Opposition growing to  Aspen’s conditional water rights for dams on Maroon and Castle creeks

A view of the Maroon Bells from just below the confluence of East Maroon and West Maroon creeks, where the City of Aspen has told the state of Colorado it intends - at some point - to build a 155-foot-tall dam. The resulting reservoir would back up 4,567 acre-feet of water and cover 80 acres of USFS land, including a portion of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. — A view of the Maroon Bells from just below the confluence of East Maroon and West Maroon creeks, where the city of Aspen has told the state of Colorado it intends – at some point – to build a 155-foot-tall dam. The resulting reservoir would back up 4,567 acre-feet of water and cover 80 acres of USFS land, including a portion of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness.

By Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism

ASPEN – A representative of the U.S. Forest Service told Aspen City Council Tuesday that the federal agency is likely to oppose the city if it files to extend conditional water rights it holds for dams on upper Maroon and Castle creeks.

The city has until Oct. 31 to submit a due diligence filing in Division 5 water court in Glenwood Springs to keep its conditional water rights alive for another six years, and the council held a work session Tuesday where it took public comment on the issue.

Kevin Warner, who is serving as the acting district ranger in the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District, said legal counsel for the Forest Service at the regional level had advised him that the federal agency would likely submit a statement of opposition if the city filed to extend its conditional water rights.

He said that given the city’s ongoing exploration of whether or not it should seek to renew its conditional water rights, the Forest Service also took an “in-depth” look at the rights.

“In this instance, we’ve taken a little more time, looked into it,” Warner told the council. “And based on advice from our counsel, we are considering filing a statement of opposition to this diligence filing.”

If built as currently described by the conditional water rights, the Maroon Creek Reservoir would store 4,567 acre-feet of water behind a 155-foot-tall dam, just below the confluence of East Maroon and West Maroon creeks.

The Maroon Creek Reservoir would cover 85 acres of Forest Service land about a mile and a half below Maroon Lake. The reservoir would also inundate portions of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness.

The potential Castle Creek Reservoir would hold 9,062 acre-feet of water behind a 170-foot-tall dam located about two miles below the ghost town of Ashcroft.

The reservoir, inundating 120 acres, would affect mostly private land but would also flood some Forest Service land within the wilderness.

The city originally filed for the water rights in 1965, citing an expectation that it would need to build at least one of the reservoirs by 1970 to meet demands for water.

In its last diligence filing in 2009, the city told the water court “it has steadily applied effort to complete the appropriation of this water right in a reasonably expedient and efficient manner.”

On Tuesday, the city’s director of utilities and environmental initiatives, David Hornbacher, told the city council there could be a gap in the future between the city’s water supply and demand, especially given  climate change, but he did not cite the specific size of the perceived gap, or how the potential reservoirs would be used to meet it.

He did, however, recommend that the city file an application in water court to maintain its conditional water rights and then look at alternatives.

A draft resolution put forward by city staff says “the city should also continue to further investigate alternative locations and sizing requirements of the Maroon Creek Reservoir and/or Castle Creek Reservoir, and, if appropriate, seek water court approval for modification of one or both conditional decrees, with their existing appropriation dates.”

A view of one of the many wetlands in the Castle Creek valley that would be flooded by a potential Castle Creek Reservoir. The U.S. Forest Service has advised the city of Aspen that its potential reservoirs would conflict with management plans for the White River National Forest.

Not compatible with USFS  management plan

Art Daily, a member of the Aspen City Council and a veteran attorney with Holland and Hart in Aspen, asked Warner during Tuesday’s work session whether the Forest Service viewed filing a statement of opposition in water court as an “opportunity” or a “responsibility.”

Statements of opposition in water court cases do not always reflect a party’s intent in the case. A statement could be simply a way to monitor court proceedings, or it could signal intent to litigate against a proposed water right.

In response to Daily’s question, Warner said the agency saw it as a responsibility to oppose the city, rather than an opportunity.

Warner said the Forest Service’s opposition to the city’s water rights was based on the fact that the reservoirs would inundate portions of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness.

“Based on our understanding of the Wilderness Act, and the fact that there was no exception built into the designation for the Maroon-Bells Wilderness Area … it would need to go to the president” in order for the reservoirs to be approved, Warner said.

Without such an authorization, the Forest Service could not support the city’s conditional water rights.

“It is nothing against this particular one, it’s just a legal thing,” Warner told the council. “It is kind of our opportunity in the court system to say, ‘You guys would have to get this done,’ and therefore it is kind out of our control.”

Will Roush, conservation director at Wilderness Workshop in Carbondale, told the city council in an Aug. 19 letter that no president has granted such an exemption to the Wilderness Act since it was approved 52 years ago.

Roush wrote, “the city would have to convince the president of the Unites States that the ability of Aspen residents and second homeowners to water their lawns in late summer was of a greater national interest than the internationally recognized ecological and scenic values of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness.”

He also urged the city, on behalf of Wilderness Workshop, to abandon its conditional water rights.

This is not the first time the Forest Service has warned the city of Aspen that its proposed dams and reservoirs conflict with federal policy.

In 2009, the last time the city filed to extend its conditional water rights, White River National Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams sent the city a letter about its conditional water rights, but did not file a statement of opposition.

“As currently decreed, the locations of the Castle Creek and Maroon Creek reservoirs would not comply with the goals and objectives of the White River National Forest’s land and resource management plans for these areas,” Fitzwilliams wrote. “For example, the Maroon Creek Reservoir, as currently sited, would not be compatible with the specific management of the highly visited area for the protection of its high scenic value. Both proposed structures would conflict with our management objective to maintain or improve long-term riparian ecosystem conditions on the forest.”

A map showing the location of the potential Castle Creek Reservoir. The extend of the reservoir has been slightly modified to flood a smaller portion of private property owned by adjacent neighbors. — A map showing the location of the potential Castle Creek Reservoir. The extent of the reservoir has been slightly modified to flood a smaller portion of private property owned by adjacent neighbors.

County in question

In addition to the likely pushback from the Forest Service, American Rivers has also stated it will oppose the city in water court.

“American Rivers strongly encourages the city of Aspen to not file to maintain its conditional water rights for new dams on Castle and Maroon creeks,” wrote Matt Rice, the director of the Colorado River basin program for American Rivers on Aug. 17. “Aspen does not need these dams for municipal water supply, climate resiliency, or for stream protection now or at any time in the foreseeable future.”

Last month, Rice also said in an interview that American Rivers would oppose the city in water court if it filed to extend the conditional water rights.

The Roaring Fork Conservancy also weighed in with an Aug. 25 letter to the council, arguing that based on relevant studies, the city “appears to have sufficient water supply to meet its forecasted demand” without the reservoirs, which would “result in needless, drastic alteration of the natural landscape of two of our state’s most scenic places.”

“Rather than prolonging this debate for another six-year diligence cycle, Roaring Fork Conservancy believes now is the appropriate time to cancel these conditional water rights and tfor the city to pursue any other water demand and supply initiatives,” says the letter signed by director Rick Lofaro.

The city council also heard Tuesday from Lisa Tasker, the chair of Pitkin County’s Healthy Rivers and Streams Board, which recently sent a letter to the city saying the board “does not support new construction of impoundments on Maroon and Castle creeks.”

Tasker also suggested that Pitkin County might oppose the city’s diligence filing.

But Laura Makar, an attorney with the county who specializes in water issues, said Wednesday that the board of county commissioners “has not taken any position on any possible permutation of a diligence application the city of Aspen might file and I expect the [commissioners] will not have any position until any application is filed.”

A map produced by Pitkin County from a map on file with the state of the city of Aspen's proposed Maroon Creek Reservoir, located just below Maroon Creek Lake, shown to the left as the smaller of the two bodies of water. The map was commissioned by Aspen Journalism and confirmed in 2012 as accurate by city officials. — A map produced by Pitkin County, from a map on file with the state, of the city of Aspen’s proposed Maroon Creek Reservoir, located just below Maroon Creek Lake, shown to the left as the smaller of the two bodies of water. The map was commissioned by Aspen Journalism and confirmed in 2012 as accurate by city officials.

Opposition in Maroon Creek Valley

The city also received a letter from an attorney representing the Larsen Family Limited Partnership, which owns water rights on Maroon Creek.

Craig Corona, a water attorney in Aspen who represents the Larsen family, wrote a letter on Aug. 17 to the city saying, “The city has not demonstrated that it will have a water supply shortfall in the future raising questions as to the need for these water rights. Even if such a supply issue arises, the city has other far less damaging options to meet its needs, including improving conservation and efficiency, developing additional groundwater sources (which the city is currently doing), and developing multiple smaller storage structures in more appropriate locations.”

Corona also told the city that it “should not file for diligence on its Castle Creek and Maroon Creek Reservoir water rights and should allow them to be canceled.”

Marcella Larsen of Aspen is co-manager of the Larsen Family Limited Partnership. She’s also a member of the Maroon Creek Caucus, which advises Pitkin County on land use in the Maroon Creek Valley.

Larsen recently sent a comment letter to the city from the Maroon Creek Caucus, opposing the Maroon Creek Reservoir, noting, “The city has made several statements to the public that it has no plans to build the reservoir and merely seeks to keep its options open by maintain the water rights. But when it files in court, the city will have to prove that it ‘can and will’ build the reservoir. Put differently, the city must prove that the project is essentially a foregone conclusion, not just a potential pursuit.”

The caucus concluded, “We think the only reasonable decision is for the city of Aspen to choose to not maintain its Maroon Creek Reservoir water right.”

The city council next plans to meet in a closed-door executive session with its water attorney on Monday about its conditional water rights, and then hold another public work session on Tuesday.

It also plans to vote on Oct. 10 whether or not to file to maintain the conditional water rights.

Editor’s note: Aspen Journalism and the Aspen Daily News are collaborating on coverage of rivers and water. The Daily News published this story on Thursday, Sept. 22, 2016.

Opposition likely to Aspen’s conditional water rights on upper Maroon and Castle creeks

ASPEN – After holding both private and public meetings last week about its conditional water rights for dams and reservoirs on upper Maroon and Castle creeks, the city of Aspen is likely facing opposition in water court if it files a request to extend the water rights for another six years.

“If their diligence filing is consistent with the current project configuration, I do think we will file a statement of opposition,” said Matt Rice, Colorado basin director for American Rivers, a national river conservation organization.

The city has until the end of October to file a due diligence report in Division 5 water court in Glenwood Springs. Such filings are required every six years.

In its September 2009 diligence filing, which was approved in 2010, the city told the water court “it has steadily applied efforts to complete” the dams and reservoirs “in a reasonably expedient and efficient manner.” The city first filed for the conditional water right in 1965 and the conditional rights were formally decreed in 1971.

The view, with a zoom lens, of the Bells from the meadow that would be flooded by a Maroon Creek Reservoir. The meadow is known as the Stein Meadow and the wedding meadow.

Routine filing?

At a public meeting Thursday a consultant working for the city, Larissa Reed of Common Ground Environmental Consulting LLC, told the gathering of about 35 people that the city’s pending due diligence filing was “routine.”

“City council is not proposing to build water storage reservoirs at this time,” Reed said. “What they are doing is thinking about the conditional water storage rights and whether or not they should be filed for again in October for another six years.“

A work session with city council on the question is to be held in September or October.

Reed then explained some aspects of conditional water rights, including the “can and will” test for proposed water supply projects.

“The phrase ‘can and will’ suggests, in the law, that you have to be making progress towards developing this water supply in order to re-up every six years in your diligence filing,” Reed said. “The idea is that applicants have to show that they are making progress on those water rights, that they’re not just sitting on them doing nothing.”

A view looking down the Castle Creek valley at one of the many wetlands that would be covered by the potential Castle Creek Reservoir. The city of Aspen has told the state it intends to build - at some point - a 170-foot-tall dam that would stretch about 1,000 feet across the Castle Creek valley and back up 9,062 acre-feet of water, inundating 112 acres of public and private land. — A view looking down the Castle Creek valley at one of the many wetlands that would be covered by the potential Castle Creek Reservoir. The city of Aspen has told the state it intends to build – at some point – a 170-foot-tall dam that would stretch about 1,000 feet across the Castle Creek valley and back up 9,062 acre-feet of water, inundating 112 acres of public and private land.

Can and will?

Since 1965, the city has consistently told the state it intends – at some point – to build a 155-foot-tall dam at the confluence of East and West Maroon creeks that would store 4,567 acre-feet of water behind it and build a 170-foot-tall dam on Castle Creek that would back-up 9,062 acre-feet of water.

The city has not undertaken feasibility or cost studies of the dams and reservoirs since filing for the water rights, although the Bureau of Reclamation did conduct limited test drilling on the Castle Creek dam site in 1970.

Nor has the city determined how much water storage it actually might need in the future, or what other storage locations might be feasible, according to David Hornbacher, the city’s director of utilities and environmental initiatives.

Castle Creek, not far below Ashcroft. This section of river would be covered by a potential Castle Creek Reservoir. — Castle Creek, not far below Ashcroft. This section of water would be covered by a potential Castle Creek Reservoir.

Facilitated sessions

On Wednesday, the city held a private stakeholders meeting about the conditional water rights with representatives from American Rivers, Wilderness Workshop, Roaring Fork Conservancy, Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, the Colorado River District, U.S. Forest Service, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

The formats of both the private stakeholders meeting and Thursday’s public meetings were the same, with remarks from the consultant and Hornbacher, limited time for questions, and then facilitated small-group discussions focused on questions crafted by the city.

“I’m hopeful that they will take this public input and present it to the council in an unbiased and accurate fashion,” said Rice of American Rivers, who attended Wednesday’s stakeholder meeting, “but if the city moves forward with due diligence for a reservoir on Maroon Creek and a reservoir on Castle Creek, we intend to stand up for those rivers and those wild places and oppose.”

When asked if American Rivers was prepared to take its opposition to a level of active litigation in water court, which typically comes after a lengthy period of time when parties are asked by the court to work out their differences in private meetings, Rice said he hoped it wouldn’t go that far.

“I would hope that it would give the city an opportunity to investigate real alternatives to this project to meet their future water supply needs,” he said of discussions during the initial phase of the process. “One thing that a statement of opposition in a diligence filing does is that inspires those discussions at a quicker pace than would happen otherwise.”

American Rivers filed a statement of opposition in response to a diligence filing in 2011 from the Colorado River Water Conservation District and the West Divide Water Conservancy District for conditional water rights for two large dams on the Crystal River.

The River District and the West Divide District agreed to abandon those water rights in 2013.

Pitkin County also filed a statement of opposition against the Crystal River conditional water rights and took an active role in the proceedings.

After Thursday’s public meeting on the rights on Maroon and Castle creeks, Laura Makar, an assistant county attorney for Pitkin County, said the county had not yet decided if it would oppose a diligence filing by the city.

“We don’t have a position at this point in time,” Makar said. “The diligence filing is not due until October. Any statement of opposition would not be due until December. We’re in August right now, so I anticipate we’ll have a position at some point.”

In a small bit of irony, there is a two-foot-tall beaver dam just below the location where Aspen has told the state it intends to build a 155-foot-tall dam - some day. — In a small bit of irony, there is a 2-foot-tall beaver dam just below the location where Aspen has told the state it intends to build a 155-foot-tall dam – someday.

Dueling statements

Pitkin County Commissioner Rachel Richards, a former mayor of Aspen, attended Thursday’s meeting. She said during the small-group discussions that she thought it was “premature” for the city to abandon its conditional rights for the dams and reservoirs.

Will Roush, a conservation advocate for Wilderness Workshop, attended both the private stakeholders meeting and the public meeting.

When asked Friday if Wilderness Workshop intended to oppose the diligence filing, Roush said, “We’ll make that decision once they decide whether or not to file a diligence filing,” but also said his organization wants Aspen to abandon the water rights.

Paul Noto, a water attorney at Patrick, Miller, Noto who fought the city’s proposed hydropower plant on lower Castle Creek on behalf of a group of local clients, was asked if he expected someone to file a statement of opposition if the city filed.

“It’s not a question of someone, it is a question of how many,” Noto said. “There is going to be a lot of opposition to this project. The reason is Aspenites, and others, hold Castle and Maroon creek valleys near and dear to their hearts and I think a lot of people passionately believe, rightly so, that there shouldn’t be dams in those valleys.”

Rob Harris, the senior staff attorney at Western Resource Advocates of Boulder, also was at Thursday’s meeting. Afterward, he was critical of the city’s dueling messages about its intentions for the dams and reservoirs.

“The city can’t and shouldn’t say different things to the public that it says to the water court,” Harris said. “The city shouldn’t come in here, to this public meeting, and say, ‘We don’t really have any plans to build these dams’ and then go into the water court and say, ‘We can and will build these reservoirs.’ Those are two different, inconsistent, statements.”

He also challenged the way the city made it sound that climate change made the dams necessary.

Ashley Perl, the director of the city’s Canary Initiative, had presented climate projections at the meeting that showed less water would likely be in Aspen-area rivers in a hotter future. She said that Aspen doesn’t have any water storage facilities, which made it vulnerable, and that the community needed to have a conversation about storage.

But Harris said, “It is important to note that nothing we saw tonight connected any of those water availability scenarios under those climate models to actual water needs that the city of Aspen has. There was nothing presented tonight that showed that in any of those scenarios that Aspen would in fact be short of water.”

Harris added, “If the city does identify a water need, they have lots of other alternatives” than the dams and reservoirs.

The city has set up an email address for citizens to send comments and questions about the conditional water rights, at waterrights@cityofaspen.com, until Aug. 19.

One of the many wetlands in the area that would be covered by a Castle Creek Reservoir.

Regional reservoirs and dams, ranked by normal storage capacity

During a public meeting on Aug. 4, 2016, the city of Aspen presented a graphic comparing the surface area of various regional reservoirs with the surface area of the proposed Castle and Maroon creek reservoirs.

We’ve expanded the list, added more criteria, ranked it by storage capacity, and used data from the Colorado Dept. of Dam Safety, including their term of “normal storage” for the storage capacity amount.

For Castle and Maroon, which the city labeled in their presentation as “proposed,” we’ve simply used “storage capacity.”

AF means “acre feet.” There are 325,851 gallons of water in an acre-foot.

Ruedi Reservoir
Normal storage: 102,369 AF
Dam height: 291 feet
Dam length: 1,060 feet
Surface area: 998 acres

Homestake Reservoir
Normal storage: 42,900 AF
Dam height: 231 feet
Dam length: 1,996 feet
Surface area: 333 acres

Paonia Reservoir
Normal storage: 20,950 AF
Dam height: 199 feet
Dam length: 770 feet
Surface area: 334 acres

Rifle Gap Reservoir
Normal storage: 13,602 AF
Dam height: 124 feet
Dam length: 1,450 feet
Surface area: 359 acres

Proposed Castle Creek Reservoir
Storage capacity: 9,062 AF
Dam height: 170 feet
Dam length: Approx. 1,000 feet
Surface area: 112 acres

Proposed Maroon Creek Reservoir
Storage capacity: 4,567 AF
Dam height: 155 feet
Dam length: Approx. 1,500 feet
Surface area: 80 acres

Spring Park Reservoir
Normal storage: 1,732 AF
Dam height: 20 feet
Dam length: 1,645 feet
Surface area: 258 acres

Wildcat Reservoir
Normal storage: 1,100 AF
Dam height: 75 feet
Dam length: 1,100 feet
Surface area: 50 acres

Ivanhoe Reservoir
Normal storage: 752 AF
Dam height: 16 feet
Dam length: 270 feet
Surface area: 82 acres

Grizzly Reservoir
Normal storage: 590 AF
Dam height: 56 feet
Dam length: 792 feet
Surface area: 44 acres

Dinkle Lake
Normal storage: 460 AF
Dam height: 40 feet
Dam length: 580 feet
Surface area: 20 acres

Ziegler Reservoir
Normal storage: 248 AF
Dam height: 28 feet
Dam length: 500 feet
Surface area: 16 acres

Chapman Reservoir
Normal storage: 100 acre feet
Dam height: 37 feet
Dam length: 160 feet
Surface area: 10 acres

Editor’s note: Aspen Journalism, the Aspen Daily News, and Coyote Gulch are collaborating on coverage of rivers and water. The Daily News published this story on Monday, August 8, 2016.

Aspen: Public open house on  Castle and Maroon creek water rights

From the City of Aspen via The Aspen Daily News:

The city of Aspen is hosting a public open house on the municipality’s conditional water rights on Castle and Maroon creeks on Thursday from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the Pitkin County library community meeting room.

City representatives will provide background information and host a dialogue with the public with the goal of asking for input and ideas.

Since 1965, the city has maintained conditional water rights for a reservoir on Castle and on Maroon creeks to plan for the community’s future water needs, a press release says. To keep these rights, Aspen must submit a diligence filing this October.

Aspen Journalism reported in June that, if built as currently described by the city’s plans, which were first presented to a water court judge in 1965, the Maroon Creek reservoir would store 4,567 acre-feet of water behind a 155-foot-tall dam just below the confluence of East Maroon and West Maroon creeks.

But the release issued Monday by the city says the diligence filing is a routine one that occurs every six years.

And it is not a proposal to actually build the reservoir, the city says.

“A conditional water right is a place holder in Colorado’s priority system for water rights,” the release says.

City of Aspen to discuss possible dams on Castle and Maroon creeks

A rendering from Wilderness Workshop of a potential Maroon Creek Reservoir, which would hold 4,567 acre-feet of water behind a 155-foot-tall dam. The rendering was prepared by a professional hydrologist and is based on plans submitted to the state by the city.

By Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism

ASPEN – Officials at the city of Aspen intend to hold at least one public meeting this summer to discuss the conditional water rights it holds that are tied to potential dams on upper Castle and Maroon creeks.

The city’s next diligence filing for its conditional water rights for the two dams and reservoirs is due in Division 5 water court in Glenwood Springs by Oct. 31. It’s highly unusual in Colorado for a city, or any other entity, to hold a public meeting on a pending diligence filing.

David Hornbacher, city of Aspen director of utilities and environmental initiatives, said that while holding a public meeting is indeed “different,” he is acting at the direction of the city council.

“These are important questions,” he said. “And it’s very much about looking into the future and how do we ensure Aspen has what it needs to continue to thrive and be the place that it is, and what’s the best approach.”

Paul Noto, a water attorney with Patrick, Miller and Noto, which specializes in water law and has represented many clients in the Roaring Fork River watershed, said it was “very unusual” for a city to hold a public hearing about a pending diligence filing.

“I’ve never heard of it, although that’s not to say it’s never occurred,” Noto said. “I’ve just never heard of it.”

A rendering from Wilderness Workshop showing the potential Castle Creek Reservoir. The rendering was developed by a professional hydrologist and i sbased on engineering plans filed by the city.

15-story dams?

If built as currently described by the city’s plans, which were first presented to a water court judge in 1965, the Maroon Creek reservoir would store 4,567 acre-feet of water behind a 155-foot-tall dam just below the confluence of East Maroon and West Maroon creeks.

While only about a third of the size of Paonia Reservoir, which can hold 15,553 acre-feet when full, a Maroon Creek reservoir would still cover 85 acres of U.S. Forest Service land about a mile-and-a-half below Maroon Lake.

It would also inundate portions of both the East Maroon Creek and West Maroon Creek trails in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness.

The Castle Creek reservoir would hold 9,062 acre-feet of water behind a 170-foot-tall dam located about two miles below the historic town site of Ashcroft.

It would inundate 120 acres of mostly private land between Fall Creek and Sandy Creek and flood a small piece of Forest Service land within the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness.

Both reservoirs would be located in Pitkin County.

Since 1965, the city has told the state eight different times it intends to build two large dams in pristine locations in the upper Castle and Maroon creek valleys, and it is on the record that the city intends to file a diligence application this fall. In its September 2009 diligence filing the city told the water court “it has steadily applied efforts to complete” the reservoirs “in a reasonably expedient and efficient manner.”

A court official, known as a water referee, agreed.

“To date, the city of Aspen has not needed to construct the storage structures as it has devoted considerable resources to reducing per capita water consumption,” the unnamed referee wrote. (Please see related story).

A rendering from Wilderness Workshop showing how a Castle Creek Reservoir might look on a seasonal basis after water has been drawn done to meet downstream needs.

Private and public meetings

Hornbacher said this week he will hold one private meeting with stakeholders in early July about the dams and at least one public meeting in July or early August, “depending on the level of public interest.”

After presenting information about the water rights and taking questions and suggestions at the meetings, Hornbacher said he would report back to the council in a work session in August or September to get its direction by the Oct. 31 filing deadline.

He said council could direct staff to proceed with the diligence filing and try and keep the water rights on the books for another six years.

Or it could direct staff not to file, or to file a modified application.

Hornbacher said a modified application could mean filing on one dam and reservoir, but not both, or it could mean filing on both reservoirs but changing their size and shape.

It’s not unheard of for entities to walk away from conditional water rights. The Colorado River District made the decision to abandon rights for two large dams on the Crystal River in 2013. And over the last five years, the district has stepped away from a number of other conditional water rights.

Among the stakeholders Hornbacher plans to invite to a private meeting are Wilderness Workshop, Roaring Fork Conservancy, U.S. Forest Service, and Pitkin County.

Wilderness Workshop first reported the city’s decision to hold public hearings in a newsletter it sent to members on June 1. The headline of the article read, “Potential dams on Maroon and Castle creeks still on the books” and a subhead read, “A diligence filing this fall would keep them alive; WW says, ‘No way!’”

The city of Aspen intends to hold at least one public meeting on the conditional water rights it holds for two large dams, one on upper Castle Creek and one on upper Maroon Creek, shown here in this 2012 file photo, with the Maroon Bells visible in the background. The dam on Maroon Creek would be 155-feet-tall and store 4,567 acre-feet of water.

Proving diligence

Typically, owners of conditional water rights need to demonstrate to the court they meet the “can and will” doctrine – that they can build the proposed water supply project and that they will build it.

The city may also need to meet standards developing in the wake of a Colorado Supreme Court decision in Pagosa Area Water & Sanitation Dist. v. Trout Unlimited.

Alan Martellaro, the Division 5 engineer based in Glenwood Springs, told the city in May, in response to a separate conditional water rights application it filed, that “the applicant [the city] must demonstrate that speculation is overcome per the criteria in ‘Pagosa.’”

“The applicant must demonstrate the proposed appropriation can and will be diverted and put to beneficial use for each of the proposed uses: a) within a reasonable planning period; b) using normal population growth assumptions; and c) the amount claimed is necessary and unappropriated water is available,” Martellaro wrote.

In past filings, the city has left the state with the distinct impression that it intends to build the two reservoirs, especially in the face of the uncertainty of climate change. But it has also left citizens with another impression – that it is simply protecting its water rights, not warming up bulldozers in view of the Bells.

Noto, the Aspen water attorney, says “you can’t have it both ways.”

“It’s a really important point,” Noto said. “You either are moving forward toward completing your project, which is essentially the standard for keeping your water right, or you’re not. And there’s no in-between.”

Noto has represented clients in the past who successfully opposed the city’s proposed hydropower plant on Castle Creek, but said he is not currently representing a client regarding the city’s pending diligence filing.

As such, Noto was willing to talk on the record in the role of citizen and as an experienced local water attorney.

He said he doesn’t agree with the city’s reasoning that a hotter future may increase the need for the reservoirs.

“I don’t buy it,” he said. “To use climate change as a pretext for damming the Maroon Bells and damming upper Castle Creek is not appropriate.”

The city of Aspen recently completed a raw water availability study that concluded that Aspen has sufficient water to meet future municipal demands, but in one of out of 20 years it might have trouble meeting its goal of keeping instream flows of at least 14 cfs in Maroon Creek and 13.3 cfs in Castle Creek.

The language in the water availability study leaves open the door for the city to suggest that building dams on the upper sections of the creeks could help meet its instream flow goals on the lower sections of the creeks.

Good planning?

“What we’re talking about is trade-offs,” Noto said. “Is maintaining an instream flow worth building large dams at the Maroon Bells and upper Castle Creek? Absolutely not. There are other ways that the city could meet the instream flow such as eliminating some irrigation during times of shortage. There are better ways to meet your goals than building big dams. And the people aren’t going to stand for it.”

Noto was asked if he could see a reason why the city should hold on to its conditional water rights on Castle and Maroon creeks.

“I don’t see it,” he said. “I can’t, for the life of me, envision a scenario where it would be good planning or good policy to dam Maroon Bells and to dam upper Castle Creek.”

Wilderness Workshop told its members in its June newsletter that it would be working “to convince the city to abandon the rights to these reservoirs (and we’ll need your help).”

American Rivers is also on the record as opposing the city’s plans to build dams and reservoirs.

“We are absolutely and always will be opposed to new reservoirs on Castle and Maroon creeks,” said Matt Rice, director of the Colorado River Basin Program for American Rivers. “They contradict the values of Aspen and the state of Colorado — values we will fight for.”

American Rivers is a national nonprofit dedicated to river restoration and protection, which fought vigorously against the city of Aspen’s Castle Creek hydro power plant.

Rice said whether or not American Rivers will oppose the city in water court if it does decide to file a diligence application is a strategic decision to be made down the road.

“We think the city’s willingness to have an open, transparent process with citizens is a good thing, if indeed that’s what it is,” Rice said. “There needs to be a sincere and open examination of these projects and what people would be giving up if they were developed.”

Editor’s note: Aspen Journalism, the Aspen Daily News, Coyote Gulch are collaborating on the coverage of rivers and water. The Daily News published this story on Monday, June 20, 2016.

City water supply could be tested by climate change — The Aspen Daily News

Smuggler Mine back in the day via GregRulon.com

From The Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

If climate change renders the Western Slope warmer and drier, and if historic growth rates keep up, then Aspen’s water utility could have trouble meeting consumer demand without depleting minimum in-stream flows in Castle and Maroon creeks over the next 50 years.

Aspen City Council on Monday heard a presentation from consultants hired to evaluate the adequacy of the municipal water supply. Wilson Water Group put together a report forecasting demand and available supply over a 50-year outlook, and found that in the worst-case climate change scenario, the city could miss in-stream flow targets on Castle and Maroon creeks by between 4 and 9 cubic feet per second during the “irrigation months” of June through September.

The city has committed to a 13 cfs minimum flow in Castle Creek, and 14 cfs in Maroon. Both creeks are tapped to feed municipal needs through diversion structures that send water to Thomas Reservoir, a holding bay for the city’s treatment plant.

Even if the worst-case scenario projections come to pass in terms of climate change and population growth — demands on the city’s water system historically have risen by about 1.2 percent a year, according to special projects utilities engineer Phil Overeynder — the city has other ways to shore up its water supply.

One project that has been on the drawing board for years would pump treated wastewater uphill from the sanitation plant to irrigate the city’s golf course.

The city also controls three wells in town drawing from the local aquifer. If irrigation for city parks increasingly relied on those wells, then more water could be left in Castle and Maroon creeks.

Combined with more water conservation, or restrictions in drought years, depletion of in-stream flows could be avoided, consultants report.

City council agreed to adopt the 2016 Water Supply Availability Study, and continue monitoring hydrologic conditions.

Council also heard a presentation on Monday from another consultant that analyzed threats to the water supply and water quality. Given that Aspen’s water originates in high mountain valleys, wildfire poses perhaps the most imminent and hazardous threat. A bad fire in the Castle or Maroon watersheds could be detrimental to water quality in those streams, and subsequent mudslides could also cause problems.

There is also the abandoned Pitkin Iron Mine above Ashcroft that drains into Copper Creek, a Castle Creek tributary.

The Colorado Rural Water Association conducted a study for the city assessing the best ways to mitigate these threats.

Creating a buffer zone against wildfire near the diversion structures on Castle and Maroon creeks, while continuing to develop plans to limit wildfire debris flow into Thomas Reservoir, were among the study’s top recommendations.

More work to control erosion at the Pitkin Iron Mine site was also recommended. However, the consultant noted that the Pitkin Iron Mine did not make the list of the state’s 200 most pressing mine cleanup needs.

Aspen Times Weekly: Could a mine-waste spill happen here?

From The Aspen Times Weekly (Scott Condon):

Pitkin County has between 600 and 800 mine features, including multiple adits into the same mine, according to an estimate by the Colorado state government. And as Cooper’s experience shows, there are Aspen mines that are filled with water — but just because there’s water, that doesn’t mean it’s contaminated water.

Still, that hefty inventory of adits and shafts makes it reasonable to wonder if something similar to the discharge of 3 million gallons of toxic water from the Gold King Mine near Silverton into the Animas River earlier this month could happen in Aspen (see story, page 33).

State and federal officials as well as miners with street credibility will never say never, but a similar disaster in Pitkin County is unlikely, in large part because of geology, they agreed.

Aspen Mountain’s mines tended to be internally drained to the water table, so “there is generally no significant surface drainage discharges associated with the underground workings,” said Bruce Stover, an official with the Colorado Inactive Mine Reclamation Program. That means there is a “very limited possibility” of underground impoundments of water being formed, he said.

Mines in the San Juan Mountains and other parts of the state have water above the surface. Toxic water was intentionally captured inside the Gold King Mine. It breached when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency undertook a reclamation effort.

Aspen miners tended to encounter water below the level of the water table and Roaring Fork River, said Jay Parker, a partner in the Compromise Mine on Aspen Mountain and a miner and tour guide at the Smuggler Mine.

The water emerging from Aspen’s mines hasn’t been found to be acidic or laced with heavy metals in any testing to date. In one of Aspen’s few hard-rock mine reclamation projects, water in Castle Creek tested similarly above and below where the Hope Mine discharged, according to Forest Service records.

Parker said water draining from the Compromise Mine on Smuggler Mountain feeds ponds where fish thrive and ducks gather.

Local Mine reclamation aimed at safety

Many of Pitkin County’s mines have collapsed, either naturally or by public agencies for safety reasons.

“Our records show we have safeguarded approximately 90 hazardous, non-coal openings in Pitkin County, many of them on Aspen Mountain,” said Stover. Numerous closures have also been completed on coalmines in the Coal Basin and Thompson Creek areas.

The Forest Service typically performs safety closures on three or four mines per year, according to Greg Rosenmerkel, engineering, minerals and fleet staff officer on the White River National Forest. “There are hundreds of mines across the forest.”

The focus of both the Forest Service and the Inactive Mine Reclamation Program is to prevent people from entering an unsafe situation. Old mining timbers have often rotted, making interior travel perilous. Air deep underground can be toxic without proper ventilation.

“It’s almost an attractive nuisance,” Rosenmerkel said of the old mines.

A recent closure was completed earlier this summer at three mines in the high ground beyond Crystal. The typical closure costs $200,000, though no two projects are the same, he said.

Both the Forest Service and Inactive Mine Reclamation Program are focused on finding mines that pose a physical hazard, such as ones located in a ski area or adjacent to a popular hiking trail, and safe-guarding them.

No toxic water impounded

If Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management officials suspect environmental issues, the state Water Quality Control Division is mobilized to test for acidity or metals. If a problem is found, the Inactive Mine Reclamation Program figures out how to solve the problem. If an environmental problem is suspected with a mine on private lands, the Forest Service might be involved if it affects public lands, Rosenmerkel said.

The Hope Mine in Castle Creek Valley warranted remediation while the Ruby Mine in Lincoln Creek Valley has raised concerns but hasn’t been found in need of monitoring (see related stories), according to officials.

Rosenmerkel said there is no situation in the Aspen-Ranger District where water as toxic as that in the Gold King Mine is being impounded.

The Roaring Fork Conservancy, a Basalt-based nonprofit focused on water quality and quantity issues in the valley, doesn’t specifically test to see how water coming from mines affects rivers and streams in the basin.

“Outside of Ruby, I don’t know if we have a big enough problem or big enough source,” said Rick Lofaro, the conservancy’s executive director.

Aspen utilities official favors new dams on local streams — Aspen Journalism

From Aspen Journalism (Brent Gardner-Smith):

A top utility official with the city of Aspen voiced his support last week for building “small reservoirs” on a number of streams in the Roaring Fork River watershed, including on Hunter, Castle, Maroon, and Avalanche creeks.

“Small reservoirs would improve stream flow on tributaries,” said Mike McDill, deputy director of utilities for the city of Aspen, referring to the ability to store water in the spring and release it later during low-flow periods.

“A small reservoir on Castle Creek would improve the stream health on Castle Creek and also help our drinking water reserves,” McDill said. “I think there may also be benefits to Hunter Creek, Maroon Creek and maybe even Avalanche Creek. All of our tributaries could use that kind of small reservoir and stream-flow calming.”

Today, the city of Aspen owns two diversion dams, one on lower Castle Creek next to Dick Butera’s estate, and one on lower Maroon Creek near the T-Lazy Ranch. Both of the dams are river wide and completely block fish passage, but they do not form reservoirs of water behind them.

McDill also said the city fully intends to keep its options open for two large dams on both upper Castle and Maroon creeks, which he referred to as “serious water storage reservoirs.”

McDill’s remarks were made during a public meeting of the Roaring Fork Watershed Collaborative, held at the Third Street Center in Carbondale.

At the watershed meeting, consulting engineers from SGM were facilitating a group-planning exercise in an effort to determine the top three water projects in the Roaring Fork River basin for inclusion in the forthcoming statewide Colorado Water Plan.

The effort did not result in a definitive shortlist of water projects, and no one else at the meeting spoke in favor of Aspen building new dams.

The Colorado River Basin Roundtable is slated to finalize a water project list for the entire Colorado River basin March 23.

“Serious water reservoirs”

McDill represents the city of Aspen on the Colorado Roundtable, and over the past year has consistently said the city needs to develop or acquire water storage.

“The city of Aspen, most of the cities in the region, none of them have any storage,” McDill said. “Their storage is snowpack, as is ours. I can tell you that that works great in the spring, works great through the summer. But believe it or not, our times of greatest concern are January, February, March, because Castle Creek, where we take most of water, is so low that we have to send a crew out almost every morning to chip the ice off of our intake bars, because the development of an inch or so of ice is enough to block our intake.”

McDill said the city, in addition to exploring new storage options, also is developing new water-supply projects, such as a reclaimed-water system and a deep-water well originally drilled as part of a geothermal energy project.

“The reason that we are doing that and the reclaimed water system,” McDill said, “is they are all really part of this idea of continuing due diligence to try to investigate every other possible way to provide the security for our drinking water system before we go to the point of building serious water storage reservoirs.

“We have reservoir storage rights on Maroon Creek and Castle Creek,” McDill added. “We know that’s going to be a really hard sell whenever we would start to do that, so before we even try, we’re going to look at every other alternative.”

The city holds conditional water rights for dams and reservoirs on both upper Castle and Maroon creeks.

The Maroon Creek reservoir would store 4,567 acre-feet of water behind a 155-foot-tall dam just below the confluence of East Maroon and West Maroon creeks, about a mile-and-half from Maroon Lake.

The Castle Creek reservoir would hold 9,062 acre-feet of water behind a 170-foot-tall dam located about two miles below the historic town site of Ashcroft.

The city’s conditional water rights for the Castle and Maroon creek reservoirs are officially on the state’s books through 2016, when the city will need to convince the state water court it is diligently making progress toward building the dams.

(Please see related stories: “Aspen’s Ruedi water buy may bolster prospect for new dams on Castle and Maroon creeks” and “City maintains rights for dams on Castle and Maroon creeks“)

Small and large reservoirs

When McDill was asked at Thursday’s meeting what his definition of a “small dam” is, he pointed to the city’s Leonard Thomas Reservoir at the city’s water treatment plant, which he said holds 14 acre feet of water. The dam at the reservoir is 19 feet tall.

“But it’s a good question,” McDill then said. “What’s a large reservoir?”

He went on to say that the conditional water rights for the Maroon and Castle creek reservoirs were “in the neighborhood of 10,000 acre-feet,” and that the other “smaller” reservoirs under discussion were in the “4,000 to 5,000 to 6,000” acre-foot range.

Editor’s note: Aspen Journalism is collaborating with The Aspen Times on coverage of rivers and waters. The Times published this story on Friday, March 13, 2015.

More Roaring Fork River watershed coverage here.

On Monday the City of Aspen officially ended its pursuit of a hydroelectric generation plant on Castle Creek — Aspen Journalism

On Mon, #Aspen officially ended its pursuit of a hydro plant on Castle Crk. Reso: http://t.co/saHrZP7Jhe Memo: http://t.co/aPvBoIbThH

— Aspen Journalism (@AspenJournalism) February 24, 2015

The City of Aspen councilors decide to let FERC hydropower application expire in March

Aspen

Micro-hydroelectric plant

From The Aspen Times (Karl Herchenroeder):

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted Aspen its first three-year preliminary permit for a 1,175-kilowatt hydropower plant on lower Castle Creek in November 2008 and a second three-year permit in March 2012.

City Attorney Jim True recommended allowing the permit to expire on March 1, which would officially put the controversial Castle Creek Energy Center on ice, for now. City officials did, however, agree to continue exploring micro-hydro projects on Castle and Maroon creeks, which True said would involve protection of city water rights.

“We will update you on those issues,” True told the council, adding that there will be more detailed analysis later. “We do believe there are additional protections.”

Will Dolan, the city’s utilities project coordinator, said that if the city were able to install low-head hydro on Maroon Creek, it would allow it to run more water through the existing Maroon Creek hydroplant and “optimize production.” Councilwoman Ann Mullins asked if it will affect streamflows.

“It wouldn’t affect the flow regimes necessarily,” Dolan said. “It would allow us to more fully utilize our water rights, but it wouldn’t create any additional diversion from the stream.”

“These are issues we want to bring back in greater detail,” True said, adding that consultation with federal and city water attorneys is needed.

Councilman Adam Frisch said he believes there is broad community support to explore micro-hydro and called the plan that True laid out “a great step forward.” None of the council members offered objections to True’s recommendation.

“I agree to let it expire, continue the investigation of micro-hydro and have a universal statement on protecting water rights,” Councilman Dwayne Romero said.

In March, the city filed a progress report saying it was still working on the Castle Creek project, despite a November 2012 advisory vote where 51 percent of city voters said the city should stop doing so.

However, in June, the city settled a lawsuit over its water rights for the proposed hydroplant. Both the settlement and a subsequent city council resolution said the city “will not be pursuing or seeking to complete the Castle Creek Energy Center hydroelectric project at this time.”

More hydroelectric/hydropower coverage here and here.

Aspen faces deadlines on federal hydro permit — Aspen Journalism

From Aspen Journalism (Brent Gardner-Smith) via The Aspen Times:

The Aspen City Council is expected Jan. 12 to face decisions about its federal permit for a hydropower plant on Castle Creek, as the permit expires Feb. 28 and there are deadlines Jan. 29 and March 1 if the city wants to keep the permit alive.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted Aspen its first three-year preliminary permit for a 1,175-kilowatt hydropower plant on lower Castle Creek in November 2008, and its second three-year permit in March 2012.

In the past nine months, the city’s communication with the commission has signaled varying degrees of commitment for the project.

In March, the city filed a progress report saying it was still working on the project, despite a November 2012 advisory vote where 51 percent of city voters said the city should stop doing so.

“The Aspen City Council has not abandoned the project … ” the city told the agency in March. “The project remains a viable project at this juncture, one which the city continues to study and to defend the water rights upon which its plans are based.”

In June, however, the city settled a lawsuit over its water rights for the proposed hydropower plant. Both the settlement and a subsequent City Council resolution said the city “will not be pursuing or seeking to complete the Castle Creek Energy Center hydroelectric project at this time.”

Instead, the city declared it was going to “pursue other renewable energy projects, including microhydroelectic installations at existing city-owned or controlled facilities.”

Those facilities are two diversion dams located several miles up Castle and Maroon creeks, which are currently used to divert water to the city’s water treatment plant.

The city in June sent FERC a copy of the resolution and the settlement agreement, and feels it gave adequate notice to the commission that its position on the project had evolved to embrace microhydro, Aspen City Attorney Jim True said.

But in September, the city sent FERC a progress report that seemed to suggest the city was leaving the door open for the plant on lower Castle Creek.

“In the event the City Council decides to proceed with the Castle Creek Energy Center project as a chosen alternative, the city will move forward as appropriate in accordance with applicable statues and regulations,” the city stated.

On Dec. 23, True said that sentence should not be taken to mean the city is still pursuing the original project.

Micro-hydroelectric plant

“The city intends to pursue microhydro and we’ve made that clear to FERC,” True said. “We’re not looking at the Castle Creek Energy Center any more, at all.”

But if the city is not pursuing the lower Castle Creek project and instead plans to study microhydro projects, should it ask FERC to extend or renew its existing preliminary permit?

That’s one question the City Council is facing Jan. 12.

The city does have the right to apply for a third “successive” preliminary permit, but Shana Murray, who manages hydro projects at FERC, said it would be difficult.

“We will take a very hard look at what they have done to develop a license application over the last six years.”

Karl Kumli, an attorney working for the city on its federal permit, was more upbeat about the chances of extending the city’s current permit, even though the city’s focus has shifted.

“A preliminary permit, by its very nature, has some flexibility associated with it because you are studying options,” Kumli said.

Murray said if Aspen did want to file for a third permit, it would be expected to do so on March 1, the day after its current permit expires Feb. 28.

That is because one purpose of a preliminary permit is to secure the location of a proposed hydropower plant, so most applicants don’t leave a gap of even one day.

The city also has the option, with the passage of the federal Hydropower Regulatory Efficiency Act of 2013, to apply for a two-year extension to its current permit.

Murray said so far two-year extensions on second permits are getting about the same level of scrutiny at FERC as applications for a third permit.

However, if the city wants to go that route, it would need to notify FERC officials 30 days before the existing permit expires Feb. 28, which in this case is Jan. 29.

Murray wouldn’t speculate on how the agency would respond if the city applies to extend or renew its permit.

The city also has the option of simply letting its current permit expire and then applying for a new permit, or permits, for its proposed microhydro projects.

And in June, the city signaled to FERC it might go that route, although it did not discuss letting its current permit expire.

“In the near future, the city anticipates filing a separate preliminary permit or permits for such microhydro sites, which will be separate and different projects from the Castle Creek Energy Center,” the city said in its update.

Aspen Journalism and The Aspen Times are collaborating on coverage of rivers and water. More at http://www.aspenjournalism.org.

More hydroelectric/hydropower coverage here.

Aspen puts the skids under proposed hydroelectric plant — council pulls funding for penstock

From the Aspen Times (Karl Herchenroeder):

The Aspen City Council reversed its decision to spend $750,000 on an emergency drainline associated with the controversial Castle Creek Energy Center on [November 9] after city staff admitted mistakes in communicating the issue to officials and the public.

To date, the city has invested about $7 million in the estimated $10.5 million hydro project, which was halted in 2012 when 51 percent of Aspen voters shot it down during an advisory election. The 3,900-foot drainline, which was originally intended to source the hydroelectric plant with water from Thomas Reservoir, is about 91 percent complete but is currently capped and inoperable.

On May 27, the Colorado Department of Natural Resources conducted a scheduled inspection, which found the reservoir to be a “significant hazard,” meaning damage is expected with a dam failure while the reservoir is at the high-water line. Aspen’s Utilities Manager Dave Hornbacher admitted Monday that he misrepresented the issue to the council in October, when he gave officials the impression that it was a safety issue and state recommendations called for the drainline.

“Clearly, I could have done a better job, and I sincerely apologize for any misunderstanding or confusion or lack of diligence,” Hornbacher said.

Hornbacher explained that staff presented its recommendation as if it were based solely on the dam inspection, when in fact, officials also considered opportunities to address the potential for property damage near the drainline.

Assistant City Manager Randy Ready, who also admitted mistakes in his delivery to the council, made the case that staff was blinded by the opportunity to address two issues at once. He said that a question from the council that staff failed to respond to was, “How do we minimally meet the dam inspector’s requirements?”

More background from Brent Gardner-Smith writing for Aspen Journalism:

David Hornbacher, the city of Aspen’s director of utilities, acknowledged Friday he may have oversold the impact of a May 27 state dam safety report to the city council on Oct. 21, when he successfully convinced elected officials at a budget work session to approve $750,000 to complete the tail end of a big pipeline running from the bottom of Leonard Thomas Reservoir toward Castle Creek.

Hornbacher left the council with the distinct impression that the state was now requiring the city to complete the pipeline, originally envisioned as a penstock to a proposed hydropower plant, and now primarily seen as an “emergency drain line” for the city reservoir.

But, as it turns out, the state is not specifically requiring the city to finish its big pipeline, nor has it ever told the city the pipeline is required to safely operate the reservoir.

Erin Gleason is the state dam safety engineer with the Colorado Division of Water Resources who inspected the dam and reservoir in May. She wants documentation that the city can slowly draw down the reservoir through its existing low level outlet, which today directly feeds the city’s adjoining water treatment plant, or whether a bypass of the plant will be required.

“It might just be that I need information,” Gleason said.

After talking with Gleason on Friday, Hornbacher said he now intends to research whether the city can meet Gleason’s concerns by either using the reservoir’s current low-level outlet system, or if it can do so after some level of modification. He said he would prepare a range of options that compare cost and risk and bring them to council to discuss.

Hornbacher also said he would clarify things by describing two types of potential emergencies at the reservoir. The first is some type of structural threat to the dam, which would require the use of a low-level outlet to slowly draw down the reservoir. The proposed emergency drain line, if finished, would serve as a low-level outlet.

The second type is a a hydrologic event, such as losing control of the two feeder pipes that can bring up to 52 cfs of water to the reservoir, which requires the use of a spillway or an emergency drain line to deal with more water coming into the reservoir than it has the capacity to contain.

“We look forward to having a greater depth of discussion to solutions to a low-level outlet and a hydrologic event, and we look forward to a follow-up to have a detailed discussion about the options,” Hornbacher said.

Hornbacher said on Friday that he did not try to mislead the city council about the reservoir.

“My intent is to try and be factual and accurate and convey the information in an open and honest way,” Hornbacher said, pointing out that his answers were to questions at a budget work session, and he did not make a formal proposal.

And it’s fair to note that it is Hornbacher’s standing professional opinion that the city should complete the last 360 feet of the 4,000-foot-long pipeline installed before the proposed hydropower project ran into political turmoil and was mostly shelved by the city council.

He has consistently pointed out that the pipeline is a better way to move a lot of water out the reservoir than running it down the hillside just to the east of the reservoir. However, the city does routinely run 3 to 4 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water down the hillside toward the creek, but Hornbacher is concerned that a flow of 52 cfs could damage Castle Creek Road.

A water tight case?

At an Oct. 21 budget work session, Hornbacher was asked by council to answer questions about the $750,000 line item in the 2015 budget. (On meeting video, start at 26:52).

There was no staff memo on the topic and the May 27 dam inspector’s report was not in the public packet, nor was the last inspector’s report from April 2012.

However, the discussion turned toward the May report from Gleason.

“The report requires that we complete, or provide some level of a low-level drain line, or outlet, to this reservoir,” Hornbacher told the council. “Completing the drain line does provide that low-level outlet to the reservoir. So we do have an action item required by the dam safety division. If we do not comply with that in a method that is acceptable to them, then they are forced to take action. “

At another point, Hornbacher told the council, “We need a have plan in place, something that we can demonstrate within the next several years, 2017, that you know, we’ve got something already done or that we’re taking this tangible action,” Hornbacher said. “And certainly completing the drain line is that action. If we were to try to look at other mechanisms, that would either require us to make modifications at the reservoir or provide other types of facilities that could drain that reservoir.”

With that, and other statements, Hornbacher consistently backed-up to his professional recommendation that the city complete the pipeline. And he only mentioned in passing the existing low level outlet.

During public comment at city council on Oct. 27, Maurice Emmer, a former Aspen mayoral candidate and staunch opponent of the city’s hydro project, told the council that they should conduct their own research and not trust staff to give them all the information they might need to make a decision on projects such as Thomas Reservoir.

“Staff makes a proposal, then it gives city council information to support the proposal,” Emmer said. “It doesn’t give council information that might undercut the proposal.” (Meeting video starts at 19:01).

For example, Emmer pointed out that Hornbacher did not tell council that the dam had been inspected in 2012, or elaborate on how the existing low-level outlet might satisfy the state.

And Hornbacher did not know, when asked by Councilman Dwayne Romero, how often the state inspects dams.

“I was going to look that up and I didn’t,” Hornbacher said. “I would say it is somewhere between two to five years, I’m thinking it’s around three, which is why you know, we’ve got this report in 2017.”

The state historically has inspected dams classified as “high hazard” dams, which pose a threat to human life, every year. It inspects significant hazard dams, which only pose a threat to property, every other year, as in 2012 and 2014 in the case of Thomas Reservoir, which has been classified as a significant hazard dam since at least 2012.

It’s not clear why Hornbacher is citing a need to act by 2017, as Gleason, the dam inspector, said she would need proof of a low-level outlet by the next inspection, which is slated for 2016.

Hornbacher, when asked, also did not cite the date of the last dam inspection, which was April 4, 2012.

Thomas Leonard Reservoir was completed in 1966, although water had historically been stored on the site in wooden structures to feed an old hydro plant in the same location as the proposed plant.

In 1989, the state concluded the city’s dam was under 10 feet tall, and didn’t meet its definition of a “jurisdictional” dam. So they stopped inspecting it. At the time it was classified as low hazard dam.

Inspection reports in the early 1980s mention that the reservoir’s low-level outlet drains to the water treatment plant — and was considered acceptable.

In 2010, when the city went to install its new penstock/emergency drain line, it had to rebuild the north side of the reservoir to a height of 19 feet, which put the dam back under the state’s jurisdiction.

At that time, regulators saw that the dam, if breached, would damage some property below the reservoir, but not threaten any lives, and gave it a significant hazard classification. That did not change at the May inspection, as Hornbacher implied on Oct. 21.

As to the overall damage that would be caused if the dam failed, a 2011 report by the city’s consulting engineers, McLaughlin Water Engineers, stated that “it is unlikely that buildings or roads would receive extensive damage as a result of a dam breach at Leonard Thomas Reservoir.”

No other options?

By the time Hornbacher was through discussing the completion of the emergency drain line with council on Oct. 21, it was clear he had persuaded them that his proposal was the only safe and correct course of action for the city to take to meet the requirements of the May inspection report.

“So, summing it up for my purposes, this is a state-mandated action to put in this drain line?” Councilman Art Daily asked Hornbacher at the end of the discussion on Oct. 21.

In response to Daily, who is an attorney with Holland and Hart, Hornbacher seemed to choose his words carefully.

“The state mandates that we must have a low-level outlet,” Hornbacher said. “What we have available is a nearly completed low-level outlet, and that would meet the state requirements. So they are telling you, you have to do it. They don’t necessarily go and say this, this and this, is how.”

“But some sort of drain line has got to go in?” Daily asked.

“Yep, a low-level outlet has got to be established in there for emergency, you know, release of water or draining the reservoir,” Hornbacher said.

“I guess, then the last question that comes to my mind is, are there any more equally efficient but more cost effective means of resolving the state requirement versus … this is the best solution?” Daily asked.

“This is a really enduring and complete solution, and by that I mean that you’ve got this hardened route that takes it to the stream and empties into the stream without further erosion or damage there at the stream, you’ve sort of dissipated the energy,” Hornbacher said. “Any other option that you might pursue to get water out of that reservoir does not have such a direct route, so you’d be either placing that water in an unimproved, sort of drainage-like way, and movement of such water would then … start to erode, and cause other types of damage, and then … basically recovery costs or other impacts we can’t even foresee today.”

However, it is also possible that there may be simpler and less expensive ways to meet the state’s requirements for a low-level outlet, without completing the emergency drain line — which the state has never required the city to install. And that’s what Hornbacher said on Friday he is now looking into.

In fact, as Hornbacher briefly alluded to early in his remarks on Oct. 21, and confirmed on Friday, there is a low level outlet already in place at the reservoir, and it sends water to the water treatment plant, where it can then be released down to Castle Creek.

All the state is requiring of a low-level outlet at Thomas Reservoir is that it be able to move 1 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water out of the reservoir over a five-day period, which would lower the water level by five feet — a state standard that technically doesn’t even apply to reservoirs as small as Thomas Reservoir.

Under the “Outlet” section of her May 27 dam inspection report, Gleason wrote “it is our understanding that the only active outlet(s) discharge into the water treatment plant. According to Rule 5.9.6.2.1, a low-level outlet is required to draw down the reservoir under emergency conditions. Please either provide documentation of an existing bypass for treatment plant flows, or provide a low level outlet for the reservoir.”

May was the first time Gleason had inspected Thomas Reservoir. She inspected another 60 dams this summer and said she will review issues identified in those inspections throughout the winter.

As a state dam safety engineer, Gleason said she has wide latitude to work with dam owners, such as the city, to come up with reasonable solutions to concerns raised during inspections.

According to a safety manual published by the state in 2002, “follow-up of the inspection often includes reviewing questionable conditions on site with the dam owner, explaining the problems and suggesting the best and/or most economical way to proceed in assuring the dam’s safety. Frequently, further studies by a consulting engineer are recommended.”

“We work with the owner to make sure we are not requiring something that they can’t afford,” Gleason said. “The city could propose having a stand-by generator, a pump and a hose on site. Our office would typically accept such a solution.”

Hornbacher, in his response to Daily or other council members, did not bring up the pump-and-hose option.

Editor’s note: The Aspen Daily News collaborated with Aspen Journalism on this story and published in Monday, Nov. 3, 2014. Aspen Journalism was responsible for an error in the printed version of the Daily News story, as well as the initial digital version, as we said David Hornbacher is a licensed engineer, and he is not.

More hydroelectric/hydropower coverage here.

Aspen drinking water tour recap

From the Aspen Daily News (Collin Szewczyk):

Through a program by the Roaring Fork Conservancy, a group of over 20 people seeking to quench their intellectual curiosities concerning the city’s water, how it’s treated and where it comes from, toured the city of Aspen’s drinking water treatment facility this week led by water treatment supervisor Charlie Bailey and Laura Taylor, an operator at the facility.

Christina Medved, watershed education director of the Roaring Fork Conservancy, pointed out the parameters of the Roaring Fork watershed, noting that local rivers and streams are fed from an area the size of a small Eastern state.

“Our watershed is about the size of Rhode Island,” she said. “And over 30 percent of it is in designated wilderness areas.”

She praised the relationship that the conservancy has with local government entities such as the city water department, that allows visitors to check out local facilities, which are normally closed to the general public.

“What’s really exciting is we get access to places like this,” Medved said. “We have really wonderful partners that will say, ‘yeah, we’ll open up the gate for you,’ when you normally can’t get in here and have an audience with Charlie and Laura because they’re busy bringing water to Aspen.”

Aspenitus
The plant was completed in December 1966 after Aspen endured a major waterborne epidemic of giardia in the mid-1960s. Giardia is a microscopic parasite that is found in soil, food or water that is contaminated with feces. Another parasite, cryptosporidium, has yet to appear in the Aspen area.

“That was 1964-65; it was the first documented public health problem in the United States,” said Bailey. “There was a documented waterborne problem and that was giardia. There were two redwood tanks up on the hill here that were used for the hydro plant that was down the street, but the Aspen Water Company provided water to the pipes and there was no treatment at all … It was a big hit, they called it ‘Aspenitus.’”

After the outbreak, the city got money together, bought bonds and broke ground on the treatment plant in 1965. There’s been no cases of giardia in the city’s water since the building of the facility, Bailey said.

“There’s lots of giardia in the water and none of it comes out of the pipeline here,” he said. “We’re required to do testing once a year on the performance of our filters and our clear well (a reservoir used for storing filtered water, which flows through a series of baffles, allowing contact time with chlorine for disinfection).”

Beavers were the main culprit for the giardia epidemic, and the area up Maroon and Castle creeks was teeming with them at the time.

“There was a huge beaver population up there,” Bailey said, but added that it’s good to have them in the area. “They’re animals that let us know that the environment is healthy.”

The water plant also checks the water for mining tailings and other non-natural pollutants.

“We’ve requested extra testing of our water sources,” Bailey said. “We’ve done heavy metal testing and we actually do [pharmaceutical] testing, too.”

He added that no traces of either have been found in Aspen’s drinking water.

“Ever since I’ve been here, and even before, there’s been no problem with city water,” he said. “No public outbreaks, no boil orders, because I will not let it happen on my watch.

“We make the water, and the best thing about making the water here is that it’s clean,” Bailey continued. “The water comes from wilderness areas and there is nobody up above us that has dumped back [into the creeks] after industrial processes or anything like that. We get water coming through the geology, through the snowmelt, we are stewards of the water so we really keep track of everything above us and below us.”[…]

The water here is pumped in from Maroon and Castle creeks and begins its journey through the treatment facility and into Aspen taps. He noted that the city has water rights of 142 cubic feet per second (cfs) in Maroon Creek and about 90 cfs in Castle Creek, even though the streams only hit that level during spring runoff…

The purification process
The reservoir, which holds about 4 million gallons in the summer, is the first stop in the purifying process as sediment in the water begins to settle here.

“This is one of our processes,” Bailey said. “We basically bring the water in here and we slow it down. This helps so much during [peak] runoff … the dirt is tumbling, it’s coming in and all the sudden it settles out here and we’re able to draw off the surface and it’s much, much cleaner.”

He added that the water is usually at about one turbidity unit (TU) — the measurement of cloudiness caused by particulates — when it enters the reservoir. When it leaves it’s at .5 TU; during peak runoff it can be as dirty as 60 TU.

“We get reduction in here,” Bailey said. “That’s just a natural tumbling process, we slow it down and that stuff just falls out.”

The nutrient-rich sediment has to be periodically dug out, but it gets spread around the site making the soil perfect for plant growth.

To the north side of the reservoir lies the remnants of the old Maroon Creek flume that was used to divert water to the “tent city” in the late 1800s. As the group was looking down on the wooden channel one observer noticed a bear hanging out in a nearby tree, adding to the natural feel of the site.

The water next goes into large flocculation tanks — which look like UFOs — that, with the aid of chemicals, coagulate the particulates, churn them about and make the sediment again settle to the bottom.

After settling twice, the water makes its journey to a filtration section of the facility. Here, it’s pushed by gravity through a filter that consists of 18 inches of anthracite (coal) and a foot of sand. It next heads to the clear well for 14 to 15 hours to ensure all giardia is killed.

The state’s regulation allows for drinking water to reach one TU and still be acceptable to drink, but on this day Aspen’s drinking water was a pristine 0.037 TU.

More water treatment coverage here.

Conservation: Big water savings in Aspen — Mountain Town News #ColoradoRiver

From the Mountain Town News (Allen Best):

In 1974, Aspen’s future seemed clear enough. The town was growing briskly, the ski industry booming, and by the 1990s the town would need to make major investments to provide water for the future.

With that in mind, town officials filed for storage rights on two upstream creeks, Castle and Maroon, where the municipality already had significant senior water rights. Had the town gone ahead with construction of those reservoirs, the cost today would be roughly $50 million.

Instead, in about 1994, Mayor John Bennett and council members chose a different approach. They would emphasize water savings.

Phil Overeynder, who was the city’s utility manager then, says he has calculated that today water rates would need to be quadrupled to pay for the reservoirs and other infrastructure.

But there was another reason for Aspen to pursue conservation beginning in the 1990s. Overeynder said improved efficiency bolstered the argument that Eastern Slope water providers needed to make do with what they had before expanding diversions. In his eyes, Eastern Slope water providers still have not done everything they can. “Not to the extent it was promised 40 years ago,” he says.

For Aspen, improving water efficiency has several components. The city couldn’t account for 55 percent of the water being sent to customers. There were leaks, lots of them. It was, says Overeynder, a third-world water system. But a lot of water was used to bleed pipes. Water mains were buried deep, but the service lines to individual houses were within the frost line. During winter, homeowners left their faucets running, to avoid freezing. It was city policy to overlook that use.

Over time, these inefficient uses have been eliminated. The rate structure was revised to strongly recommend efficiency.

From 450 gallons per capita daily in 1974, use peaked in 1993 at 516 gallons.

Last year, it was 164 gallons per capita daily.

Use still spikes in summer, but not as much. The water treatment plant expanded in the 1980s has surplus capacity.

More Roaring Fork River watershed coverage here.

The City of Aspen has a long list of projects for the #ColoradoRiver Basin Implementation Plan #COWaterPlan

From Aspen Journalism (Brent Gardner-Smith):

Tall new dams in pristine spots on upper Castle and Maroon creeks. Bigger dams on Lost Man and Lincoln creeks in the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River. A bigger reservoir at the city’s water plant. Water pumped up from deep underneath Aspen. Treated effluent pumped from the Aspen wastewater plant to the city golf course. Water left in the river instead of being diverted to the Wheeler irrigation ditch.

These projects are all on a list that Mike McDill, the city of Aspen’s deputy director of utilities, wants included on a larger list of regional water projects now being compiled by the Colorado River Basin Roundtable.

“If it is already on the list, at least people can’t say they didn’t know we were thinking about it,” McDill said…

Over 500 “projects, policies and processes” are now on the Colorado roundtable’s draft priority list, including Aspen’s suggested projects. The list, which is part inventory, part to-do list, and part wish list, is to be winnowed down in the next two months by the roundtable.

“Putting projects on the roundtable’s list is a good way to provoke conversation,” said Louis Meyer, a consulting engineer with SGM, who is leading the development of the Colorado roundtable’s basin plan. “It is also incumbent on us to show the state that we have a list of water needs.”[…]

During recent public roundtable meetings, McDill has described Aspen’s list of projects in a calm and pragmatic matter, despite the scale of some of them.

“Our concern is we have a lot of water in June and not so much water the rest of the year,” McDill said about the potential value of reservoirs on upper Maroon and Castle creeks.

Today the city of Aspen diverts water from lower Castle and Maroon creeks for its water supply, but it does not have any water storage capacity beyond the tiny Leonard Thomas Reservoir at the water plant, which can hold 14 acre-feet of water.

If built someday as described by the city’s conditional water right, the Maroon Creek reservoir would store 4,567 acre-feet of water behind a 155-foot-tall dam just below the confluence of East Maroon and West Maroon creeks, which is known as a stunningly beautiful location. A Maroon Creek reservoir would cover 85 acres of U.S. Forest Service land about a mile-and-a-half below Maroon Lake.

The Castle Creek reservoir would hold 9,062 acre-feet of water behind a 170-foot-tall dam located about two miles below the historic town site of Ashcroft in a verdant valley. It would inundate 120 acres of mostly private land.

The city has renewed the conditional water rights for the two reservoirs eight times since they were decreed in 1971 and is required to do so again in 2016, when it must show it is making progress toward building the reservoirs.

“Aspen will build the Castle Creek and Maroon Creek reservoirs if necessary and if in the best interest of citizens of the community,” city officials said in 2012…

Also on Aspen’s list of potential projects is the enlargement of existing reservoirs, including Grizzly Reservoir and Leonard Thomas Reservoir…

Grizzly Reservoir was built in the 1930s on upper Lincoln Creek, a tributary of the Roaring Fork River. The reservoir is owned by the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co., of which the city of Colorado Springs is now the majority owner. The reservoir holds about 570 acre-feet of water and primarily serves as the forebay to the tunnel that Twin Lakes uses to divert water under the Continental Divide…

The smaller Lost Man Reservoir, also owned by Twin Lakes, backs up water on Lost Man Creek and then diverts it to Grizzly Reservoir…

But Kevin Lusk, a principal with Colorado Springs Utilities, and the president of the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Co., threw cold water this week on the idea of expanding either Grizzly or Lost Man reservoir.

“Twin Lakes has no plans or interest in enlarging these facilities,” Lusk said via email. “Nor has anyone talked to us about these ideas.”[…]

Also on the city’s list is expanding Leonard Thomas Reservoir at the city’s water plant above Aspen Valley Hospital so it can hold 25 acre-feet instead of 14 acre-feet…

Another water project on the municipal list is to determine just how much water is under the city of Aspen, and whether it is suitable for drinking.

In 2012 and 2013, the city drilled a water-well near Herron Park 1,520 feet underground in search of hot water it could use for geothermal energy.

But in July 2013 the city announced that it did not find water hot enough to make electricity, but it did find a steady stream of clear water coming up out of the well at 29 pounds per square inch, about half of the water pressure in a normal household.

“This summer, we’re putting a pump into the well to analyze the water and get some feel for the capacity of the aquifer,” McDill said.

If it turns out there is still a lot of water 1,500 feet underground Aspen, the city may install a larger, permanent pump into its test well to create a back-up supply of water…

The pump back project, which is well under way, will allow the city to reuse water from the Aspen Consolidated Sanitation District to supplement its irrigation water on the municipal golf course, and to provide irrigation and snowmaking water for other entities, including the Buttermilk Mountain ski area.

“It is intended to keep more water in the Castle Creek by not diverting for the golf course,” McDill said.

The source of the water is “treated municipal effluent” and pipes already have been installed from the sanitation plant, past the Burlingame neighborhood, and to a pond on the city golf course.

The city is still seeking a water right for its pump back project from state water court, and has been working out agreements with a long list of opponents.

The water is to be primarily used to irrigate 12.3 acres of landscaping along Highway 82 and Cemetery Lane, according to documents in water court. It also could supplement irrigation on 131 acres of the Aspen golf course, 21 acres of land in the Burlingame project, and 80 acres of the Maroon Creek golf course.

In all, 233 acres of land could receive water from the project and water could be used to make snow on as much as 156 acres of land at Buttermilk…

The Fork is often below a flow level of 32 cfs, which is the minimum amount of water the CWCB has determined is necessary to protect the environment “to a reasonable degree.” Last year, the city entered into a short-term water [lease] with the CWCB to leave 6 cfs of water in the river instead of diverting the water into the Wheeler Ditch, which is located river-left just downstream of the Aspen Club pedestrian bridge. The water in the Wheeler Ditch is typically used by the city for landscaping and irrigation in various parts of central Aspen…

The Colorado River basin roundtable is scheduled to next discuss its draft list of projects on Monday, April 14, from noon to 4 p.m. at the Glenwood Springs community center.

More Colorado Water Plan coverage here.

Aspen: Both sides in the city’s hydropower abandonment case have engaged experts to determine streamflow needs

From Aspen Journalism (Brent Gardner-Smith) via the Aspen Daily News:

A collaborative committee, formed by opposing parties in a lawsuit claiming the city of Aspen has abandoned its rights to divert water from Castle and Maroon creeks for a proposed hydro plant, is making slow progress toward its goals.

When the settlement effort was announced last year after a “stay” was filed in the case, there were hopes that a stream ecologist could be agreed upon and hired early this year to study the proposed hydro plant and the streams and make recommendations about “stream health goals.”

Steve Wickes, a local facilitator guiding the committee and working for both parties in the case, said the committee’s goals were narrowly defined: Can the two sides, with the help of a mutually trusted expert, agree on how much water can be taken out of the creeks?

But before a “request for proposals” can be written to attract a third-party stream ecologist, the committee has agreed that two experts who are working for either side should first review the list of prior studies done on the two rivers to determine where there are information gaps…

To help review the existing studies and draft the request for proposal, the city has hired Bill Miller, the president of Miller Ecological Consultants of Fort Collins, who has been working for the city on river issues since 2009.

And the plaintiffs have hired Richard Hauer, a professor of limnology (freshwater science) at the University of Montana and the director of the Montana Institute on Ecosystems. Hauer appeared at an event in Aspen in 2012 to discuss the importance of keeping water flowing naturally through a river’s ecosystem…

On the committee from the city are Steve Barwick, Aspen’s city manager, Jim True, the city attorney, and David Hornbacher, the head of the city’s utilities and environmental initiatives.

Representing the plaintiffs on the committee are Paul Noto, a water attorney with Patrick, Miller, Kropf and Noto of Aspen, and Maureen Hirsch, a plaintiff in the suit who lives along Castle Creek.

The other plaintiffs include Richard Butera, Bruce Carlson, Christopher Goldsbury, Jr. and four LLCs controlled by Bill Koch. All of the plaintiffs own land and water rights along either Castle or Maroon creeks.

Wickes said the members of the committee have agreed with his suggestion that they not discuss their ongoing work with the media, and instead refer questions to him.

The claim of abandonment against the city was filed in 2011 water court, in case number 11CW130, “Richard T. Butera et al v. the city of Aspen.”

The case was poised to go to trial on Oct. 28, 2013 and both sides filed trial briefs on Oct. 14.

On Oct. 18, however, the parties filed a stay request with the court so they could “cooperate in engaging a qualified independent, neutral, stream ecology expert.”

The ecologist is to study the rivers and the proposed plant and then “determine a bypass amount of water, to be left in the stream by Aspen.”

The opposing parties are then supposed to “use their best efforts to define the stream health goals to be achieved by said amount of water.”

That could mean, as one example, that a flow regime is agreed upon, with varying levels of water being left in the rivers below the city’s diversions at different times of year, depending in part on the natural amount of water in the rivers during any given year.

Such a protocol exists today on Snowmass Creek as it relates to diverting water for snowmaking at the Snowmass Ski Area.

The city is currently proposing to divert up to 27 cubic feet per second of water from Maroon Creek and 25 cfs of water from Castle Creek for the proposed hydro plant, on top of the water it currently diverts from both streams for municipal uses and the existing Maroon Creek hydro plant.

The city also has a policy to keep at least 13.3 cfs in Castle Creek and 14 cfs in Maroon Creek below its diversion dams in order to help protect the rivers’ ecosystems…

The plaintiffs in the suit against the city have told the court they are concerned that if the city diverts more water for hydropower, it could hurt their ability to use their junior water rights on Castle or Maroon creeks. They also claim the city intended to abandon its hydro rights connected to an old hydro plant on Castle Creek, which the city concedes it has not used since 1961.

But the city has denied it ever intended to abandon its water rights and has challenged the plaintiffs’ standing to bring the suit.

Whether the September court dates are needed likely depends on whether the two sides can agree to hire a third-party stream consultant, and then agree to follow their recommendations.

If so, Wickes thinks such an exercise could influence how rivers and streams around the West are managed.

“I’m actually hopeful that when the study is completed, not only will it inform future conversations about the hydroelectric plant, it will inform a wide number of decisions about stream ecology, how we treat our streams, and how things are interconnected,” Wickes said.

More hydroelectric coverage here.

2012 Colorado November election: Aspen voters say no to proposed Castle Creek hydroelectric generation plant

From The Aspen Times (Andre Salvail):

By a mere 110 votes, Aspen voters rejected an advisory question designed to move the city’s controversial Castle Creek hydroelectric power project forward…

Tom and Maureen Hirsch, vocal opponents of the project and residents on the banks of Castle Creek, said they might have supported a city initiative that was more eclectic. A mix of micro hydroelectric projects with other types of renewable energy efforts such as wind and solar power would be more acceptable to the community, they said, but the city instead decided to focus all of its efforts on Castle and Maroon creeks…

Over the last two years, city officials and others supporting the project, including Mayor Mick Ireland, sought to turn the debate into one of environmental stewardship, saying the hydroplant on Castle Creek would eventually eliminate the city electric utility’s reliance on power generated by coal, a nonrenewable resource.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Aspen: Environmental community divided over propose Castle Creek hydroelectric generation plant

From The Aspen Times via The Denver Post:

Big names in the environmental movement are lined up on both sides of the issue. Connie Harvey, Charlie Hopton and Ken Neubecker are opposed to the proposed plant. Harvey was a founder of Wilderness Workshop. Hopton has been a member of environmental causes and organizations in Aspen for several decades. Neubecker has emerged as a leading voice in the Roaring Fork Valley on water issues.

Those lined up in support of the plant include Auden Schendler, Randy Udall and Paul Andersen. Schendler is executive director of sustainability for Aspen Skiing Co. Udall was the original director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency and has emerged as a national expert on energy issues. Andersen is a respected environmental essayist and a columnist for The Aspen Times.

Voters in the city of Aspen will cast ballots Tuesday on Question 2C, an advisory question on the Castle Creek Hydroelectric Facility.

Hopton said he has rarely seen the upper Roaring Fork Valley’s environmental community torn apart over an issue like it is over the hydroelectric plant. He has friends on both sides of the issue and avoids discussing it with those backing the proposal. He hasn’t taken an active role in the campaign.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Aspen’s original (c. 1890) Pelton Wheel now on on display

From The Aspen Times:

A key part of Aspen’s former hydroelectric plant will go on display Tuesday in the Silver Queen Gondola Plaza.

The Pelton wheel hydroelectric turbine will be displayed starting at 10 a.m. The machinery was used around 1890 to convert falling water into electricity at the Castle Creek Hydroelectric Plant.

The historic equipment will be unveiled by Sam Perry, the great-grandson of DRC Brown, the original owner and operator of the Castle Creek plant. Perry is a Roaring Fork Valley native who is now president of Sollos Energy, which operates hydroelectric plants in other parts of the country.

The Pelton runner going on display is a smaller version of the same type of equipment that would be used in a proposed new Castle Creek hydroelectric plant.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Aspen: Locals form group to promote the proposed Castle Creek hydroelectric generation plant

From the Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

The “Backyard Energy Campaign” is set to kick off Monday with a press conference at the Marolt Barn at 2 p.m. The group is pushing for a “yes” vote on the recently approved ballot question asking voters if they want the city to continue pursuing the project, which would use water from Castle and Maroon creeks to generate hydropower.

Longtime Aspenite Jim Markalunas, who ran the city’s historic Castle Creek hydropower plant before it shutdown in the late 1950s, is chair of the committee. Ruthie Brown, a member of Pitkin County’s Healthy Rivers and Streams Board whose family pioneered hydropower in the region, is a co-chair, along with climate change expert Randy Udall. Aspen Skiing Co. environmental sustainability vice president Auden Schendler also has signed on in support, according to a press release the group issued Thursday.

“The committee message is clear: Aspen has the opportunity to stop burning 6 million pounds of dirty coal and instead can produce clean, renewable energy in our own backyard while ensuring healthy stream flows,” the group’s statement says, referring to the amount of coal-fired power currently purchased by Aspen the city claims the hydro project would supplant.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

2012 Colorado November election: City of Aspen hydroelectric project on the November ballot

From The Aspen Times (Andre Salvail):

One [ballot question], arguably the most controversial, is a referendum question that asks voters whether the city should continue with a hydroelectric project on Castle Creek…

With regard to the hydroelectric plant, the city’s voters will be asked the following “advisory” question: “Shall the city of Aspen complete the hydroelectric facility on Castle Creek, subject to local stream health monitoring and applicable government regulations, to replace coal-fired energy with renewable energy?” The council and city staff agreed to the ballot language at an Aug. 28 work session, and no members of the audience spoke up to oppose it.

So far, the city has spent about $7 million on the hydroelectric project, which aims to take a portion of the water flowing from Castle and Maroon creeks to generate enough power to cover 8 percent of the city electric utility’s needs. In 2007, when voters approved a bond-issue referendum that set the hydroelectric project into motion, the project cost was estimated at $6.2 million. Cost overruns have resulted in a revised estimate of $10.5 million to complete the plant.

A petition drive led by local residents Ward Hauenstein and Maurice Emmer early this year set off a chain of events leading to the referendum question. The petition sought to overturn the council’s December rezoning decision allowing public land off Power Plant Road to be used for the plant. The proposed plant has drawn fierce opposition from some Castle Creek property owners as well as the nonprofit group American Rivers.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Roaring Fork Valley: Friends of Rivers and Renewables forms to promote ‘civil discussion’ the proposed hydroelectric generation station

From The Aspen Times (Andre Salvail):

The organization, Friends of Rivers and Renewables, is an offshoot of Old Snowmass resident Tim McFlynn’s nonprofit Public Counsel of the Rockies. McFlynn served as a mediator last year in negotiations between city officials and Castle Creek project critics, a process that led to the city’s “slow start” concept for the plant and other compromises.

Old Snowmass resident Chelsea Congdon Brundige, a documentary filmmaker and conservationist, will serve as director of the new organization. The group is seeking to provide a “grassroots educational effort to engender a more collaborative, less confrontational discussion of the important issues raised by the city’s proposed hydropower project,” according to a statement.

In a phone interview on Thursday, Brundige said she understands that city officials and other project supporters likely will look upon her group as another gadfly organization that hopes to cast the Castle Creek Energy Center in a negative light and eventually stop the project. But that’s far from the case, she said.

“This is a project that we would like to pursue for at least the next 10 years,” Brundige said. “The nexus between what we do in western Colorado about energy and what we do about water are going to be the two most important subjects for the next 50 years. All you have to do is look at the drought that we’re going to have this summer and realize how important it is for us to dig really deep and develop a good understanding and community dialogue about what our clean energy choices are and what we should be doing to protect our rivers and streams.”

Meanwhile, Aspen’s report to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission contained errors. Here’s a report from Brent Gardner-Smith writing for the Aspen Daily News. From the article:

City officials say once the mistakes in the report are corrected, the estimate of net power to be produced by both the new Castle Creek hydro plant, and the existing Maroon Creek plant, will likely be shown to be 6.1 million kilowatt hours a year, down from a previously estimated 6.4 million hours.

The report, as it was submitted to the federal government, indicated that the net power generated by both plants would be 5.4 million kilowatt hours.

The report, an “assessment of project operation, stream flow and power generation” relating to the proposed Castle Creek Energy Center, was dated Wednesday, April 4 and submitted to FERC the same day.

It was prepared by Kerry Sundeen, a hydrologist and president of Grand River Consulting in Glenwood Springs, who has been advising the city on its proposed hydro project for several years.

At least some of the information in the report was specifically requested by officials at the FERC, which is in the process of reviewing the city’s license application for the new hydro project.

Mitzi Rapkin, the city’s communications director, said that Aspen City Manager Steve Barwick noticed some of the mistakes over the weekend while reading the report, and that a story in Monday’s Aspen Daily News prompted other city officials to take a closer look at the report.

Here’s a report about FERC’s visit to Aspen this week, from Curtis Wackerle writing for the Aspen Daily News. From the article:

But Jim Fargo, a project manager with the FERC based in Washington, D.C., said the city of Aspen’s proposal is on the agency’s radar to a greater extent than other small projects. For one, he said he’s seen in submitted public comments, and in the local press, sufficient confusion about the federal licensing process the city is entering. So he gave a presentation at Tuesday’s public meeting to the 50 or so gathered on the “traditional licensing process,” explaining how it requires a vetting of all studies presented and a review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). At best, the remainder of the licensing process will take another two-and-a-half to three years, he said.

Later in the process, people can formally contest information and file protests. However, “because of the level of controversy on this project, it’s being treated like it’s already a contested proceeding,” Fargo said.

Anyone is welcome to contact him at his office with process questions — (202) 502-6095 or james.fargo@ferc.gov — but he said he can’t debate the merits of the project due to the formal nature of the proceedings.

At this stage in the game, the city is still in the pre-application phase. Within 12 to 18 months, it will officially submit its license application and go through a NEPA process, requiring either an environmental assessment document or an environmental impact statement. But at this point, the feds are interested in public and stakeholder comments on what else still needs to be done — as far as studies conducted or data collected — to fully understand the project’s environmental impacts, said meeting facilitator Pamela Britton of Community Engagement Associates, who was hired by the city.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Aspen: FERC is coming to town today to work on the permit for the proposed hydroelectric generation plant

From the Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

There will also be a public meeting Tuesday evening with city and FERC officials to explain details of the project and take questions.

Beginning at 1 p.m.,, city officials will lead site visits to five locations associated with the new hydro project. The field trip will visit diversion facilities on Castle and Maroon creeks, where the city takes its water for consumptive and hydro power purposes. There will also be visits to the existing Maroon Creek hydro facility, the water treatment plant at Thomas Reservoir and the site of the proposed new hydro plant under the Castle Creek highway bridge. Registration for the field trip closed last week. About 30 people, including two FERC representatives in from Washington, D.C., are signed up to go along.

Beginning at 5 p.m. Tuesday at the Rio Grande conference room in the building above Taster’s Pizza, the city will hold a meeting open to the general public. The meeting’s purpose is to “present information and have a dialogue,” said David Hornbacher, the city’s director of utilities and environmental initiatives.

The meeting kicks off a 60-day comment period with the feds where the public is invited to weigh in on the project as FERC considers granting a license. The city is proposing to build a plant taking up to 52 cubic feet per second of water from Castle and Maroon creeks to feed a generator that could produce an average of 6.8 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Aspen: Opponents of the proposed hydroelectric plant hope to install stream gages on Maroon and Castle creeks to bolster their argument

From the Aspen Daily News (Brent Gardner-Smith):

A stream gauge suitable for inclusion in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) system cost between $20,000 and $35,000 to install, depending on the site, and $16,000 a year to operate. Saving Our Streams, a recently formed nonprofit that is challenging the city’s proposed hydro plant, wants at least one gauge on both Castle and Maroon creeks in order to keep an eye on how much water is left in the streams below the city’s diversion dams. Maureen Hirsch of Saving of Streams has contacted federal officials with the USGS, who have agreed to make a site visit this winter to the Aspen area…

For Our Rivers and Renewables, a new initiative from the Aspen-based Public Counsel of the Rockies, also wants gauges on those two streams. The group also is calling for new gauges on the Roaring Fork River in Aspen, on Hunter Creek and on the lower Crystal River. “It’s time to get the Roaring Fork River basin properly gauged,” said Tim McFlynn of Public Counsel for the Rockies. “It’s shockingly overdue.”

But the expense of doing so can be shocking as well. To install five streamflow gauges up to the standards of the USGS and to cover 10 years of operations and maintenance on them could cost $900,000…

Bill Blakeslee, the state water commissioner charged with managing local water diversions, said gauges are the best way to solve water disputes. “Anybody can produce a study, but without a consistent measuring device in the stream, everybody is just kind of blowing smoke,” he said. But Blakeslee warned that enthusiasm for new gauges tends to wane when it comes to paying for the ongoing maintenance and operational costs of them, which are prone to freezing up in the winter and need to be routinely checked.

Leaders from both Share Our Streams and For Our Rivers and Renewables say they are seeking funding for gauges from both private and public sources. Share Our Streams’ members include two billionaires and several other wealthy homeowners on Castle and Maroon creeks. Hirsch said one member already has agreed to fund one gauge.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

The Aspen Daily News is running a look at the parties suing the city over the proposed hydroelectric generation plant

Here’s a report from Brent Gardner-Smith writing for the Aspen Daily News. Click through and read the whole article for all the detail. Here’s an excerpt:

The city of Aspen, through its Denver-based water attorney, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit this past fall based on the notion that the plaintiffs don’t have standing to challenge the city’s water rights.

The plaintiffs recently submitted information to the court either detailing their water rights or giving other reasons why they should be allowed to sue the city over its water rights.

In the mix of property owners are two billionaires and two Aspen locals with a history of successfully taking on local governments.

The property owners sued the city in September 2011 in state water court in an effort to strip the city of its right to use water from the creeks for a new hydropower plant.

The city responded three weeks later by telling Judge James Boyd that the property owners don’t have the right to make their claims.

“The complaint does not identify which plaintiffs own water rights, what water rights they may own, or how those are or may be affected with respect to the alleged abandonment of the hydropower component of the subject water rights,” Cindy Covell, the city’s water attorney, told the court in a motion to dismiss the case.

The plaintiffs responded Oct. 24 with a 14-page brief and 155 pages of exhibits documenting their water rights and other interests.

The plaintiffs claim that since the city has not used its hydropower water rights on the two creeks since 1961, it no longer has the right to divert 25 cubic-feet-per-second of water from Castle Creek and 27 cfs from Maroon Creek for hydropower use.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Aspen files preliminary paperwork with FERC for the proposed Castle Creek hydroelectric generation plant

From the Summit County Citizens Voice (Bob Berwyn):

The filing is the first step in a formal review process that eventually could enable the town to produce about 8 percent of its needed electricity from a clean and local source — but the project is not without controversy, as some critics claim that the power generated by the facility isn’t worth the potential harm it could cause to Castle and Maroon creeks by reducing stream flows.

For the town, the Castle Creek project is a key component in providing renewable energy sources to the Aspen community. According to the town’s website, the energy center will not only provide power, but serve as a renewable energy model, education center and museum, reducing CO2 emissions by about 5,000 tons. The turbine and generator convert the force of water falling from 325 feet, from the Thomas Reservoir, into electric power. The water will travel a 42 inch penstock (pipe) which will supply the plant with approximately 52 cubic feet per second of head and double as an emergency drain line for the Thomas Reservoir if the reservoir walls are breached. The electricity will be placed on the City of Aspen electric grid to power the Water Treatment campus, and may potentially produce hydrogen for fuel cells and hydrogen vehicles.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Aspen: City council approves zoning for proposed Castle Creek hydroelectric generation plant

From The Aspen Times (Andre Salvail):

For nearly nine hours split between two meetings at Aspen City Hall on Monday, experts, consultants, residents and city officials debated the pros and cons of the proposed Castle Creek hydroelectric facility.

When the discourse was finally over at 10:20 p.m., the City Council voted unanimously to advance the project, conditionally approving a staff request to rezone property off Power Plant Road west of Aspen for a 1,761-square-foot building that would serve as the plant’s operations center. The vote also removes the land from the city’s open space inventory…

Council members heard from numerous opponents throughout the day, some of them landowners along the banks and within the watershed of Castle and Maroon creeks. An afternoon work session was designed to answer questions elected officials had about the project at large; the council’s regular meeting during the evening was supposed to focus only on the land-use request. In both instances, the public was allowed to comment…

The day began at 11:30 a.m., prior to the 1 p.m. work session, when representatives of the Washington, D.C.-based group American Rivers discussed a report it commissioned to evaluate the economic feasibility of the project.

The report, conducted by Tier One Capital Management LLC, questions the city’s estimate of $10.5 million for the project’s cost and puts the actual price tag at more than $16 million, citing interest payments on bonds used to finance construction. City officials have disputed the report and its conclusions, saying that it contains “egregious errors.”

At the work session, City Manager Steve Barwick discussed financial aspects of the plant and noted that the city need only spend a little more than $3 million more to complete the project. Most of that amount is for the building on Power Plant Road. An estimated $275,000 has been projected for handling the FERC application process.

Barwick stressed that the project is the best way to further the city’s goal of supplying 100 percent renewable energy through its electricity utility. He said every financial model shows that the new plant would save the community money in the long run.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Aspen: The city council will discuss the Castle Creek hydroelectric generation plant on Monday

From The Aspen Times (Andre Salvail):

Matt Rice, Colorado director for American Rivers, said his organization wasn’t trying to “drop a bomb” in advance of the city’s meetings. He said the report, released Thursday, was intended for council members, city officials and others involved in the debate over the merits of the project. Rice also expressed disdain for a press release the city issued Friday stating that the American Rivers-commissioned report contains “egregious errors.”[…]

A work session at 1 p.m. Monday is designed to give council members answers to some long-pressing questions surrounding the project; the council’s regular meeting Monday evening will include a public hearing on a zoning request for the proposed facility, dubbed the Castle Creek Energy Center.

At the core of the organization’s report, researched and prepared by Tier One Capital Management LLC, is an estimate that the project will cost between $16 million and $18 million, with $7.3 million in interest payments over the life of bonds used to finance construction. The city of Aspen has disclosed a capital cost of $10.5 million, according to Tier One.

The city’s financial analysis, Tier One claims, does not include debt service on the $5.5 million bond that local voters approved in 2007. “Debt service will add significantly to the cost of the project, and it is inappropriate not to consider debt service in assessing financial feasibility,” the report states.

“Tier One concludes that the project is not cost effective,” the report continues. “Given the very high price of this project and debt service extending for 28 years, future electrical rate increases are a likely result.”

The city’s Friday statement says that Tier One’s alternative analysis of the project’s costs includes “many factual errors and egregious mistakes.” The city listed what officials have determined to be “three of the most fundamental” errors:

— Tier One “incorrectly states that the city of Aspen didn’t consider debt service” in its analysis.

— Tier One’s conclusion that the project should be abandoned is deeply flawed “due to its failure to consider only the incremental costs needed to complete the project [as] opposed to considering investments already made with benefits for projects other than the hydro plant.”

— Tier One “assigned ridiculously low inflation rates” for the cost of coal -— a power source on which the city is hoping to lessen its dependence through hydropower — using rates between .3 percent and .6 percent annually.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Aspen: City Council approves application for a ‘minor water power project license’ from FERC

From the Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

City Council on Monday voted unanimously to abandon its application for a “conduit exemption” in favor of a “minor water power project license” from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is a more rigorous review process. The city estimates that the change will mean an additional $250,000 in expenses…

Council also approved a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Colorado Division of Wildlife that aims to protect the riparian environment of the creeks. The MOU requires the city to maintain a minimum stream flow of 13.3 cfs below its existing diversion structure on Castle Creek, which will be used to siphon water for the hydro plant, and a minimum stream flow of 14 cfs in Maroon Creek below the diversion structure there.

The MOU, in trying to get at optimal stream health as opposed to minimum stream flows, also establishes a 10-year monitoring program. If macroinvertebrate population, fish population or biomass decreases, and they can be tied to hydro plant operations, the city will be required to take steps to reverse the damage to the creeks, including scaling back diversions, according to the MOU…

When Maureen Hirsch, who is one of eight plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed last month, suggested that permanent streamflow monitors be placed on the creek and that the monitoring go on for more than 10 years, Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland told her it would be very difficult to work with her and others who are suing the city.

“This is very hostile litigation,” Ireland said, holding up a copy of the complaint. “It’s very aggressive and divisive and I can’t say that I really appreciate it.”

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Aspen files motion to dismiss in hydroelectric power generation water rights case

From The Aspen Times (Andre Salvail):

The Oct. 5 motion states that Saving Our Streams, a nonprofit group made up of several local landowners that filed its complaint with the court in mid-September, has failed to “allege facts sufficient” to back up its claim.

According to the city’s motion, the SOS suit seeks a court judgment that Aspen abandoned one particular component — hydroelectric power production — of the municipal uses that accompany three separate water rights for Castle, Maroon and Midland creeks.

The city’s motion states that the three water rights were granted to various companies in the late 19th century for “municipal customers” and that the city acquired those rights in 1956. Those rights included “hydroelectric generation and domestic purposes” for Castle and Midland creeks, and were confirmed through a court decree in 1949.

The 1949 decree also confirms a water right for a diversion from Maroon Creek “in the amount of 65 cfs [cubic feet per second]” stemming from an appropriation in 1892, according to the motion.

The motion states that the SOS suit “does not identify which plaintiffs own water rights, what water rights they may own or how those water rights are or may be affected with respect to the alleged abandonment of the hydropower component” of the city’s water rights.

Further, “plaintiffs tacitly admit that some of them do not own or control any water rights,” the motion says. “If a plaintiff fails to allege or demonstrate that its rights, status or other legal relations will be affected, the plaintiff has no standing … and a declaratory judgment should not be entered.”

Also, the SOS suit fails to meet the law’s “injury-in-fact requirement” in which the challenged conduct of a defendant causes or threatens to cause injury to the plaintiff’s present or imminent activities.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

In a lawsuit filed last Thursday ‘Saving Our Streams’ is claiming the the City of Aspen has effectively abandoned their hydroelectric power generation right on Castle and Maroon creeks

From The Aspen Times (Andre Salvail):

Saving Our Streams, an environmental organization whose stated mission is to support local streams and to ensure that diversions of water do not compromise the health of fragile ecosystems, filed the lawsuit. The group was formed in February.

The lawsuit, which seeks to stop the city from moving forward with plans for a hydroelectric plant, was not unexpected. One of the plaintiffs, Aspen businessman Dick Butera, suggested during a City Council meeting in late June that it was likely.

Other plaintiffs are: Yasmine Depagter, Maureen Hirsch, Joseph and Sheila Cosniac, Kit Goldsbury, Elk Mountain Lodge LLC, Crystal LLC, American Lake LLC, Ashcroft LLC, B&C LLC and the Bruce E. Carlson Trust. They all own property along or adjacent to the creeks.

More coverage from Curtis Wackerle writing for the Aspen Daily News. From the article:

The suit, filed Thursday on behalf of 11 plaintiffs, claims the city has “abandoned” its water rights for hydropower. The six-page complaint, filed in state water court in Glenwood Springs by Aspen attorneys Paul Noto and Danielle Luber, cites the decommissioning of the city’s original Castle Creek hydropower station, which was in use from about 1893 until 1958. “Aspen has shown its intent to abandon the hydropower use decreed [to the Castle and Maroon creek water rights] by not using the water right for this purpose for over 50 years,” the complaint says…

City officials said the suit is without merit. Cynthia Covell, a Denver lawyer who works on water rights issues for the city, was out of town Thursday, but she has looked into questions on the validity of the city’s water rights for hydropower in the past.

“We are confident that our water rights have not been abandoned,” City Attorney John Worcester said, adding that discussions about developing hydropower again on Castle Creek “have been kicked around for the 20-plus years I’ve been here.”

The city has 20 days to respond to the suit.

The city’s water rights on the creeks date back to the 1880s in some cases. The lawsuit cites three separate water rights — the Castle Creek Flume Ditch, the Midland Flume Ditch and the Maroon Ditch — that together account for 160 cfs on Castle Creek and 65 cfs on Maroon Creek, that the city is entitled to use for domestic and hydropower purposes, among other municipal uses. These are the water rights that the city uses for its drinking water…

Saving Our Streams, a nonprofit group started by Maureen Hirsch and Yasmine Depagter, is listed as a plaintiff, as are Hirsch and Depagter individually. The other plaintiffs are: Dick Butera, Joseph and Sheila Cosniac, Kit Goldsbury, the Bruce E. Carlson Trust, B&C LLC, Elk Mountain Lodge LLC, Crystal LLC, Ashcroft LLC and American Lake LLC. The Bruce E. Carlson Trust and B&C LLC own property on Maroon Creek…

“It’s an open mystery why someone would be concerned about water being diverted eight miles downstream from them,” Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland said, noting that the water the city would take for the hydro plant would return to the river about two miles downstream after passing through the penstock and turbine.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Restoration: Hope Mine biochar application has yielded surprising results

From the Colorado Independent (Troy Hooper):

What was once a wasteland of arsenic, cadmium, lead and zinc on a steep mountainside that abuts Castle Creek is now a haven for natural grasses and wildflowers that have stabilized the slope and drastically reduced the risk of the heavy metals crashing into the city’s main water supply.

The striking change of scenery around Hope Mine is the result of the first whole-scale reclamation project ever attempted in the United States, and possibly the world, using biochar — a type of charcoal produced through the thermal treatment of organic material in an oxygen-limited environment.

how aggressive the regrowth was,” said John Bennett, executive director of For The Forest, which teamed up with Carbondale-based Flux Farm Foundation at the request of the U.S. Forest Service, which is exploring new ways to partner with private groups to reclaim landscapes. “We did not expect waist-high grass in the very first summer. We thought it would take longer.”

Not only is biochar restoring the ecology and containing the mine tailings that fan down toward Castle Creek but experts say it is also immobilizing the heavy metals long enough so that they naturally degrade and it is sequestering carbon that would otherwise escape into the earth’s atmosphere.

Click through for the rest of the article and the cool before and after photos.

More coverage from Chadwick Bowman writing for The Aspen Times. From the article:

“This project is going better than I would have dared hoped,” John Bennett, executive director of For the Forest, an Aspen-based nonprofit focused on forest health, said Thursday during a press conference at the site.

The reclamation of the slope, south of Aspen in the Castle Creek Valley, became more pressing when it was discovered that very low levels if toxic metals had been sliding into the creek, a source of Aspen’s drinking water.

Even though the levels of toxins were minute, the reclamation plan was intended to prevent a potential landslide on a mine tailings pile — debris left from mineral extraction — that could add poisons into the creek.

“The Forest Service turned us on to the project because it’s their land,” said Kate Holstein, program director of For the Forest. “They told us there is a situation where this big slope is continually eroding into Castle Creek. … If a large erosion were to occur where the whole slope slid into the creek, it could be catastrophic.”

Holstein said such a landslide could shut down the Castle Creek water source potentially for years…

Forty-two test plots were laid out at the site; each contains different variations of biochar mixed with soil and seeds, as well as control plots that contain no biochar. Williams said there are significant differences between the plots, and that biochar is making growth happen.

More restoration coverage here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: Aspen’s Maroon Creek micro-hydroelectric plant generates 2.7 percent of the city’s supply on average

From the Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

Total capital costs on the plant, from the original construction through today, including the Deane buyout, equal $1.33 million, according to the city. Combined with operating costs of $182,500 since 1994, that brings total Maroon Creek plant expenses to $1.51 million…

Since the new turbine was installed and the necessary repairs completed, Maroon Creek hydro has supplied an average of 2.7 percent of the city electric utility’s power. Numerous factors, including natural streamflow and maintenance issues, determine how much power the plant can generate on an annual basis, but the number has reached as high as 2.27 million kwh in 2007 and as low as 1.1 million kwh in 2010…

The city transfers the electricity to the Holy Cross Energy grid, and is given a credit for the power on its monthly bill from the Nebraska utility — the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska (MEAN). Over the life of the plant, the price the city has paid for MEAN power averages out at 3.8 cents per kwh, which brings the value of the Maroon Creek energy transfer at $990,000 since 1994. The price of MEAN power — and thus the city’s reimbursement rate for its hydropower — continues to rise and currently averages about 5.5 cents per kwh, Overeynder said. The city also saves money from the power it generates by not being charged “wheeling” and “facilities” fees. Wheeling refers to the cost of transferring MEAN power from Nebraska, and the Maroon Creek plant has saved $107,136 in those fees over the 16 years since good records have been kept…

When the plant was originally proposed, environmental concerns about streamflow were raised, just as they have been with the current Castle Creek plan. The city ended up amending its original proposal for the Maroon Creek plant, which would have left a minimum of 8 cfs in the creek, upping the minimum streamflow to 14 cfs.

More hydroelectric coverage here

and here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: Aspen’s water rights for their proposed project are in question

From Aspen Journalism via the Aspen Daily News (Brent Gardner-Smith):

“The city of Aspen water department does not have the water rights for a hydro plant on Castle Creek, period,” Dick Butera told Aspen City Council at a June 27 meeting. Butera owns a large home overlooking Castle Creek just below the city’s diversion dam on the stream. He told the council that he and a group of other local landowners are willing to sue the city to prevent the hydro project from going forward.

Butera made his comments at a meeting when council approved increasing the spending authority for the hydro plant and an associated pipeline from $7.3 million to $8 million, and transferring $2.8 million from the water fund to the renewable energy fund to cover the cost. “Two of the leading water attorneys in the state of Colorado have both said to our committee that we have a 90 percent chance of winning the case to prove that the water department does not even have the water rights,” Butera said.

But Aspen’s water attorney maintains that the municipal government’s water rights remain in good standing and the city has never intended to abandon its option to use the water for hydropower. “The city has decreed absolute water rights,” said Cynthia Covell, an attorney with Alperstein and Covell in Denver. “They are decreed for power purposes and they have never been found to be abandoned in any court proceeding. I think that the city can do the project that it wants to do with the water rights it has.”[…]

Sarah Klahn, an attorney hired by Pitkin County to independently review the city’s hydro project, said last week that even if an abandonment lawsuit was successful, the city could still likely obtain new water rights for the new hydro plant. “I know that it is possible to still get a new appropriation, especially on a non-consumptive use,” said Klahn, who is with White & Jankowski in Denver…

Covell, the city’s water attorney, has a different take on the matter. “The fact that the city stopped generating electricity at that time does not mean they abandoned the right to do so,” Covell said. “The city has not intended to abandon. And intent is a piece of abandonment. We think we can defend an abandonment case.” Still, city officials are aware there is a danger of losing all or some of their water rights by not exercising them.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Energy policy hydroelectric: Aspen’s proposed generation plant update — city utilities is asking council for $1.02 million budget increase

From the Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

The original project budget in 2007 was $6.19 million. An analysis of city records shows that increases in the budget for the pipeline makes up $1.19 million of the difference between the 2007 budget at the current requested budget authority.

The pipeline, which was mostly constructed last summer, would feed up to 52-cubic-feet per second of water into a hydroelectric generator located in the proposed “energy center” under the Castle Creek Bridge. The pipeline was originally budgeted for $1.9 million, meaning it’s cost have risen by about one-third. The city is also installing the pipeline as a precautionary measure, as it can serve as an “emergency drainline” to empty the reservoir should it ever get too full. Thomas Reservoir stores water for the municipal consumption and is located above the water treatment plant on Doolittle Drive, near the Aspen Valley Hospital.

The cost of the pipeline increased because of challenges encountered during construction, city utilities director David Hornbacher said. The alignment had to be rerouted numerous times to get around utility lines the city didn’t know were there, and the work had to be modified as required by a state permit, he said…

While most of the hydro plant’s budget overruns to date have been driven by hard costs, the big variable in ongoing expenditures is the federal permitting process.

The city recently said it would withdraw its controversial “conduit exemption” application in favor of going for the more standard small project license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The conduit exemption — which would have required a less-stringent environmental review — was based on the premise that the plant would be part of the municipal water system because it would be attached to the pipe ostensibly put in to drain Thomas Reservoir.

The FERC license requires an environmental assessment, requiring more time and money than the city had originally planned. The formal license application is expected to be submitted this summer.

More coverage from Andre Salvali writing for The Aspen Times. From the article:

“I’ve been in Aspen long enough to know the truism, ‘to delay is to deny,’ ” Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland said, in reference to one speaker’s idea that the city should switch gears and explore other ways of tackling the project.

“I think there are opponents of this project who absolutely, under no circumstance, want to see it happen. The strategy in Aspen has traditionally been, ‘Well, we’ll get a new council in two years and we’ll get a new outcome.’ And we have had things in Aspen that should have been done 30 or 40 years ago because of the strategy of delay.”

Ireland and others were participating in “Hydropower in Aspen” at the Aspen Institute’s Paepcke Building. The presentation and panel discussion, which allowed questions from the audience, was hosted by the Western Rivers Institute, a Carbondale-based nonprofit that advocates healthy rivers and ecologically responsible development of hydropower…

Earlier in the forum, Ireland said the city’s plans respect the ecosystems of Castle and Maroon creeks. He said the renewable-energy project will be another way in which Aspen sets an example for other communities by working to reduce the carbon footprint and its dependency on coal-generated power.

More hydroelectric coverage here.

Pitkin County: Hope Mine restoration project update

From The Aspen Times (Janet Urquhart):

Hints of possible success poked through the landscape this spring, where three cameras are snapping photos every three hours while there’s daylight, capturing what will become time-lapse footage of native grasses taking hold in the challenging landscape. Or not. Though pockets of green dot the expansive tailings pile now, it’s too early to predict any lasting success, according to the man keeping close tabs on the vegetation’s progress. “The next question is how these seedlings will survive in the next few months, over the heat of the summer,” said Morgan Williams, executive director of the Flux Farm Foundation. The organization has an interest in a broader application of the methods used at the Hope Mine — advancing the viability of agriculture in the West…

On the flat area atop the tailings pile, thick grass has filled in among dandelions. The steepest slopes of the pile are showing the least amount of new growth, but other areas are greener, and 42 test plots on a more gently sloping area of the mine waste are producing even more telling results. Revegetating the tailings pile involved the placement of biodegradable netting to hold the application in place; it was covered by a seed mix, compost, biochar, hydromulch and naturally occurring mycorrhizal fungi, which help plant roots take in nutrients, particularly in sterile soils. Most of the pile received the same treatment, but in the 7-by-7-foot test plots, each delineated with orange flags poking upward among the grasses, the mix of components is varied. The idea is to identify the optimal mixture, Williams explained. Already, some plots are faring better than others. On test plots that received no application of the growth mixture, the difference is startling. They are essentially bare…

So far, Williams has noted a considerable difference in the condition of the test plots that contain biochar versus those that don’t. On a recent afternoon, with the sun baking the southwest-facing slope, the soil temperature in one test plot treated with biochar was 58 degrees. It’s moisture level stood at 12 percent. Six feet away, on a plot that had not received any application, the soil temperature was 79 degrees and the moisture content was 3 percent. While the monitoring of the Hope Mine reclamation is ongoing, Williams is already a believer in biochar, joining Denver-based soil scientist Andrew Harley in a business venture, Biochar Solutions Inc. Harley was a consultant on the Hope Mine project…

The public will have a chance to see the reclamation project on July 23, during a field trip to the Hope Mine hosted by For the Forest and the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies. The cost is $15 for ACES members and $20 for non-members. Go to www.aspennature.org/programs/summer-fall/adults to register and for more information.

More restoration coverage here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: Aspen plans to draw down Thomas Reservoir this summer for construction of new outlet and penstock

From the Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

Beginning in July, the city will empty the reservoir, which stores water for the municipal water treatment plant on Doolittle Drive. It will remain dry for about three months, said Dave Hornbacher, the city’s deputy director of utilities and environmental initiatives…

Most of the $2.3 million 42-inch pipeline, running from the reservoir to the site of the proposed plant, was constructed last summer and fall. Crews still need to install the final 200 feet of pipe leading up to the earthen dam. They will then bore through the dam, build an intake structure and hook up the pipe. The state of Colorado’s Division of Water Resources granted a permit for the work this spring. That permit also requires the city to upgrade a spillway on the east side of the reservoir, so there will be even more capacity to release water form the reservoir in case levels rise too high.

The pipeline is a crucial part of the city’s proposed hydroelectric plant. Voters in 2007 approved $5.5 million in bonds — with a maximum repayment of $10.7 million — to build the plant, which would be located under the Castle Creek Bridge. The pipeline would feed up to 52 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water into a turbine, generating up to 8 percent of the municipal utility’s electricity needs.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: $50,000 allocated from Pitkin County’s Healthy Rivers and Streams Fund to fund development of a diversion protocol for the proposed Castle Creek hydroelectric plant

From The Aspen Times:

The result will be something that can be applied to other transbasin diversions, according to John Ely, county attorney. The city’s project, which would divert water from Maroon Creek that would not be returned, constitutes a transbasin transfer of water, he said…

The information will be useful when additional diversions are proposed in the headwaters of Pitkin County, predicted Commissioner Rachel Richards. And, she said, the city contributes to the tax revenue that supports the Healthy Rivers and Streams fund.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: Two Aspen city councillors as well as the mayor are looking for a more stringent environmental review for the proposed Castle Creek generation plant

From the Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

At least two Aspen City Council members have voiced support for the municipal government to withdraw its application to the federal government for a conduit exemption on the proposed Castle/Maroon creek hydroplant. Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland is instead proposing the city seek a license for a “small hydro facility of 5 megawatts or less,” which is a separate designation offered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and would require a more stringent environmental review, Ireland said.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: Accuracy of Pitkin County’s streamflow data in question

From The Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

Boulder firm AMEC Earth and Environmental, hired by Pitkin County, found that the city may have overestimated stream-flows by as much as 30 percent at the diversion points where water would be taken out of Castle and Maroon creeks to feed the hydroplant. “If such an error exists and is ignored,” wrote Tim McFlynn, who has been organizing the mediation effort, “hydropower and revenue generation would be overestimated and healthy bypass flows in streams would be similarly impacted.”

The closed-door mediation session was scheduled for Feb. 8 in an attempt to bridge the gap between supporters and opponents of the project. But comments from the panel of experts hired by the county’s Healthy Rivers and Streams board for $50,000, which were submitted to the city two weeks ago, have prompted facilitators to take a time-out.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: Pitkin County’s Healthy Rivers and Streams Board is concerned with Aspen’s proposed Castle Creek hydroelectric plan

From The Aspen Times (Janet Urquhart):

The board, which met Monday, forwarded a two-page letter to David Hornbacher, the city’s deputy director of utilities and renewable energy, on Friday — the final day the city was accepting comments on its draft application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the hydro plant. Attached were 58 pages of attachments comprising the analyses of four experts hired by the county rivers board to review the city’s studies of the project. The county spent $50,000 on the review, which involved a Denver water attorney, Boulder engineering consulting firm, an aquatic specialist based in Eagle and a Telluride firm hired to review the expected energy output of the plant.

“We have significant concerns about the health and quantity of the waters in Castle and Maroon creeks,” said the board’s letter, signed by Chairman Greg Poschman. “The city’s hydroelectric project represents a potential conflict with the mission of our board.”

Among the board’s suggestions: The city should define and preserve a “healthy” streamflow as opposed to merely adhering to minimum streamflows.

The board also called on the city to make a legal commitment to maintain stream quality and quantity throughout the year as part of its operation of the hydro plant, and concluded that more complete data is needed over a longer period of time in order to assess the impacts associated with the hydroelectric facility.

Aspen is seeking a “conduit exemption” from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for its project. Such exemptions, granted for small hydroelectric projects that use infrastructure that is primarily used for other purposes, involve less onerous environmental reviews.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Restoration: Biochar for mine cleanups?

From the High Country News weblog The Range (Heather Hansen):

[A] possible solution, currently being field-tested by a non-profit based in Carbondale, may change the reclamation landscape entirely. Since 2007, the Flux Farm Foundation has been working on reclamation with a promising substance known as biochar. Biochar is made by burning biomass (like wood, animal and crop waste) in an oxygen-limited environment, resulting in a stable form of carbon that has superior water- and nutrient-retention abilities.

These characteristics make it an ideal candidate to restore moonscape-like mine sites, where vegetation (that could capture toxic metals leaching out of abandoned mines and into waterways) is long gone.

Using biochar to reduce metal toxicity and to boost the fertility of compromised soil isn’t a new concept, but using it clean up mines is. The Mountain Studies Institute, based in Silverton, has done some small-scale biochar trials on mine lands in the San Juan Mountains, but Flux Farm’s Hope Mine Project is the first time an entire mine has been taken on.

More restoration coverage here. More biochar coverage here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: Public comment period for proposed Aspen hydropower project closes January 18

From the Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

While only two comments having been submitted so far — both in favor of the project, which could generate power for up to 600 homes — a committee of experts hired by Pitkin County’s tax-supported Healthy Rivers and Streams Board is in the process of reviewing thousands of pages of documents on the proposed hydro facility. The board is aiming to complete its report in advance of the Jan. 18 deadline for comments on the draft application. The public has a 90-day window to submit comments to the city on the draft application, which was filed in mid-October. Once comments have been submitted, the city will consider them prior to finalizing its application to FERC. “The idea behind that is once we’ve had the 90 days, we’ll take those comments, and if there are any comments that might constitute making a change to the application, we would make those revisions,” City of Aspen Deputy Director of Utilities and Environmental Initiatives Dave Hornbacher said, adding that nothing has come in yet that would lead to any changes.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

The Colorado River District is kicking off a grant program for water resources projects

From email from the Colorado River Water Conservation District (Martha Moore):

The Colorado River District is accepting grant applications for projects that protect, enhance or develop water resources within the 15-county area covered by the District. This includes all watersheds in north- and central- western Colorado, except the San Juan River basin.

Eligible projects must achieve one or more of the following:

– develop a new water supply

– improve an existing system

– improve instream water quality

– increase water use efficiency

– reduce sediment loading

– implement watershed management actions

– control tamarisk

– protect pre-1922 Colorado River Compact water rights

Past projects have included the construction of new water storage, the enlargement of existing water storage or diversion facilities, rehabilitation of non-functioning or restricted water resource structures and implementation of water efficiency measures and other watershed improvements. Such projects that utilize pre-1922 water rights will be given additional ranking priority over similar projects that do not. Each project will be ranked based upon its own merits in accordance with published ranking criteria.

Eligible applicants can receive up to a maximum of $150,000 ((or approximately 25% of the total project cost whichever is less, in the case of smaller projects this percentage may be slightly higher) for their project. The total grant pool for 2011 is $250,000. Application deadline is Jan. 31, 2011.

More Colorado River basin coverage here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: Aspen hydroelectric plant application filed with FERC

From the Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

The city on Friday submitted its draft application for a conduit exemption to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). A conduit exemption would waive the formal FERC licensing process, which would likely include an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement.

The 521-page document explains why city officials believe the project qualifies for the conduit exemption.

It contains a report from Miller Ecological Consultants, which states that a minimum stream flow of 13.3 cubic feet per second (cfs) would be sufficient to maintain a healthy Castle Creek. It also contains intergovernmental agreements regarding stream monitoring and in-stream flows with the Colorado Division of Wildlife (DOW) and the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB). It also includes about a dozen letters that have been filed in opposition to the conduit exemption…

Conduit exemptions are granted for small hydroelectric projects — defined as 15 megawatts or less — that use infrastructure that is not primarily intended for the generation of hydroelectricity. City officials claim that standard is met by a drainline currently under construction from Thomas Reservoir to Castle Creek near the site of the proposed hydro plant. City officials say the 4,000-foot-long drainline, approved in April at a cost of $2.3 million, is a necessary safety feature for Thomas Reservoir, which lacks adequate discharge capacity if there was ever an emergency. But the drainline also would be a “penstock” to feed water from the reservoir into a hydroelectric turbine in the proposed building underneath the Castle Creek Bridge…

A conduit exemption also requires that water used to generate electricity be discharged back into a conduit, into a point of municipal consumption or into a natural body of water if the same amount of water is re-diverted further downstream for municipal purposes. The application, prepared by Boulder law firm Dietze and Davis, states that discharging the water from the hydro plant into Castle Creek sustains an “in-stream flow” water right held by the CWCB. The in-stream flow constitutes a “point of municipal consumption,” according to the application. To come to that conclusion, the application argues that the CWCB is a municipality as defined by FERC. Further, the application cites case law which found that municipal consumption does not necessarily mean physically removing water from a river or stream…

By returning the water to the stream to meet a minimum stream flow requirement, the city and the water conservation board fulfill a municipal purpose, according to the application. The document, while arguing that it meets the discharge requirement, simultaneously asks for a waiver from that provision. “It’s just a belt and suspenders approach,” Kumli said. “We’re being careful to use FERC law in a manner that is fair [and consistent] with the way FERC approves hydroelectric projects.”[…]

Meanwhile, the Aspen City Council is considering whether to grant local land use approval for the hydro plant. Public hearings on the project began this summer, but have been tabled while a group of citizens and Pitkin County’s Healthy Rivers and Streams Board undertakes further study of the project. A group of citizens also is attempting to convene mediation meetings between project opponents — some of whom are considering lawsuits if the hydro plant is approved — and the city.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Castle Creek: Hope Mine restoration project is test bed for biochar

From the Aspen Daily News (Andrew Travers):

The effort at Hope Mine could mark a new, carbon-negative approach to reclamation projects on the 23,000 abandoned mines in Colorado’s forests. Carbondale’s Flux Farm Foundation and Axe Trucking are providing technical assistance for the undertaking, which will use biochar to re-vegetate the area and restore soil ravaged by tailings and heavy metals left behind by miners. Biochar is a charcoal-like substance made from heated biomass. It is used to both increase the health of the soil it’s mixed into and to sequester carbon emitted by grass, shrubs and trees…

“Our project intends to show, for the first time, that biochar can be successfully used at scale to reclaim a former mine site,” said Flux Farm director Morgan Williams. “This is a big opportunity for Aspen to make a meaningful contribution to the science of biochar.”

The Hope Mine project is being funded with $90,000 of For The Forest money. The non-profit, founded by former Aspen Mayor John Bennett, for the last two summers also has partnered with the forest service, City of Aspen and Pitkin County to treat and remove trees on Smuggler Mountain hit by bark pine beetle infestation. Bennett said he hopes eventually to process local beetle-killed trees into biochar for local mine reclamation projects — essentially using one forest problem to solve another…

Work on the site begins Sunday, with a volunteer effort launched to coincide with the “10/10/10 Global Work Party,” an outreach campaign by the climate change awareness website 350.org. A geochemist will assist volunteers and Flux Farm’s Williams with laying out 10-foot-by-10-foot “test plots” on the site, trying out various recipes of biochar, compost and other materials in the soil. They have planned seven days of work to follow, including more compost/biochar mixing, treating mine tailings and hydro-mulching.

More restoration coverage here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: The Pitkin County Healthy Rivers Fund board is ponying up $15,000 for mediation around Aspen’s proposed hydroelectric plan

From the Glenwood Springs Post Independent (Aaron Hedge):

The board wants to bring in independent contractors to find a middle ground between the city and a number of Pitkin County residents who have voiced concerns that the project will have deleterious effects on Castle and Maroon creeks, where flows would be reduced to feed the hydropower plant…

Ruthie Brown, chairwoman of the Healthy Rivers and Streams Board, said the mediation will bring in a “whole crew of experts in the field.” She declined Tuesday to talk in further detail about the personnel involved in the initiative because the board is still negotiating with contractors. “In three or four days, we will have a lot more information that we can go public with,” she said.

A county memo regarding the $15,000 expenditure says the “review process would be in conjunction with valley nonprofits and other public citizen boards.” The memo also indicates the expenditure will allow an independent review of the hydrology and other information the city has used regarding the project’s impacts on Castle and Maroon creeks.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: The Aspen City Council has put off the decision about the Castle Creek hydroelectric plant until October 12

From The Aspen Times (Aaron Hedge):

The decision to extend the conversation comes after the city received a significant amount of feedback from residents who live along the stream saying the project will have disastrous effects on the ecosystem there…

Mayor Mick Ireland decided to postpone the vote after the City Council visited the site of the proposed hydropower building on Thursday. “There’s several people … who have approached us about having a stakeholder’s process” to find a middle ground between the city and residents who are opposed to the initiative, Ireland said. The city’s utilities department drew Maroon Creek down to 14 cubic feet per second (cfs) on Tuesday, which is the level Castle Creek will run at for about six months of the year if the project is approved. The average level the stream runs at currently is about 50 cfs, but it plummets to about 14 cfs for the months of February and March. At peak runoff, it holds up to 975 cfs…

Aspen officials say the health of the stream will remain intact, citing a city-commissioned environmental impact study of Castle Creek done by Bill Miller, of Miller Environmental Consultants. The study concluded that the stream would remain healthy as long as it doesn’t go below 13.3 cfs…

The project would take 25 cfs from 2 1/2 miles of Castle Creek and 27 cfs from Maroon Creek. All that water would return to Castle Creek about 300 feet above its merging point with the Roaring Fork River.

More coverage from The Aspen Times (Aaron Hedge):

The main incentive the city cites in building the hydropower plant is that it would save the city from paying energy fees to a Nebraska power authority. The project, they say, would localize Aspen’s energy economy and move it closer to its goal of becoming completely carbon-neutral. But City Manager Steve Barwick said if the city were to divert less water from Castle Creek than originally planned — not letting it go below 19 cfs — the project would still have a huge economic benefit. The city has already spent about $400,000 on the project, building a drainline from Thomas Reservoir that would feed the power turbines, as well as purchasing the turbines for the power plant, which would be located under the Highway 82 bridge that spans Castle Creek on Power Plant Road.

More coverage from the Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

What the city hasn’t put off is developing infrastructure for the project, which still requires a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as well as land use approval by the City Council.

The penstock — a steel reinforced pipe that would carry water from Thomas Reservoir to the hydro plant’s turbine — has been under construction all summer. City officials maintain, however, that the pipe also serves as an emergency drainline for Thomas Reservoir, which has more water coming into it than could be drained if something happened to the dam. That project is costing the city $2.3 million.

In addition, the city already has ordered the turbine which would generate the power at the yet-to-be-approved “Castle Creek Energy Center,” public works director Phil Overeynder told council at Monday’s meeting. He has said previously that the turbine costs $1.4 million, which includes a pressure releasing valve.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: Aspen Planners to draw down Maroon Creek as demonstration project for proposed hydroelectric plant

From the Aspen Daily News (Curtis Wackerle):

Water levels in Maroon Creek will be drawn down from the current flow of about 50 cubic feet per second to 14 cfs on Tuesday and Thursday this week as the city of Aspen demonstrates the “look and feel” of a stream running near the minimum rate associated with the proposed Castle Creek hydropower project. The demonstrations are technically site visits with Aspen City Council members, and thus are public meetings…

Maroon Creek has a state-mandated minimum instream flow of 14 cfs. The site visit is intended to allow council members to observe the “look and feel of a stream at those levels,” Hornbacher said.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: Governor Ritter Announces Acceleration Of Small Hydro Projects in Colorado

From The Aspen Times (Aaron Hedge):

It’s too early to tell, however, if that would be a good route for Aspen and its proposed Castle Creek hydroelectric plant, for which the city utilities department plans to seek an exemption from the agency. City spokeswoman Sally Spaulding said the pilot program announced by Gov. Bill Ritter, which would establish a partnership with the federal government, would probably not accommodate the timeline the city is pursuing with the project…

Exemptions are available for projects that would generate five or more megawatts of power or projects that utilize existing pipelines that feed other water usage, such as Aspen’s Thomas Reservoir, which provides residents with drinking water…

Any projects in Ritter’s new program will have to be implemented via existing infrastructure, according to the MOU [between Colorado and FERC]…

City Council indicated earlier this month that it would support the exemption, but asked for more information on how the health of the stream would be maintained after the project is built. David Hornbacher, project director, said the city would conduct yearly studies modeled from a baseline Colorado Division of Wildlife review of the stream after the plant starts operating. The investigation would determine whether the project will damage the stream. The hydropower project would divert 25 cubic feet per second through an existing pipeline from water-intake facilities on Castle and Maroon creeks to Thomas Reservoir. The water would all return to Castle Creek about 300 feet above its confluence with the Roaring Fork River. To qualify for FERC exemption, a hydropower project must allow the water to return to the body it came from or be used again for non-hydropower purposes. Spaulding said that, either way, the water all eventually runs into the Roaring Fork River.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

Energy policy — hydroelectric: How will Aspen’s proposed hydroelectric plant on Castle Creek effect streamflow?

From The Aspen Times (Aaron Hedge):

Now, with a deal pending to build a new hydropower plant on the same property that would take 52 cubic feet per second (cfs) from both streams, environmentalists and property owners along the affected shoreline say there’s no way to be certain the streams will sustain fish populations and thus remain healthy. If the City Council approves the project, the city plans to divert 25 cfs from Castle Creek, and 27 cfs from Maroon Creek…

As part of the city’s Canary Initiative — an ambitious effort to become carbon-neutral by 2020 — the hydro project is expected in the next decade to save the city $41,000 a year in energy that it would no longer have to purchase from other power authorities. After that decade, when the $3.92 million in bonds for the project are paid off, the city would save twice that amount, said project director David Hornbacher…

Currently, Castle Creek stays at about 14 cfs in February and March, before starting to rise in the spring. The plant would shut down during winter to maintain the minimum flow, and other power resources, including the Ruedi Reservoir hydropower plant and electricity Aspen buys from a Nebraska power authority, would pick up the load. During other times of the year, Castle Creek typically runs between 50 and 70 cfs. But if the project is implemented, the diversions could extend Castle Creek’s low-water period by four months, calling into question how long the stream can sustain itself, and sustain all the creatures that depend on it, at that level…

The city has yet to apply for permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which requires an environmental impact study, to construct the line. In a statement to the City Council this month, project staff recommended that the city not apply for a FERC license because, “Preparation of a an EIS would … delay the project, add to the cost of the project, and jeopardize the project economics.”

More coverage from The Aspen Times (Aaron Hedge). From the article:

City funding for a drainage line from Thomas Reservoir to Castle Creek could go away for the second phase of the construction next year if the Aspen City Council denies the proposed Castle Creek hydropower project, said Phil Overeynder, the city’s public works director. The approximate $2.3 million for the line comes partially from $5.5 million in bonds the city applied for after voters approved the construction of the hydropower plant in 2007. Approximately $126,700 of that money will come from utilities department coffers. The project’s total cost is nearly $6.2 million. The remaining funds will come from a grant of $400,000 and various other sources, Overeynder said. There is no guarantee that the project will stay within that budget, but about $800,000 has been added to it for unforeseen expenditures, according to the City Council application…

The city would have to buy less coal energy from a Nebraska power authority if the plant is approved, project manager David Hornbacher said last week. If the project is not approved, the line will simply empty into Castle Creek just below the Power Plant Road bridge. Efforts to finish the drain line have to wait on approval of the hydropower project because if it is approved, the end of the drain will undergo a completely different construction process, Overeynder said. Either way, the water returns to the stream, through the Penstock drain line if the project is struck down, or through a square concrete tube from the plant to Castle Creek if it is approved. None of the water taken from Maroon Creek will return to it. The hydropower plant is part of the city’s Canary Initiative, a goal to reduce carbon emissions from the city’s energy consumption to zero by 2020. It would draw 52 cubic feet per second from Castle and Maroon creeks. But the drain line will be completed either way, Overeynder said, because the Thomas Reservoir dam poses a threat to the Twin Ridge residential development just down the hill from it. A safety study of the dam, conducted in 1989, said the reservoir posed no public hazard. The Twin Ridge development was not yet built.

More hydroelectric coverage here and here.

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