerators and sustainable commercial refrigerators. Refrigeration is the leading source of energy misuse, making Taco Star’s transition a vital step towards energy conservation within Colorado’s sustainability work. Overall, Taco Star’s activities have contributed to an annual cost savings of $4,695, 32 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent avoided and 13,000 gallons of water conserved…
Leprino Foods Company
Based in [Denver], Leprino Foods Company is a leading dairy manufacturer. With over 5,000 employees in multiple locations, they specialize in producing mozzarella cheese and popular dairy products. Conventional dairy production is a leading polluter industry. To reduce the company’s footprint, Leprino Foods installed sustainable equipment to limit greenhouse gas and water use. They also implemented cleaning and production process improvements to lower waste brine…By overhauling its equipment and systems, the company modeled water conservation processes for others in the industry to follow…
Management and Engineering Services
Headquartered in Longmont, Management and Engineering Services LLC provides business consulting services. They specialize in consulting with government agencies and private companies that operate on public lands. Over a three-year span, the company installed water reduction equipment, stopped stocking disposable office products and implemented renewable energy throughout the building. They also promoted a bike-to-work program and provided bicycles for employees. Through their efforts to improve Colorado’s sustainability, Management and Engineering Services embodies the purpose of their own work in environmental business solutions.
Learn more about the 2021 EPA Region 8 Pollution Prevention (P2) Award Program here.
The boat ramp at the Lake Fork Marina closed for the season on Sept. 2 due to declining reservoir levels. The Bureau of Reclamation is making emergency releases out of Blue Mesa Reservoir to prop up levels in Lake Powell and preserve the ability to make hydropower. CREDIT: HEATHER SACKETT/ASPEN JOURNALISM
From email from Reclamation (Erik Knight):
Releases from the Aspinall Unit will be increased from 700 cfs to 750 cfs on Tuesday, April 4th. Releases are being increased as diversions to the Gunnison Tunnel continue to increase. Currently snowpack in the Upper Gunnison Basin is 106% of normal and the forecasted April-July runoff volume for Blue Mesa Reservoir is 83% of average.
Flows in the lower Gunnison River are currently above the baseflow target of 1050 cfs. River flows are expected to stay at levels above the baseflow target for the foreseeable future.
Pursuant to the Aspinall Unit Operations Record of Decision (ROD), the baseflow target in the lower Gunnison River, as measured at the Whitewater gage, is 1050 cfs for April and May.
Currently, Gunnison Tunnel diversions are 300 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon are around 400 cfs. After this release change Gunnison Tunnel diversions will be around 400 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon will be near 350 cfs. Current flow information is obtained from provisional data that may undergo revision subsequent to review.
The evidence is clear: the time for action is now. We can halve emissions by 2030.
GENEVA, Apr 4, 2022 – In 2010-2019 average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history, but the rate of growth has slowed. Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach. However, there is increasing evidence of climate action, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released today.
Since 2010, there have been sustained decreases of up to 85% in the costs of solar and wind energy, and batteries. An increasing range of policies and laws have enhanced energy efficiency, reduced rates of deforestation and accelerated the deployment of renewable energy.
“We are at a crossroads. The decisions we make now can secure a liveable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. “I am encouraged by climate action being taken in many countries. There are policies, regulations and market instruments that are proving effective. If these are scaled up and applied more widely and equitably, they can support deep emissions reductions and stimulate innovation.”
The Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC Working Group III report, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of climate change was approved on April 4 2022, by 195 member governments of the IPCC, through a virtual approval session that started on March 21. It is the third instalment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), which will be completed this year.
We have options in all sectors to at least halve emissions by 2030
Limiting global warming will require major transitions in the energy sector. This will involve a substantial reduction in fossil fuel use, widespread electrification, improved energy efficiency, and use of alternative fuels (such as hydrogen).
“Having the right policies, infrastructure and technology in place to enable changes to our lifestyles and behaviour can result in a 40-70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This offers significant untapped potential,” said IPCC Working Group III Co-Chair Priyadarshi Shukla. “The evidence also shows that these lifestyle changes can improve our health and wellbeing.”
Cities and other urban areas also offer significant opportunities for emissions reductions. These can be achieved through lower energy consumption (such as by creating compact, walkable cities), electrification of transport in combination with low-emission energy sources, and enhanced carbon uptake and storage using nature. There are options for established, rapidly growing and new cities.
“We see examples of zero energy or zero-carbon buildings in almost all climates,” said IPCC Working Group III Co-Chair Jim Skea. “Action in this decade is critical to capture the mitigation potential of buildings.”
Click the link to read “United Nations climate report: It’s ‘now or never’ to limit GlobalWarming to 1.5 degrees C” on the United Nations website:
A new flagship UN report on climate change out Monday indicating that harmful carbon emissions from 2010-2019 have never been higher in human history, is proof that the world is on a “fast track” to disaster, António Guterres has warned, with scientists arguing that it’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
Reacting to the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN Secretary-General insisted that unless governments everywhere reassess their energy policies, the world will be uninhabitable.
His comments reflected the IPCC’s insistence that all countries must reduce their fossil fuel use substantially, extend access to electricity, improve energy efficiency and increase the use of alternative fuels, such as hydrogen.
Unless action is taken soon, some major cities will be under water, Mr. Guterres said in a video message, which also forecast “unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages and the extinction of a million species of plants and animals”.
Horror story
The UN chief added: “This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies. We are on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree (Celsius, or 2.7-degrees Fahreinheit) limit” that was agreed in Paris in 2015.
Providing the scientific proof to back up that damning assessment, the IPCC report – written by hundreds of leading scientists and agreed by 195 countries – noted that greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity, have increased since 2010 “across all major sectors globally”.
In an op-ed article penned for the Washington Post, Mr. Guterres described the latest IPCC report as “a litany of broken climate promises”, which revealed a “yawning gap between climate pledges, and reality.”
He wrote that high-emitting governments and corporations, were not just turning a blind eye, “they are adding fuel to the flames by continuing to invest in climate-choking industries. Scientists warn that we are already perilously close to tipping points that could lead to cascading and irreversible climate effects.”
Urban issue
An increasing share of emissions can be attributed to towns and cities, the report’s authors continued, adding just as worryingly, that emissions reductions clawed back in the last decade or so “have been less than emissions increases, from rising global activity levels in industry, energy supply, transport, agriculture and buildings”.
Striking a more positive note – and insisting that it is still possible to halve emissions by 2030 – the IPCC urged governments to ramp up action to curb emissions.
The UN body also welcomed the significant decrease in the cost of renewable energy sources since 2010, by as much as 85 per cent for solar and wind energy, and batteries.
A new flagship UN report on climate change out Monday indicating that harmful emissions from 2010-2019 were at their highest levels in human history, is proof that the world is on a “fast track” to disaster, António Guterres has warned. Reacting to the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN Secretary-General insisted that unless governments everywhere reassess their energy policies, the world will be uninhabitable.
Encouraging climate action
“We are at a crossroads. The decisions we make now can secure a liveable future,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. “I am encouraged by climate action being taken in many countries. There are policies, regulations and market instruments that are proving effective. If these are scaled up and applied more widely and equitably, they can support deep emissions reductions and stimulate innovation.”
To limit global warming to around 1.5C (2.7°F), the IPCC report insisted that global greenhouse gas emissions would have to peak “before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43 per cent by 2030”.
Methane would also need to be reduced by about a third, the report’s authors continued, adding that even if this was achieved, it was “almost inevitable that we will temporarily exceed this temperature threshold”, although the world “could return to below it by the end of the century”.
Now or never
“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F); without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible,” said Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III, which released the latest report.
Global temperatures will stabilise when carbon dioxide emissions reach net zero. For 1.5C (2.7F), this means achieving net zero carbon dioxide emissions globally in the early 2050s; for 2C (3.6°F), it is in the early 2070s, the IPCC report states.
“This assessment shows that limiting warming to around 2C (3.6F) still requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by a quarter by 2030.”
A great deal of importance is attached to IPCC assessments because they provide governments with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.
They also play a key role in international negotiations to tackle climate change.
Among the sustainable and emissions-busting solutions that are available to governments, the IPCC report emphasised that rethinking how cities and other urban areas function in future could help significantly in mitigating the worst effects of climate change.
“These (reductions) can be achieved through lower energy consumption (such as by creating compact, walkable cities), electrification of transport in combination with low-emission energy sources, and enhanced carbon uptake and storage using nature,” the report suggested. “There are options for established, rapidly growing and new cities,” it said.
Echoing that message, IPCC Working Group III Co-Chair, Priyadarshi Shukla, insisted that “the right policies, infrastructure and technology…to enable changes to our lifestyles and behaviour, can result in a 40 to 70 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. “The evidence also shows that these lifestyle changes can improve our health and wellbeing.”
A cow trying to leave an area affected by intense flooding, South Sudan. Credit: UNICEF/Sebastian Rich
Click the link to read “New UN Climate Report Outlines Failure of Existing Policies, Need for Rapid Emissions Cuts” on the Yale 360 website:
The Yallourn Power Station and adjacent brown coal mine in the Latrobe Valley of Victoria, Australia. STEPHEN EDMONDS VIA WIKIPEDIA
The world must make immediate and drastic cuts to carbon emissions to keep warming to under 1.5 degrees C, according to a new report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Existing policies and economic growth would allow warming to reach 3.2 degrees C, or nearly 6 degrees F, the report finds.
“It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C,” said IPCC Working Group III co-chair Jim Skea. “Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.”
To reach the 1.5 degree goal, emissions must peak by 2025, drop by roughly half by 2030, and reach net zero by 2050, the report says. By mid-century, countries must cut their use of natural gas by 45 percent, oil by 60 percent, and must stop burning coal entirely. They must also remove large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, for instance, by planting trees.
The IPCC report said that such progress is not unrealistic thanks to rapidly falling prices for solar, wind, and batteries, which have dropped by as much as 85 percent since 2010. But countries must act swiftly to cut emissions. At the current rate, the world will unleash enough heat-trapping gas by 2030 to produce 1.5 degrees C of warming. The failure of existing climate policies drew a harsh rebuke from UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
“High-emitting governments and corporations are not just turning a blind eye; they are adding fuel to the flames,” he said. “They are choking our planet based on their vested interests and historic investments in fossil fuels, when cheaper, renewable solutions provide green jobs, energy security, and greater price stability.”
The new report is the third and final installment in the IPCC’s latest review of climate science. IPCC assessments are produced around every seven years, meaning this is potentially the last report to be released before the end of this critical decade. Guterres called the document “a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world.”
Humans and fire have coexisted for years. But reorganizing our society around constant combustion may burn it to the ground. (Photo Credit: Issy Bailey, @bailey_i, via Unsplash)
Click the link to read “The world is running out of options to hit climate goals, U.N. report shows” on The Washington Pose website (Sarah Kaplan and Brady Dennis):
With the world on track to blaze past its climate goals, only immediate, sweeping societal transformation can stave off catastrophic warming
Whether humanity can change course after decades of inaction is largely a question of collective resolve, according to the latest report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Governments, businesses and individuals must summon the willpower to transform economies, embrace new habits and leave behind the age of fossil fuels — or face the catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change.
“The science has been ever more consistent and ever more clear,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said in an interview.
What’s needed now is “political courage,” she added. “That is what it will take — the ability to look beyond current interests.”
Human carbon pollution has already pushed the planet into unprecedented territory, ravaging ecosystems, raising sea levels and exposing millions of people to new weather extremes. At the current rate of emissions, the world will burn through its remaining “carbon budget” by 2030 — putting the ambitious goal of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) irrevocably out of reach.
It is still technically possible, and even economically viable, for nations to curb carbon pollution on the scale that’s required, according to the United Nations-assembled panel of 278 top climate experts. However, the report’s authors write, it “cannot be achieved through incremental change.”
Monday’s report represents the IPCC’s first analysis of humanity’s remaining paths for climate action since the landmark Paris agreement, in which world leaders committed to prevent dangerous warming. The nearly 3,000-page document details how coordinated efforts to scale up renewable energy sources, overhaul transportation systems, restructure cities, improve agriculture and pull carbon from the air could put the planet on a more sustainable path while improving living standards around the globe.
Swim class on the San Juan River. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism
From email from Reclamationk (Susan Novak Behery):
In response to increasing flows in the critical habitat reach, the Bureau of Reclamation has scheduled a decrease in the release from Navajo Dam from 350 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 300 cfs for Tuesday, April 5th, at 4:00 AM.
Releases are made for the authorized purposes of the Navajo Unit, and to attempt to maintain a target base flow through the endangered fish critical habitat reach of the San Juan River (Farmington to Lake Powell). This release change is calculated as the minimum required to maintain the target baseflow.
The San Juan River Basin Recovery Implementation Program recommends a target base flow of between 500 cfs and 1,000 cfs through the critical habitat area. The target base flow is calculated as the weekly average of gaged flows throughout the critical habitat area from Farmington to Lake Powell.
Settling ponds used to precipitate iron oxide and other suspended materials at the Red and Bonita mine drainage near Gold King mine, shown Aug. 14, 2015. (Photo by Eric Vance/EPA)
Click the link to read the article on the PBS website (Matthew Brown). Here’s an excerpt:
Every day many millions of gallons of water loaded with arsenic, lead and other toxic metals flow from some of the most contaminated mining sites in the U.S. and into surrounding streams and ponds without being treated, The Associated Press has found. That torrent is poisoning aquatic life and tainting drinking water sources in Montana, California, Colorado, Oklahoma and at least five other states.
Bonita Mine acid mine drainage. Photo via the Animas River Stakeholders Group.
The pollution is a legacy of how the mining industry was allowed to operate in the U.S. for more than a century. Companies that built mines for silver, lead, gold and other “hardrock” minerals could move on once they were no longer profitable, leaving behind tainted water that still leaks out of the mines or is cleaned up at taxpayer expense.
Using data from public records requests and independent researchers, the AP examined 43 mining sites under federal oversight, some containing dozens or even hundreds of individual mines. The records show that at average flows, more than 50 million gallons of contaminated wastewater streams daily from the sites. In many cases, it runs untreated into nearby groundwater, rivers and ponds — a roughly 20-million-gallon daily dose of pollution that could fill more than 2,000 tanker trucks. The remainder of the waste is captured or treated in a costly effort that will need to carry on indefinitely, for perhaps thousands of years, often with little hope for reimbursement…
Perpetual pollution
Problems at some sites are intractable.
Among them:
In eastern Oklahoma’s Tar Creek mining district, waterways are devoid of life and elevated lead levels persist in the blood of children despite a two-decade effort to clean up lead and zinc mines. More than $300 million has been committed since 1983, but only a small fraction of the impacted land has been reclaimed and contaminated water continues to flow.
At northern California’s Iron Mountain Mine, cleanup teams battle to contain highly acidic water that percolates through a former copper and zinc mine and drains into a Sacramento River tributary. The mine discharged six tons of toxic sludge daily before an EPA cleanup. Authorities now spend $5 million a year to remove poisonous sludge that had caused massive fish kills, and they expect to keep at it forever.
In Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, site of the Gold King blowout, some 400 abandoned or inactive mine sites contribute an estimated 15 million gallons (57 million liters) of acid mine drainage per day.
This landscape of polluted sites occurred under mining industry rules largely unchanged since the 1872 Mining Act.
Click the link to read the article on the Moab Sun News website (Science Moab). Here’s an excerpt:
In the desert, few issues are as crucial as water. As a historic megadrought continues in the West, water usage is at the top of mind for many scientists. Hydrologists can help us understand how and when to enact new water policies. In this week’s column, Science Moab highlights important messages from conversations with hydrologists, speaking with Eric Kuhn, Jack Schmidt, Brian Richter, and Arne Hultquist.
Science Moab: Are we bound by water usage policies enacted years ago? If nature can’t sustain those, what then?
Eric Kuhn: One hundred years ago, we had some flexibility because the river was not very well-used. Today, not a drop of the Colorado River reaches the Gulf of California, so we don’t have that luxury. The way I look at it is: we legally allocated water based on an assumption that this river system had about 20 million acre-feet. Today, we think it’s more like 13, and it might be less in the future with climate change. Predictions and models show that increasing temperatures are going to reduce flows to the Colorado River. The drama is not how much water we’re going to have in the future — we know it’s going to be less. The drama is how we’re going to decide who gets less water, and when…
These turbines at Lake Powell’s Glen Canyon Dam are at risk of becoming inoperable should levels at Powell fall below what’s known as minimum power pool due to declining flows in the Colorado River. Photo courtesy U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Science Moab: At the start of 2021, Lake Powell was at 41% of its capacity. Why should we be so concerned that Lake Powell levels continue to fall to all-time lows?
Brian Richter: Lake Powell serves three really important benefits. One is that it generates hydropower from the Glen Canyon Dam, which provides electricity throughout the southwestern United States. Two, Lake Powell is important for tourism, which is impacted by falling water levels. But by far the biggest concern is that if Lake Powell drops by another 85 feet — and for reference, the lake level dropped by more than 30 feet in 2020 — then the lake will drop below the hydropower outlets, so all the electricity production out of Glen Canyon Dam will stop. But even worse is that it will become physically impossible to move enough water into the Lower Basin states to provide for their water needs.
Colorado transmountain diversions via the State Engineer’s office
Bulkheads remain relatively obscure except to those involved in mine remediation, but their purpose is to plug mines and limit the release of mine waste while reversing the chemical processes that contribute to acid mine drainage. They can be simple fixes for extraordinarily complex mining systems and produce unintended consequences. But they are also a critical tool for the EPA and those working to improve water quality and reduce the lingering effects of more than a century of mining in the Bonita Peak Mining District…
The role of bulkheads in the Gold King Mine Spill
In its October 2015 technical assessment of the incident, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation argued that bulkheads were at least partially responsible for the Gold King Mine spill. The Gold King Mine is a maze of tunnels, faults and fissures located at different elevations inside Bonita Peak and the surrounding mountains in Gladstone. The mine opening that drained when the EPA crews struck a plug holding back water was actually what’s known as the “Upper Gold King Mine,” or Gold King Mine Level 7. A short distance away lies the “Gold King Mine,” which refers to a mine adit called American Tunnel…
With oversight from the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety, Sunnyside Gold Corp. first installed a bulkhead in American Tunnel in 1995 to stop mine drainage from entering Cement Creek. The company closed the valve on the first bulkhead in October 1996 and would go on to install two other bulkheads in American Tunnel. With the installation of the bulkheads, the flow of toxic mine waste into Cement Creek decreased from 1,700 gallons per minute to about 100 gallons per minute. But as the impounded water rose behind the bulkheads, the water rose elsewhere, including in Gold King Mine Level 7, which sits about 750 feet above American Tunnel, according to the Bureau of Reclamation’s assessment…The EPA has yet to determine if it was faults and fractures in the rock or other internal mine workings that carried water from American Tunnel to Gold King Mine Level 7, but the EPA and the Bureau of Reclamation have both said the spill was in part the result of this buildup from the bulkheads in American Tunnel. Bulkheads have been used in mine remediation efforts in Colorado for more than three decades, and there are about 40 installed across the state, said Jeff Graves, director of Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety’s Inactive Mine Reclamation Program…Bulkheads back up water and fill mine tunnels. When they do so, they limit the air rocks can come into contact with, preventing the chemical reaction that creates acid mine drainage…
Prior to mining, snowmelt and rain seep into natural cracks and fractures, eventually emerging as a freshwater spring (usually). Graphic credit: Jonathan Thompson
Acid mine drainage can also still make its way into river systems. Water naturally moves through rock and can turn into acid mine drainage when exposed to oxygen, though in smaller volumes.
The “Bonita Peak Mining District” superfund site. Map via the Environmental Protection Agency
Construction workers build a single family home in Castle Rock. The community needs new surface water supplies to reduce its reliance on non-renewable groundwater. Credit: Jerd Smith
Castle Rock’s building boom has barely slowed over the past 20 years and its appetite for growth and need for water hasn’t slowed much either.
The city, which ranks No. 1 in the state for water conservation, will still need to at least double its water supplies in the next 40 years to cope with that growth. It uses roughly 9,800 acre-feet of water now and may need as much as 24,000 acre-feet when it reaches buildout.
With an eye on that growth and the ongoing need for more water, Douglas County commissioners are debating whether to spend $10 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding to help finance a controversial San Luis Valley farm water export proposal.
Thirteen Douglas County and South Metro regional water suppliers say they have no need or desire for that farm water, according to Lisa Darling, executive director of the South Metro Water Supply Authority. [Editor’s note: Lisa Darling is president of the board of Water Education Colorado, which is a sponsor of Fresh Water News]
“It is not part of our plan and it is not something we are interested in,” said Mark Marlowe, director of Castle Rock Water. “We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in our long-term plan and we are pursuing the projects that are in that plan. The San Luis Valley is not in the plan.”
Renewable Water Resources, a development firm backed by former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and Sean Tonner, has spent years acquiring agricultural water rights in the San Luis Valley. It hopes to sell that water to users in the south metro area, delivering it via a new pipeline. In December, RWR asked the Douglas County commissioners for $10 million to help finance the $400 million plus project.
Tonner did not respond to a request for comment for this article, but he has said previously that the water demands in south metro Denver will be so intense in the coming decades, that the San Luis Valley export proposal makes sense.
Opposition to the export plan stems in part from concern in the drought-strapped San Luis Valley about losing even a small amount of its water to the Front Range. But RWR has said the impact to local water supplies could be mitigated, and that the proposed pipeline could help fund new economic development initiatives in the valley.
Stakes for new water in Douglas County and the south metro area are high. In addition to demand fueled by growth, the region’s reliance on shrinking, non-renewable aquifers is putting additional pressure on the drive to develop new water sources.
Denver Basin Aquifer System graphic credit USGS.
Marlowe and other water utility directors in the region have been working for 20 years to wean themselves from the deep aquifers that once provided clean water, cheaply, to any developer who could drill a well. But once growth took off, and Douglas County communities super-charged their pumping, the aquifers began declining. Because these underground reservoirs are so deep, and because of the rock formations that lie over them, they don’t recharge from rain and snowfall, as some aquifers do.
At one point in the early 2000s the aquifers were declining at roughly 30 feet a year. Cities responded by drilling more, deeper wells and using costly electricity to pull water up from the deep rock formations.
Since then, thanks to a comprehensive effort to build recycled water plants and develop renewable supplies in nearby creeks and rivers, they’ve been able to take pressure off the aquifers, which are now declining at roughly 5 feet per year, according to the South Metro Water Supply Authority.
The goal among Douglas County communities is to wean themselves from the aquifers, using them only in times of severe drought.
Ron Redd is director of Parker Water and Sanitation District, which serves Parker and several other communities as well as some unincorporated parts of Douglas County.
Like Castle Rock, Parker needs to nearly double its water supplies in the coming decades. It now uses about 10,000 acre-feet annually and will likely need 20,000 acre-feet at buildout to keep up with growth.
Parker is developing a large-scale pipeline project that will bring renewable South Platte River water from the northeastern corner of the state and pipe it down to the south metro area. Castle Rock is also a partner in that project along with the Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District in Sterling.
Redd said the San Luis Valley export plan isn’t needed because of water projects, such as the South Platte Water Partnership, that are already in the works.
“For me to walk away from a project in which we already have water, and hope a third party can deliver the water, just doesn’t make sense,” Redd said.
The costs of building two major pipelines would also likely be prohibitive for Douglas County residents, Redd said.
“We would have to choose one. We could not do both.”
Steve Koster is Douglas County’s assistant planning director and oversees new developments, which must demonstrate an adequate supply of water to enter the county’s planning approval process.
Koster said small communities in unincorporated parts of the county reach out to his department routinely, looking for help in establishing sustainable water supplies.
He said the county provides grants for engineering and cost studies to small developments hoping to partner with an established water provider.
“All of them are working to diversify and strengthen their water systems so they are sustainable. Having a system that encourages those partnerships is what we’re looking at,” Koster said.
Potential Water Delivery Routes. Since this water will be exported from the San Luis Valley, the water will be fully reusable. In addition to being a renewable water supply, this is an important component of the RWR water supply and delivery plan. Reuse allows first-use water to be used to extinction, which means that this water, after first use, can be reused multiple times. Graphic credit: Renewable Water Resources
Whether an RWR pipeline will play a role in the water future of Douglas County and the south metro area isn’t clear yet.
Douglas County spokeswoman Wendy Holmes said commissioners are evaluating more than a dozen proposals from water districts, including RWR, and that the commission has not set a deadline for when it will decide who to fund.
Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.
Click the link to read the newsletter on the CoCoRaHS website. Here’s an excerpt:
The Wild Rollercoaster We Call “Spring”
March has been living up to expectations. When I started writing this more than two weeks ago the midday temperature here in Northern Colorado was hovering near +10 F (~ -2C) and snow was tumbling down. Now that we’re eight weeks past Groundhog Day we’re in the 70s. Day to day weather changes this time of year in the middle of North America can be huge. After our mild and nearly snow-free fall and early winter, we have had plenty of cold and snow. In fact, we’ve now received over 45 inches of snowfall since December 31 and nearly double our average precipitation for that time period as well (as of mid-March). As you can see from this graph, we are now back up to average after five+ months of the 2022 water year as we move into our wetter seasons of the year…
Yesterday there were furious wildfires in portions of TX, OK and NM as well as major dust storms. Severe thunderstorms are rumbling into the Mississippi Valley. And in the Upper Great Lakes area it probably still felt a lot more like January than spring. What comes next? Well, that depends on where you are. For our southern states, the last bites of winter are about done. And for those of you who happen to be in the Bahamas, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and the Florida Keys – we know your song – ‘Winter? What’s that?” But for areas farther north or higher in elevation there can still be several more weeks that look and feel a lot like winter – except, of course, for the ever-longer daylength. The old saying that goes “As the days grow longer, the storms grow stronger” just may be true. For the next several weeks as the transition from winter to summer progresses, be ready for just about anything – especially in the battle grounds between north and south where airmasses duke it out.
Colorado Water Conservation Board to Focus on Water Resilience within the State as Demand Management Investigation Paused
In March, the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) decided to pause its Demand Management Feasibility Investigation in Colorado. Demand Management is the concept of temporary, voluntary, and compensated reductions in the consumptive use of water in the Colorado River Basin. Colorado has been a leader among the Upper Basin States in the feasibility investigation, gathering information from Colorado water users, stakeholders, and the public since 2019, and developing a Roadmap for answering questions in the future. CWCB stands ready to continue its investigation when more information becomes available from the ongoing feasibility investigations in the other Upper Basin States. All Upper Basin States would need to agree to a program if it is to be established, and any such program would depend upon a storage pool in Lake Powell, which could only be used to ensure ongoing Compact compliance. This pause provides an opportunity for CWCB to focus on what can be done in the more immediate future within Colorado. CWCB will consider a full range of mechanisms that would not be dependent on other states or the broader Colorado River System and could be implemented by and within Colorado, with the purpose of protecting Colorado’s water users through increased hydrologic shortage and variability.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Water and Climate Center’s snowpack report, the Wolf Creek summit, at 11,000 feet of elevation, had 34.0 inches of snow water equivalent as of 10 a.m. on Wednes- day, March 30. That amount is up 0.2 inches from the snow water equivalent depth of 33.8 inches reported Wednesday, March 23. The Wolf Creek summit is at 121 percent of the March 30 snowpack median.
The San Miguel, Dolores, Animas and San Juan river basins were at 93 percent of the March 30 median in terms of snowpack.
At their March 10 joint meeting, the boards of the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) and Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) discussed the future of the Dry Gulch reservoir.
The meeting opened with SJWCD board president Al Pfister providing an update on the organization’s activities related to Dry Gulch.
“We haven’t really … done a lot of work in the past two years,” Pfister said.
He continued to explain that SJWCD had unanimously voted to hire Wilson Water Group to perform a water needs assessment study at its meeting earlier in the day. This study will cost $15,000 and will be completed over a three- month period. The study will examine the mu- nicipal, agricultural, industrial, environmental and recreational water needs of the community and assess how these needs are likely to change in the future given the population increases the county has recently experienced…
Secrist provided an update on SJWCD’s work with Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) to potentially nominate the Dry Gulch site to be a state park site. According to Secrist, this process began in the summer of 2021 when Secrist was approached by CPW representatives about the possibility of locating a state park at the Dry Gulch site…He explained that the state park application would need to be submitted by June 1 and that CPW is interested in creating the park whether or not the site contains a reservoir.
The University of Denver Sturm College of Law is home to the Water Law Review, the premier water law journal in the nation. This year, the annual Water Law Review symposium will celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the Colorado River Compact, a document designed to guide seven western states and Mexico in allocating and sharing water from the river.
Water is a precious resource, and the Colorado River is becoming more important than ever before due to climate change and growth of western cities putting pressure on an over-allocated resource. To learn from history, the symposium will first discuss what went into drafting the Compact 100 years ago. As a foundation for panel discussions, we will have a hydrology report to learn the state of the river and the status of this precious resource. Colorado River professionals will then come together from each of the basin states, Mexico, and the Tribes to discuss how the Compact has affected each of their communities, and how we can continue to work together to share a diminishing resource.
From the 2018 Tribal Water Study, this graphic shows the location of the 29 federally-recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin. Map credit: USBR
We have created a unique opportunity to hear perspectives from such distinguished speakers, including our keynote speaker: Tanya Trujillo, the Assistance Secretary for Water and Science at the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Our panel speakers include:
▪ William Philpott, Associate Professor of History, University of Denver
▪ Michelle Garrison, Senior Water Resource Specialist, Colorado Water Conservation Board
▪ Terry Goddard, Attorney, President of the Central Arizona Project, Former Arizona Attorney General
▪ Peter Fleming, General Counsel, Colorado River District
▪ Daniel Galindo, Deputy Director of the Colorado River Mexican Section of the International Boundary
Water Commission
▪ Peter Ortego, General Counsel for Ute Mountain Ute
▪ Puoy Premsrirut, Attorney, Chairwoman of the Colorado River Commission of Nevada
▪ Rolf Schmidt-Petersen, Director, New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission
▪ Gene Shawcroft, Utah Colorado River Commissioner
▪ Chris Brown, Wyoming Senior Assistant Attorney General
▪ Philip Womble, Fellow, Stanford Law School; Postdoctoral Fellow, Woods Institute for the
Environment, Stanford University
▪ James Eklund, Founder of Eklund Hanlon, LLC, Former director of the Colorado Water Conservation
Board, Former Colorado River Commissioner for Colorado
▪ Amy Ostdiek, Section Chief of Interstate, Federal, and Water Information Section, Colorado Water
Conservation Board
▪ Celene Hawkins, Colorado and Colorado River Tribal Engagement Program Director
▪ Christopher Harris, Executive Director, Colorado River Board of California
The event is April 14th and 15th at the University of Denver. All Pertinent details can be found on our website. Registration ends midnight on Sunday April 10th.
For any questions, please reach out to Andie Hall at ahall22@law.du.edu or Andrea Thomas at athomas24@law.du.edu.
Click the link to read the article on the CBS Denver website (Ashton Altieri). Here’s an excerpt:
With the average date for peak mountain snowpack just a week away, only two of Colorado’s eight river basins are at or above normal. March was not as snowy in the mountains as it needed to be after a unusually dry January and February…As of Thursday morning, statewide snowpack was 8% lower than normal for the final day of March.
The Yampa Basin is in the worst shape with snowpack measuring only 83% compared to normal through the end of March. Ideally all eight river basins in Colorado would be at least 100% of average by the first week in April. The average date for maximum snowpack is April 8. After that date, the combination of a higher sun angle, longer days, and generally warmer temperatures means the snowpack starts to gradually disappear regardless of how many spring storms bring additional snow.
Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map April 2, 2022 via the NRCS.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife began restoration efforts this week to remove sediment from high spots in Home Lake just east of Monte Vista. Tyler Cerny, CPW District Wildlife Manager for the Monte Vista District, said sediment has accumulated in the lake for years primarily from the water inlet from the Lariat Ditch on the south side of the lake. With irrigation season slated to start in early April, plans are to remove as much sediment as possible before the water allotment is available. Fish restocking will begin as early as May or June with plans to include trout, bluegill, large mouth bass, catfish, grass carp and possibly crappie.
View down Clear Creek from the Empire Trail 1873 via the USGS
Click the link to read the article on the Canyon Courier website (Corinne Westeman). Here’s an excerpt:
Empire has confirmed there’s a leaking water pipe on private property, and there’s another suspect area underneath U.S. Highway 40.
Police Chief John Stein stated on April 1 that, while the leak on private property was confirmed to be drinking water, it was relatively small compared to the town’s overall system. So, it cannot be the sole cause of Empire’s loss in water last month, he described.
The suspect area underneath U.S. 40, which Stein said could be a valve that isn’t shutting completely or a cracked pipe, requires further research. If it’s a valve that’s not closing completely, water might not be leaving the system in that location, he explained.
Stein said he couldn’t guarantee it, but Empire’s water woes could be from these two problems plus residents’ relatively high water use during last month’s cold spell.
It’s still possible, he continued, there is a larger issue with the water infrastructure that the town and its partners haven’t identified yet.
A rare sight: Water shoots out of Glen Canyon Dam’s river outlets or “jet tubes” during a high-flow experimental release in 2013. Typically all of the dam’s outflows go through penstocks to turn the turbines on the hydroelectric plant. The outlets are only used during these experiments, meant to redistribute sediment downstream, and when lake levels get too high. Spillways are used as a last, last resort. The river outlets may be used again in the not so distant future: Once Lake Powell’s surface level drops below 3,490 feet, or minimum power pool, water can no longer be run through the turbines and can only be sent to the river below via the outlets. This is cause for concern because the river outlets were not built for long-term use. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
If you read my impressions from a visit to Hoover Dam, you’ll remember that I ended it with these sentences describing the spillway at the dam (not the dam, itself): “It’s beautiful in the way functional structures can be. And yet, it no longer serves any real function—and never will—except, perhaps, as a reminder of what was.”
When the venerable LA Times environment reporter Sammy Roth tweeted out the description, this was one of the responses:
Okay, well, I’m not sure how it’s “arrogant” to say that a spillway will never be used again, but a subsequent Twitter discussion fleshed out the bigger point he was trying to make: Just as climate change can exacerbate drought, warming can also trigger extremely abundant precipitation, leading to catastrophic flooding a la 1983, which could fill up the reservoirs again and put the spillways back into use. Others piped in, as well, pointing to Lake Oroville in California, which went from nearly empty to overflowing and back to empty over the course of several years.
It got me thinking that maybe I had been too rash in asserting the spillways would never be needed again. After all, anything’s possible: We know that the 1911 Flood sent around 300,000 cubic feet per second or more past the current Glen Canyon Dam site (compared to the 1983 flows of 120,000 cfs), and paleoflood investigations suggest deluges in the distant past have topped out above 600,000 cfs—a Biblical sort of event.
Could a climate change-induced megaflood of this magnitude reverse the effects of a climate change-induced megadrought and fill Powell and Mead back to the brim?
It seems unlikely.
The issue here is one of scale. Lake Powell and Lake Mead are both gargantuan in size. Powell is 186 miles long when full with over 1,900 miles of coastline. It can store nearly 27 million acre feet (af) of water (minus a million or two due to siltation). Contrast that to Lake Oroville, with its relatively minuscule 3.5 million acre feet of capacity.
Powell currently has less than 6 million acre feet in it, leaving 20 million acre feet of empty storage that needs to be filled before water would reach the spillways. Lake Mead’s numbers are similarly huge.
Now, the monster flood of 650,000 cfs would dump 1.3 million acre feet of water per day into the reservoir. So, you’d need two weeks of this to fill up Powell—and Lake Mead would still have 20 million acre feet of unused capacity, meaning you’d need another two weeks of deluge to fill it up. Megafloods usually don’t last that long—the 1911 Flood brought up river levels for several days, not weeks (and Colorado river flows for the entire year were unremarkable). And besides, 650,000 cfs isn’t going to sneak up on the dam operators. They’d see it coming and start releasing water from the reservoirs ahead of time, obviating the need to use the spillways.
Conclusion: A sudden megaflood is not going to cause either Mead or Powell—and certainly not both of them—to overflow.
But what about a string of really wet years, when record-setting snowfall is followed by torrential summer rains? We know this is possible, because it’s exactly what happened in 1983 through 1986, the last time the spillways were used. We also know, from streamflow reconstructions back to the 8th Century, that the wet and wild 1980s were not entirely unprecedented. They were, however, an anomaly, and they are among the wettest four consecutive years on record.
So, let’s assume a repeat. Would that fill the dams to overflowing and put the spillways back to use? Perhaps.
Here are the numbers as of March 30:
Lake Powell Current storage: 5.8 million acre feet (MAF)
Full capacity: 27 MAF
Minimum annual release: 8.23 MAF
Annual evaporation: .4 MAF
Lake Mead current: 8.6 MAF
Full capacity: 28.2 MAF
Minimum annual release: 9.6 MAF
Annual evaporation: .6 MAF
Las Vegas withdrawal: .3 MAF
These were the actual inflows into Lake Powell during the super soaker years from 1983-1986, also known as the only time the spillways at Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams were actually used. It didn’t go so well, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
1983: 20 MAF
1984: 21.6 MAF
1985: 18.2 MAF
1986: 18.4 MAF
To put this in context, consider inflows during the four biggest water years of the last two decades:
2011: 16.3 MAF
2008: 12.4 MAF
2019: 11.7 MAF
2005: 11.4 MAF
And, just to give you an idea of the dismal state of the Colorado River currently:
2021: 4.03 MAF
1983, the last time the spillways at Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams were used, was a remarkable year in many ways. The winter started out above average in terms of snowfall, but not wildly so. Then, in March, it started dumping and didn’t stop until the end of May (snowpack peaked on May 20, more than a month later than normal). The temperature shot up rapidly followed by heavy June rains. Glen Canyon’s operators weren’t expecting the deluge and failed to leave enough room in Lake Powell to accommodate it. Source: NRCS and USBR.
Glen Canyon Dam operators are required to send at least 8.23 MAF downstream to Lake Mead each year, but usually only go above that when Powell gets close to full and “equalization” kicks in—it’s basically a “fill Powell first” philosophy. The following Glen Canyon release numbers are guesses based on that. Of course, once Lake Powell is full, then releases would equal inflows.
The equation, then, is:
Begin Water Year Storage + Inflows – (evaporation+withdrawals) = End WY Storage
So, at the end of the nearly unprecedented string of wet years, Lake Powell would be full but Lake Mead still would need another 6 million acre feet of water before the spillways could be used.
Let’s just say I’m feeling better about my spillway “never again” comment.
There is another possible scenario: Four years of giant snow/water years followed by the monster megaflood—the double whammy. That certainly would fill up both Powell and Mead and could lead to a 1983 situation all over again, or worse.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean the spillways would be utilized again. In fact, dam operators will do everything they can to avoid it because they really aren’t intended to be used. In 1983 it wasn’t the big water that forced the spillways into use, it was the dam operators’ failure to prepare for the sudden runoff by releasing enough water beforehand. And that stemmed from faulty weather forecasting.
When the runoff did hit the already full reservoir, it caused the water to spill into the spillways, which are actually tunnels through the cliffs on either side of the dam. A phenomenon called cavitation occurred, in which vapor bubbles in the water collapse, sending shockwaves through the tunnels. That tore huge gouges into the concrete lining and then the rock, which in turn threatened the dam, itself. Plywood extenders were added to the top of Glen Canyon Dam’s spillway gates to stop the water from entering them.
So, even in the extraordinarily unlikely event of a double whammy 1983 water year + a megaflood, dam operators will be ready for it. So, I’m standing by my assertion as rash as it may be: The spillways on both Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams are obsolete, except maybe as extreme skateboarding chutes.
In kinda related news, the federal Energy Information Administration published figures on the effects of last year’s drought on hydropower generation. As expected it was kind of grim, with California facilities only producing about half of what they normally would.
But it’s okay, right? I mean that was last year and now the drought’s over, so … Huh? What’s that? Oh. Oh, dear. This just in: Snowpack levels in the Sierras are between 30 percent and 44 percent of average for this date. Unless the storms come quick and bountiful, it’s going to be another year of diminished hydropower in the Golden State. Not good.
We promised we’d be doing various Colorado River Compact-related coverage this year, so here are a couple pretty fascinating tidbits I found in a 1916 USGS paper on the Colorado River. On the left are population figures for major towns and cities in the Colorado Basin and for the portion of states lying within the Basin. On the right are annual streamflows for the Colorado River above its confluence with the Gila. Turns out the average for that time period was a bit higher than the historic mean, leading Compact negotiators to parcel out more water than actually existed in the river. Whoops!
Population and streamflow at the time the Colorado River Compact was being negotiated. Credit: The Land Desk
Brighton Village mobile home park next to a river. Multiple trailers are intersperses with bare deciduous trees on a riverbank. Photo credit: Aqua Talk
Click the link to read the article on the Aqua Talk website (Amy Schultz and Jorge Delgado):
The Brighton Village mobile home community (Park) is a 28-home community in Adams County that serves around 80 people and is a disproportionately impacted community, defined in HB21-1266 Environmental Justice Disproportionate Impacted Community. The department initially issued an Enforcement Order in 2003 due to high nitrate values and the Park’s failure to comply with the nitrate maximum contaminant levels. Infants below the age of six months who drink water containing nitrate above the MCL could become seriously ill and, if untreated, may die. Symptoms include shortness of breath and blue baby syndrome.
The 2003 enforcement order was closed in 2010. However, the department again issued an Enforcement Order in 2012 for nitrate violations and did so again in 2018. The Park had installed treatment but did not have the capabilities or the resources to operate the treatment appropriately to reliably achieve compliance. The long-term exposure to an acute contaminant created environmental injustices for this community.
From the EPA, environmental justice is “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” The Colorado Environmental Justice Act recognizes that all people have a right to drink clean water and live free of dangerous levels of toxic pollution, experience equal protection of environmental policies, and share the benefits of a prosperous and vibrant pollution-free economy.
The department facilitated meetings with the Park and the City of Brighton. The City of Brighton and the Park decided that the best way to serve safe drinking water to the public was to connect the park to the City’s municipal water supply. However, the Park was required to upgrade its water distribution system before the connections could be made. The department provided the Park with $16,000 in grants that allowed the Park to connect to the municipal water supply.
The Safe Drinking Water Program worked in partnership with both the Park and City of Brighton to ensure this disproportionately impacted community is being provided with access to a consistent and reliable source of safe drinking water. This is an Environmental Justice win for the residents of this community, the department, and Colorado.
Written and sung by young people who live and play along the Gila River, in Southwest New Mexico, this video is a plea to protect the Gila River for future generations. Give a listen, then go to http://www.wildgilariver.org to learn more.
Footage courtesy of the movie Hearts on the Gila-HeartsontheGila.com
Gila River. Photo credit: Dennis O’Keefe via American Rivers
Click the link to read the release on the Reclamation website (Peter Soeth):
The Bureau of Reclamation announced today that 17 Tribes in eight states will receive $3 million to support water management projects. The Native American Affairs Technical Assistance to Tribes Program supports Tribes through projects including water need studies, water quality data collection and assessments, and water measurement studies.
“Reclamation is committed to working with Tribes and Tribal organizations as they develop, manage and protect their water resources,” said Acting Commissioner David Palumbo. “This funding will help Tribes and Tribal Nations as they address the long-term drought and meet their critical water needs.”
This program provides Tribes financial assistance to implement projects to support their water management projects. This investment will complement the funding provided by Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s investments to support Tribal communities and ensure they have the resources they need to bolster climate resilience and develop their water resources.
The Native American Affairs Technical Assistance Program is one part of how Reclamation is responding to drought and climate change across the West as part of the White House Interagency Drought Relief Working Group, part of the National Climate Task Force created by President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad. The working group, chaired by the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture, is working to build upon existing resources and coordinate across the federal government, working in partnership with state, local, and Tribal governments to address the needs of communities suffering from drought-related impacts.
Projects
The funding will be provided to the Tribes as grants or cooperative agreements. The projects selected are:
Fort McDowell Pumping System Replacement, $200,000 (Arizona)
Fort Mojave Tribe Irrigation Pump Replacement, $200,000 (Arizona)
San Carlos Apache Water Metering Project, $200,000 (Arizona)
Big Valley Band Planning for Water Recycling/Reuse, $199,563 (California)
Registration Full for Spring Water Users Meeting on April 13
The Northern Water Spring Water Users Meeting is now at capacity and accepting names for a waitlist. The annual meeting is from 8 a.m.-2 p.m. on April 13 at the Embassy Suites in Loveland.
The meeting includes time for water users throughout Northern Water boundaries to provide input regarding the 2022 quota level for the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. Information gathered at the meeting will be included in the data used by the Northern Water Board of Directors to set the quota at its monthly board meeting on April 14. If you would like to provide feedback regarding the quota via email, please email generaldelivery@northernwater.org by 5 p.m. on April 13.
In addition, the meeting will provide an opportunity to learn about the latest activities being carried out by Northern Water, such as the construction of Chimney Hollow Reservoir, the restoration of lands damaged by the 2020 Colorado wildfires and the future of our forested source watersheds.
To add your name to the wait list or if you have registered and are now unable to attend, please email events@northernwater.org.
With a recent update of @NWSSPC's database to include data from 2020, we've updated our Colorado severe weather climatology page. The most notable additions from 2020 are numerous wind reports from the June 6 derecho and June 9 Akron downburst. #cowxhttps://t.co/ljuTYefdaH
A long-planned project to restore healthy ecosystems along the South Platte River and two other waterways in central Denver got a major boost from the federal government this week, in the form of $350 million in funding from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The funding for the South Platte River Project, spearheaded by Denver and Adams counties, will cover nearly two-thirds of the $550 million that civic leaders plan to spend restoring wetland habitats, improving recreation and mitigating flood risk along a 6.5-mile stretch of the river, along with Weir Gulch and Harvard Gulch.
The funds awarded Tuesday by the Biden administration are part of the $17 billion appropriated by a new federal infrastructure law to the Army Corps of Engineers to support flood mitigation projects across the country.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
“I’m delighted to welcome funding from the bipartisan infrastructure bill for the South Platte River and surrounding communities after years of urging Washington to support this project,” Sen. Michael Bennet said in a statement. “For decades, the neighborhoods bordering the South Platte River have experienced environmental hardship. This project is an important part of Denver’s efforts to protect communities and businesses from flooding, build resilient infrastructure, and help ensure that anyone who wants to live and work in Denver is able to.”
The Army Corps of Engineers finalized a feasibility and impact study on the project in 2019, concluding more than a decade of planning and environmental reviews. In addition to restoring aquatic, wetland and riparian wildlife habitats along the South Platte, supporters say the plan will create more than 7,000 jobs and protect hundreds of homes and other structures from flood risk.
In December, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock convened a coalition of two dozen interest groups that signed a memorandum of understanding on the project in order to secure federal funding. Signatories included the Colorado Water Conservation Board, Denver Water and multiple environmental and conservation organizations — as well as business and real-estate groups like the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and Revesco Properties.
Revesco is the developer behind the massive, multi-billion-dollar River Mile project, which aims to redevelop 62 acres along the Platte south of Confluence Park over the next 25 years, adding homes for new 15,000 residents and ultimately displacing the Elitch Gardens amusement park. The river restoration project, too, is likely to take decades to complete, with city officials estimating in 2018 that the project could be finished in 10 to 20 years.
“The restoration and conservation of the South Platte River ecosystem is a phenomenal opportunity,” Hancock said in a statement. “Infrastructure investments like this do more than just improve our waterways, they build lives, they build communities and they build futures.”
SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST.
Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.
The Hutchins Water Center recently completed two reports: Insights Gained on Agricultural Water Conservation for Water Security in the Upper Colorado River Basin distills insights from recent studies and experiences related to using strategic agricultural water conservation in order to help balance supply and demand in the Colorado River system, share water supplies, and aid troubled streams. The other report, Grand Valley Water Workforce Needs & Related Opportunities at Colorado Mesa University, summarizes local water workforce skill and knowledge needs and outlines how current CMU offerings respond, as well as opportunities for improvement.
Two fast-moving storms impacted the Lower 48 last week. Heavy rain fell across parts of the Midwest and South, leading to broad areas of drought improvement in these regions. Parts of the West saw much-needed rainfall. In most cases, these amounts were not enough to bring relief to the region’s relentless long-term drought conditions. Pockets of dryness also continued across the northern High Plains, South, and Southeast leading to drought expansion…
Much of the High Plains remained dry last week resulting in deteriorating drought conditions across parts of the Dakotas and Nebraska. The eastern edges of abnormal dryness (D0) and moderate drought (D1) crept eastward. Severe drought (D2) expanded over a large swath from southwest North Dakota to central Nebraska. Extreme drought spread in central Nebraska. Short-term dryness is superimposed over long-term moisture deficits across the region. The lack of seasonal snow cover combined with the onset of spring has people in the region worried. Soil moisture is very low, stream flows continue to decline and state reports indicate that stock ponds are drying up…
Parts of the West saw much needed precipitation with rain over the West Coast and higher elevation snow over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In most cases, these amounts were not enough to bring relief to drought conditions that have plagued the region for months. Only western Oregon saw minor improvements to abnormal dryness (D0) and moderate drought (D1) in response to recent precipitation. Across much of the West, higher than normal temperatures last week caused premature snow melt, with snowpack values plummeting over just a few days. The California Department of Water Resources noted that about one-third of the water equivalency disappeared in a week. Extreme drought (D3) expanded in northern California, parts of Utah, and New Mexico. In these locations, the warm weather has led to increased evaporative demand and stress on vegetation. The rest of the West remained unchanged this week…
This week the South saw drought worsen across west and south Texas and the Oklahoma Panhandle. Above-normal temperatures combined with below-normal precipitation and high winds exacerbated conditions. Drought indicators supporting the degradations include increasing precipitation deficits, dry surface and root zone soil moisture and low stream flow. State drought teams noted reports of blowing dust and crop failures in the area. Drought also expanded across southern Louisiana. This area has been in severe drought (D2) since March without any relief in weeks. One-category improvements were made to drought conditions across east Texas, southern Arkansas, north and central Louisiana and Mississippi in areas where the heaviest rain (3 inches or more) fell and where warranted by short-term precipitation indicators, streamflow, soil moisture and other measures…
Looking Ahead
The National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center forecast (valid March 31 – April 7) calls for heavy rain and storms ahead of an advancing cold front extending from south of Lake Michigan to East Texas. Storms will progress eastward through the remainder of the week. The Northern Plains, Upper Midwest, and New England can expect snow/freezing rain. Heavy rain and mountain snow are expected from the Pacific Northwest to the Rockies. Moving into next week, the Climate Prediction Center Outlook (Valid April 7 – 13) favors above normal temperature for a large part of the West, extending from California across the Great Basin and into the southern Rockies. Meanwhile, near to above normal temperatures are favored for the Northeast and Eastern Seaboard. Below normal temperatures are expected over the eastern central CONUS. The outlook favors above normal precipitation across much of the northern tier of the Lower 48 and Alaska. Near to below normal precipitation is favored over southern areas of the West and the Southern and Central Plains.
US Drought Monitor one week change map ending March 29, 2022.
Black Canyon July 2020. Photo credit: Cari Bischoff
From email from Reclamation (Erik Knight):
Releases from the Aspinall Unit will be decreased from 775 cfs to 700 cfs on Wednesday, March 30th. Releases are being decreased as flows in the lower Gunnison River are well above the baseflow target. Currently snowpack in the Upper Gunnison Basin is 109% of normal and the forecasted April-July runoff volume for Blue Mesa Reservoir is 92% of average.
Flows in the lower Gunnison River are currently above the baseflow target of 790 cfs. River flows are expected to stay at levels above the baseflow target for the foreseeable future.
Pursuant to the Aspinall Unit Operations Record of Decision (ROD), the baseflow target in the lower Gunnison River, as measured at the Whitewater gage, is 790 cfs for March and 1050 cfs for April.
Currently, Gunnison Tunnel diversions are 300 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon are around 475 cfs. After this release change Gunnison Tunnel diversions will still be around 300 cfs and flows in the Gunnison River through the Black Canyon will be near 400 cfs. Current flow information is obtained from provisional data that may undergo revision subsequent to review.
Lake Powell boat ramp at Page, Arizona, December 17, 2021. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Salt Lake Tribune website (Zak Podmore). Here’s an excerpt:
The reservoir could drop below the level needed to generate power at the Glen Canyon Dam this year if other ways of increasing the elevation of the lake aren’t used
…water managers in Colorado announced last week that they will stop exploring one proposal to prop up the rapidly depleting levels in Lake Powell. The plan — known as demand management — would compensate farmers and ranchers for voluntarily stopping irrigation on a temporary basis, sending water that would have been used for agriculture to the reservoir. A drought contingency plan developed in 2019 by Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming identified demand management as one method that could be used to keep the water level in Lake Powell above 3,525 feet in elevation, around a quarter of its capacity, in order to protect electricity generation. The four-state demand management proposal was met with suspicion by agricultural interests, according to Anne Castle, a senior fellow at the University of Colorado Law School who previously worked on Colorado River issues under the Obama administration. Skeptics of the plan feared it could “wipe out irrigated agriculture” in parts of the river basin and fundamentally alter rural economies, Castle said at a recent University of Utah symposium hosted by the Wallace Stegner Center. She said those fears were “not unfounded” and “they would have to be dealt with in an equitable demand management program.”
[…]
Utah still supports a four-state demand management program, said Amy Haas, executive director of the Colorado River Authority of Utah, but it is also prepared to move forward with water conservation pilot projects and potentially pursue a smaller-scale demand management program on its own. She pointed to Utah’s investments in water measuring infrastructure, studies looking at switching to crops that require less water and other programs…
The Bureau of Reclamation recently announced that it is studying modifications to the Glen Canyon Dam that would allow for power generation at lower water levels. That could include installing turbines on bypass tubes that are located below the current hydropower intakes…
But Brad Udall said finding the political will and leadership at federal and state levels to permanently reduce demand is difficult.
“My biggest fear,” Udall said, “is that it’s easier to let the system crash than it is to find the painful solutions that are needed.”
He defined a system crash as letting the two largest reservoirs in the U.S. — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — empty because of an inability to respond to declining flows. Udall added there have been incremental, positive solutions implemented in the basin over the last two decades, but he said future solutions have to be “more than incremental” to deal with the crisis.
Brad Udall: Here’s the latest version of my 4-Panel plot thru Water Year (Oct-Sep) of 2021 of the Colorado River big reservoirs, natural flows, precipitation, and temperature. Data (PRISM) goes back or 1906 (or 1935 for reservoirs.) This updates previous work with @GreatLakesPeck.
El Paso County is accepting applications for its American Rescue Plan Act Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Grant funding opportunity. According to a news release, “[t]he county has allocated $20 million in ARPA funding for necessary investments in water and wastewater infrastructure, to include improvements to drinking water infrastructure, upgrading facilities, managing sewage and other eligible uses.”
“The community has expressed great interest in this particular grant, and it truly is going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many communities and projects,” Commissioner Holly Williams said in the release. “This grant will have a monumental impact for decades to come, as it increases peoples’ access to clean drinking water, and replaces many aging infrastructures.”
According to the release, “[a]ll levels of infrastructure have seen increased demands during the pandemic, and our water and wastewater infrastructures are no exception. This $20 million allocation will help El Paso County preserve and be better stewards of our most precious and scarce resource, and is an investment directly allowed under ARPA guidance.”
The application opens Monday, March 28, 2022, and will remain open through 5 p.m. Friday, April 22.
Application Eligibility:
All projects must meet federal eligibility requirements, which include 17 project categories under guidelines published through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water State Revolving Fund and the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund.
Projects must be located in El Paso County.
The entire allocation for this funding is $20 million and the county expects to fund several projects, the release said, adding a portion of the funding will be reserved specifically for smaller communities and projects.
El Paso County will be hosting a pre-application webinar at 11:30 a.m. on April 4 to answer specific application related questions. To participate in the webinar, join using this link. Participants are encouraged to send questions ahead of time to ARPArequests@elpasoco.com. If you require accommodations or need a translator, send an email to JyotsnaKhattri@elpasoco.com by March 30.
The application is a fillable PDF available here and on El Paso County’s ARPA page. All completed applications and supporting documentation must be submitted electronically to ARPArequests@elpasoco.com. For more information, visit http://admin.elpasoco.com/arpa.
New Mexico water agencies are slowly piecing together a regulatory puzzle in order to store Rio Grande water in Abiquiú Reservoir for middle valley irrigation this summer as El Vado Dam is repaired. But an objection from Texas water managers could interfere with the reservoir’s use for non-pueblo irrigators. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operates the northern New Mexico reservoir on the Rio Chama. Nabil Shafike, the Army Corps Albuquerque District’s water management chief, said Abiquiu was once authorized only to store Colorado River Basin water that is diverted into the Rio Grande Basin with a series of tunnels and dams for the San Juan-Chama Project.
“All the Corps reservoirs – Abiquiú, Cochiti, Galisteo and Jemez Canyon – work as one unit to protect the middle valley from flood,” Shafike said. “Any storing of native (Rio Grande) water would require a deviation from the current operation.”
The agency is weighing two potential changes at Abiquiu:
• A request from the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission to store up to 45,000 acre-feet, or 14.6 billion gallons, of Rio Grande water in Abiquiú each year for release later in the season to meet middle Rio Grande irrigation demand.
• A request from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to store up to 20,000 acre-feet, or 6.5 billion gallons, of Rio Grande water in Abiquiú each year to meet direct flow right for the six middle Rio Grande pueblos of Isleta, Sandia, Santa Ana, San Felipe, Santo Domingo and Cochiti.
The Army Corps could approve both storage plans or may choose only one.
Colorado snowpack sub-basin filled map March 29, 2022 via the NRCS.
Click the link to read the article on the Craig Press website (Dylan Anderson):
The amount of water in the snowpack blanketing the Yampa River Basin started declining on Friday, March 25, potentially marking the earliest peak since 2017…Erin Light, engineer for the Colorado Division of Water Resources, has put the river under administration three of the last four years. At the Colorado River District’s State of the Yampa River event last week, she said 2022, so far, is tracking in line with other dry years over the last two decades.
This year’s snowpack is rivaling that of 2002 and 2012 — two of the driest years during the current 22-year drought that is the worst ever recorded, Light said…Snowpack is important, but precipitation in the spring and late summer is also a key metric, and it seems harder to come by…
The Yampa is one of most free flowing rivers in Colorado. Of the five main reservoirs feeding into the Yampa, Light estimated that at least two and maybe three of them won’t fill up this year. Stillwater Reservoir is the farthest upstream and was sitting at about 310 acre-feet when it was last measured in October. Light said there was water released last year for both agricultural purposes and for work on the dam. Farther downstream, Yamcolo Reservoir was about 45% full, and Stagecoach reservoir was 75% full as of late last week. Two reservoirs in the basin — Fish Creek Reservoir on Buffalo Pass, where Steamboat Springs gets much of its water, and Elkhead Reservoir near the Routt and Moffat county line — are both likely to fill, Light said.
Westwide SNOTEL basin-filled map March 29, 2022 via the NRCS.
Residents in Big Thompson Canyon east of Estes Park became the latest Coloradans to flee their homes in fear of a nearby wildfire on Monday, just hours after the NCAR Fire forced evacuations and closures 30 miles to the south in Boulder.
It’s been three months since the Marshall Fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes and left two people dead, and nearly two years since Colorado’s three largest wildfires on record burned in the summer and fall of 2020, razing mountainsides, choking the skies with haze and eventually causing mudslides that killed four people in Larimer County and left Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon shut down for weeks.
The increasingly tangible impacts of the climate-driven “megadrought” that has affected much of Colorado since 2000 — stressed water supplies, more intense wildfires, losses in the agricultural and tourism sectors — have served as a rallying cry for Democrats who highlight the urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But the 2022 campaign season has brought little sign of a change in Colorado Republicans’ long-running pattern of denying or downplaying human-caused climate change.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
In the crowded GOP primary for U.S. Senate, misinformation, half-truths and conspiracy theories still dominate candidates’ rhetoric on climate and energy issues.
State Rep. Ron Hanks of Cañon City, the race’s only sitting lawmaker, said earlier this month that climate change is a Chinese hoax designed to “emasculate” the American economy.
Eli Bremer, a first-time candidate and former Olympic pentathlete, has spread debunked claims that wind power emits more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels.
And Gino Campana, a former Fort Collins city councilman who once supported the city’s emissions-cutting programs and co-founded a clean-energy startup, has joined other Republicans in blasting Democrats for holding back domestic energy production — an assertion belied by the oil and gas industry’s own statements.
Ahead of the state GOP assembly next month, climate change has rarely come up in debates and other campaign events featuring Republican Senate candidates. Several leading contenders ignored repeated requests from Newsline to comment on climate issues, and none have detailed a plan to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions cuts that an overwhelming scientific consensus says is necessary to avoid increasingly catastrophic effects. Other GOP candidates who filed to run for the Senate seat include Joe O’Dea, Deborah Flora and Peter Yu. Observers generally name Hanks, Bremer and Campana among the frontrunners.
“Human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people, beyond natural climate variability,” wrote 270 scientists in the latest report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last month. “The magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks depend strongly on near-term mitigation and adaptation actions, and projected adverse impacts and related losses and damages escalate with every increment of global warming.”
‘It’s called weather’
A Colorado College poll released last month found that 82% of Centennial State voters agreed that climate change is a serious problem, up from 60% in 2011. Nearly 7 in 10 Coloradans say they’re supportive of climate action, including efforts to transition to 100% clean energy within “the next ten to fifteen years,” the school’s annual State of the Rockies poll found.
Republican voters, however, are much more evenly split on the issue, with about half declaring climate change “not a problem,” according to poll results across an eight-state Western region. And despite periodicpredictions of a Republican shift on climate issues from pollsters and pundits, little about party leaders’ views has changed over the last decade.
During his six-year U.S. Senate term, former Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner acknowledged that “the climate is changing” but consistently cast doubt on the extent to which warming is human-caused. The same position is held by many Republicans in the state Legislature, including Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert of Parker, who said of “so-called climate change” during a floor debate last year: “I do not believe that it is man-made.”
In fact, virtually all of the 1.07 degrees Celsius average global temperature increase observed since 1850 has been the result of rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations “unequivocally caused by human activities,” IPCC scientists wrote last year. Non-human drivers like solar and volcanic activity and natural variability have had no quantifiable long-term effect.
Hanks, a first-term lawmaker who was present at the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol and a leading proponent of conspiracy theories relating to the 2020 election, staked out the primary’s most extreme position on climate change at a candidate forum earlier this month.
Asked how he would respond to concerns about climate change in a general election matchup with incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, Hanks replied that Republicans need to “start marketing the truth.”
“I don’t want to sit here and pretend climate change is a real issue. It’s called weather,” Hanks said to laughter and applause, according to video posted by his campaign.
Echoing baseless claims made by former President Donald Trump, Hanks called climate change a “serious effort from China to emasculate us” by impeding domestic manufacturing and economic growth.
Bremer, a onetime chair of the El Paso County Republican Party, is among the only candidates in the primary to have publicly addressed the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “Our approach should be led by data, science, and common sense rather than tilting to the political winds of the day,” reads a section devoted to environmental policy on his website.
But Bremer’s recent claims about emissions from renewable energy sources like wind turbines are contradicted by a vast body of existing research.
“On the yardstick of greenhouse gas emissions, environmental policies fail … If you look at windmills, there’s a lot of greenhouse gas emission cost that we gloss over,” Bremer said in a March 23 Fox News interview, claiming that the emissions resulting from the manufacture and construction of wind farms offsets their lower operating emissions. “Virtually every expert that I’ve talked to believes that the overall return is negative.”
In fact, a 2021 analysis by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden concluded that even when “total life cycle” emissions are calculated wind energy projects produce only a tiny fraction of the emissions of fossil-fuel-powered electricity generation. Evaluating the results of hundreds of previous studies, researchers concluded that the 13 grams of CO2-equivalent emissions per kilowatt-hour produced by wind generation — nearly all the result of one-time construction emissions — are 77 times smaller than the emissions from a typical coal plant and 37 times smaller than emissions from a natural gas plant.
From smart-grid investor to ‘unleash Colorado energy’
Campana, a wealthy real estate developer who served a term on the Fort Collins City Council between 2013 and 2017, has attracted establishment support for his Senate candidacy, including endorsements from former Trump administration figures like Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Kellyanne Conway, who joined Campana’s campaign as an advisor last month.
During his city council term, Campana frequently aligned himself with Fort Collins’ ambitious emissions-cutting efforts. In 2014, he voted to approve an update to the city’s climate action plan, which aimed to reduce emissions 80% by 2030, and endorsed another resolution calling for the city to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. In 2016, he also expressed support for the “objectives” of a legal brief filed by city officials in support of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, though he didn’t vote in favor of it. The Trump administration later gutted the policy.
Years earlier, Campana had been one of four founders of Windsor-based Ice Energy, a manufacturer of thermal energy storage systems. Experts say so-called “smart grid” technologies are a key part of the transition to a fully renewable electric grid, helping improve efficiency and offset the intermittency of wind and solar resources.
In 2010, Ice Energy received millions in government funding in the form of tax credits authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — the same stimulus bill under which California-based solar panel manufacturer Solyndra received a $535 million federal loan guarantee that became notorious among conservatives after the firm went bankrupt a year later. Campana reported income from Ice Energy in a financial disclosure as late as 2013; the company later moved out of Colorado and declared bankruptcy in 2019.
In a financial disclosure filed earlier this year, Campana estimated his net worth at between $44 million and $141 million, and detailed an extensive list of corporate stock holdings that include tens of thousands of dollars invested in both fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum and clean-energy firms like Tesla and Vestas Wind.
As he looks to win support from the GOP base ahead of next month’s state assembly — and fight off attacks from opponents who say his city council record makes him a “tax-and-spend-liberal” — Campana has positioned himself as a champion of the oil and gas industry, calling on policymakers to “unleash Colorado energy.”
“Biden and Bennet are stifling America’s energy production, costing us jobs and higher gas prices,” he wrote in a tweet earlier this month. That’s a widely repeated GOP attack line that’s contradicted by the thousands of approved drilling permits held by oil and gas producers in Colorado and beyond, and the repeated assurances companies have made to investors to limit production growth.
On his website, Campana touts his “background in environmental engineering” and endorses an “all of the above energy strategy” that he says can lead to reduced emissions.
Scientists, however, warn that plans for continued fossil fuel production by governments around the world are “dangerously out of sync” with the targets outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which called for limiting average global temperature rise to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius.
“The research is clear: Global coal, oil, and gas production must start declining immediately and steeply to be consistent with limiting long-term warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” Ploy Achakulwisut, a lead author on the 2021 U.N. Production Gap report, said upon the report’s release last year. “However, governments continue to plan for and support levels of fossil fuel production that are vastly in excess of what we can safely burn.”
SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST.
Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.
On an average day, 25 people move to Douglas County. Each one needs to drink, shower, water their lawn and wash their dishes. The full impact of that growth is difficult to see, but it’s easy to understand: more people need more water. And in a county where thousands of homes rely on a limited supply of underground aquifers, water providers are constantly working to shift to more sustainable resources before they run out.
Denver Basin Aquifer System graphic credit USGS.
Some aquifers buried under Douglas County have lost two to six feet in depth of water. Local water providers have noticed their supply wells aren’t producing like they once did.
“It’s like sucking water out of the bathtub with a straw,” said Rick McLoud, water resources manager for Centennial Water & Sanitation. “There’s only so much water in the bathtub and the sooner you suck it out with a straw, the sooner it will be gone.”
[…]
To meet those demands, water providers are planning a mix of conservation efforts, wastewater projects and new infrastructure for renewable resources of water. The county government is also looking at how to bring in more water and is considering spending a portion of their $68 million in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act on the issue.
‘Overreliance on groundwater’
As Douglas County’s development has surged since the 1990s, many of the largest communities such as Parker and Castle Rock have relied on groundwater to fill residents’ bathtubs and sinks, said State Engineer Kevin Rein…Groundwater from aquifers makes up about 65% of the water used by Parker Water and Sanitation, which is the provider for Parker and parts of Lone Tree and Castle Pines, and by Castle Rock Water. Centennial Water uses about 20% groundwater. Those ratios can change depending on drought conditions…
Douglas County sits on a layer of several aquifers, including the Arapahoe, Denver, Dawson and the Laramie-Fox Hills aquifers. Most major water providers use the water in the Arapahoe and Denver aquifers, which reach depths of 1,700 and 600 feet beneath the ground, respectively…
Under Douglas County’s guidelines for development in unincorporated areas, only the western part of the county is not allowed to rely on their groundwater for development, said Steve Koster, assistant director of planning services for the county. Those communities must provide either a renewable water source or use groundwater from the eastern part of the county. Koster said the county is not actively looking at requiring or incentivizing developers to instead look for renewable resources of water…
Parker Water and Sanitation is working on a project that will partner with a water conservancy district in Sterling, a town in eastern Colorado, to capture unused water during high runoff years from the South Platte River there and store it to pipe back to the town. The project won’t impact existing water rights and won’t allow buy-and-dry of nearby agriculture, Redd said. In order to meet Parker’s projected water demands, the project will need to be complete by 2040, Redd said. That project would get Parker Water to 75% renewable water and would provide water for more than 300,000 people in Douglas County, including in Parker, Castle Rock and portions of Castle Pines and Lone Tree, according to a project proposal. Castle Rock Water is a partner on that project.
Over the next 20 to 30 years, Castle Rock plans to invest about $500 million in renewable water projects including new pipelines, additional storage and water rights. Marlowe said the reason they spread out those projects over time is to keep rates for their customers down. By 2050, Castle Rock plans to move to 75% renewable and by 2065 have a 100% renewable system for wet or average years.
Dominion Water and Sanitation, which serves about 1,200 homes in Sterling Ranch, plans to be 90% renewable by 2040. Sterling Ranch is slated to add about 11,000 more homes to their community in that same time period at a rate of 450 homes per year. Dominion also plans to include about 700 other existing homes from smaller communities to their service area soon. Right now, Dominion is 100% renewable but is set to drill wells in the Cherokee Ranch area to blend some groundwater into their system, making it more drought-resistant, Cole said. They are also planning to build a river intake on the South Platte River and a wastewater treatment facility, which will provide at least 1,600 acre-feet of water per year to Sterling Ranch…
Castle Rock plans to incorporate programs in the coming years that encourage more efficient utilities and lawns that don’t require heavy irrigation. At the statewide level, a bill being considered by the legislature this session would pay residents up to $2 per square foot to rip out their irrigated turf and replace it with less thirsty alternatives. Sterling Ranch has focused on a program they call “demand management” that allows residents to have a live look at their water usage and bills…Their community also has banned the use of bluegrass, a type of turf that demands lots of water. Instead they offer a variety of drought-resistant plants for landscaping…
A view of public lands around the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and just south from the area Renewable Water Resources has proposed a wellfield for water exportation. Photo credit: Alamosa Citizen
As the commissioners consider how to approach the issue, $68 million in federal funds has the potential to aid in addressing the water demands of a growing community. One proposal for the money, which the commissioners have dedicated six two-hour meetings to discussing, would pump about 22,000 acre-feet of water per year to Douglas County from the San Luis Valley. Renewable Water Resources, the private company proposing the project, says that’s enough for 70,000 houses. The project has been met with ire from many in the valley, though, as multiple water conservation districts and elected officials there have said they don’t have enough water to spare and it would damage their agriculture-based economy…So far, all the major water providers in Douglas County have said they are not interested in using the water from the RWR proposal. Darling says that’s in part because many providers have already heavily invested in other projects…
Commissioners have also heard presentations from Parker Water, who asked them to consider using about $20 million of the federal funds to help their South Platte River project, and Dominion, who asked for help funding their regional wastewater plant in partnership with Castle Rock Water and the Plum Creek Reclamation Authority.
Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website (Theo Stein):
The people, economy, and ecosystems of the Pacific coast states of California, Oregon and Washington are highly dependent on cool-season atmospheric rivers for their annual water supply. These long, narrow flows of saturated air can transport enormous amounts of water vapor – roughly equivalent to the flow at the mouth of the Mississippi River. They can unload heavy precipitation on the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges, but their annual yield regularly swings between boom and bust.
When atmospheric rivers, or ARs, fail to materialize, droughts often follow – especially in California, where they account for over 50% of the total annual precipitation. Anticipating future climate-induced changes to AR patterns is therefore exceedingly important. Global models, however, do a poor job of simulating precipitation over the complex terrain of coastal and inland mountain ranges. Now, a new NOAA study using data generated by regional climate models and published in the journal Climate Dynamics suggests climate change will likely alter atmospheric rivers in ways that will make managing water more difficult.
“These high-resolution climate simulations showed something we hadn’t seen before, which was decreased future precipitation amounts across many mountainous regions of the western United States,” said lead author Mimi Hughes, a research scientist in NOAA’s Physical Sciences Laboratory.
Atmospheric rivers can be both beneficial — when they provide water to fill reservoirs and build snowpack — and calamitous — when they generate so much precipitation over a short period of time that they cause flooding. Although numerous studies have investigated climate projections for atmospheric rivers, few have examined whether climate change would have a uniform impact on all events.
Downscaling climate models to better predict future impacts
For the new paper, Hughes and a team of Physical Science Lab and colleagues from CIRES and NCAR analyzed data from regional climate models simulating weather conditions over most of North America for the period 1950–2100. They specifically looked at the end-of-21st-century changes in integrated water vapor transport (IVT) events along the western US coast in three of the highest-resolution regional climate models. IVT is a measure of how much water vapor is moving through the air and was used as an indicator of atmospheric rivers making landfall.
Rather than evaluate the simulated impact on all model-generated atmospheric rivers, researchers partitioned the events into two categories – modest and extreme – and then looked for different outcomes.
Hughes said their findings are consistent with previous global climate model projections of increased lower-elevation precipitation across much of the western U.S. However, differences did emerge. The simulations projected moderate events to be less frequent and deliver less high-elevation precipitation, a finding that tracks another recent NOAA study.
A drier future for California’s most important “reservoir”?
The Sierra Nevada mountains are an irreplaceable component of California’s current water system. Snowpack in the high Sierras acts like a giant reservoir, releasing clean water during the melt season. Sixty percent of California’s water supply originates in the high Sierras. More than 75% percent of Californians drink water generated by Sierra snows.
Notably, more than half of the model runs in the new study showed that Sierra snowpack would receive decreased precipitation by 2100, while the arid Great Basin might benefit from a moisture boost.
This study suggests these two types of atmospheric rivers could change in different ways under climate change, with the beneficial kind becoming less frequent, Hughes said.
“While we did not specifically examine seasonal precipitation outcomes like droughts, it’s fair to conclude that if these projections bear out, California’s strained water resources may become even more challenging to manage,” she said.
For more information, contact Theo Stein, NOAA Communications, at theo.stein@noaa.gov.
Click the link to read the article on The Greeley Tribune website (Jeff Rice, The Fort Morgan Times). Here’s an excerpt:
Collaboration will yield a lot more South Platte River water for Nebraska than trying to finish a ditch that’s been abandoned for more than a century. That was the consensus at a freewheeling panel discussion in Sterling Monday afternoon as Nebraska Sen. Theresa Thibodeau met with water experts from Colorado to learn more about the water that flows into her state across the state line near Julesburg.
Thibodeau is a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor in Nebraska. Her visit was prompted a proposal by incumbent Gov. Pete Ricketts to finish digging the Perkins County Canal from the South Platte River near Ovid to a reservoir somewhere in Nebraska. The canal is allowed under the terms of the South Platte River Compact of 1923, and can divert up to 500 cubic feet per second out of the river. But without the canal, Nebraska can’t exercise that water right…
The panel consisted of Thibodeau, Bruce Gerk, a member of the South Platte Roundtable, Jim Yahn, manager of the Prewitt and North Sterling reservoirs, Don Chapman, manager of Riverside Irrigation District near Sterling, and Joe Frank, general manager of the Lower South Platter Water Conservancy District. Among the dozen or so attendees were Colorado Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg of Sterling, former state senator and agriculture commissioner Don Ament, Gene Manuello, vice president of the LSPWCD, and Logan County Commissioner Byron Pelton. During Monday’s discussion, Thibodeau made it clear that Nebraskans will do whatever is necessary to protect the water they now get and that they have a right o in the 1923 compact…
Yahn. Chapman and Frank gave Thibodeau a short course on Colorado’s water reality. The most important point, and one they stressed repeatedly, is that return flow and seepage from irrigation in Colorado is what makes the South Platte the year-round river it is today. Sonnenberg pointedly asked the panel what would happen to the multitude of water augmentation projects that operate during the winter months along the lower Colorado reach of the river if Colorado had to try to deliver 500 cubic feet per second into the Perkins Canal. Chapman said it was “very likely” that those projects, which replace water drawn out by pumps during the irrigation season, would be harmed, leading to curtailment of pumping. It also would probably diminish the return flow that ends up in Nebraska. Manuello said one of the worst myths about the river is the amount of water that flows out of Colorado. He said that, while it’s true spring runoff and occasional flooding send large amounts of water downstream, those events are of short duration and probably wouldn’t be available for use in the Perkins Canal.
Arizona monsoon cloud with lightning striking the beautiful Sonoran desert in North Scottsdale. Photo by James Bo Insogna. Title: Arizona Monsoon Thunderstorm. Taken on August 15, 2016. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Click the link to read the article on the Circle of Blue website (Keith Schneider). Here’s an excerpt:
What’s happening in the million-dollar homes of Rio Verde Foothills, one of the Phoenix metropolitan region’s choice places to live, is a future shock “buyer beware” scenario certain to be replicated over the next several decades in many other Arizona communities contending with urgent water constraints.
Bridges across the Tempe Town Lake on the Salt River in Tempe, Arizona. Tempe Beach Park in the foreground, and the building with HOPE on it at 350 W Washington St across the river. By Dicklyon – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65090199
Another View
About 50 miles south, another scenario of 21st century Arizona is taking shape. The nearly 23,000-member Gila River Indian Community is modernizing: adding to its group of casinos, preparing to expand its irrigated farm acres, and elevating its influence in Arizona’s politics and economy. It’s doing so by virtue of one of the most secure and abundant water supplies in Arizona and the entire Southwest.
Following decades of brutal discrimination and abuse by white settlers and state authorities during which the two Gila River tribes’ rights to their historic water supply were not honored, Congress approved an agreement between the United States and the State of Arizona that essentially guarantees tribal access to 653,500 acre-feet of water per year…
…from previous statements by tribal leaders and in interviews with state water authorities, it is clear that the Gila River Indian Community, or GRIC, is using its abundant water to build a new age of wealth and influence on the 372,000-acre reservation south of Phoenix. GRIC is constructing a federally-financed irrigation network to increase farming operations to 75,000 ancestral acres from the current 35,000. It negotiated lucrative agreements to lease water to Phoenix, Chandler, and other communities. It is also marketing water that it stores in aquifers to willing suburbs and subdivision builders interested in long-term leases.
Since 2016, GRIC has played a central role in storing over 370,000 acre-feet of water in Lake Mead, plus 130,000 more acre-feet this year to keep lake levels high enough to prevent a water shortage declaration more dire than the one the federal government issued last August. GRIC received $274 per acre-foot from the state and federal governments. In short, ample and secure water supply is the basis of the community’s plan to rebuild the vitality of its 8,000 year-old desert civilization that was ruined in the 20th century…
Arizona’s Future Water Shock
The water-abundant and thriving Gila River Indian Community amounts to one bookend scenario of Arizona’s 21st century condition. The other bookend is the arid Rio Verde Foothills, where government decisions and meteorological disruptions trap residents in a water-related crisis that heat and drought aggravated, and state law did not anticipate.
In 1980, Arizona enacted an innovative groundwater management program intended to ensure adequate reserves of water for rapid home development and expansive population growth by designating four regions from Prescott to Tucson as Active Management Areas. (Santa Cruz, the fifth AMA, was carved out from the Tucson AMA in 1994.) The program included two important exemptions, however: its provisions did not apply to groundwater withdrawals outside of the AMAs. And within the AMA boundaries, owners of private wells that pumped less than 35 gallons per minute — in other words, many of the wells drilled for the state’s exploding residential real estate markets — did not come under state oversight.
In 1995, the law set in place a consumer protection measure to require developers building subdivisions in AMAs with six or more homes to assure buyers that their houses had a 100-year supply of water. But the requirement did not apply for residential construction projects with less than six homes. Builders constructing individual homes, or clusters of five homes or less in an AMA, avoided the 100-year water requirement. Outside the AMAs, groundwater safeguards did not apply, creating what amounted to a home construction free-for-all.
Little more than 40 years after the statute was enacted and less than 30 years after the 100-year assured water supply rules were adopted, the subdivision and private well waivers have resulted in Rio Verde’s emergency. They also influenced a boom in home construction that has caused — and continues to cause — thousands of wells to fail inside and outside of AMAs. It is clearer by the day that, without significant strengthening, the state’s water management program is becoming increasingly irrelevant. The emergence of serious instances of water shortage from Kingman in the north, to the Chino Valley north of Prescott, to Cochise County in Arizona’s southeast has prompted civic campaigns for reform. They have yet to attract sufficient legislative support.
That seems certain to change. And soon, because of climate change.
Ranking and time evolution of summer (June–August) drought severity as indicated by negative 0–200 cm soil moisture anomalies. Maps show how gridded summer drought severity in each year from 2000–2021 ranked among all years 1901–2021, where low (brown) means low soil moisture and therefore high drought severity. Yellow boxes bound the southwestern North America (SWNA) study region. Time series shows standardized anomalies (σ) of the SWNA regionally averaged soil moisture record relative to a 1950–1999 baseline. Black time series shows annual values and the red time series shows the 22-year running mean, with values displayed on the final year of each 22-year window. Geographic boundaries in maps were accessed through Matlab 2020a.
This year alone, the latest scientifically respected studies reveal a number of disconcerting findings. The megadrought that has Arizona in its tightening grip is the worst in 1200 years. Climate change is responsible for at least 40 percent of the decline in Colorado River water supplies. And the Southwest, like other desert regions, is getting steadily hotter, drier, and more dangerous. Though future weather conditions are always difficult to accurately predict, a worst-case scenario for Arizona looks like this: Population growth stops. Residents start to migrate in droves away from the stifling hot and dry state. Home values collapse. The state enters an era of relentless decline. By 2060, according to several published projections, extreme heat and water scarcity could make Phoenix one of the continent’s most uninhabitable places.
It’s not much of a reach to conclude that Arizona is at the intersection of two paths to the future. By mid-century it will be a model of desert dwelling resiliency. Or it will be a weakened civilization that is starting to waste away…
Taken as a whole, the data mean that Arizona’s share of the Colorado River will likely shrink to less than half the current 2.8 million acre-feet allotment. Arizona will rely much more heavily on its finite groundwater reserves to support population growth, residential construction, and new business starts that state officials continue to encourage. And though Arizona has stored over 13 million acre-feet of water underground to supplement supply during years of water shortage, never since statehood in 1912 has Arizona encountered such a long and deep period of water scarcity that science predicts will grow steadily more severe…
This year, the governor proposed establishing a new state agency, the Arizona Water Authority, to pursue new supplies and also asked the Legislature for $1 billion more, framing the request around the need to build a desalination plant, perhaps in Mexican waters, to produce 250,000 acre-feet a year.
Other ideas for securing Arizona’s water supply — regulating groundwater use in rural areas, metering private water wells, increasing use of recycled wastewater, restricting natural grass lawns, and imposing land use and urban design requirements to collect and store stormwater — haven’t reached nearly the same level of clarity and legislative purpose.
There’s a reason for that. Regulatory changes in water policy and practice are some of the steepest cliffs in Arizona’s political landscape. Any proposal judged by lawmakers to challenge property rights, raise costs, and impede growth is dead on arrival in the Legislature. Such proposals generate powerful winds of opposition in the executive offices of home builders, chambers of commerce, and every other economic development agency.
Nook on Lake Powell. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots
Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
Spring runoff last year in the Colorado River Basin was a bust, with snowpack of almost 90% of average reduced to a 30% inflow at Lake Powell.
Nobody yet predicts another bust this year. Maybe a meteorological March madness will compensate for last year. While we wait, water managers talk about “the math problem.”
The gap between water flows and demands in the Colorado River is enormous and likely to widen. The dysfunctional equation begins with 20 million acre-feet, the average annual flows assumed by the Colorado River Compact that was crafted 100 years ago by delegates from the seven basin states.
Eugene Clyde LaRue measuring the flow in Nankoweap Creek, 1923. Photo credit: USGS via Environment360
This cheerful assumption was based on early 20th century flows. It was made with almost willful disregard of evidence available even then of the river’s lesser flows during the prior half-century. The delegates who met at a lodge near Santa Fe in 1922 were determined to yoke all irrigable acres into agricultural production.
In this math problem, another key number is 12.3 million acre-feet. That’s been the river’s average flow in the 21st century. Some of this reduced flow seems to be entirely natural, what we call drought, if exceptional in duration.
Something else has been going on. Temperatures have risen 3 degrees C altogether since 1970. By some estimates, half or more of the reduced flows can be attributed to this global warming effect. This warming explains the grand larceny in the Colorado River, decent snowpacks reduced to a shrug in the Utah desert because of evaporation but also because plants need more water. Too, baked soil sops up water.
We can’t flip the switch on global warming, and it’s almost certain to worsen, the temperature rise doubling or tripling, as Colorado State University’s Brad Udall warns. He describes what is occurring as aridification. Unlike drought, it’s not temporary.
This brings us to another number for this Colorado River Basin math problem: 11 million acre-feet.
That’s the number cited last week at a University of Utah conference about future flows of the Colorado River. “The best climate scientists in the world say we will be lucky to have 11 million acre-feet,” said John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the agency serving Las Vegas.
To recap this math problem, the Colorado River Compact assumed 20 million-acre feet, the reality has been 12.3 in the last two decades, and we’ll end up with 11 million-acre feet—or conceivably less.
“Every new use will have to be mitigated by someone, somewhere, using less water,” Entsminger added.
That’s not entirely right either. We all will have to use less water. Keep in mind that not one drop of the Colorado River gets to the Sea of Cortez.
Cinching of the water belt has been underway from Mexico to Colorado. It’s not happening as rapidly as needed, though. Consider the rapidly emerging walls of Glen Canyon and the dam that creates Lake Powell. Despite emergency releases from upstream reservoirs in Colorado and Utah last summer to bolster Powell, the water levels last week dipped below 3,525 feet.
Lake Powell storage in acre-feet. 1 acre-foot = 325,851 gallons. USBR.
That elevation is arbitrary but a loud warning that a further decline of 35 feet leaves Glen Canyon unable to generate electricity. Recent modeling by the U.S. Geological Survey shows a 25% risk. If —or perhaps when—that happens, municipalities and cooperative members who get power from Glen Canyon will still get electricity from elsewhere, but it will cost more. That includes Holy Cross Electric.
Long term, this worsening situation of subpar runoff in the Colorado River matters to well more than 90% of Colorado’s population. The Colorado River and its tributaries deliver half of Front Range water. Even the easterly flowing rivers in Colorado that pass through more distant, less citified places, Sterling and La Junta, carry water augmented by diversions from the Colorado River.
Much remains to be worked out. Within Colorado, agriculture uses 80% to 90% of all water. Farmers and ranchers who own the more senior water rights, not subject to compact limitations, have served emphatic notice that their water will not be the answer to the math problem.
Lees Ferry streamgage and cableway downstream on the Colorado River, Arizona. (Public domain.)
Another problem is the compact clause that puts the upper basin states—Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming—on the hook for diminished flows. It says they “will not cause” the flows at Lee Ferry, just below Glen Canyon, to be depleted below 75 million acre-feet of water over a rolling 10-year average. The upper basin states cannot do this alone. The risk must be shared.
This sounds gloomy. That said, the seven basin states, Mexico, and the sovereign tribes who collectively own about 20% the basin’s water have yet to throw rocks at each other. They are talking. They just haven’t solved this math problem.
Most Empire residents and businesses are still without water, as of March 25, 2022 as town officials continue to search for a suspected large leak in the town’s water infrastructure. Anyone who does have water service is under a boil warning, which will remain in place until water service is restored to the entire town and it has been tested, Mayor Wendy Koch said. According to Koch and Police Chief John Stein, most of the town’s infrastructure has been pressurized with gas to locate the suspected leak. Those efforts didn’t yield any major leaks, but several smaller issues were noted and are now being addressed, Koch said. Now, Empire is restoring water service to different sections of the town to see if that helps to locate the suspected leak.
Stein said Empire will be hosting public updates at 10 a.m. March 28 and 6:30 p.m. March 29 at Town Hall. The latter will include an opportunity for public comment, but the former is an informational meeting only…
An emergency declaration has been made to assist with resources and seeking funding, Stein stated. Colorado’s Water/Wastewater Agency Response has been activated and is assisting, and volunteers were scheduled to deliver two cases of bottled water to every housing unit on March 25…
Stein said that, thankfully, several municipalities have offered to help fix whatever the problem is. However, the town is “still in detection mode,” he said. Another piece of good news, Koch detailed, is that surface water levels are back up thanks to the warmer weather. Additionally, Koch and Stein stated, Empire is adding a new filtration system to its old well. The state health department approved the design on March 24, and crews will start work on March 28.
If all goes according to plan, Koch said the town might have water service mostly restored by April 1. However, she stressed that she couldn’t guarantee it.
Click the link to read the article on the The Denver Post website (Conrad Swanson). Here’s an excerpt:
Climatologists no longer consider the Denver metro to be suffering from drought conditions, instead the area’s now considered “abnormally dry.” The change shows a significant improvement over conditions in December, during which Denver was considered to be swathed in an “extreme drought,” data collected by the National Drought Mitigation Center shows.
While the improvement around Denver is reflected this week around much of the rest of Colorado, more than 80% of the state’s land is still in what is considered to be a “moderate drought,” the data indicates. Climatologists repeatedly said this winter that the state needed consistent, above-average snowfall to recoup lost moisture and that didn’t happen. Other areas, like those around Grand Junction and most of Pitkin County are also now considered to be abnormally dry, the data shows. Swathes of extreme and “exceptional” drought still cover large portions of Colorado’s southern counties.
The $1 million in restoration work is part of the $11 million settlement New Mexico reached last year with Sunnyside Gold Corp. and its two parent companies…
The plan calls for:
San Juan County to build the Cedar Hill Boat Ramp on the Animas River.
The city of Farmington to build the Festival and Farmers Market Pavilion at Gateway Park.
The San Juan County Soil and Water Conservation District to implement a soil restoration project in San Juan Valley.
The Tse Daa Kaan Chapter of Navajo Nation to upgrade its irrigation system.
The other $10 million in the settlement covers environmental response costs and lost tax revenue, among other things.
Bulkheads, like this one at the Red and Bonita Mine, help stop mine water discharges and allow engineers to monitor the mine pool. Credit: EPA.
Sunnyside Gold oversaw construction of the bulkheads that led to mines filling with acidic water…
Some money from the EPA settlement will go to northwestern New Mexico communities for agriculture and outdoor recreation, partly to ease the stigma the spill caused in that region, state officials said in a news release. It will cover some of New Mexico’s costs responding to the spill. And it will pay the state to restore and conserve river and land habitats, monitor water quality, and clean up pollution to protect drinking water.
