View of runoff, also called nonpoint source pollution, from a farm field in Iowa during a rain storm. Topsoil as well as farm fertilizers and other potential pollutants run off unprotected farm fields when heavy rains occur. (Credit: Lynn Betts/U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service/Wikimedia Commons)
Morgan Conservation District’s 62nd annual meeting will be held on February 9th.
It will be held at the Fort Morgan Home Plate Restaurant, 19873 U.S. Hwy. 34. Breakfast will be at 8 a.m. and the meeting will start at 9 a.m. The cost of the meeting will be $25 in advance, and that will cover the annual meeting, annual membership in Morgan Conservation District, and free breakfast that morning.
If you do not RSVP in advance, and show up on the day of the meeting, please be advised that the cost will be the same, however breakfast will not be free, due to our needing to order the food in advance. Our keynote speakers, Bill Hammerich and Andrew Neuhart.
Bill Hammerich has served as the CEO of Colorado Livestock Association (CLA) for the past fourteen years. He grew up on a cattle and farming operation in Western Colorado and he attended CSU where he graduated with a degree in Agricultural Economics. Following graduation, he began working with Monfort of Colorado, then Farr Feeders and was with the Sparks Companies before joining CLA in 2002.
His time spent in the cattle feeding industry provided him not only with an understanding of how to feed cattle, but also the importance of protecting and sustaining the environment in which one operates.
Bill and his wife Sabrina live in Severance, Colorado and have two grown children, Justin and Jessica, and four grandsons.
Andrew Neuhart completed both a B.S. in Natural Resource Management and an M.S. in Watershed Science at CSU. After spending two years assisting in precision farming studies in the San Luis Valley for the USDA Soil, Plant and Nutrient Research team, Andrew went to work for the State of Colorado’s Water Quality Control Division. For 9 years with the WQCD, Andrew led a Permitting Unit for discharge permits under the Clean Water Act, for both industrial and domestic wastewater treatment facilities. Working for Brown and Caldwell over the last 4 years, Andrew assists clients with regulatory issues under the Clean Water Act, and has been working with the Ag Task Force, part of the Colorado Monitoring Framework, to get the word out regarding nutrient regulations and their impacts to agricultural operations.
Mr. Hammerich and Mr. Neuhart will be speaking about Regulation 85.
Regulation 85 establishes requirements for organizations holding a NPDES permit and with the potential to discharge either nitrogen or phosphorus to begin planning for nutrient treatment based on treatment technology and monitoring both effluents and streams for nitrogen and phosphorus.
The data from these efforts is designed to better characterize nutrient sources, characterize nutrient conditions and effects around the state and to help inform future regulatory decisions regarding nutrients. Please come to the meeting and learn more from our very knowledgeable keynote speakers!
Please RSVP as soon as possible to Angela at morganconservationdistrict@gmail.com or call 970-427-3362. Space is limited.
Governments, agencies and organizations have until Feb. 3 to submit comments to the EPA, which will be considered as the agency makes a decision.
La Plata County commissioners plan to submit comments and discuss the matter in a 3 p.m. Monday work session and again in a special meeting at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Tribes can ask the EPA to be treated as a state, which allows them to adopt and administer water quality standards. Under the Clean Water Act, a state can determine the level of purity and quality of its own waters. The Southern Utes have no such standards under the Clean Water Act.
There are eight river basins in La Plata County over which the tribe has some jurisdiction, and standards adopted by the tribe would influence upstream discharge permit holders near these waterways, including the city of Durango, town of Bayfield, the Durango-La Plata County Airport and South Durango Sanitation District.
It is unclear whether, if the EPA approves the request, the tribe’s standards would be equal to or more stringent than regulations governing areas upstream, and if the process would be transparent.
The Southern Utes have considered this action for years.
If the EPA approves the application, which details the tribe’s ability to effectively govern a water quality program, the agency would then consider approval for a set of standards as a separate action, which could take years…
As the story unfolds, organizations large and small are scrambling to determine what it could mean for them. The potential impacts are limited not just to obvious environmental programs, such as the cleanup of the Gold King Mine spill, but also to the small local nonprofits and businesses that serve the EPA’s offices here in Denver.
The suspension may threaten the state’s ability to carry out its environmental work, according to Governor John Hickenlooper. In all, the federal government reports the EPA has awarded nearly $200 million in grants and contracts since October 2014, which marked the beginning of the 2015 fiscal year, where the primary work is done in Colorado.
What we know so far:
As ProPublica reported on Monday, the new leadership of the EPA has ordered a temporary suspension of the agency’s grants and contracts. What’s unclear is whether the new freeze merely stops the agency from taking on new spending or whether it will disrupt existing grants and contracts…
The Associated Press has reported that the freeze affects “new” grants and contracts, but ProPublica reports that ongoing work is “temporarily suspended.” We may not know for a while, as the administration has banned EPA employees from talking to reporters, according to AP.
The Associated Press was eventually able to get a little information out of Doug Ericksen, the communications director for Trump’s transition team at EPA.
“We’re just trying to get a handle on everything and make sure what goes out reflects the priorities of the new administration,” he told the AP.
Ericksen clarified that the freeze on EPA contracts and grants won’t apply to pollution cleanup efforts or infrastructure construction activities…
Who it impacts:
In either case, we’re working to assess the role and impact of this funding in Colorado. Recent EPA grants here include the $2.2 million that Colorado State University received in 2014 to support a water-cleaning science project and $260,000 that Sen. Cory Gardner announced would aid in the cleanup of the Gold King Mine spill.
Federal contracts and grants can be viewed at usaspending.gov. In the previous fiscal year, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment received $17.6 million in grants from the EPA, while the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority received $25 million. The authority provides low-cost financing for water and wastewater infrastructure projects. The city of Durango received $29 million to rehabilitate a water treatment plant in response to the Gold King Mine spill. It’s possible work like this would fall under the exemption for environmental clean-up and infrastructure construction.
The EPA’s contracts, meanwhile, include a huge range of work that the EPA pays external companies to do. Take Bayaud Enterprises, the Denver nonprofit that provides employment and support for people with disabilities and other barriers to employment. Bayaud also runs the city’s employment program for homeless people. Bayaud did more than $500,000 of contract work for the EPA last fiscal year, mostly relating to building maintenance…
How Colorado’s agencies are reacting:
Colorado State University has almost $5 million in active EPA grants funding projects that involve some 700 faculty, although most of that money has already been received, according to Alan Rudolph, vice president for research at the school.
He said that the university understands that funding can change in the year-to-year government cycle, but staff are worried about the idea that existing funding would suddenly be stopped.
“If those were frozen, that would be of great concern to us,” he said. The university is in regular contact with program officers at the EPA, but even those employees can give little sense of what’s to come as the new administration takes power.
Changes at the EPA also could significantly affect some Colorado governments’ environmental activities.
“We’re still trying to understand the impacts of the order, including if this affects only new grants or current too,” wrote Kerra Jones, spokeswoman for the Denver Department of Environmental Health, in an email.
She added that much of the city’s EPA money is routed through the Colorado Department of Health and Environment, which “will be affected much more than us.”
Mark Salley, spokesman for CDPHE, wrote that the department has “received little to no clarification as of yet as to what is even meant by ‘grants and contracts.’ We hope to receive additional information in the coming weeks.”
Late on Tuesday, Gov. John Hickenlooper issued a statement saying that his office had received notice of the suspension that day.
“The communication was ambiguous and did not explain the duration or scope of the freeze. This freeze could potentially impact the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s ability to carry out its federally mandated commitment to protect clean air, clean water and safe drinking water. We have sought clarification from the EPA and have asked for assistance from Senators Gardner and Bennet.”
Parachute/Battlement Mesa area via the Town of Parachute.
FromAspen Public Radio (Elizabeth Stewart-Severy):
Earlier this month, the contractor Battlement Mesa Partners asked Garfield County to allow zoning for an injection well in a residential neighborhood. Injection wells are used for disposal of wastewater generated from fracking.
Three citizens groups in the area are concerned about protecting the health of the water supply. The Colorado Oil and Gas Commission approved permits for two well pads in the Battlement Mesa neighborhood last fall, but those permits do not include injection wells.
Garfield County is accepting public comment through Thursday, Jan. 26. Comments can be sent to Glen Hartmann at the Garfield County Community Development Department at ghartmann@garfield-county.com. The issue will be heard by the Garfield Planning and Zoning Commission on Feb. 8 at 6 p.m.
The “Get the Lead Out” program creates a partnership between property owners and Pueblo Water to help eliminate lead service lines in the community. Pueblo Water soon will begin replacing older lead residential water service lines — the pipe connecting each residence to the water main in the street or alley — with Type K soft copper tubing, at no charge to the property owner.
Pueblo Water officials believe the lead lines in Pueblo’s service area comprise a very small percentage of the 40,000-plus customer connections…
Pueblo Water officials said the best protection for residents with lead service lines is to remove the potential sources of lead. Known lead service lines will be replaced as quickly as service schedules allow, minimizing any inconvenience to residents.
Should any service interruption be necessary during line replacement, residents will be given as much advance notice as possible.
In addition to the lead service line removal project, Pueblo Water has begun a physical inventory of service lines of unknown composition in neighborhoods where the known lead lines exist, in an effort to discover if there are any additional lead lines that have not yet been documented.
If and when additional lead lines are discovered, they will also be replaced at no charge to the customer.
A “get well soon” balloon floats in the contaminated waters of the Animas River flowing through Durango on Monday afternoon August 10, 2015 — photo The Durango Herald, Shane Benjamin
In November 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Chief of Staff, Matt Fritz, established an agency team to conduct an After-Action Review of EPA’s response to the Gold King Mine (GKM) release that occurred on August 5, 2015. The team, comprised of employees from across the agency, interviewed over a hundred people and reviewed a large volume of documents to identify lessons learned and develop recommendations for the Administrator’s consideration. Among the documents reviewed were after-action reports from previous emergency responses, which showed that some of the issues identified at Gold King Mine were not new. On December 21, 2015, the After-Action Review Team submitted its report detailing ten specific recommendations to improve how the agency responds to emergency incidents and to ensure a highly effective EPA Emergency Response Program that can adapt quickly to dynamic, unpredictable situations. These recommendations, shown in Appendix A, were:
Recommendation 1: Establish a National Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT) at EPA.
Recommendation 2: Institute Senior Official training plan.
Recommendation 3: Institute ICS key leadership training plan.
Recommendation 4: Establish an agency data and information management team.
Recommendation 5: Improve data and information posting and communications.
Recommendation 6: Establish Communications Strike Teams and broaden data training for PIOs and public affairs staff.
Recommendation 7: Invest in data resources and clarify roles/responsibilities.
Recommendation 8: Build capacity for rapid data collection, interpretation, and dissemination.
Recommendation 9: Align public affairs resources and update communications procedures.
Recommendation 10: Improve notification procedures, plans, and equipment.
The EPA outlined its efforts in a report posted on its website late Friday afternoon called “In the Rearview Mirror: Implementation of the Gold King Mine After-Action Review.”
The EPA’s chief of staff announced the changes in February 2016, after the agency took responsibility for the release of metal-laden water from the Gold King Mine on Aug. 5, 2015.
The changes were based on a December 2015 after-action report that made 10 recommendations focused on improving its emergency response and communications that the EPA has worked on, the review stated. The original after-action report did not seem to have been posted on the EPA’s website when it was finished. EPA officials did not immediately respond to request for comment on the review Saturday.
The review recommended the agency continue funding emergency management training and positions created as a result of the changes. But it did not list specific budget expenses.
A national emergency response team was trained by December 2016 and it will be deployed to mine spills or releases that the EPA has caused or is directly involved in, or when an event involves multiple EPA regions.
“Quick and effective response to incidents reduces the risk to public safety, environmental damage and potential legal liability,” the report said.
To improve communications, the EPA plans to develop three teams of six that will assist with breaking down complex and technical information. When a team is deployed, they will not communicate with the public but will work behind the scenes.
Assistant County Manager Joanne Spina could not comment on the report, but she acknowledged that there were challenges with EPA communications after the Gold King Mine spill.
“We tried to work through those as situations arose,” she said.
During emergencies, the EPA also plans work with federal, state, local, tribal, trust territory and other partners on development and release of all materials.
Effectively communicating data with the public was another focus of the EPA, and it calls for eliminating the time lag between the EPA receiving data and communicating it to the public.
Residents and local officials were frustrated with the slow pace of metals sampling and interpretation of the data.
This data was needed to determine whether the river could be reopened and used for drinking, agriculture and recreation.
Distrust of the EPA’s data led some residents of the Navajo Nation to keep their irrigation ditches closed, causing lost crops, because they didn’t want to risk using the contaminated water.
The Office of Emergency Management has hired a coordinator to help the EPA with data, and the review solicits funding for training and workshops.
Agency workers also updated their contact lists for tribal governments and plan to update those lists annually.
The agency also updated training for senior leadership on what their role is during an emergency. Satellite communications systems were also upgraded for those working in the field.
After the spill, the EPA team was trapped without cellphone service or a satellite phone and this delayed communications with the state by almost two hours.
The state and federal agencies told a judge Thursday that they support the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District’s request to have a courtroom voice in a clean-water lawsuit against Colorado Springs.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are suing the city, which discharges pollutants into Fountain Creek and other tributaries.
The Lower Ark district wants to join the case as an intervenor to protect the district’s interest during the litigation…
Senior Judge Richard Matsch is presiding over the case in U.S. District Court in Denver and will decide whether to grant Lower Ark’s request.
The EPA and the state health-environment department filed the lawsuit Nov. 9. It alleges that Colorado Springs’ storm sewer system is violating federal and state clean water laws.
The city denies it is violating the laws. Mayor John Suthers recently pointed to additional expenditures the city is making as an example of its commitment to correct storm water problems.
The storm water contains pollutants, including E. coli, that flow into the river from creek tributaries.
The district encompasses Bent, Crowley, Otero, Prowers and Pueblo counties, where considerable produce, including Rocky Ford melons, are grown.
In Thursday’s court filing reviewed by The Pueblo Chieftain, the EPA and the department told Matsch they agree with Lower Ark that it should have a voice in court because the district wants the river water to have adequate quality.
To achieve that, the agencies and the district want Colorado Springs to reduce the amount of polluted discharges.
The environmental agencies contend Colorado Springs mischaracterizes the lawsuit as being focused on past issues, but it in fact “seeks to remedy current and ongoing violations.”
The environmental agencies disagree with Colorado Springs’ arguments that the district has no legal right to become an intervenor and that intervention will unduly complicate the litigation.
The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring the city “to develop, implement and enforce” its stormwater management program, as required by permits the government has issued. The lawsuit goes on to ask a judge to impose monetary penalties on Colorado Springs for the violations.
This image was taken during the peak outflow from the Gold King Mine spill at 10:57 a.m. Aug. 5. The waste-rock dump can be seen eroding on the right. Federal investigators placed blame for the blowout squarely on engineering errors made by the Environmental Protection Agency’s-contracted company in a 132-page report released Thursday [October 22, 2015]
FromThe Farmington Daily Times (Magdalena Wegrzyn , Leigh Black Irvin , Joshua Kellogg and Noel Lyn Smith):
Federal lawmakers, tribal leaders and state and local officials presented a rare unified front today as they vehemently denounced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement that it will not pay more than $1.2 billion in claims filed against it in response to the Gold King Mine spill.
The EPA said the Federal Tort Claims Act prevents the agency from paying claims that result from “discretionary” government actions. Congress passed the law to allow government agencies — and in this case, contractors working on their behalf — to act “without the fear of paying damages in the event something went wrong while taking the action,” according to a press release from the EPA.
Three federal lawmakers representing New Mexico denounced the news in a joint statement, calling the agency’s reasoning a “shameful legal interpretation of liability.” Meanwhile, Navajo Nation officials questioned who would take responsibility for reimbursing tribal members hurt by the spill, which on Aug. 5, 2015, released more than three million gallons of toxic wastewater into a tributary that feeds the Animas River, which flows into the San Juan River, ultimately emptying into Lake Powell.
The EPA said the work contractors conducted at the mine near Silverton, Colo., is considered a “discretionary function” under the law.
Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, New Mexico Democrats, and Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., issued a statement saying they would continue pushing for legislation to hold the EPA accountable. They also said it would be up to the courts to determine whether the EPA’s defense is legitimate.
Heinrich said in a phone interview that he intends to introduce legislation to ensure the EPA pays claims that have already been filed, as well as future claims.
“I’m going to speak to all of the senators from Colorado and Arizona, and we’re going to introduce legislation to do this right,” he said.
An EPA agency official said paying the claims would discourage cleanup efforts — such as the one being conducted at the Gold King Mine when it was breached — in the future…
Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said the tribe will continue pursuing its lawsuit against the EPA and several other entities. He said the tribe plans to work with president-elect Donald J. Trump’s administration to address claims tied to the spill.
“It doesn’t stop here,” Begaye said shortly after attending an inauguration ceremony in Shiprock for recently elected Northern Agency chapter officials. “This is one step, and we will continue taking the next step and if we have to, we’ll take it all the way to the Supreme Court.”
[…]
An EPA official said 73 claims related to the mine spill were filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Four were from governmental agencies and the rest were from individuals and companies…
Joe Ben Jr. served as the Shiprock Chapter’s farm board member when the spill occurred. Ben, a farmer himself, said he did not file a claim but knows several other farmers who submitted claims for lost crops and revenue…
The orange plume flows through the Animas across the Colorado/New Mexico state line the afternoon of Aug. 7, 2015. (Photo by Melissa May, San Juan Soil and Conservation District)
… collecting compensation doesn’t weigh heavily on [Earl] Yazzie. Instead, the farmer said he’s more concerned about whether to plant crops this spring and if he’ll irrigate with water from the San Juan River…
Included in the $1.2 billion is about $154 million in tort claims that are part of a lawsuit filed by the state of New Mexico, according to the EPA official. She said the EPA’s defense will be used in court to deny payment of those claims…
The EPA official acknowledged the announcement was slow in coming, adding “we spent a lot of time trying to see if there was any other way to address this because this is obviously an answer that leaves a lot of people unhappy who have been hurt.”
The EPA said the claims could be refiled in federal court, or Congress could authorize payments.
But attorneys for the EPA and the Justice Department concluded the EPA is barred from paying the claims because of sovereign immunity, which prohibits most lawsuits against the government.
“The agency worked hard to find a way in which it could pay individuals for damages due to the incident, but unfortunately, our hands are tied,” EPA spokeswoman Nancy Grantham said.
The EPA said it has spent more than $31.3 million on the spill, including remediation work, water testing and payments to state, local and tribal agencies.
Click here to read the newsletter. Here’s an excerpt:
Across the country, drinking water crises are making the news—from toxic algae to lead poisoning to a growing number of communities facing contamination from a class of manmade chemicals known as perfluorinated compounds or PFCs—raising concerns about whether the nation’s current drinking water regulations do enough to protect us.
While there are clear rules pertaining to 93 federally regulated drinking water contaminants, there are no national drinking water standards for algal cyanotoxins, PFCs, or a host of other potentially harmful unregulated contaminants of emerging concern.
Read this article and more in the recently-released issue of Headwaters magazine, where we explore the connection between public health and water, the regulations in place to keep us safe, and the question of whether those go far enough.
‘It’s amazing, really, how it worked out,” says Roy Heald.
Heald, general manager of the Security Water and Sanitation District (SWSD), is referring to perhaps the only piece of good news in the ongoing story of water contamination in communities south of Colorado Springs.
“We got into planning [the Southern Delivery System] two decades ago for redundancy, thinking we’d use it if anything happened, and then it comes online not three weeks before we really needed it,” he says.
In May, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a health advisory lowering what’s considered a safe amount of perfluorinated chemicals — a highly prevalent but unregulated toxin that’s been linked to low birth weights, heart disease and cancer. Wells drawing from the Widefield aquifer, which supplies around 80,000 people’s drinking water, then tested at nearly 20 times the EPA’s recommended threshold in some cases.
Right away, SWSD took mitigating steps by instigating watering restrictions, fast-tracking an infrastructure project to boost connectivity between service areas and negotiating more access to surface water through the newly operational SDS pipeline. By September, all groundwater wells were shut off. But all that came at a price.
“The exact cost is hard to pin down at this point because we’ve still got bills coming in,” Heald says, “but yeah, this was a huge unanticipated expense.” To get an idea, consider groundwater typically accounts for half the district’s total water supply. Forgoing cheap groundwater in favor of more expensive surface water, even if just for the last four months of the year, cost SWSD around $1 million in 2016, when it expected to spend $100,000. The district has deferred other capital projects, prioritized new ones and diminished its cash reserve, meaning it needs money.
But from whom?
At the very least, the Security, Widefield and Fountain water districts are all expecting some portion of the $4.3 million the Air Force pledged over the summer after Peterson Air Force Base admitted a chemical-laden fire retardant used for decades on base could be the source of contamination.
Air Force spokesman Steve Brady gave the Indy a rundown of how the money’s being spent: Homes on private well water will get reverse osmosis systems installed; NORAD and Security Mobile Home Parks will get granular activated carbon systems, as will Stratmoor Hills, Fountain and Widefield public water systems; First United Pentecostal Church will tap into Security water; SWSD will construct new piping to hook into Colorado Springs Utilities; the Fountain Valley Shopping Center, private homes that don’t agree to take ownership of a filtration system once installed and the Venetucci farmhouse will continue getting bottled water.
The Air Force’s pledge has been messaged as a “good neighbor” gesture and not a signal of responsibility, meaning that for now, available funds are finite. The Air Force Civil Engineer Center is working to confirm or deny the possibility that contaminants came from Peterson Air Force Base while public health officials (and private litigants) continue to investigate other possible polluters.
A damning outcome of those inquiries could warrant additional compensation, but until then, affected parties will have to just deal on their own.
“I know we’ll get some share of that $4.3 million, but whatever it is won’t be enough to cover our costs,” says Heald, whose district hasn’t received a check from the Air Force yet. “There could be grants available at the state level, but those are in the thousands or tens of thousands range. We’re looking at millions. I’ve talked to our congressional representatives but I don’t know about federal sources. Maybe folks will have other ideas, because whatever the source, our ratepayers didn’t cause this so they shouldn’t have to pay for it.”
Security residents will start seeing higher water bills immediately. Rates were already scheduled to rise in 2017 before this situation arose, but now the hike could be steeper. Unless some new windfall comes through before the next rate study gets underway in the fall, you can guess what direction rates will continue to go. Still, a typical water bill in Security during 2016 was $36 —about half of a typical Colorado Springs bill.
Fountain is in a similar, though not identical, position. “We don’t need to use groundwater in the wintertime — that’s been the standard for years,” Utilities Director Curtis Mitchell tells the Indy, explaining that groundwater only ever flowed through taps during peak demand over the summer. Ahead of that time this year, Mitchell has negotiated extra surface water through a capacity swap with Colorado Springs Utilities. Groundwater will only enter the equation once filtration systems are installed and working reliably.
Widefield has been off well water since November, according to department manager Brandon Bernard, who says four pilot projects are underway to find the best technology for filtering out PFCs. He’s aiming to get a small treatment facility built by May and another, bigger one “in the near future.” (Because Widefield isn’t an SDS partner, it has limited surface water, hence the primary focus is on treating well water.)
“All of the capital costs to pilot and build the treatment will be taken from cash reserves,” Bernard wrote by email. “The only costs the customers will incur through rates will be to cover operation and maintenance of these facilities. … We aren’t sure how much of the $4.3 million is portioned for WWSD and have not heard when we will receive it.”
Fountain and Security’s increased reliance on SDS may cost their customers, but it provides some relief to Colorado Springs — primary investor, owner and operator of the $825 million pipeline. As partners, Fountain and Security already contributed their share of construction costs, but moving more water through it offsets operational costs.
“We’re running at really low levels right now, so there’s plenty of room in the pipe for our partners,” says Colorado Springs Utilities spokesman Steve Berry. “The bottom line is we’re one big community here in El Paso County, so we’re happy to be flexible for them, but it also takes some of the financial burden [of running SDS] off our customers.”
The costs of getting SDS up and running have been factored into CSU’s rates over the past five years, Berry says, so Phase 1 is pretty much paid for. Phase 2, including new storage construction and reservoir resurfacing, has yet to be reflected in customers’ water bills. Other capital improvement projects like maintaining aging pipes elsewhere in CSU’s raw water system, replacing main lines under downtown and modernizing storage tanks and treatment facilities are coming later.
So whatever reprieve Colorado Springs water users get will be overshadowed by other expenses. “Unfortunately, base rates typically don’t go down — they either stay constant or they increase,” says Berry, who emphasizes that partners’ usage won’t compromise CSU’s access to water. CSU still has precious “first-use” water rights and plenty of redundancy built into its overall system. “But to have a high-quality, reliable water source requires a hefty investment,” Berry adds.
Reliable is the key word there, as demonstrated by the crises playing out in Security, Widefield and Fountain, and communities across the country where drinking water is compromised. Part of the trend is having better detection instruments and part is better science showing potential harm, Heald observes. But, he says, what remains constant is America’s “leap before you look” approach to regulating toxins in our environment — chemicals get introduced to the market before anyone really knows what risk they pose.
Heald offers this summation: “You don’t know what you don’t know, but when you do know, you know it’s going to cost more.”
The city of Colorado Springs, in response to a lawsuit that seeks court action against the city for discharging pollutants into tributaries of the Arkansas River, denies it is violating clean water laws.
The city’s denial is its first response in court to a lawsuit that claims discharges of pollutants into Fountain Creek and other tributaries violate the laws. The discharges are from Colorado Springs’ stormwater system.
“The City has complied with the law,” states the response filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Denver.
The lawsuit was filed Nov. 9 against Colorado Springs by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Health and Environment.
The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring the city “to develop, implement, and enforce” its stormwater management program as specified in permits the government has issued in past years.
Colorado Springs asserted in Monday’s filing that it “has at all times been in compliance” with permits issued by the state agency to govern the discharges and the stormwater system.
The city contends it should not be subjected to court orders or monetary penalties that the environmental agencies want a judge to impose.
Colorado Springs also contends that allegations in the lawsuit misrepresent the facts of issues in dispute.
Scott Hummer, general manager of North Poudre Irrigation Company, talks about how his agency worked with Fort Collins Natural Areas and Colorado Parks and Wildlife to include a fish passage when the irrigation company replaced a diversion structure on the Poudre River that was destroyed by the 2013 floods. Work was completed [in February 2016]. (Pamela Johnson / Loveland Reporter-Herald)
Here’s the release from Colorado State University (Jim Beers):
The Cache la Poudre River, which flows from the mountains through Fort Collins, Timnath and Windsor to the plains east of Greeley, is at the heart of countless activities: from irrigating crops and lawns to providing drinking water for more than 365,000 people and hosting numerous recreational activities.
Those with connections to and concerns for the Poudre River will gather on Friday, Feb. 3 for the fourth annual Poudre River Forum. After its first three years at Larimer County Fairgrounds, the forum is moving down the river to Greeley as a reminder that the Poudre River is important to all who benefit from it — from its headwaters to its confluence with the South Platte. This year’s forum — the theme is “As the Poudre Flows — Forest to Plains” — will be held from 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. at the Island Grove Events Center, 501 N. 14th Ave., Greeley. Pre-registration is required for all participants.
Understanding the river, each other
Sponsored by the Poudre Runs Through It Study/Action Work Group, the forum serves as a community-wide gathering of people from agricultural, municipal, business, recreational and environmental backgrounds to learn about and discuss issues related to the Poudre River.
“The Poudre River Forum brings together those who use the river for agricultural and urban diversions and those who work to improve its ecological health. In the past those groups have not necessarily seen eye to eye,” said MaryLou Smith, PRTI facilitator. “Increasingly our participants are open to the idea that it takes collective vision and action to make the Poudre the world’s best example of a healthy, working river.”
Once again, this year’s event will be facilitated by the Colorado Water Institute at Colorado State University. “The Forum is a great opportunity for the communities connected by the Poudre River to come together to better understand the entire watershed, and each other,” said Reagan Waskom, director of CWI.
Forests and water quality/quantity
Laurie Huckaby with the U.S. Forest Service, will present “The last 1,000 years in the Poudre according to the trees,” to kick off the topic of how important the upper watershed is to water quantity and quality.
“Water quality and forests are inextricably linked,” said Joe Duda of the Colorado State Forest Service, who will join Huckaby as one of the presenters. “Forest conditions and insects, disease and fire all can have profound impacts on water flow and quality. Only healthy, resilient forests can continuously supply clean water.”
Global lessons for local success
“Finding the Balance: Managing Water for People and Nature” is the message of keynote speaker Brian Richter. Richter has been a global leader in water science and conservation for more than 25 years, and currently serves as chief scientist for the Global Water Program of The Nature Conservancy in Washington D.C. Richter’s ideas about the importance of recognizing the balance of working river/healthy river are the basis for which PRTI was initially formed. He has consulted on more than 120 water projects worldwide, and has served as a water advisor to some of the world’s largest corporations, investment banks, the United Nations, and has testified before Congress on multiple occasions. Richter co-authored,with Sandra Postel, the 2003 book Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature and in 2014 wrote Chasing Water: A Guide for Moving from Scarcity to Sustainability.
Change affects all sectors
An afternoon panel session will probe the impacts of change — positive and negative — along the Poudre River and how they have been similarly and differently addressed by agriculture, urban, and environmental sectors. They will discuss what anticipated future changes might these three sectors see as opportunities or incentives for mutually beneficial collaboration that could result in a healthier, working river?
“It has been said that the only thing that is constant is change,” said John Bartholow, retired ecologist from U.S. Geological Survey, and panel coordinator/moderator. “The question is, can we learn to adapt to those changes sure to come on the Poudre in ways that benefit agriculture, municipalities, and the environment?”
The panel will include Eric Reckentine, deputy director, City of Greeley Water and Sewer; John Sanderson, director of science, Nature Conservancy of Colorado; and Dale Trowbridge, general manager, New Cache la Poudre Irrigating Company.
Videos, displays and music too
The day-long forum also includes “River Snapshots” highlighting more than 15 projects undertaken by a variety of groups on the Poudre last year; “My How the Poudre Has Changed,” featuring historical 1970’s footage of the Poudre; updates from both the cities of Greeley and Fort Collins on current water programs; and over two dozen river-focused displays from community organizations and agencies. The day concludes with a social hour including food, beer and other beverages, and river-themed door prizes.
Registration is $50 and includes lunch. Scholarships for students and reduced rates are available. The deadline to register is Friday, Jan. 27 at http://prti.colostate.edu/forum_2017.shtml.
For more information, contact event coordinator Gailmarie Kimmel at PoudreRiverForum@gmail.com or 970-692-1443.
This image was taken during the peak outflow from the Gold King Mine spill at 10:57 a.m. Aug. 5. The waste-rock dump can be seen eroding on the right. Federal investigators placed blame for the blowout squarely on engineering errors made by the Environmental Protection Agency’s-contracted company.
Here’s the release from the Environmental Protection Agency (Christie St. Clair):
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) posted the final fate and transport report for the Gold King Mine (GKM) release. The report focuses on understanding pre-existing river conditions, the movement of metals related to the GKM release through the river system, and the effects of the GKM release on water quality. The research supports EPA’s earlier statements that water quality in the affected river system returned to the levels that existed prior to the GKM release and contamination of metals from the release have moved through the river system to Lake Powell.
“This report is a comprehensive analysis of the effects on water quality from the Gold King Mine release,” said Dr. Thomas A. Burke, EPA’s Science Advisor and Deputy Assistant Administrator of EPA’s Office of Research and Development. “While data indicate that water quality has returned to pre-event conditions, EPA is committed to continue our work with States and Tribes in the river system affected by the Gold King Mine release to ensure the protection of public health and the environment.”
The area affected by the Gold King Mine release consists of complex river systems influenced by decades of historic acid mine drainage. The report shows the total amount of metals, dominated by iron and aluminum, entering the Animas River following the release — which lasted about nine hours on August 5, 2015 –was comparable to four to seven days of ongoing GKM acid mine drainage or the average amount of metals carried by the river in one to two days of high spring runoff. However, the concentrations of some metals in the GKM plume were higher than historical mine drainage. As the yellow plume of metal-laden water traveled downstream after the release, the metal concentrations within the plume decreased as they were diluted by river water and as some of the metals settled to the river bed.
There were no reported fish kills in the affected rivers, and post-release surveys by multiple organizations have found that other aquatic life does not appear to have suffered harmful short-term effects from the GKM plume. The concentrations of metals in well-water samples collected after the plume passed did not exceed federal drinking water standards. No public water system using Lake Powell as a source of drinking water has reported an exceedance of metals standards since the release.
Some metals from the GKM release contributed to exceedances of state and tribal water quality criteria at various times for nine months after the release in some locations. Metals from the GKM release may have contributed to some water quality criteria exceedances during the spring 2016 snow melt. Other exceedances may reflect longstanding contributions of metals from historic mining activities in the region and natural levels of metals in soils and rocks in the area. EPA will continue to work with states and tribes to interpret and respond to these findings.
Results from this analysis will inform future federal, state and tribal decisions on water and sediment monitoring. EPA will continue to work with states and tribes to ensure the protection of public health and the environment in the river system affected by the Gold King Mine release.
Read the final report, “Analysis of the Transport and Fate of Metals Released From the Gold King Mine in the Animas and San Juan Rivers”: https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_file_download.cfm?p_download_id=530074
The 2015 Gold King Mine spill deposited nearly 540 tons of metals over a 9-hour period into Cement Creek, which feeds into the Animas River, the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday in it final report on the scope and ongoing effects of the spill.
The EPA estimated that roughly one percent of the metals, mostly iron and aluminum, contained in the spill came from the mine, with the rest coming from the waste piles on the hillside below the mine adit and the stream bed of Cement Creek.
The study states “the volume of the GKM release was equivalent to four to seven days of ongoing GKM acid mine drainage,” or “one to two days of high spring runoff.”
But, as indicated in previous tests, the river returned to pre-spill levels.
There have been no reported fish kills or significant impacts on other aquatic life, but the EPA will continue to monitor the waterways impacted by the spill, the agency said Friday in a release.
The study also looked at water quality in the Animas to see if it had returned to pre-event conditions and if the impacts of the spill itself had long-term detrimental ramifications on the river given the history of mining in the region…
“The research supports EPA’s earlier statements that water quality in the affected river system returned to the levels that existed prior to the GKM release and contamination of metals from the release have moved through the river system to Lake Powell,” the release said.
Following Aug. 5, 2015 spill, the concentration of contaminants exceeded water quality standards in multiple locations impacted.
This necessitated the building of an interim water treatment plant at Gladstone that was mandated to operate through November 2016, said Cynthia Peterson, community involvement coordinator for the Bonita Peak Mining District. The EPA concluded a public comment session on Dec. 14 regarding the future of the treatment plant, and will release a final decision by the end of January, Peterson said. But the EPA has a preferred course of action.
“EPA’s preferred plan for the water treatment plant is for its continued operations and to look at additional options in the future as we understand more about the nature and spread of the contamination,” she said.
The agency also is conducting remedial investigation to understand the impact of the 48 sites in the mining district, which was named a Superfund site in September, on river contamination, Peterson said. This represents the first step before clean-up operations can begin.
From the Associated Press (Matthew Daly) via The Farmington Daily Times:
Agency says only 1 percent of the metals came from inside the mine and the rest were “scoured” from waste piles on nearby hills and stream beds
Health and environmental officials in San Juan County are evaluating the Animas River after roughly 1 million gallons of mine waste water were released Wednesday. August 6, 2015. (Photo courtesy San Juan Basin Health Department)
Nearly 540 tons of metals — mostly iron and aluminum — contaminated the Animas River over nine hours during a massive wastewater spill from an abandoned Colorado gold mine, the Environmental Protection Agency said today in a new report on the 2015 blowout that turned rivers in three states a sickly yellow.
The total amount of metals entering the river system was comparable to levels during one or two days of high spring runoff, although the concentration of metals was significantly higher at the spill’s peak, the report said.
In February, the EPA estimated the amount of metals in the release at 440 tons. The agency said additional data and improved analysis resulted in the higher final estimate.
The EPA said its research supports earlier statements that water quality in the affected river system has returned to pre-spill levels…
The EPA said in its report that only 1 percent of the metals came from inside the mine, while 99 percent were “scoured” from waste piles on nearby hills and stream beds. The iron and aluminum reacted with the river water to cause the eye-catching mustard color that was visible for days as the plume traveled down the river system into Lake Powell, the EPA said.
Besides iron and aluminum, the spill released manganese, lead, copper, arsenic, zinc, cadmium and a small amount of mercury into the river, the EPA said…
New Mexico Environment Secretary Butch Tongate accused the EPA of using the taxpayer-funded report to try to defend its actions. The state has sued the agency over the spill.
Colorado officials said they had no comment on the report. Utah officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“While data indicate that water quality has returned to pre-event conditions, EPA is committed to continue our work with States and Tribes in the river system affected by the Gold King Mine release to ensure the protection of public health and the environment,” Dr. Thomas A. Burke, EPA’s science adviser and deputy assistant administrator in its office of research and development, said in a statement…
The disaster, which turned the Animas River a toxic-looking yellow-orange, prompted concern and anger downstream, particularly in the Navajo Nation and New Mexico, where officials have been continually complaining about the spill’s water-quality impacts and have filed lawsuits against the EPA. The concentrations of some metals in the Gold King mine plume were higher than historical mine drainage, the EPA said in a news release announcing the report’s findings, but the impacts on water quality were not long lasting as some had worried…
There were no reported fish kills in the Animas or San Juan rivers, and the EPA says surveys have round that other aquatic life does not appear to have suffered any short-term impacts…
Also, the agency says the concentrations of metals in well-water samples collected after the 3 million-gallon spill’s plume passed through areas did not exceed federal drinking water standards. No public water system using Lake Powell as a source of drinking water has reported an exceedance of metals standards since the release, according to the EPA.
“Some metals from the GKM release contributed to exceedances of state and tribal water quality criteria at various times for nine months after the release in some locations,” the release said. “Metals from the GKM release may have contributed to some water quality criteria exceedances during the spring 2016 snow melt.”
However the EPA says other metal-level exceedances may reflect the longstanding mine drainage from the region’s historic sites as well as natural levels of metals in southwest Colorado’s soils and rocks. Silverton and its surroundings are now slated to get a federal cleanup of their leaching, historic mines under the EPA’s Superfund program.
The mines and mining sites in Silverton’s surroundings — including the Gold King — pour an estimated 5.4 million gallons of metal-laden waste into the Animas’ headwaters each day.
“Results from this analysis will inform future federal, state and tribal decisions on water and sediment monitoring,” the EPA release said, though it did not immediately elaborate.
Bonita Mine acid mine drainage. Photo via the Animas River Stakeholders Group.
From the Associated Press (Mead Gruver) via The Colorado Springs Gazette:
Federal officials withdrew a proposed requirement for companies to clean up groundwater at uranium mines across the U.S. and will reconsider a rule that congressional Republicans criticized as too harsh on industry.
The plan that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency put on hold Wednesday involves in-situ mining, in which water containing chemicals is used to dissolve uranium out of underground sandstone deposits. Water laden with uranium, a toxic element used for nuclear power and weapons, is then pumped to the surface. No digging or tunneling takes place.
The metal occurs in the rock naturally but the process contaminates groundwater with uranium in concentrations much higher than natural levels. Mining companies take several measures to prevent tainted water from seeping out of the immediate mining area.
Even so, underground leaks sometimes occur, though most of the mines are not near population centers. No in-situ uranium mine has contaminated a source of drinking water, the industry and its supporters assert.
Along with setting new cleanup standards, the rule would have required companies to monitor their former mines potentially for decades. The requirement was set for implementation but now will be opened up for a six-month public comment period, with several changes.
Those include allowing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or states to determine certain cleanup standards on a site-specific basis. The EPA decided to resubmit the rule and seek additional public input after reviewing earlier comments, agency spokeswoman Monica Lee said.
Wyoming’s Republican U.S. senators, John Barrasso and Mike Enzi, praised the EPA’s decision to reconsider, saying the rule was unnecessarily burdensome for the uranium industry.
Wyoming has five active in-situ uranium mines and is the top uranium-producing state. Other mines are active in Nebraska and Texas.
“In-situ uranium recovery has been used in the United States for decades, providing valuable jobs to Wyoming and clean energy to the nation,” Enzi said in a news release. “I rarely say this about the EPA, but the agency made the right decision.”
Environmentalists and others say uranium-mining companies have yet to show they can fully clean up groundwater at a former in-situ mine. Clean groundwater should not be taken for granted, they say, especially in the arid and increasingly populated U.S. West.
“We are, of course, disappointed that this final rule didn’t make it to a final stage,” said Shannon Anderson with the Powder River Basin Resource Council. “It was designed to address a very real and pressing problem regarding water protection at uranium mines.”
The EPA rule is scheduled for further consideration in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
In-situ uranium mining surged on record prices that preceded the 2011 Japanese tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster. Prices lately have sunk to decade lows, prompting layoffs.
From the Bureau of Land Management via the The Chaffee County Times:
The Bureau of Land Management and Park County have discovered the presence of dioxane, an industrial chemical, within a closed municipal landfill and on surrounding public lands approximately one mile south of Fairplay.
According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, the chemical exceeds regulatory limits but would not cause harmful health effects based on detected levels of exposure.
Currently, the dioxane has been detected only on public lands. The BLM and Park County will conduct additional monitoring efforts to determine the nature and extent of contamination.
The BLM leased 20 acres of public land to Park County in 1974 for use as a landfill under the Recreation and Public Purposes Act. Park County operated the landfill from the early 1970s to the early 1990s.
The BLM Royal Gorge Field Office has been working with Park County and CDPHE to bring the landfill into compliance.
As part of this effort, the BLM installed two groundwater monitoring wells earlier this year to evaluate water quality.
If you are concerned about your health, you can drink and cook with bottled water to limit your exposure. BLM is notifying adjacent landowners directly.
Local landowners can contact Sheila Cross, Park County, at 719-839-4272 or scross@parkco.us to arrange groundwater testing or for more information on monitoring efforts.
Colorado Springs is opposing an Arkansas River water district’s request to join a lawsuit that seeks to stop the city from discharging pollutants into Fountain Creek and other tributaries of the river.
The Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District wants a voice against Colorado Springs by being allowed to take part in the litigation.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Health jointly filed the lawsuit Nov. 9 in U.S. District Court in Denver against Colorado Springs. The lawsuit claims that the city’s discharges of polluted stormwater into the tributaries violate state and federal clean water laws.
The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring Colorado Springs “to take all steps necessary to redress or mitigate the impact of its violations.”
The lawsuit also seeks a court order to require the city “to develop, implement and enforce” its stormwater management program, as required by permits the government has issued. The lawsuit goes on to ask a judge to impose monetary penalties on Colorado Springs for the violations.
Water runoff from streets, parking lots and other surfaces picks up pollutants that drain into the stormwater sewage system, which discharges it into the creeks.
Pollutants include accumulated debris, chemicals and sediment. They “can adversely affect water quality, erode stream banks, destroy needed habitat for fish and other aquatic life, and make it more difficult and expensive for downstream users to effectively use the water,” the lawsuit states
The water district on Dec. 9 asked Senior Judge Richard Matsch for permission to become an intervenor to protect the district’s interests to have clean and usable water from the river.
The city on Dec. 22 filed arguments opposing the district’s request. The city contends that the district has no legal right to intervene.
The district — as well as Pueblo officials — has long been a critic of Colorado Springs for sending polluted and sediment-filled stormwater, including dangerous E. coli bacteria, into the river and for not controlling flooding the water causes.
The district encompasses Bent, Crowley, Otero, Prowers and Pueblo counties, where considerable produce, including Rocky Ford melons, are grown.
Colorado Springs officials have negotiated a deal with Pueblo County for the city to spend $460 million over 20 years on Fountain Creek flood control.
The Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs reported last Friday that Mayor John Suthers cited that commitment as an example of how his administration is working to resolve the complaints of its downstream neighbors.
In its court filing opposing allowing the district to become a participant in the litigation, the city said the case will be greatly complicated and costs of litigating it will increase. The city also said that the EPA and state environment department will adequately represent the district’s interests.
Attorney Peter Nichols, representing the district, sees it differently, according to The Gazette: “The question is whether the city is already putting a lot of political pressure on the state and EPA to back off. The district is concerned they might be successful with that pressure, and water quality wouldn’t be improved in Fountain Creek,” Nichols said.
The newspaper reported that district Executive Director Jay Winner said Colorado Springs repeatedly had broken promises about the stormwater problems.
South Fork Mineral Creek, Silverton photo via hhengineering.com
Click here to read the newsletter. Here’s an excerpt:
Aquatic Life Discovered on Mineral Creek Above Silverton
Recent studies by Mountain Studies Institute and the USGS on Upper Mineral Creek have found an improving macroinvertebrate population and a naturally reproducing brook trout population. For the past 20 years, this stretch was devoid of aquatic life. The Animas River Stakeholder Group has conducted a dozen mining remediation projects above that reach on Mineral Creek, which has dramatically improved water quality. ARSG will request that the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission make an aquatic life designation under the Clean Water Act for that segment of Mineral Creek. Congratulations to ARSG and its many partners for this water quality remediation success!
The Animas flows orange through Durango on Aug. 7, 2015, two days after the Gold King Mine spill. (Photo by Esm Cadiente http://www.terraprojectdiaries.com)
Two members of Colorado’s congressional delegation are pressing the Environmental Protection agency to fully reimburse state, local and tribal agencies for the cost of responding to a toxic mine waste spill triggered by the EPA.
Sen. Cory Gardner and Rep. Scott Tipton said Monday a law passed this month removed some of the obstacles the EPA cited in turning down $20.4 million in requests.
The EPA says it paid $4.5 million in claims but rejected the others, in some cases because the costs came after a cutoff date set by the agency. The EPA said it was following federal law.
An EPA-led crew inadvertently triggered the spill at the Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado while doing preliminary cleanup work in August 2015.
Rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah were polluted.
FromThe Grand Junction Daily Sentinel (Katie Langford):
Even before he designed lightweight, biodegradable water pouches, local inventor and entrepreneur Tim Huff had his eyes on a much bigger project.
As the founder of Palisade-based company Colorado Clear, Huff has always dreamed of a way to provide clean water in large quantities to those who need it the most, whether they’re people living in an impoverished country or a disaster-stricken community.
“The logistics of shipping water is horrible,” Huff said. “Water weighs an exorbitant amount.”
It takes semitrailer after semitrailer to bring enough clean water to communities in need, and the waste that’s left behind stays in landfills for hundreds of years.
And even with a water filtration plant built in a community, people might not have sterile containers to haul and store the water safely.
What people really need, Huff said, is an all-in-one water purification and bottling system — a system that will purify water on site, then put it into sterile containers that won’t overwhelm landfills. The system needs components that are small enough to be hauled in a standard pickup or airplane, yet hefty enough to purify and bottle thousands of bottles of water in a day.
Huff didn’t see anything like that on the market, so he created it.
Huff and the Colorado Clear team finished their first model in November and have since received calls from across the country and the world. From Flint, Michigan, to Ghana, governments and organizations are asking for one of Huff’s systems.
Some can pay for it out of pocket, but many others can’t.
People desperately need clean water, Huff said, and he’s looking for public and private investors to bring it to them.
“We want to get the word out to the right people in government or the (non-governmental organizations) who are willing to back this and get this technology out to the people,” Huff said. “It’s something that the world needs.”
It’s also something Mesa County needs, because Huff said he is committed to manufacturing his product in the Grand Valley.
The first mobile purification and bottling system was almost entirely sourced from nine local companies.
“Our goal is to have a global solution for this problem but at the same time put our community back to work with something that is a year-round need, globally,” he said.
While he’s happy that his biodegradable water “amphoras” will mean less trash in the world, Huff said he’s more focused on the people who die every day because they don’t have access to clean water.
“It’s more important to us, getting safe water to people,” Huff said. “I think that’s a bigger issue.”
More than 70 percent of Latino voters are deeply concerned about the environment and how it affects their families. That’s according to a new Latino Decisions poll, which found over 90 percent of Latino Coloradans want the President-elect and new Congress to fight climate change.
Dominick Moreno, incoming Colorado Senator for Adams County, said he isn’t surprised by the poll results.
“The Latino community, I think, in Colorado really cares about the environment, cares about climate change and doing something about that, and is generally, I think, more environmentally sensitive to these issues,” he said.
He added that the survey confirms Latinos are an increasingly important voting bloc and are willing to take their convictions into the voting booth. In Colorado, 96 percent of Latinos surveyed said they support candidates who work to protect public health by limiting air pollution.
Nationally, Latino Republicans were less enthusiastic than Democrats about the need for action on climate change, but more than 60 percent agreed it’s an important issue. Over 90 percent want more clean-energy development.
Senior analyst of Latino Decisions, Edward Vargas, said these voters care about the environment because Latino communities are disproportionately affected.
“We tend to reside and live near environmental dump sites, factories; Latinos are also more likely to be working in the fields,” he explained. “So, I think this is just a reflection of where we live and where we work is impacted by the environment.”
Moreno said he’s confident the Latino community will keep a watchful eye on the Trump administration and Congress in case they try to reverse progress on climate change or let energy producers off the hook.
“You’re going to see them really, I think, rise up and say that we’re not going to accept the status quo, that we’re not going to accept halting the work that we’ve already done to make sure that, no matter where you live, that you have access to clean air and clean water, and outdoor recreation,” Moreno added.
Continued operations of the temporary water treatment plant north of Silverton received near unanimous support during a 30-day public comment period.
From Nov. 14 to Dec. 14, the Environmental Protection Agency accepted public comments on whether to continue operations at the plant that handles acidic discharges from the Gold King Mine.
The EPA previously announced it preferred that option while it continues to evaluate long-term options for the recently declared Bonita Peak Mining District Superfund site, which would address issues at 48 mining-related sites around Silverton.
The public comment period was part of a formal process to move the plant from “emergency removal action” funding to a “non-time critical removal action” funding, which is part of the Superfund process.
The agency received 12 submissions, mostly from government entities affected by the Aug. 5, 2015, Gold King Mine blowout, with only one resident weighing in.
The government entities in favor of continued operations included the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment; the Colorado Attorney General’s Office; La Plata County; San Juan County; the town of Silverton; the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, and Congressman Scott Tipton.
Trout Unlimited, an environmental group, and Duranglers Flies and Supplies also voiced support for keeping the plant running.
While all the above-mentioned entities voiced support for continued operations, some suggested the EPA start treating discharges from adjacent mines, namely the Red & Bonita and Mogul mines, as well as the American Tunnel.
Others wrote that the EPA should secure a place to store the lime-heavy metal sludge byproduct of the treatment plant before committing to continued operation. The EPA has said it is searching for a long-term dump site…
A representative from Silverton Mountain Ski Area, which is about a mile and a half downstream from the water treatment plant, raised concerns about the treatment plant’s impact on ski operations.
The ski mountain’s chief operating officer, Tim Petrick, asked the EPA to consider installing better equipment for improved communications in the remote area, as well as perform dust suppression on County Road 110.
And a Castle Rock-based company called Jalema Technologies Ltd. that deals with mine wastewater treatment said the EPA could cut costs of operations “if a more studied plant design was implemented at the site.” The company then argued it had the technology to “produce higher quality discharge water for a cost similar to that shown for” the temporary plant, and offered its services.
One resident voiced support for the continuance of the plant, though the name was redacted.
Rebecca Thomas, EPA’s project manager for the Superfund site, said the agency will consider the comments and then make a decision through an “action memo.”
She expected the final decision to be issued in January.
Oil and gas development on the Roan via Airphotona
Here’s guest column from David Nickum writing in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel:
For more than a decade, the battle over Colorado’s Roan Plateau — a beautiful green oasis surrounded by oil and gas development — raged in meetings and in courtrooms. At issue: Would the “drill, baby, drill” approach to public lands carry the day and the path of unrestrained energy development run over one of Colorado’s most valuable wildlife areas? Or would “lock it up” advocates preclude all development of the Roan’s major natural gas reserves?
Luckily, this story has a happy ending — and a lesson for Colorado and other states in the West struggling with how to balance the need for energy development with conservation of public lands and irreplaceable natural resources.
The Bureau of Land Management recently issued its final plan for the Roan Plateau, closing the most valuable habitat on top of the plateau to oil and gas leases. The plan, which will guide management of the area for the next 20 years, also acknowledges the importance of wildlife habitat corridors connecting to winter range at the base of the plateau.
At the same time, the BLM management plan allows responsible development to proceed in less-sensitive areas of the plateau that harbor promising natural gas reserves and can help meet our domestic energy needs.
What happened? After years of acrimony and lawsuits, stakeholders on all side of the issue sat down and hammered out a balanced solution. Everyone won. It’s too bad it took lawsuits and years of impasse to get all sides to do what they could have done early on: Listen to each other. We all could have saved a lot of time, money and tears.
The Roan example is a lesson to remember, as the incoming administration looks at how to tackle the issue of energy development on public lands. There’s a better way, and it’s working in Colorado.
The BLM also this month, incorporating stakeholder input, closed oil and gas leasing in several critical habitat areas in the Thompson Divide — another Colorado last best place — while permitting leasing to go ahead in adjacent areas.
That plan also represents an acknowledgment that some places are too special to drill, while others can be an important part of meeting our energy needs.
And in the South Park area — a vast recreational playground for the Front Range and an important source of drinking water for Denver and the Front Range — the BLM is moving ahead with a Master Leasing Plan (MLP) for the area that would identify, from the outset, both those places and natural resources that need to be protected and the best places for energy leasing to proceed.
We have said that we want federal agencies in charge of public lands to involve local and state stakeholders more closely in land management planning — that perceived disconnect has been the source of criticism and conflict in the West regarding federal oversight of public lands.
The MLP process is a new tool that promises to address some of that top-down, fragmented approach to public land management. To their credit, the BLM is listening and incorporating suggestions from local ranchers, conservation groups and elected officials into their leasing plan for South Park.
This landscape level, “smart from the start” approach is one way for stakeholders to find consensus on commonsense, balanced solutions that allow careful, responsible energy development to occur while protecting our most valuable natural resources.
The lesson I take from the Roan? We can find solutions through respectful dialogue—and we shouldn’t wait for litigation to do so. [ed. emphasis mine] Coloradoans can meet our needs for energy development and for preserving healthy rivers and lands by talking earlier to each other and looking for common ground.
David Nickum is executive director of Colorado Trout Unlimited.
The Environmental Protection Agency this week told state, local and tribal governments about how much they would receive in Gold King Mine spill reimbursements, with most falling far short of what was requested…
“I was disappointed in this most recent letter, but not surprised,” La Plata County Manager Joe Kerby said of the notification.
La Plata County was among the 12 affected governments listed as Gold King reimbursement recipients, according to EPA documents. The state of New Mexico was expected to receive the most at $1,072,585, but this money will be split among 14 different local governments and state agencies.
Allocations to the states of Utah and Colorado are still pending.
But the other governments have been directed to the appeals process if they disagree with the reimbursement decision, EPA letters said.
It is unknown how long an appeal might take, said Andrew Mutter a spokesman for EPA.
“We don’t have a specified time line, but we will work as fast as we can to resolve any appeals,” he said.
Kerby believes at least another $29,000 in reimbursements mostly to cover La Plata County staff time is warranted.
This would cover time the staff spent in meetings after Oct. 31, the date the agency closed its incident command in Durango. The county has asked the EPA multiple times to consider reimbursements for expenses that occurred after this date, he said.
“The EPA has reimbursed us for a substantial amount, I believe they should reimburse us 100 percent,” he said.
Pending legislation would allow Gold King expenses after Oct. 31 to be reimbursed, according to a statement from Sen. Michael Bennet’s office.
Bennet also expressed disappointment in the EPA in a written statement.
“Although we’re relieved the EPA has finally ended its long drawn-out reimbursement process, it’s disappointing that the agency has not reimbursed the communities for more of their costs,” Bennet said in a statement. “We will continue to fight for our measure to enable further reimbursements and establish a long-term water monitoring program.”
La Plata County’s total request included about $2.5 million for future costs, which were denied as well.
Part of the problem may be communication.
“We didn’t have a clear direction from the EPA as to what they would and would not reimburse,” Kerby said.
The city of Durango requested $444,032 for costs it incurred during the toxic waste spill and about $5.2 million for future costs through 2030, according to an EPA letter.
The EPA approved $55,403 in reimbursement related to the spill, and the city has already received these funds, said Sherri Dugdale, assistant to the city manager.
The city staff members have not reviewed the EPA’s decision enough to say whether they might consider an appeal, she said.
The city was asked to anticipate future costs and include those in its request, but the city had not included these funds in the city budget, she said.
The EPA will also fund a cooperative agreement with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment that will cover the city’s request for $101,465 for improvements to the Santa Rita pump station monitoring system, the letter said.
The city pumps water from the Animas River at the station.
The costs that the EPA decided not reimburse the city for include lost revenue from the sale of water, travel costs and working lunches.
Food is not a reimbursable cost under the Comprehensive Environmental Response and Liability Act, which is governing the reimbursements, Mutter said.
San Juan County and Silverton received $349,565 of the $8.4 million the two governments requested.
The county and the town would consider an appeal together, if one is warranted, Town Manager Bill Gardner said.
He could not say, yet, if that is the case.
“They are extremely helpful, and I think it is fair we are reimbursed,” he said, of reimbursements.
The EPA’s regional representatives have done their best to get the town and city reimbursed, he said.
The Animas flows orange through Durango on Aug. 7, 2015, two days after the Gold King Mine spill. (Photo by Esm Cadiente http://www.terraprojectdiaries.com)
The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it will pay $4.5 million to state, local and tribal governments for their emergency response to a mine spill that the EPA triggered, but the agency turned down $20.4 million in other requests for past and future expenses.
The EPA provided the figures to The Associated Press a day after informing two Indian tribes and more than a dozen state and local agencies in Colorado and New Mexico…
The EPA said in a statement Friday it is following federal law that dictates what it can pay…
The EPA said the Navajo Nation had requested $1.4 million and would be reimbursed $603,000. The difference in the EPA and Navajo figures couldn’t immediately be reconciled.
Navajo Nation officials had no immediate comment Friday on the EPA’s reimbursement decisions.
Among the Navajos’ costs that EPA rejected was more than $250,000 to haul drinking water to replace supplies taken from the San Juan. The EPA did agree to pay more than $90,000 to transport water to two areas until early September 2015 but said the river quality had returned to pre-spill levels by then.
The EPA turned down requests from several local and tribal governments to be repaid for such spill-related expenses as attorney fees, future water quality monitoring and travel to testify before Congress.
The EPA agreed to pay New Mexico $1.1 million but rejected $236,000 in requests. The reimbursements are for the San Juan County cities of Aztec and Farmington, and 11 state agencies.
State Environment Secretary Butch Tongate said he was pleased the EPA was repaying the costs and said the state will pursue reimbursement for long-term monitoring as well.
The EPA’s reimbursement decisions can be appealed. None of the governments reached Friday had decided whether to do so.
La Plata County, Colorado, may decide next week, County Manager Joe Kerby said.
“We are extremely disappointed in their response,” Kerby said. “Disappointed but not surprised.”
EPA rejected some of the county’s costs because they came after Oct. 31, 2015, the day the EPA closed down its incident command center. But Kerby said the county kept accumulating response costs after that.
Kerby said the EPA has repaid the county about $377,000, and he believes the agency owes it another $29,000 in expenses.
On April 7, 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed adding the “Bonita Peak Mining District” to the National Priorities List, making it eligible for Superfund. Forty-eight mine portals and tailings piles are “under consideration” to be included. The Gold King Mine will almost certainly be on the final list, as will the nearby American Tunnel. The Mayflower Mill #4 tailings repository, just outside Silverton, is another likely candidate, given that it appears to be leaching large quantities of metals into the Animas River. What Superfund will entail for the area beyond that, and when the actual cleanup will begin, remains unclear. Eric Baker
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a provision Thursday aimed at speeding up the process for damage claims from last year’s Gold King Mine spill into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River.
The provision would require the Environmental Protection Agency to submit all claims from states, local governments and tribes within 180 days of the bill being enacted. Part of a broader legislative package addressing improvements to the nation’s water infrastructure, it also would authorize federal funding for a water quality monitoring program for bodies of water contaminated by the August 2015 mine spill. The plume of toxic sludge traveled from the mine down the Animas and into the San Juan River, affecting communities in four states.
The goal of the provision is to establish a quicker procedure for reimbursing claimants on damages resulting from government negligence under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The EPA has admitted responsibility for the accident and has already granted more than a quarter million dollars to state and local officials to cover cleanup costs…
The water infrastructure act, which also includes emergency funding for the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and drought relief, moves to the Senate for a vote expected before the end of the year.
The orange plume flows through the Animas across the Colorado/New Mexico state line the afternoon of Aug. 7, 2015. (Photo by Melissa May, San Juan Soil and Conservation District)
From the Associated Press via the The Denver Post:
The Navajo Nation has submitted a claim of more than $160 million in damages to the federal government over last year’s mine waste spill that fouled rivers in three western states.
A cleanup team led by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency triggered the August 2015 spill while working at the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado.
The 3-million-gallon blowout tainted rivers in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah with tons of toxic heavy metals including arsenic, mercury and lead.
In a letter Monday to the EPA, attorneys say the tribe still awaits more than $3 million in unreimbursed expenses for costs through Sept. 30 to deal with the spill that contaminated the San Juan River.
The tribe also is seeking $159 million for 10 years of health monitoring and other assessments.
The Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine, formerly and historically the Cresson Mine, is an active gold mine located near the town of Victor, in the Cripple Creek mining district in the US state of Colorado. It is the largest current producer of gold in Colorado, and produced 211,000 troy ounces of gold in 2014. Photo credit Wikimedia.
From the Associated Press (Matthew Brown) via the The Denver Post:
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday said it plans to require mining companies to show they have the financial wherewithal to clean up their pollution so taxpayers aren’t stuck footing the bill.
The proposal follows a 2015 court order for the government to enforce a long-ignored provision in the 1980 federal Superfund law.
The requirement would apply to hardrock mining, which includes mines for precious metals, copper, iron, lead and other ores. It would cover mines in 38 states, requiring their owners to set aside sufficient money to pay for future clean ups.
The EPA is considering similar requirements for chemical manufacturers, power generation companies and the petroleum refining and coal manufacturing industries.
From 2010 to 2013, the EPA spent $1.1 billion on cleanup work at abandoned hardrock mining and processing sites across the U.S. [ed. emphasis mine]
The new rule “would move the financial burden from taxpayers and ensure that industry assumes responsibility for these cleanups,” EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus said.
Contaminated water from mine sites can flow into rivers and other waterways, harming aquatic life and threatening drinking water supplies. Companies in the past avoided cleanup costs in many cases by declaring bankruptcy…
The National Mining Association said the new rule was “unnecessary, redundant and poorly constructed,” because existing programs prevent mines from becoming Superfund sites.
The group accused government officials of overstating the potential risks from modern mining techniques, in a rushed attempt to put a new rule in place before President Barack Obama leaves the White House next month.
U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop of Utah and Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan voiced similar concerns. The Republicans said programs in place at the state level already ensure the environment is protected and predicted the EPA proposal would result in a multibillion dollar obligation for the mining industry.
In documents released with the new rule, the EPA said that since 1980, at least 52 mines and mine processing sites using modern techniques had spills or other releases of pollution.
There are about 300 hardrock mines in the U.S. Combined they produced about $26.6 billion worth of metals last year, according to mining association Senior Vice President Ashley Burke. Of those mines, the EPA said 221 would be subject to the rule.
The agency took the first step toward seeking financial assurances on cleanups from hardrock mining companies in 2010 in response to a lawsuit from environmental groups.
In 2014, frustration with the agency’s slow progress prompted the Sierra Club, Earthworks and other groups to file a second suit that resulted in last year’s court order. A subsequent order in that case requires the EPA to finalize its rule by Dec. 1, 2017.
Farmers and ranchers who work in close proximity to oil and gas production, especially if that extraction involves fracking, need to be aware of the effects of that process on their operations, according to a presentation made Tuesday morning during the Eastern Colorado Crop Production Conference in Fort Morgan.
While the boom in hydrologic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” began a decade ago, researchers are just now asking serious questions about the impact of fracking fluids on crops, livestock and people. Molly McLaughlin, a doctoral candidate at Colorado State University, told the 80-plus attendees at the Fort Morgan conference that she hopes her research will answer some of those questions.
The most surprising revelation from McLaughlin’s presentation is that some “produced water” from oil and gas wells is actually used to irrigate crops and water livestock.
The researcher explained that there are two kinds of fluids involved in fracking. The first is the fracturing fluid that is forced into the drilled well to widen fractures in the bore hole. The fluid consists mainly of water but also contains chemicals to reduce friction of fluids against the well casing, biocides to kill bacteria that may grow in the warm, wet environment, and “proppants” that hold the fractures open so oil and gas can flow into them to be extracted. McLoughlin said wells in eastern Colorado use an average of about 3 million gallons of water per well during the fracturing process, mixed with about 30,000 gallons of chemicals.
The other fluid is the produced water, or fluid that flows back out of the well during the extraction of oil and gas. McLoughlin said most of the fracturing fluids are expelled from the well in the first few years of production, but that water will flow out for the life of the well, or about 30 years in most cases. During later years, most of the water is what was already in the geologic formation that contains the oil or gas being pumped out. She pointed out that this is not water from aquifers that supply water for human consumption. As oil and gas production decreases, she said, water production increases.
Most of the exposure to fracking fluids and produced water happens during spills, McLoughlin said, and virtually all spills must be reported to state authorities. She said contamination can come from spilled chemicals getting into surface water, such as nearby lakes and streams, or by leaching through soil into shallow aquifers.
McLoughlin said most of the chemicals used in fracking will degrade fairly rapidly if they are spilled into soil, but that combinations of chemicals degrade at different rates. She said the presence of salts in the produced water can retard degradation by six months or more. Her research is aimed at determining the degradation rates of various chemical combinations, and the effects those combinations have on soil, crops, livestock, and people.
Wastewater from oil and gas wells is treated, McLoughlin said, by skimming pollutants off of the top of holding ponds, by heating the wastewater, or by adding neutralizing chemicals. She said increasingly, treated water is being used to irrigate some crops and water some livestock.
McLaughlin showed research being done at the University of California at Davis that uses produced water to irrigate switch grass for biofuels or cotton for textiles.
An online article from the California Environmental Protection Agency states that produced water from oil and gas wells there is treated and then blended with other water to irrigate crops in the arid inland areas of the state. The CEPA closely monitors that water, the article said, and the state’s Food Safety Expert Panel monitors the crops grown with that water.
McLoughlin concluded her presentation by saying that much more research needs to be done on potential impacts of oil and gas wastewater on food production.
Ray Kemble holds two samples of well water from his neighborhood in Dimock, PA. He says the water was contaminated after fracking. – Amanda Hrycyna for APM Reports
Top officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year made critical changes at the eleventh hour to a highly anticipated, five-year scientific study of hydraulic fracturing’s effect on the nation’s drinking water. The changes, later criticized by scientists for lacking evidence, played down the risk of pollution that can result from the well-drilling technique known as fracking.
Documents obtained by APM Reports and Marketplace show that in the six weeks before the study’s public release, officials inserted a key phrase into the executive summary that said researchers did not find evidence of “widespread systemic impacts” of fracking by the oil and gas industry on the nation’s drinking water.
Earlier draft versions emphasized more directly that fracking has contaminated drinking water in some places.
The documents also show that the news release accompanying the scientific study was changed on June 3, 2015, the day before it was made public. A draft displayed a conclusion that the EPA had identified “potential vulnerabilities” to drinking water. But the final release dated June 4, concluded: “Assessment shows hydraulic fracturing activities have not led to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water resources and identifies important vulnerabilities to drinking water resources.”
In a conference call with reporters about the study on the day it was released, the EPA’s deputy administrator, Tom Burke, highlighted the lack of “widespread, systemic impacts” as the agency’s top finding.
In fact, scientists had found evidence in some places that fracking activity had polluted drinking water supplies.
In all, the agency identified more than two dozen instances in which hydraulic fracturing had an impact on water resources. The agency also identified hundreds of other spills, many of which reached soil and water.
It’s not clear precisely who inserted or ordered the new phrasing. But emails acquired via the Freedom of Information Act show EPA officials, including press officers, met with key advisers to President Obama to discuss marketing strategy a month before the study’s release. The emails also show EPA public relations people exchanging a flurry of messages between 4 and 11 p.m. on the eve of the study’s release.
A small proportion of sinks and water fountains in Denver, Jeffco and Cherry Creek schools have been taken out of service because of high lead levels found after school district testing in the summer and fall.
So far, results are back for one-third of Denver schools, mostly elementaries. They show that about 4 percent of samples came back high. Some schools have no sinks or fountains with elevated lead levels, while others — such as Cory and Greenlee elementaries, and Denver Montessori Junior/Senior High School — have four or five.
“We haven’t really found anything alarming,” said Joni Rix, environmental services manager for DPS. “Certainly we’ve found lead, but it’s not widespread.”
Fixes, which are expected to cost around $500,000, will happen at every school with elevated lead levels, she said.
That’s not the case in Jeffco, where testing revealed that about 80 percent of schools have at least one sink or water fountain with high lead levels.
While smaller fixes have been or will be made, district officials say voters’ rejection of the district’s $535 million bond issue earlier this month will make extensive plumbing repairs impossible.
“If it’s any kind of big fix it’s probably not going to happen,” said district spokeswoman Diana Wilson. “It’s probably going to be easier to shut some sinks down.”
In Cherry Creek, where testing was conducted this fall, some schools had elevated levels. In most cases, fixes have already been made, though more systemic problems surfaced at the 1980s-era Creekside Elementary. Water samples from 10 locations in the school had elevated lead levels and samples from most other locations also showed some lead, though not above the federal limit.
District spokeswoman Tustin Amole said via email that students there are drinking bottled water until repairs can be completed — probably over winter break.
The risk of lead poisoning from school water is relatively low, according to experts in Colorado. Still, they say school officials are right to be aware of it given that high lead levels can severely impair children’s physical and mental development.
School districts aren’t required to test their water for lead unless they’re considered public water systems. (That’s the case in some rural districts and on a limited basis in Jeffco, which provides water to six mountain schools.)
Still, in the wake of the lead-poisoning crisis in Flint, Mich., last year, Colorado’s five largest school districts all decided to test their water.
Douglas County School District launched its effort last spring at 19 older schools, and had no samples above the federal 15-parts-per-billion threshold, according to district records provided to Chalkbeat last summer.
Jeffco began districtwide lead-testing in June and Denver followed in August. In Jeffco, testing is now complete save for a small number of re-tests in locations where fixes have been made.
Aurora Public Schools began testing school water in October, and so far results are available for two early childhood centers, according to the district’s lead-testing web page. Neither have elevated lead levels.
Results for the remaining two-thirds of Denver’s schools will be back by the end of January. Rix said she expects a similar proportion of those samples — 4 to 5 percent — to have elevated levels. All told, district staff collected more than 4,000 water samples this fall.
Starting this Saturday, DPS will also test some schools’ service lines — the pipes that run from buildings to the city’s water mains under the street — to determine whether they are made of lead. That testing, which involves drilling into the ground to reach the service lines, will start at Newlon, Cowell, Goldrick, Schmitt and Knapp elementary schools.
The five, all built in the 1950s, are among 69 district schools that may have their service lines tested this year. The $572 million bond Denver voters passed earlier this month will provide $800,000 to replace lead service lines.
The Town of Winter Park scheduled a meeting in Denver with the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), participants from Grand County, CDPHE (Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment), UPRR (Union Pacific Railroad), CDM Smith (UPRR’s consultant), Winter Park Ranch and HRS Water Consultants, Inc. on November 21. The meeting was to address the Class V injection well permitting process regarding the permit that will be submitted by the UPRR for a well near the Moffat Tunnel.
According to Lisa McClain-Vanderpool, Public Affairs Officer for the EPA the purpose of the meeting was to educate the parties on the Class V well permitting process and discuss issues associated with the wastewater treatment plant project for discharges from the Moffat Tunnel to the Fraser River. EPA’s UIC (Underground Injection Control) Class V program has authorized the construction of an onsite waste water system for domestic waste. UPRR will submit a Class V permit application for its wastewater treatment facility. Additional sanitary waste would be dumped into the system as well.
WINTER PARK’S CONCERNS
Winter Park Town Manager Drew Nelson said, prior to the meeting, that with the nature of the soils in the area, the Town is concerned that contaminants could easily move between the septic and leach field into the Fraser River. The meeting was not held to address the contaminants seen discharging into the Fraser River in September, but only concerned waste materials generated by the new water treatment facility. The facility has been under construction for the last few years.
GRAND COUNTY’S CONCERNS
Grand County Water Specialist Katherine Morris expressed the Water Resource Management department’s concerns about the project to the Grand County BOCC (Board of County Commissioners) on November 1.
Morris submitted an update memo stating that the treatment plant has a bathroom and faucet needing treatment, and will produce a certain amount of centrate waste from the plant waste treatment process that needs to be dealt with appropriately. UPRR applied to Winter Park Water and Sanitation District (WPWSD) to accept the waste stream and was granted a variance from the compulsion to connect because the waste will be classified “industrial” and would require reopening WPWSD’s permit and likely redesign of the plant. UPRR then applied to the county for Class V injection permit, which is essentially an OWTS (On-site Water Treatment System). The OWTS was declined because it would include industrial rather than solely domestic waste. Morris said Grand County Water had several concerns about the new application. She said it is unclear if the plant has a source of potable water for the restroom. Because there is no acknowledgment yet in the discharge permit of the organic contamination within the discharge, to the county’s knowledge, the plant was not designed to treat organics, and it is unclear how much of a threat the organics pose. The update states it is not clear what will be the fate and transport of organics through the treatment process, and they don’t know how much of the organic pollutants will end up in the centrate that is destined for the OWTS. Morris referenced the discharge from the Moffat Tunnel in September, stating that events like that are likely to overwhelm the plant. The update asked: if an OWTS is approved, what oversight will there be to ensure that highly concentrated discharges are actually processed through the plant? And is an OWTS adequate to the task of safely breaking down any organics that survive treatment, or will they just concentrate in the vault or travel by groundwater through the relatively close connection to the Fraser River?
WHAT IS A CLASS V INJECTION WELL?
According to the EPA website, a Class V well uses injection techniques different from those used by wells in other classes. Some Class V wells are technologically advanced disposal systems, but most are low-tech holes in the ground. A typical Class V well is shallow and relies on gravity to drain or inject waste into the ground, which is often directly into, or above, an underground source of drinking water. Class V wells are used to inject non-hazardous fluids underground. Most are used to dispose of waste into or above underground sources of drinking water. This disposal can pose a threat to ground water quality if not managed properly.
Examples of simple class V wells are dry wells, cesspools, and septic system leach fields.
REQUIREMENTS
The EPA has established minimum requirements to prevent injection wells from contaminating underground sources of drinking water. According to the EPA website, in most cases Class V wells are authorized by rule—meaning they may be operated without a permit as long as the owners or operators abide by a set of regulations:
Submittal of inventory information to their permitting authority and verify that they are authorized to inject—the permitting authority will review the information to be sure that the well will not endanger drinking water
Operate the wells in a way that does not endanger drinking water.
APPLICATION PROCESS
The process for a Class V application relies on public input, according to McClain-Vanderpool.
First, an applicant submits an application to the UIC unit. The UIC unit will make sure the application is complete. If complete the review process starts.
After the technical and administrative review process is done and the application meets EPA requirements, they continue on to the next step. If it does not meet EPA requirements, a letter is sent to the applicant explaining the reason it was not approved.
The UIC program will draft a permit and submit it for a 30-day public notice on their website and in the local newspaper.
If no comments are received, the UIC unit will finalize the permit and issue it. If they get public comment, they will consider the comments for their decision.
The timeline depends on the complete application and the public notice response.
The UIC unit cannot estimate a timeline for this process, according to McClain-Vanderpool.
Click here to read the report. Here’s the abstract:
To evaluate the influence of military training activities on streamflow and water quality, the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of the Army, began a hydrologic data collection network on the U.S. Army Garrison Fort Carson in 1978 and on the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in 1983. This report is a summary and characterization of the precipitation, streamflow, and water-quality data collected at 43 sites between October 1, 2012, and September 30, 2014 (water years 2013 and 2014).
Variations in the frequency of daily precipitation, seasonal distribution, and seasonal and annual precipitation at 5 stations at the U.S. Army Garrison Fort Carson and 18 stations at or near the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site were evaluated. Isohyetal diagrams indicated a general pattern of increase in total annual precipitation from east to west at the U.S. Army Garrison Fort Carson and the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. Between about 54 and 79 percent of daily precipitation was 0.1 inch or less in magnitude. Precipitation events were larger and more frequent between July and September.
Daily streamflow data from 16 sites were used to evaluate temporal and spatial variations in streamflow for the water years 2013 and 2014. At all sites, median daily mean streamflow for the 2-year period ranged from 0.0 to 9.60 cubic feet per second. Daily mean streamflow hydrographs are included in this report. Five sites on the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site were monitored for peak stage using crest-stage gages.
At the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, five sites had a stage recorder and precipitation gage, providing a paired streamflow-precipitation dataset. There was a statistically significant correlation between precipitation and streamflow based on Spearman’s rho correlation (rho values ranged from 0.17 to 0.35).
Suspended-sediment samples were collected in April through October for water years 2013–14 at one site at the U.S. Army Garrison Fort Carson and five sites at the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site. Suspended-sediment-transport curves were used to illustrate the relation between streamflow and suspended-sediment concentration. All these sediment-transport curves showed a streamflow dependent suspended-sediment concentration relation except for the U.S. Geological Survey station Bent Canyon Creek at mouth near Timpas, CO.
Water-quality data were collected and reported from seven sites on the U.S. Army Garrison Fort Carson and the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site during water years 2013–14. Sample results exceeding an established water-quality standard were identified. Selected water-quality properties and constituents were stratified to compare spatial variation among selected characteristics using boxplots.
Trilinear diagrams were used to classify water type based on ionic concentrations of water-quality samples collected during the study period.
At the U.S. Army Garrison Fort Carson and the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, 27 samples were classified as very hard or brackish. Seven samples had a lower hardness character relative to the other samples. Four of those nine samples were collected at two U.S. Geological Survey stations (Turkey Creek near Fountain, CO, and Little Fountain Creek above Highway 115 at Fort Carson, CO), which have different geologic makeup. Three samples collected at the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site had a markedly lower hardness likely because of dilution from an increase in streamflow.
This image was taken during the peak outflow from the Gold King Mine spill at 10:57 a.m. Aug. 5. The waste-rock dump can be seen eroding on the right. Federal investigators placed blame for the blowout squarely on engineering errors made by the Environmental Protection Agency’s-contracted company in a 132-page report released Thursday [October 22, 2015]
From the Associated Press (Dan Boyd) via The Albuquerque Journal:
New Mexico’s lawsuit against neighboring Colorado over the fallout of a massive mine spill could be affected by the pending presidential transition, after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday asked the federal Department of Justice to weigh in on the case…
Top-ranking state officials indicated Monday that they are taking a wait-and-see approach to the request for the federal government’s legal opinion – even if that means a drawn-out court saga.
“We will be interested to read the U.S. Office of the Solicitor General’s opinion of our lawsuit filed in the U.S. Supreme Court against the state of Colorado,” state Environment Secretary-designate Butch Tongate said in a statement.
New Mexico’s lawsuit, filed in June, contends Colorado was too lax in its oversight of water contaminated by decades of mining and should be held responsible for the fallout of the 2015 Gold King mine spill. It was filed by Attorney General Hector Balderas’ office and outside attorneys hired by the Environment Department…
In addition to the lawsuit against Colorado, New Mexico has also filed a lawsuit in federal court against the EPA and the owners of a mine adjacent to the Gold King Mine. That lawsuit seeks more than $136 million in damages, which would be used to pay for economic losses the state attributes to the mine spill, specifically in the tourism, recreation and agriculture sectors.
The U.S. Supreme Court…handles cases that involve one state suing another. And it’s common for the nation’s highest court to ask the solicitor general, a top attorney within the Justice Department, to weigh in on such cases by filing official court briefs. The briefs lay out the federal government’s views on the case, including its merits.
New Mexico Environment Department Chief Scientist Dennis McQuillan will present an update Monday on the department’s monitoring efforts on the Animas River following last year’s Gold King Mine spill, according to an NMED press release.
In August 2015, crews working for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency triggered a blowout at the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colo. The blowout caused millions of gallons of water laden with toxic mine waste to flow down Cement Creek into the Animas River and eventually the San Juan River.
Following the spill, NMED formed a Gold King Mine Spill Citizens’ Advisory Committee. The committee will meet at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the San Juan College Student Center, 4601 College Blvd. Meetings are open to the public.
FromThe Glenwood Springs Post Independent (Pam Boyd):
…a new report prepared by the Colorado Rural Water Association for the town of Gypsum has reminded the community that wildfire impact is the top risk identified for its drinking water system.
Source water specialist Paul Hempel prepared the report for the town.
“People don’t ever think about water safety, really. Water just comes out of the tap,” said Hempel.
But water does come from somewhere, and ensuring the safety of their water sources is a prime concern for municipal providers. Source water assessment and protection came into existence in 1996 as a result of Congressional amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act. The amendments required each state to develop a source water assessment and protection program. In Colorado, the Water Quality Control Division, an agency of the state Department of Public Health and Environment, assumed the responsibility for conducting the program.
The effort includes four parts:
• Delineating the source water assessment area for each of the drinking water sources.
• Conducting a contaminant source inventory to identify potential sources of contamination within each of the source water assessment areas.
• Conducting a susceptibility analysis to determine the potential susceptibility of each public drinking water source to the different sources of contamination.
• Reporting the results of the source water assessment to the public water systems and the general public.
GYPSUM’S THREATS
Gypsum obtains its drinking water from one intake on Mosher Spring and two intakes on Gypsum Creek. The town supplies drinking water to approximately 7,000 residents with 2,791 connections. The average daily demand on the system is 1.23 million gallons, and the average peak demand is 1.43 million gallons.
The Gypsum stakeholder group included representatives from the town, Eagle County, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the Gypsum Fire Protection District, the Eagle River Watershed Council and several local landowners.
Through the process, Hempel assisted a steering committee as they categorized the potential course of contamination and issues of concern for the town’s water. The identification noted both the probability of impact from various sources as well as the level of risk they presented.
VERY HIGH AND CATASTROPHIC
The study revealed wildfire impact to the upper watershed, located on Forest Service property, was the greatest danger to Gypsum’s water supply. The risk level was categorized as “very high” and the impact to the system was classified as “catastrophic.”
“It is certainly Gypsum’s No. 1 concern” said Hempel.
But the community isn’t unique in this regard. Hempel noted many mountain communities that get water from surface sources identified similar risks and impacts. While it may be a cliche, it is still true that identifying the problem is the first step toward addressing it.
In Gypsum’s case, Hempel said the town needs to complete more soils and slope study for the area around its intakes to determine a defensible space. Defensible space is a familiar term for anyone who lives in wooded mountain areas, and it refers to a series of actions that can lessen the chances of wholesale property loss due to wildfire. These actions include everything from cutting back thick brush to laying down gravel or other material to limit fuels around a structure.
West Fork Fire June 20, 2013 photo the Pike Hot Shots Wildfire Today
[Stormwater enforcement actions represent] a 10-fold increase over 2015 and a dramatic uptick from a time when the city largely ignored violations of its own stormwater regulations. And this could just be a start — the city is also looking at a new program that would give it even more muscle against violators.
The ramp-up is due in part to Mayor John Suthers’ response to pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Those agencies issued two highly critical reports of the city’s stormwater maintenance and regulation enforcement in recent years, and on Nov. 9 the EPA filed a lawsuit alleging the city’s lax approach violates its MS4 permit and the Clean Water Act. The lawsuit could bring multi-million-dollar civil penalties and federal monitoring.
In early 2007, City Council imposed stormwater fees on property owners, raising about $16 million a year for drainage projects and maintenance.
But in 2009, the Council defunded the program after voters approved a measure aimed at killing the fees. After that, the EPA lawsuit states, the city’s stormwater program limped along on an average of $1.6 million a year from 2011 to 2014.
Despite a scathing EPA report in 2013, then-Mayor Steve Bach did little, and even opposed a citizen-driven ballot measure for drainage that failed in 2014. Without more money, city officials have said, they couldn’t effectively track down violators.
That neglect had ramifications: In addition to possible EPA fines, uncontrolled drainage enraged officials in downstream Pueblo County, who in turn threatened agreements on Colorado Springs Utilities’ Southern Delivery System pipeline. So, earlier this year, Suthers and Council adopted a $460-million, 20-year stormwater program to fend off fines and cope with the city’s extensive drainage problems. One part of that program: oversight to verify compliance by contractors. Last year, the city’s stormwater staff numbered about 20. Today, it stands at 56, and another 10 will be added next year. Many of those are inspectors who troll for violators…
Though stormwater program manager Rich Mulledy says inspectors fan out over the city, most offenses were spotted on the city’s northeast side where development is brisk, records show…
Mulledy stresses the city would rather gain compliance than punish builders. He doesn’t like the word “crackdown” to describe the city’s approach in enforcing its MS4 permit, which requires erosion control for all projects larger than one acre.
“Just because of the number of houses being built, we’ve really stepped up,” he says, quickly adding that the industry has proven a willing partner. The city, he notes, has the authority to issue summonses that carry fines of $500 per day, but no fines have been levied so far.
“We’ve had compliance,” he says, “We’re committed from the city’s standpoint to make sure we’re doing the right thing to meet our permit going forward, and I feel the industry is supportive going forward. We have to meet the federal permit for sure, but we want to do the right thing and still have developers make progress and be able to do business.”
Builders and developers are all in, says Tim Seibert, president of the Housing and Building Association of Colorado Springs.
“Obviously, just like the mayor stated, we’re not pleased to hear the EPA has filed a lawsuit,” Seibert says. “We think there is a better solution. But at the end of the day, we want to be at the table and be sure we’re in compliance.”
Seibert says the HBA hosts monthly “Wet Wednesday” meetings at which its members are instructed in stormwater regulations, such as erosion control and best management practices.
“With the recent enforcement, we’ve stepped that up,” he adds. “We’ve made it more thorough. We’ve gotten a lot of cooperation from the city telling us, ‘These are the practices we need to see.’ I think that’s been very helpful for them to get in contact with guys in the field doing the implementation.”
The HBA also added a monthly meeting with Mulledy at which design standards are discussed. “We want to make sure we’re not getting ourselves in trouble, and we don’t want the city to get in trouble,” Seibert says.
He also says that as the city shapes its program to satisfy federal authorities, HBA members realize more enforcement is coming.
Mulledy won’t discuss details of the new program — still being worked out — but says it will clarify enforcement steps, and allow officials to “jump steps” if a violation poses an immediate threat to the city’s stormwater system or downstream. Currently being reviewed by stakeholders, the program will be introduced within a few months.
“In general,” Mulledy says, “it’s going to be more specific and give us more tools.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s temporary water-treatment facility at Gold King Mine, October 2015, via Steve Lewis/The Durango Herald.
From the Associated Press (Dan Elliott) via The Farmington Daily Times:
A final decision will be made next month, the EPA said. The agency announced its intentions last week.
The plant began operating in October 2015, and the agency said at the time it would run at least through the end of this month and possibly longer…
The EPA is looking at long-term solutions for the Gold King and 47 other nearby mining sites, which send millions of gallons of acidic wastewater to creeks and rivers every year. The area was designated a Superfund site in September, clearing the way for a multimillion-dollar federal cleanup expected to take years.
The temporary treatment plant cost $2.9 million. The original plant cost $1.8 million, and the EPA later expanded it for $1.1 million more.
It is being run for slightly less than expected. The EPA initially said it would cost $20,000 a week to run, but the agency said Tuesday the cost is about $16,000 a week.
Cleanup so far has cost about $29 million, the EPA said. That money has gone toward work and reimbursements and aid to state and local governments affected by the Gold King spill.
The temporary treatment plant could be in operation for at least two years while the EPA investigates the area and evaluates long-term options, the agency said.
On April 7, 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed adding the “Bonita Peak Mining District” to the National Priorities List, making it eligible for Superfund. Forty-eight mine portals and tailings piles are “under consideration” to be included. The Gold King Mine will almost certainly be on the final list, as will the nearby American Tunnel. The Mayflower Mill #4 tailings repository, just outside Silverton, is another likely candidate, given that it appears to be leaching large quantities of metals into the Animas River. What Superfund will entail for the area beyond that, and when the actual cleanup will begin, remains unclear. Eric Baker
Storm drain and open channel improvements between the East Rail Line (38th & Blake Station) and the South Platte River (Globeville Landing Outfall), Stormwater detention/conveyance between the East Rail Line (38th & Blake Station) and Colorado Blvd, (Montclair Basin) Stormwater detention/ conveyance immediately east of Colorado Blvd. (Park Hill Basin).
The city of Denver’s $300 million stormwater diversion project has already generated significant community resistance, from complaints over the sharp hike in stormwater fees needed to finance the plan to protests over the impacts the construction will have on north Denver neighborhoods and the City Park Golf Course to heated debates over who truly benefits from the project.
But as more details of the plan become public, opponents of the Platte to Park Hill Stormwater Systems are increasingly focusing on a little-discussed aspect of the project: the decision to direct storm runoff to the South Platte River through a heavily polluted Superfund site, a process that some fear could expose the river and nearby neighborhoods to a toxic brew of contaminants from arsenic-laced groundwater and a long-buried landfill.
“This is authentically nuts,” says civil engineer Adrian Brown, who’s raised questions with city engineers about the viability of the storm runoff outfall design. “If this thing fails, it’s just going to deposit the whole landfill into the river.”
Public works officials say the project is safe and will actually improve river quality. They have touted Platte to Park Hill (or “P2PH”) as a necessary fix for long-festering drainage problems in the northeast part of the city — water that flows north and west from Fairmount Cemetery through the Montclair, Park Hill, Cole and Whittier neighborhoods to Elyria, Swansea, Globeville and ultimately the South Platte River. Officials have stressed that some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods will benefit from the improvements, which include a fifteen-block channel along East 39th Avenue, an expanded outfall area at Globeville Landing Park, and a thirty-acre detention “pond” at the golf course, which won’t fill up except in the worst storms.
The number of Jeffco schools affected by unsafe levels of lead in drinking water from at least one sink or water fountain has risen to 109.
According to documents posted to the district’s website, approximately 7,500 samples have been taken from 144 schools since June 3, and more than 500 of those samples showed lead levels above the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum allowable level, which is 15 parts per billion.
As of Wednesday morning, test results are back for 137 schools, and approximately 80 percent have lead levels above the EPA threshold.
The test results show that a significant number of classroom and laboratory sinks are affected, as well as numerous food service sinks and sprayers, and drinking fountains in girls’ locker rooms at several schools. The lead levels at the affected schools range from 15.1 to 3,704.8 parts per billion.
Commenting on the latest numbers, district spokeswoman Diana Wilson said some of the results were expected due to the age of many of the buildings.
“Considering the age of many of our schools, we knew there was a risk that some of the plumbing fixtures could result in lead content in the drinking water being above the EPA recommended level. That is exactly what led us to test,” she said.
Six months ago, the district began testing its drinking water after high lead levels were found at the Head Start building the district previously owned in Arvada. Since then pipes and plumbing at several schools have been replaced, and a remediation plan has been developed.
Still, district officials said at a special meeting of the Jeffco school board in late July that the district hadn’t tested for lead since 1990 — partially because it wasn’t legally required to do so.
Test results for a handful of schools are still forthcoming, but do not include charter schools. Wilson said that of the school district’s 155 schools, 10 percent are charters, and “their facilities are not maintained by the district.”
The Widefield Water and Sanitation District became the last major water system to stop using well water from the tainted aquifer, according to the district’s water manager, Brandon Bernard.
As of Nov. 10, all of the district’s customers receive cleaner surface water from the Pueblo Reservoir.
“We’re looking forward to moving forward without having to worry about PFCs,” said Bernard, using an acronym for the toxic chemicals.
The announcement ends one chapter of a water crisis that sent thousands of residents scrambling for bottled water…
The contamination has spawned two class-action lawsuits against companies that manufactured the foam. The Air Force, which found the chemical harmful to laboratory animals as early as the 1970s, also is studying its role in the contamination by drilling several test wells around Peterson Air Force Base…
For months, local water officials raced to limit residents’ exposure to the chemicals, which remain unregulated by the EPA.
Fountain officials shut off their wells in fall 2015 – relying instead on cleaner water from the Pueblo Reservoir. But other water districts couldn’t meet customers’ demands this past summer without using contaminated well water.
Security Water and Sanitation Districts weaned itself from the aquifer in September.
Officials for all three water districts are optimistic that customers will no longer receive contaminated water from the aquifer, unless its cleansed of the toxic chemicals.
Officials in Security and Fountain have previously voiced plans to build treatment plants to filter the fouled water. Water rates there could rise to help finance those projects.
Widefield officials, however, are conducting two test projects to determine whether ion exchange or granular activated carbon filters best remove the chemicals, Bernard said.
Widefield’s test projects, which began in October, are expected to last six months, he said.
The district also is planning a $1 million project to install a pipe under Interstate 25 capable of bringing in more water from the Pueblo Reservoir. Widefield has several thousand acre feet of water stored at the Pueblo Reservoir, and officials there are no longer concerned about running out of water rights this year.
District leaders also plan to meet with Air Force officials on Thursday to coordinate how the military can help filter water. In July, the Air Force vowed to spend $4.3 million to supply bottled water and well water filters for the affected communities.
Unlike other water districts, Widefield is not planning to raise rates in 2017 to pay for the water projects, Bernard said. Rather, they will be paid for using reserve funding.
Customers are only likely to pay for operations costs once a treatment plant is built, he said.
“It’s nice just to not have to worry about our customers being concerned,” Bernard said. “And now we can just move forward with fixing the problem.”
During their monthly meeting…Lower Arkansas board members voted unanimously to join a lawsuit filed last week against Colorado Springs for discharging pollutants into Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River.
Members also said they have asked Pueblo City Council and the Pueblo County commissioners to join the lawsuit, as well.
“I can’t see where Pueblo County and the city cannot step up and do the same thing,” said Anthony Nunez, a former Pueblo County commissioner who sits on the Lower Ark board…
Peter Nichols, an attorney and a Lower Ark director, told board members that intervening in the lawsuit would give them a seat at the table in any sort of trial or negotiated settlement that might occur…
Nunez said Colorado Springs needs to be held accountable and, in the nearly six years he has been on the board, he’s heard the same thing from Colorado Springs over and over again.
“We’ve met with the (Colorado Springs) City Council. I guess to put it in better terms, we meet with half of the City Council because they are always waiting for the next city council,” Nunez said.
“We have talked and talked, and I think it is time that actions be taken.”
[…]
“As long as they can keep giving us the stiff arm — put us off, put us off, put us off — they don’t feel like they have any obligation because, quite frankly, if they have a violation, they pay a small fine and that fine is far less than rectifying the entire problem,” [Melissa Esquibel] said.
Silverton, Colo., lies an at elevation of 9,300 feet in San Juan County, and the Gold King Mine is more than 1,000 feet higher in the valley at the left side of the photo. Photo/Allen Best
This time last year, the Environmental Protection Agency, having breached the portal of the Gold King Mine on Aug. 5, 2015, was still the target of public lashing for the release of 3 million gallons of mine wastewater into the Animas River.
Yet nearly a year ago to the day, officials from Durango, La Plata County, Silverton and San Juan County were on a tour of Superfund sites around Colorado – an event many note as the turning point in the conversations surrounding listing the mines around Silverton as a Superfund site.
And on Monday, at an EPA-hosted public hearing to update the community of Silverton on the workings of the Superfund site, local officials noted the complete 180-degree turn on the tone of conversations.
“After working with this group, it’s been beneficial,” said San Juan County Commissioner Ernie Kuhlman, who historically opposed to a Superfund listing. “We’ve learned a lot from it. They are working with us, and we appreciate having a seat at the table.”
San Juan County Administrator Willy Tookey, too, heaped praise on the EPA for reimbursing the more than $349,000 the county spent in response to the spill, as well as contributing to the local economy.
Tookey said the EPA has populated local hotels and restaurants, as well as hired local firms whenever possible. He estimated EPA crews, as well as other federal agencies, spent a total of 775 nights in Silverton hotels.
“So far, it’s been a pleasant experience,” Tookey said. “Its been a real pleasure to work with the folks from the EPA.”
For most of the two hour-plus meeting, EPA officials listed numerous actions taken over the summer in the Animas watershed, as it addresses 48 mining sites contributing to degraded water quality.
EPA officials, in partnership with multiple agencies, said they completed an extensive evaluation of the Animas River Basin, information they will take into the winter months to draft a more complete plan for cleanup.
Other tasks taken over the summer included minor work at the Brooklyn Mine and installation of two meteorological stations, a precipitation gauge and a full weather station around the Superfund site.
The EPA and Bureau of Land Management also installed four groundwater wells at the Kittimack tailings between Howardsville and Eureka to establish the depth of the water table and define groundwater flows.
And the EPA’s Rebecca Thomas said the agency will consider future expansion of the temporary water-treatment plant to treat mine waste from adjacent mines of the Gold King, namely the Red & Bonita, Mogul and American Tunnel.
“(It being so close) we owe it to ourselves to evaluate treating that water,” Thomas said.
In addition, lesser-known actions were discussed: testing to see if dust kicked up from ATVs could potentially be harmful to human health, or if plants in the basin, used by Native American tribes for medicinal purposes, could have adverse health impacts.
Thomas said an estimated 4 million gallons of mine waste discharge into the Animas watershed every day, and the agency will prioritize the major contributors, as well as look for lower hanging fruit for cleanup actions.
“It is going to be a long-term project,” Thomas said. “We are going to be here for years and years.”
The Fountain Creek Watershed is located along the central front range of Colorado. It is a 927-square mile watershed that drains south into the Arkansas River at Pueblo. The watershed is bordered by the Palmer Divide to the north, Pikes Peak to the west, and a minor divide 20 miles east of Colorado Springs. Map via the Fountain Creek Watershed Flood Control and Greenway District.
Not surprisingly, the federal government sued the city of Colorado Springs on Nov. 9 over the city’s repeated violations of the Clean Water Act and the Colorado Water Quality Control Act. The allegations arise from the city’s failure to deal with drainage and failure to comply with its permit to discharge stormwater into the municipal storm sewer system, which ultimately flows into the Arkansas River.
The suit comes despite Mayor John Suthers orchestrating a deal with Pueblo County earlier this year to fix the city’s storm drainage system, costing taxpayers and Colorado Springs Utilities ratepayers $460 million in the next 20 years.
Suthers took office in June 2015, following years of violations in controlling stormwater. Suthers lamented to other media the City Council’s move to abolish the city’s Stormwater Enterprise in 2009. But Council did so after voters approved Issue 300 that fall, which aimed to dismantle the enterprise. (At the time, the city attorney’s office felt the language in Issue 300 failed to force the shutdown of the enterprise, but City Council defunded it anyway, citing voter intent.)
The EPA, however, cites the city’s soft treatment of developers — along with its lack of a stormwater program — for the violations. In early 2013, the EPA issued a scathing report outlining violations and followed up in August 2015 with an equally critical report.
Specifically, the lawsuit notes the city backed off of requiring detention ponds and other flood-control measures in Cottonwood Creek that would have cost $11.4 million, and instead reduced developers’ fees. But that violates the city’s discharge permit, the lawsuit states. It also notes drainage violations at First & Main adjacent to Powers Boulevard and Flying Horse Pond Filing 26 on the city’s far north side. In addition, the city allowed seven residential developments to be built without requiring stormwater controls, in violation of its discharge permit and its own requirements, the lawsuit says. Moreover, the city didn’t enforce its rules when developers violated the city’s stormwater requirements, according to the suit.
“Unless enjoined, the city’s violations will continue,” the lawsuit states, noting it is seeking unspecified civil penalties.
“On Wednesday, the city was served with a broad and unspecific filing from the EPA, citing Colorado Springs for deficiencies in its stormwater system since the dissolution of the stormwater enterprise in 2009,” Suthers said in a statement. “While we recognize that stormwater was underfunded during that time, this was extremely frustrating, considering the commitment the mayor and city council have already made to massive stormwater improvements over the next 20 years.”
Suthers also noted it makes more sense to use city money to fix the problem than pay to litigate the lawsuit or remit fines. “We will ask the federal judge to look at our efforts and our commitments toward real progress and hope that a more constructive resolution can be reached,” he said.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday it would prefer to continue operations at the temporary water-treatment plant that handles discharges out of the Gold King Mine while the agency continues to evaluate long-term options.
Before the EPA makes that decision final, a public comment period that began Monday will run to Dec. 14.
“As EPA understands more about the hydrology of the area, and how various sources of contamination are affecting water quality, the Agency will consider any number of options, including potential expansion of the IWTP, to address the contamination,” Chris Wardell, of U.S. EPA Region 8, said in a news release.
The second option considered in the report released Monday was to mothball the $1.5 million water-treatment plant, which was built two months after an EPA contracted crew on Aug. 5, 2015, breached the portal of the Gold King Mine, releasing 3 million gallons of mine waste down the Animas River.
The treatment plant’s high cost of operation, as well as the need to deal with the lime-heavy metal sludge by-product, led officials tasked with improving water quality in the Animas River watershed to find other options.
As of last week, the average flow rate into the treatment plant was 712 gallons per minute, and it costs about $16,000 per week to operate.
If EPA, after reviewing public comments, formally decides to continue operations, the agency will move the plant from “emergency removal action” funding to “Non-Time Critical Removal Action,” which falls under the proper Superfund process.
FromAspen Journalism (Allen Best) via The Aspen Daily News:
Nobody disputes that the Colorado-Big Thompson project has changed Grand Lake, the state’s largest, deepest natural lake. How could it not?
In the 1940s, Grand Lake was integrated into the giant C-BT, what the late historian David Lavender called a “massive violation of geography.” It’s Colorado’s largest transmountain diversion project. By one tally in the 1990s, it delivers an average 231,060 acre-feet annually from the headwaters of the Colorado River to cities and farms east of the Continental Divide. This compares to the 105,024 acre-feet from three tunnels through the Sawatch Range east of Aspen.
Almost immediately after the C-BT was completed in 1953, locals began to complain that the project shoehorned into the lake had sullied the lake’s clarity by introducing algae and sediments. This is, they insist, a violation of federal law.
The controversy pivots on Senate Document 80, a part of the Congressional authorization for project funding in 1937. The document describes the needs of irrigation, industrial and power production but also warns against impacts to nearby Rocky Mountain National Park.
The lake, if outside the park, has one of Colorado’s most memorable backdrops. The document specifies the need “to preserve the fishing and recreational facilities and the scenic attractions of Grand Lake…”
On that, say many locals, the C-BT has failed, and they say that until recently they got little response from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that built the C-BT.
But now, in a reversal, the bureau is working with 18 other stakeholders in an effort to solve the problem. Parties include Northern Colorado Water, the agency that manages the diversions for cities and farmers of northeastern Colorado, Grand County and other state and local organizations.
Grand Lake’s story fits into a broad theme of changed sensibilities in Colorado about 20th century river alterations. Restoration and remediation projects are starting or underway on the San Miguel River in Telluride, on the Eagle River at Camp Hale and on the Fraser River near Winter Park.
“It’s possible that at one time, the impacts of the CBT Project on Grand Lake clarity were thought to be just part of the price we pay for valuable water projects,” said Anne Castle, a fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment at the University of Colorado-Boulder. “Now, we are more inclined to believe that the environmental values have significance, including economic significance, and that operations can and should be adjusted to better accommodate these values.”
The work at Grand Lake also illustrates the power of persistence and spunk by advocates of environmental protection. And it involves a collaborative process called adaptive management that emphasizes consensus-based decision-making in solving stubborn issues involving water diversions.
Nobody thinks solving this problem will be easy, though. In April, after several years of working together, the Grand Lake stakeholders submitted a plan to the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission. The plan approved by the commission sets an interim clarity goal for summer pumping during the next five years.
During that time, the Bureau of Reclamation is to develop a plan for long-term solutions. Alternatives include expensive new tunnels, possibly bypassing Grand Lake altogether. A preview of the alternatives may emerge at a meeting of stakeholders in late November.
Not everybody in Grand Lake thinks that reduced clarity is a problem. “There are people who think there’s a problem, but there is no problem,” says Jim Gasner, a member of the Grand Lake Board of Trustees, the town’s elected body, and a fishing “teacher” at Rocky Mountain Outfitters.
But Elwin Crabtree, a real estate agent and former Grand County commissioner, sees something different. “It’s adverse to its natural being,” he said in early August in an interview at his office along the town’s main street of knotty-pined stores and lodges. “I think we look at it as a moral issue,” he added. “I think we believe in having responsibility to be good stewards of our environment.”
The C-BT is an effort to address what one historian in the 1950s called “nature’s error.” Even as Aspen was putting on its silver-lined britches in the 1880s, farmers along the South Platte River and its tributaries were struggling with inadequate water in late summer to finish their corn and other crops.
Grand River Ditch July 2016. Photo credit Greg Hobbs.
Irrigators set out to remedy this. The first large-scale transmountain diversion from the headwaters of the Colorado River began in 1890. Called the Grand River Ditch, it’s beveled into the side of the Never Summer Range in what is now Rocky Mountain National Park, collecting water like a rain gutter from a roof.
Then came the 1930s, the decade of the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression and the New Deal. Farmers in northeastern Colorado had long been agitating for added infusions of water from the Colorado River headwaters. But they couldn’t get it done themselves. They needed federal funding.
Map of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project via Northern Water
The flawed design
But the work along the Continental Divide from 1939 to 1953 created a wound at Grand Lake. In retrospect, the design was flawed.
The C-BT at the Colorado River headwaters consists of three main bodies of interconnected water. Only one, Grand Lake, is natural.
Farthest downstream is Granby Reservoir, which is Colorado’s third largest, capable of holding 539,758 acre-feet of water during runoff of spring and early summer. This compares to Ruedi Reservoir’s 102,373 acre-feet and Dillon’s 257,304 acre-feet.
From Granby, water is pumped upstream as needed by Eastern Slope diverters to Shadow Mountain Reservoir. Shallow, no more than nine feet deep, Shadow Mountain is directly connected through a short canal to Grand Lake.
In 2011, reservoirs east of the divide were full, so water was allowed to continue down the Colorado River without diversion. This photo shows what the lake looked like on Aug. 30, without pumping. Photo courtesy of Byron Metzler and pilot Steve Paul
The canal occupies the original path of the Colorado River emerging from Grand Lake. From the interconnected Grand Lake and Shadow Mountain Reservoir, water is then pumped through the 13.1-mile Alva Adams Tunnel underneath the national park to the Estes Park area for storage in reservoirs there and along the northern Front Range.
Shadow Mountain is a problem, though. Its shallowness allows water to be easily warmed in summer, producing algae that can float into Grand Lake. The shallowness also allows lake-bottom sediments to be disturbed more easily and dispersed into Grand Lake.
Evidence for the historic, pre-construction clarity of Grand Lake is scant: Just one measurement, taken in 1941, of 9.2 meters (30 feet).
Detailed observations during the last decade show clarity down to 6 meters (19.6 feet), but no more.
The standard adopted in April by the state agency specifies a minimum of 2.5 meters and an average of 3.8 meters (8.2 feet to 12.4 feet) during summer diversion season.
“I think the clarity standard has really elevated the discussion,” says Lane Wyatt, co-director of the water quality/quantity committee in the Northwest Council of Governments. “This is the only clarity standard in Colorado. It’s the first one we’ve ever done.”
Clarity is not the only issue, though. Water must be delivered to farms and cities. As it is flows downhill toward the Great Plains, it generates electricity distributed by the Western Area Power Authority. Purchasers of this low-cost power include Aspen Electric and Holy Cross Energy.
Canton “Scally” O’Donnell, president of the Three Lakes Watershed Association, remembers a more pristine past.
As a boy, his family summered at Grand Lake. That was in the 1930s and 1940s. “We drank the water right out of the lake, and many families did that,” O’Donnell said.
The first complaint about the sullied water was filed in 1954, the year after the project’s formal completion. In 1956, Grand Lake trustees adopted a resolution that informed Colorado’s congressional delegation of problems. The resolution was aimed at the Bureau of Reclamation.
“I think it’s fair to say that up until seven or eight years ago, the bureau pretty much stonewalled,” O’Donnell said. “They just did not want to recognize the problem, and Northern Colorado Water, the same.”
Movement has occurred during the last decade. One avenue for local protest was a proposed expansion of an existing diversion of the Colorado River at Windy Gap, about 15 miles downstream. Completed in 1985, the Windy Gap dam uses the C-BT infrastructure to deliver additional water to the Rawhide power plant north of Fort Collins, Greeley, Boulder and other cities.
The Windy Gap Firming, or expansion, plan was formally introduced after the drought of 2002. It proposes diversion of remaining water rights owned by a string of northern Front Range cities.
The effect of persistence
O’Donnell, of the Three Lakes Watershed Association, thinks the changed attitudes is explained by the persistence of individual public officials.
He singles out Lurline Underbrink Curran, then the Grand County manager. “She’s smart and she’s tough,” he said. “She just kept on beating on everybody to make it happen.”
He also points to the influence of Anne Castle, a long-time Denver water lawyer who served from 2009 to 20014 as assistant secretary for water and science in the Interior Department. Her responsibilities included oversight of the Bureau of Reclamation.
“I think part of the reason it has attention now is the fact that the Windy Gap Firming Project required the federal government to pay attention to Senate Document 80 and both C-BT and Windy Gap Firming Project do have an impact on Grand Lake’s recreation and scenic attraction. Calling attention to that issue, as both Lurline and I did, with prodding from Scally, had an impact,” Castle said.
But again, agreeing there is a problem is not the same thing as finding a solution.
“There is a lot of uncertainty about how our operations affect clarity,” said Victor Lee, an engineer for the Bureau of Reclamation.
The precise circumstances that cause algae and sediments to degrade clarity are poorly understood. Northern has been altering its diversion regimes, to see if that will improve clarity.
This year, from July until late August, pumping was conducted about 15 hours a day at 250 cubic feet per second. Clarity degraded, though. Algae growth was suspected. So the pumping was accelerated to about 20 hours a day with two pumps. Results were mixed.
It was a success, said Lee, in that they learned something. Clarity readings exceeded the minimum but did not meet the average standard. “I would say the experiment was successful, but we did not meet our objective,” he said.
Esther Vincent, water quality manager for Northern Water, said the effort to address Grand Lake’s muddled clarity is attracting attention across Colorado by water professionals. Spurring their interest, she said, is the possibility of other bodies of water being assigned clarity standards.
There’s also interest in the adaptive management process created for Grand Lake. It’s similar to but separate from Learning By Doing, which was created in response to expanded water diversions from both Windy Gap and by Denver Water’s Moffat Tunnel collection system.
Vincent also points out a deeply philosophical question. In 1937, when adopting S.D. 80, did Congress have the same notion about what constitutes “scenic attraction” as we do today?
“I am an engineer,” she said. “Asking an engineer to define what beauty is, is an interesting dilemma. It’s not a concept that lends itself very well to science.”
Editor’s note: Aspen Journalism and the Aspen Daily News are collaborating on coverage of Colorado’s rivers and water. More at http://www.aspenjournalism.org.
On April 7, 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed adding the “Bonita Peak Mining District” to the National Priorities List, making it eligible for Superfund. Forty-eight mine portals and tailings piles are “under consideration” to be included. The Gold King Mine will almost certainly be on the final list, as will the nearby American Tunnel. The Mayflower Mill #4 tailings repository, just outside Silverton, is another likely candidate, given that it appears to be leaching large quantities of metals into the Animas River. What Superfund will entail for the area beyond that, and when the actual cleanup will begin, remains unclear. Eric Baker
In a lawsuit filed earlier this year in U.S. District Court of New Mexico, the tribe named Sunnyside Gold Corp. as a responsible party for the spill on Aug. 5, 2015.
The lawsuit also names the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Restoration LLC, Harrison Western Corp., Gold King Mines Corp., Kinross Gold Corp., Kinross Gold USA Inc. and John Does 1-10.
Sunnyside filed a motion on Oct. 17 to dismiss its involvement in the lawsuit, and the tribe filed its response on Monday.
In the tribe’s response to Sunnyside’s motion, it called the company a “key contributor” to the toxic water buildup at the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colo.
The buildup led to a blowout, triggering the release of more than 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater into the Animas and San Juan rivers.
“It knew that its actions in bulk heading its mine would shift the flow of contaminated water to other mines in the Upper Animas Watershed and pose a substantial threat of a future blowout into downstream communities,” the response states…
Sunnyside argued the state of Colorado should be named in the lawsuit since the mine and associated activities at the mine site are within the state.
In the tribe’s response, it stated the federal court can provide “complete relief” for damages incurred as a result of the spill among the defendants already named in the lawsuit. It adds that Colorado’s role as a mine regulator is of “no consequence” because the tribe is not challenging how the state regulates mining nor is it asking for an injunction only the state could provide.
Sunnyside also argued for a dismissal using a section of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, which is commonly known as the Superfund Act.
The section Sunnyside cited states that no federal court has jurisdiction to review any challenges when remedial action is taking place at a Superfund site.
In response, the tribe argues Sunnyside cannot use that section of the Superfund Act because the Bonita Peak Mining District, which includes the Gold King Mine, was designated a Superfund site only after the mine spill.
The EPA declared the area a Superfund site in September.
The orange plume flows through the Animas across the Colorado/New Mexico state line the afternoon of Aug. 7, 2015. (Photo by Melissa May, San Juan Soil and Conservation District)
The district says the lawsuit, filed by the federal and state governments, followed on the heels of a letter of concern the district sent Oct. 28 to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Denver by the EPA and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment against the city of Colorado Springs.
The lawsuit alleges that discharges into the creek from the city’s stormwater sewage system violate the federal Clean Water Act and the state Water Quality Control Act.
“It’s time Colorado Springs be held accountable for its continued violations of discharge limits into Fountain Creek,” said Jay Winner, general manager of the Lower Arkansas district. Its mission is to protect water resources of the Lower Arkansas River Valley.
“We’ve been trying to get the Springs to recognize their responsibility to Pueblo and the Lower Arkansas Valley for the past 12 years, but there has been close to zero progress when it comes to cleaning up the mess on Fountain Creek,” Winner said.
He said the Oct. 28 letter expressed concerns with Colorado Springs’ 2016 Stormwater Program Implementation Plan. The letter was part of the district’s long-standing complaints about the city’s discharges into the creek.
The lawsuit seeks:
A court order requiring Colorado Springs “to take all steps necessary to redress or mitigate the impact of its violations.”
A court order requiring the city “to develop, implement and enforce” its stormwater management program, as required by permits the government has issued. The federal and state laws invoked by the lawsuit regulate the discharges.
Imposition of monetary penalties on Colorado Springs for the violations.
“This is an historic day for Pueblo, which has been waiting decades for Colorado Springs to clean up Fountain Creek,” Anthony Nunez, a former Pueblo County commissioner who sits on the Lower Ark board, said in a statement issued by the district.
Melissa Esquibel, another Pueblo County member of the district’s board, said the board intends to discuss the lawsuit at its Wednesday meeting in Rocky Ford. The district encompasses Bent, Crowley, Otero, Prowers and Pueblo counties.
The Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs reported Thursday that the city’s mayor, John Suthers, expressed frustration that the EPA and state environmental agency filed the lawsuit rather than recognize recent strides the city has made to deal with its storm sewer discharges.
“They know they have a mayor and City Council that recognize the problem, understand the problem and are intent on fixing the problem,” the mayor said. “Rather than working with us to get this done, they file a lawsuit.
“Every single dime going to litigate this thing and pay fines should be going into fixing the problem,” Suthers said.
The district sees it differently.
“They’ve dumped on Pueblo in the past, and it looks like they’ll keep on dumping,” Winner said. “We’ve seen nothing to convince us they have changed their attitude that Fountain Creek can be used as an open sewer.”
The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring Colorado Springs “to take all steps necessary to redress or mitigate the impact of its violations.”
Colorado Springs’ discharge from its storm sewer system of toxic pollutants into Fountain Creek has long been a cause of distrust and bad relations between Pueblo and its upstream neighbor.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Denver.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed the lawsuit at the request of the Environmental Protection Agency. The Colorado Attorney General’s office filed the lawsuit at the request of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
The lawsuit claims that polluted discharges from Colorado Springs’ stormwater system violate the federal Clean Water Act and the state Water Quality Control Act.
The 51-page lawsuit states that the discharges flow into Monument Creek, Camp Creek, Cheyenne Creek and Shooks Run, as well as into Fountain Creek.
The lawsuit also seeks a court order to require Colorado Springs “to develop, implement and enforce” its stormwater management program, as required by permits the government has issued. The federal and state laws invoked by the lawsuit regulate the discharges.
The lawsuit also asks a judge to impose monetary penalties on Colorado Springs for the violations.
Water runoff from streets, parking lots and other surfaces picks up pollutants that drain into the stormwater sewage system, which discharges it into the creeks.
Pollutants include accumulated debris, chemicals and sediment. They “can adversely affect water quality, erode stream banks, destroy needed habitat for fish and other aquatic life, and make it more difficult and expensive for downstream users to effectively use the water,” the lawsuit states.
Under federal courts rules, the city is required to respond to the lawsuit after it is served on a city official. In their responses filed at the court, defendants typically state their position on the allegations and claims against them.
Report: Remediation Scenarios for Attenuating Peak Flows and Reducing Sediment Transport in Fountain Creek, Colorado, 2013
Contaminated drinking water isn’t just a problem for Flint, Michigan. Many towns and cities across the Midwest and Great Plains face pollution seeping into their water supplies.
Farmers spread nitrogen- and phosphorous-based fertilizers on their fields to help their crops grow. Excess nutrients, though, can leach into groundwater or seep into rivers, creeks, canals or ditches that eventually feed into the Mississippi River. In high concentrations, these chemical compounds damage aquatic life and burden small towns that have to remove them from their water supply.
Headlines on news stories from Burlington, Colorado, Erie, Illinois, and Creighton, Nebraska, warn citizens not to drink the water due to high levels of nitrate. Boiling the water won’t work. It further concentrates the contaminants. Dilution and filtering seem to be the best ways to limit exposure.
So, nutrients meant for plants are ending up concentrated in our water. But how?
View of runoff, also called nonpoint source pollution, from a farm field in Iowa during a rain storm. Topsoil as well as farm fertilizers and other potential pollutants run off unprotected farm fields when heavy rains occur. (Credit: Lynn Betts/U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service/Wikimedia Commons)
![This image was taken during the peak outflow from the Gold King Mine spill at 10:57 a.m. Aug. 5. The waste-rock dump can be seen eroding on the right. Federal investigators placed blame for the blowout squarely on engineering errors made by the Environmental Protection Agency’s-contracted company in a 132-page report released Thursday [October 22, 2015]](https://coyotegulch.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/goldkingminespill1057am08052015viaepa.png)
![Scott Hummer, general manager of North Poudre Irrigation Company, talks about how his agency worked with Fort Collins Natural Areas and Colorado Parks and Wildlife to include a fish passage when the irrigation company replaced a diversion structure on the Poudre River that was destroyed by the 2013 floods. Work was completed [in February 2016]. (Pamela Johnson / Loveland Reporter-Herald)](https://coyotegulch.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/cachelapoudrefishpassage022016lovelandreporterheraldscotthummer.png)
