Data viz: explore our interactive dashboards for drought, precipitation and snowpack

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September 30, 2019

Browse through the sports section of any newspaper and you’ll find tons of data dissecting the performance of teams and players. Flip to the business section and you’ll see a wealth of charts and figures tracking companies and economies.

But what if your local media outlet had a section devoted to environmental issues like water? Imagine pages filled with statistics, graphics and maps tracking watershed health, river flows and water use trends. One of my goals for The Water Desk is to move us toward that vision. I want to see our atmosphere, snowpack, rivers, streams, reservoirs and manifold uses of water analyzed with the same fervor we devote to batting averages, stock indices and other metrics that are routinely reported in the media.

Sure, the weather section sometimes includes information on local reservoir levels, drought conditions and other water indicators. But these sections tend to focus on short-term conditions, rather than the big picture and how things are changing. Instead, imagine data visualizations and interactive maps that are not only way cooler than any box score but also allow you to step back in time so you can find your own trends and patterns.

Introducing interactive dashboards for water issues

As we launch The Water Desk’s website, I’d like to introduce you to three data visualizations that cover the closely related topics of drought, precipitation and snowpack. There’s also an interactive on dams and reservoirs that I’ll explain in a future post. At this point, we only have dashboards for the water supply, rather than water demand, but I’m hoping we can tackle that side of the equation soon.

water dashboard screenshots — Above: *images from the drought, snowpack and precipitation dashboards.*

To create this series of interactive dashboards, I’ve worked over the years with some accomplished data experts–Geoff McGhee, David Kroodsma and Erik Hazzard. I’m not a coder, and the prospect of learning the Python language appeals to me as much as curling up with a 20-foot snake. But Geoff, David and Erik managed to figure out how to make these dashboards self-updating so they can automatically ingest the latest data.

Below is some background on how the visualizations came about and how you can use them.

If you’d like, you can skip to the visualizations themselves.

EcoWest: tracking environmental trends

Before getting into the dashboards, let me quickly explain their genesis. From 2011 to 2015, I worked as an independent evaluator of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s grantmaking around Western environmental issues. As part of that consulting work, the foundation asked me and my colleagues at California Environmental Associates to develop a way to track trends in the region. Our solution was to create a website, EcoWest.org, which features blog posts, data visualizations and PowerPoint slide decks summarizing a variety of indicators and topics, including water, land use, climate, wildfires, biodiversity and politics. As with The Water Desk, EcoWest was editorially independent from its funders: we had complete freedom to research and write about the issues.

While working on EcoWest, I had the great fortune to do an (unpaid) fellowship at Stanford’s Bill Lane Center for the American West, where I got to work closely with Geoff, a veteran of the multimedia and infographics desk at The New York Times, Le Monde and ABCNews.com.

To make a long story short, we decided to create a series of dashboards that track key indicators so users can not only explore the data but also embed the visualizations on their own websites.

As the Packard Foundation’s Western Conservation subprogram ended, so did the funding for EcoWest, but I decided to keep the site operational even though I wasn’t adding new content. On their own dimes, Geoff and David continued to tinker with the dashboards and make improvements, but I’ve always regretted not doing more with the dashboards or disseminating them more widely.

Now, with The Water Desk underway, we’re relaunching the EcoWest dashboards and incorporating them into our website, which Geoff helped us build. We hope these interactives will be a useful tool for journalists and others who are interested in reporting on water.

Drought dashboard

Watch the West move in and out of severe drought

In recent years, drought has been in the news frequently as dry spells gripped large parts of the West. There are many ways to define and track “drought,” but the best known of these measures is the U.S. Drought Monitor, which reports conditions across the country and is widely reported in the media.

drought dashboard screenshot — Comparing drought conditions between 2014 and 2019.

The Drought Monitor publishes a weekly map on Thursdays that shows which parts of the country are in drought by using five color-coded categories. There’s “abnormally dry” (D0), which indicates areas going into or coming out of drought, then four escalating levels of drought: “moderate” (D1), “severe” (D2), “extreme” (D3) and “exceptional” (D4).

When you arrive at the drought dashboard, you’ll find yellow boxes akin to sticky notes that explain some of the features. If you’d like to go big, click on the icon in the upper right corner to expand the interactive.

Interactive map: current drought conditions

The U.S. Drought Monitor is jointly produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The drought levels represent a composite index that includes many indicators: the Palmer Drought Severity Index, the Standardized Precipitation Index and other climatological inputs; the Keech-Byram Drought Index for fire; satellite-based assessments of vegetation health and various indicators of soil moisture; and hydrologic data, particularly in the West, such as the Surface Water Supply Index and snowpack levels. For more on how the maps are made, see this piece by Grace Hood at Colorado Public Radio.

Colorado emerges from a brutal drought

Below are two views from the dashboard that focus on Colorado. The top image is from July 23, 2002, when Colorado and other Western states were in the grips of a brutal drought. That summer, the 138,000-acre Hayman Fire became the largest in Colorado’s recorded history. On the Colorado River, inflows to Lake Powell were about one-quarter of normal.

drought dashboard map — July 23, 2002, when Colorado and other Western states were in the grips of a brutal drought. See visualization on this date.

Fast-forward 17 years to the bottom graphic, showing July 23, 2019, and Colorado was virtually drought-free after one of the wettest winters in decades wiped out a dry stretch that was particularly bad in the southwestern corner of the state.

In the bar chart below the map, clicking on different dates will transport you to that week’s Drought Monitor as well as bring up a tooltip that shows you what percent of the area was in the various categories of drought. On July 23, 2002, one-third of Colorado was suffering from exceptional drought and the other two-thirds of the state were in extreme drought; by contrast, on July 23, 2019, just 3 percent of the state was classified as abnormally dry.

If you use the dropdown menu above the chart–or click on a state on the map–you’ll be brought to a chart showing drought conditions over time for the selected state or region. Clicking on the timeline or dragging the slider will update the map display to the selected week.

The “i” icons on the map indicate that a narrative about that location or region is available for the selected week. Clicking on the icon will reveal a text box with a discussion and forecast written by the U.S. Drought Monitor analysts.

If you want to embed this dashboard on your site or share the view you’ve created, click on the “share” button in the upper right and you’ll find options for republishing and distributing the visualization.

Precipitation dashboard

From atmospheric rivers to parched plains: visualizing rain and snow patterns

Precipitation patterns are obviously a big part of why droughts come and go, but it’s important to remember that temperature can also be important and create so-called “hot droughts” in which a higher evaporation rate is a leading player in the meteorological drama. For example, a seminal 2017 paper by Bradley Udall and Jonathan Overpeck, found that a big chunk of the 2000 to 2014 drought on the Colorado River was due to higher temperatures, not just reduced precipitation, with future warming projected to cut the river’s flow even further.

While the drought maps change relatively slowly and the shapes are only updated once a week, precipitation is much more dynamic and fine-grained. I’d love to tell you we have a constantly updating map of the country showing where every drop and flake has fallen over the past five minutes, but we’re not there yet. Instead, our precipitation maps focus on the monthly average.

When you arrive at the precipitation dashboard, you’ll be greeted by an intro screen with sticky notes explaining the features. The map shows how much rain and snow fell every month in the contiguous United States, from 1981 to the present. We offer a couple of ways to slice and dice the data:

Total precipitation
Difference from the long-term average
Percent of average for that month

For example, the screenshot below shows March 2019 precipitation as a percent of the monthly average. It was a wet month here in Colorado and neighboring Utah, but the weather was much drier than normal along the Pacific Northwest coast. If you click on one of the states, you’ll bring up a bar chart showing how that month’s precipitation compared to the 30-year average and the rest of the year.

rain and snow dashboard map — March 2019 precipitation as a percent of the monthly average. It was a wet month here in Colorado and neighboring Utah, but the weather was much drier than normal along the Pacific Northwest coast.

The data for this dashboard comes from the PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University, which uses weather station data and a sophisticated model to report monthly and daily precipitation for the contiguous United States at a resolution of about 800 meters (around a half-mile). Including all that data would make for a painfully slow map, so we’ve reduced the resolution to four kilometers (about 2.5 miles) per pixel.

The timeline below the map shows monthly rainfall totals for the selected geography. By default, the chart shows the average monthly precipitation for the contiguous United States since January 1981. Using the dropdown menu above the chart or clicking a state on the map will redraw the chart to show the precipitation over time for the selected state.

As with our other dashboards, you can embed the precipitation map on your own website or share via social media by clicking on the “share” button in the upper right.

Snowpack dashboard

Measuring the frozen reservoir vital to Western water supplies

Loveland ski area photo by Mitch Tobin — A skier along the Continental Divide at Loveland Ski Area in Colorado. Photo by Mitch Tobin

Here in the American West, our water supply hinges on the snowpack that accumulates each winter in the high country. Snowmelt supplies the bulk of the flow in many Western rivers, so the volume of snow in the mountains is an obsession not only for ski bums like me but also for water managers, farmers, paddlers and others downstream.

Truth be told, our snowpack dashboard doesn’t exactly come alive with breaking news in August. Like most sports, the snowpack has a season. But even in the middle of summer, you can use the snowpack interactive to look back at past years.

Our snowpack map shows the daily estimates for the contiguous United States since October 2003. Using the dropdown menu above the chart or clicking a state on the map will redraw the chart to show the snowpack estimate by day for the selected state.

This data set is based on output from the National Weather Service’s National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (NOHRSC) SNOw Data Assimilation System (SNODAS).

You have two options for displaying the snowpack data:

“Monochrome” paints the map with varying intensities of white
“False color” uses blues and purples to depict the snowpack’s snow-water equivalent (SWE), a measure of its water content

Rather than insert a screenshot, I clicked on the “share” button to create some HTML code for the map embedded below, which shows data from March 11, 2019, when the nation’s snowpack was near its peak.

Below the map you’ll find a chart showing the volume of the snowpack going back to 2004. As with the drought and precipitation maps, you can zoom in on specific states.

Another feature of this dashboard is a line graph that shows the snowpack’s rise and fall by year. In the visualization embedded below, the blue line marks the 2018-2019 winter.

At first, the West’s snowpack season seemed unremarkable, but in February and March, a series of potent storms led to some of the deepest conditions in recent memory and a ski season to remember.

We hope folks find these dashboards useful, and we’d appreciate hearing from anyone who uses or embeds them. Please feel free to send us feedback or reports about bugs by emailing waterdesk@colorado.edu.

A feverish stream, a legion of volunteers, a $1.7 million grant. Is it enough to help the Yampa River keep its cool?

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Fresh Water News

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September 27, 2019

Yampa River climate change GIF — The Yampa River, June 29, 2019: Credit: Kelsey Ray, CU News Corps, The Water Desk

By Jerd Smith

Could something as simple and natural as a ragged corridor of expansive, towering shade trees help a river arm itself against a world in which temperatures are rising?

In northwestern Colorado’s Yampa River Basin, a 300-person-strong army of volunteers is banking on it.

The Yampa River historically has produced so much abundant, clear, cool water that its fish, kayakers, and the farmers along its banks were rarely left wanting.

But climate change is altering that dynamic. Last summer the river’s flows shrank sharply, and its formerly cool waters became dangerously warm, threatening the fish. Its high fever prompted the City of Steamboat Springs to close the popular stretch through town to fisherman and boaters on multiple occasions to avoid further stressing the mountain white fish, which is found in few other Colorado regions.

The shut-down was a huge blow to the city and to local rafting and tubing companies who rely on the river for their livelihoods.

The disturbing heat added urgency to a small program that has been gaining supporters and clout in the Yampa River Basin. The Yampa Sustainability Council (YSC), aided by $175,000 from local donors and some state grants, has ramped up a broad-based tree planting program along the river’s banks known as ReTree. Additional funding from a new $1.7 million Nature Conservancy water fund will add even more muscle to the effort.

On a hot Friday afternoon in late June, Sarah Jones, executive director of the YSC, parks at a trailhead just east of town, slathers herself in sunscreen, and loads a white plastic bucket with small calipers, a measuring stick, a GPS device and wooden stakes to take down to the river’s edge. These are the tools she and others will use to carefully locate and measure the progress of trees planted in recent years.

A restorative area on the Yampa River where groups are working to plant trees on the land surrounding the river in hopes of providing natural shade and coverage for the river in the future. June 28, 2019. Credit: Callie Rhoades, CU News Corps, The Water Desk — A restorative area on the Yampa River where groups are working to plant trees to provide natural shade and coverage for the river in the future. June 28, 2019. Credit: Callie Rhoades, CU News Corps, The Water Desk

The reforesting work is conducted with a careful, slow precision. Each tree that is planted along the banks, and there are hundreds, is assessed, measured and located each season, even as more are placed in the ground.

The trend of warming rivers is creating a need for new science and reams of field data. “This is a new, not well-understood problem,” Jones said.

She and her partners, including the Colorado State Forest Service and the City of Steamboat, are taking the long view, carefully evaluating each year what has worked, discarding practices that have failed, and boosting those that have succeeded.

They once used elaborate planting protocols for placing the young saplings in the ground, but the trees respond much better when their small root balls are poked into the side of the bank, almost casually, supported by simple twigs. The starter trees also like being planted in the fall, they’ve learned, not the spring.

The Yampa River, in some ways, is a blessed stream, with more water than most Western rivers, and a community of hard-working, often wealthy, advocates.

This year The Nature Conservancy announced it had raised $1.7 million in a long-term water fund to restore and protect the Yampa River. The goal is to raise another $4.3 million to protect the watershed.

It is an unheard-of sum in this remote, northwestern corner of the state.

But those who know the Yampa understand the significance of protecting it, not just for the sake of this region, but for the state of Colorado and even for the greater American Southwest.

The river sits near the headwaters of the drought-stressed Colorado River system and is one of its last, mostly free-flowing tributaries. Because it is relatively unhindered, with only a few small reservoirs high on its mainstem, it serves as a kind of benchmark for scientists seeking to understand natural river dynamics and mimic them elsewhere.

Keeping the Yampa healthy also helps a much broader effort in the West to bring the Colorado River system back from the edge of a crisis precipitated by population growth, a nearly 20-year drought, and rising temperatures.

Jones and her colleague Caroline Manriquez, assistant district forester with the Colorado State Forest Service, walk slowly along a public stretch of the river. Each of them notes the young trees planted two or three years ago that are outgrowing the metal cages put in place to protect them from beavers, who are both a curse and a blessing on the river.

“On the one hand we want them,” said Manriquez, because their work on the river creates natural dams and habitats. “But on the other hand, they’re cutting the trees we want to preserve.”

Each tree that outgrows its anti-beaver cage will need to be visited, its protective metal enclosure cut off and a bigger one put in place.

The re-treeing effort anticipates a Johnny-Appleseed kind of longevity, with some 200 shade trees planted annually over the next 20 years.

“This is a huge project, and we are planting very small trees,” Manriquez said. “But given the water issues climate change is creating, we decided we had better start now.”

Like other river basins around the state, the Yampa Basin has developed a state-funded management plan for the river. Some of that funding went toward several years of studies and planning to develop the science to support the reforestation effort, said Kelly Romero-Heaney, water resources manager for Steamboat Springs.

“We’ve done a tremendous amount of modeling to look at what this river will look like in the future,” Romero-Heaney said.

Just downstream of the work zone, on the opposite bank from the workers, is a nursery which houses hundreds of delicate, young willow, cottonwood, and box elder trees. These varieties are known for growing tall and spreading a generous shade canopy.

The young seedlings have been sprouted in a nursery in Fort Collins, then transferred up to the Steamboat nursery early in the summer, all in preparation for the fall planting season.

These seedlings will be planted in the public stretches of the river, but reforesting there alone won’t be enough.

Jones and Manriquez know that the key to success for the project will be to bring the private landowners who control most of the land on the river’s banks into the program.

And that’s not easy. Western ranchers are notoriously government-averse, skittish about letting federal and state environmental officials onto their property, they said.

Rancher Steve Williams is an exception. He owns 200 acres of land along a critical reach of the Yampa east of Steamboat Springs, one that has been degraded by heavy cattle grazing, its cottonwood canopy gone, its streambed wide and much shallower than it once was.

Steve Williams, a local rancher in Steamboat Springs, is showing a section of the Yampa River he works to protect and conserve that flows through his land. June 29, 2019. Credit: Callie Rhoades, CU News Corps, The Water Desk — Steve Williams, a local rancher in Steamboat Springs, shows a section of the Yampa River through his land that he works to protect and conserve. June 29, 2019. Credit: Callie Rhoades, CU News Corps, The Water Desk

As a result the water temperature here each summer threatens to exceed the state’s standard for the stream. If Williams can cool down his reach of the river, it will help everyone farther down and closer to Steamboat Springs.

To achieve this, he has partnered with federal agencies to shore up the river’s banks, deepening it as it curves, snakelike, through the wetlands and pastures above Lake Catamount.

This land hasn’t been grazed in 10 years, Williams said, and he’s hopeful the bank restoration work, as well as the re-treeing effort, will give this stretch of the river the assistance it needs to heal.

Williams understands the magnitude of the work that lies ahead and the challenges, the discrepancy in scale between young trees and a sprawling Western river, and the global dilemma of warming. “We will see how this goes,” Williams said. “It is a Band-aid, but it’s one I think will last at least through my lifetime.”

Romero-Heaney and other river advocates know that they will likely never see the final results of this reforestation effort, but based on the preliminary studies, they see it as an important tool for helping this playful, powerhouse of a river flourish in a very different world than it has inhabited up until now.

“I have to believe that if any river can persist through climate change, it will be the Yampa,” Romero-Heaney said.

This story is made possible, in part, by The Water Desk, an initiative of the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.

This story originally appeared on Fresh Water News, an independent, non-partisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Its editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.

Defining The Water Desk’s scope and water journalism

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Mitch Tobin

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September 26, 2019

“Water journalism? What’s that?”

I’ve triggered this response from people on chairlifts, airplanes and other places I tend to meet strangers.

When folks ask what I do, I tell them I’m working on a water journalism initiative at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Unless the other person is a media professional or a water wonk, my statement is apt to draw a quizzical look.

Average citizens know about “political” journalism, “sports” journalism, “business” journalism and other sub-disciplines that sometimes warrant separate sections in newspapers, or even publications unto themselves. But water journalism isn’t as well known—at least not yet.

water journalism drone photo — Drone view of rafters on the Colorado River, near Radium, Colorado. Photo by Mitch Tobin

For folks who are initially confused about water journalism, it usually doesn’t take long for them to get the concept. They start to think about water pollution and episodes like the lead poisoning in Flint. They recall the many news stories they’ve seen or heard about extreme droughts and floods whipsawing places like California and Colorado in recent years.

Public opinion surveys show most people don’t know where their water comes from beyond a general notion that it’s some river, reservoir and/or well. All too many of us take water for granted, because at least for now in the United States, the vast majority of citizens—but certainly not all—have a water supply that is clean, reliable and relatively affordable.

But if you’re one of the unfortunate people in this country or elsewhere whose water supply isn’t safe and secure, the subject can be impossible to ignore and warrants as much attention as possible from journalists, politicians and others. Just in California, home to one of the greatest concentrations of wealth and economic activity on the planet, around 1 million people are exposed to unsafe drinking water; globally, billions of people lack access to safe drinking water, managed sanitation or basic handwashing facilities, according to the World Health Organization.

Non-human species also depend on water for their survival, but here at home and around the globe, we have utterly transformed aquatic and riparian habitat by damming, diverting, depleting, defiling and destroying streams, rivers and underground aquifers, not to mention heating up the planet and spreading invasive species all over the place.

More than ever, we need water journalism to not only explore and expose these complex problems but also explain potential solutions to the public and policymakers. Unfortunately, the demand for more and better water journalism is coming at a time when the media landscape has been rocked to its core by tectonic shifts in how people consume news and access information.

With journalists continuing to be laid off and entire publications still collapsing on a regular basis, The Water Desk is starting up at a pivotal moment for both the news industry and the water sector.

Shining a light on a murky field

When you think about how important water is to every person on Earth, devoting more news coverage to the decisions, policymakers and institutions responsible for our water resources seems like a journalistic no-brainer.

A central goal of water journalism is to shed light on this critical yet murky part of our world in order to expand public understanding of water issues so that individuals, businesses, governments and other entities can make better-informed decisions about the most precious of natural resources.

In essence, water journalists need to constantly remind their audience that they shouldn’t, in fact, take their water for granted. Actually, they should care deeply about where their water comes from, what’s in it, how it’s used, what it costs, where it goes, who’s calling the shots and how human demands for water are affecting nature.

water journalism denver photo — Sloan’s Lake in Denver. Photo by Mitch Tobin

Most of us, myself included, need a better grasp on a slippery concept: water is embedded in virtually every product we buy—from beer to tomatoes to jeans to phones to cars. In addition to our carbon footprints, we also have water footprints.

Saying you’re a water journalist may not seem like the best icebreaker, but if you start talking about water issues, it turns out that many people are keenly interested in the subject. The word “important” comes up constantly, and that’s borne out by a spate of public opinion polls conducted over a span of decades. These surveys have consistently shown that water is at the top of Americans’ environmental and health concerns.

For example, in an April 2016 poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Americans said contaminated water was as serious a health problem as heroin abuse (for more on water-related public opinion, please see my previous project, waterpolls.org).

water journalism poll slide — In this poll, Americans said contaminated water was as serious a health problem as heroin abuse. Source: Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll

Year after year, decade after decade, surveys conducted by Gallup have found that pollution of drinking water, rivers, streams and lakes rank much higher than other environmental concerns, such as climate change and the loss of biodiversity.

But it’s not just pollution that evokes worries. Especially in more arid places like the American West, where The Water Desk is focusing its work, the increasingly dubious supply of water also troubles the majority of residents. The Conservation in the West Poll, produced by Colorado College’s State of the Rockies Project, has found Westerners of all political stripes are concerned about low water levels in rivers and think our water supplies are getting less predictable.

water journalism poll slide 2 — Westerners of all political stripes are concerned about low water levels in rivers and think our water supplies are getting less predictable. Source: Conservation in the West Poll

As someone who has tried to explain water journalism and fundraise for it, I sometimes hear variants of the line that “water isn’t sexy.” Not so! It’s true that water issues can be as dry as dust. It’s easy to get bogged down in a quagmire of laws, hydrology, engineering and local politics.

But if you actually start covering water issues, as I did frequently as a newspaper reporter in California and Arizona from 1998 to 2006, you quickly realize that water does, in fact, animate your audience and inspire passionate reactions. Sitting through a five-hour hearing on sewer rates is unlikely to stimulate any erogenous zones, but nowadays I think water journalism is as exciting and important as any beat: we’re covering the lifeblood of every economy, ecosystem and community just as the entire hydrologic cycle of the planet is being amped up by climate change. Sounds pretty juicy to me.

Fresh water is scarce on the blue planet

Despite freshwater’s importance—and rarity—on Earth, water issues are typically ignored unless there’s an immediate crisis, such as a drought, flood or contamination episode. One of my favorite visual summaries of water issues is this cartoon from the National Drought Mitigation Center that depicts the “hydro-illogical cycle.”

water journalism hydro-illogical cycle — This cartoon from the National Drought Mitigation Center depicts the “hydro-illogical cycle.” Source: National Drought Mitigation Center

Here in the United States, it’s easy for most people to forget about water outside of a crisis. But if you’ve ever spent time in the developing world, suffered in a natural disaster, backpacked in the desert or lived in one of the disadvantaged communities where clean water is a luxury, you know there’s nothing more critical and visceral than water. In fact, up to 60% of our bodies consist of the stuff, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

water journalism what does water do for you — Up to 60% of our bodies consist of water. Source: U.S. Geological Survey

You can live for weeks, even months or years, without adequate food, clothing or shelter. Deprived of water, you’re speeding toward a horrible death in a matter of days.

If there are any extraterrestrials spying on the Earth, I wouldn’t be surprised if they refer to our home as the “blue planet” or “water world” since about 71% of the surface is covered by the liquid. When astronomers and astrobiologists scan the heavens looking for possible life on other planets and their moons, they’re often looking for liquid water since it is, to the best of our knowledge, a prerequisite for life.

Our home planet, said to resemble a blue marble from space, is mostly covered with water, but the supply of freshwater that we can actually drink is minuscule by comparison. In the visualization below from the U.S. Geological Survey and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the largest blue sphere shows all of the water on, inside and above the Earth, nearly all of it saltwater in the oceans. The volume of liquid freshwater is a tiny fraction of that: the second largest sphere over Kentucky is only 169.5 miles in diameter. And that tiny dot located around Atlanta you may not even be able to see? That sphere, just 35 miles across, represents all of the freshwater in the world’s rivers and lakes.

water journalism the world's water — That tiny dot located around Atlanta you may not even be able to see? That sphere, just 35 miles across, represents all of the freshwater in the world’s rivers and lakes. Source: U.S. Geological Survey

Our rivers and lakes are the most obvious and visible manifestation of our freshwater resources, but the graphic below shows why this supply is so scarce. Oceans account for 96.5% of all the water on Earth, and nearly all of the remaining water is either saline, locked up in glaciers and ice caps, or buried under ground, sometimes at depths that aren’t economical for pumping. Much of the freshwater that’s left over is ice and permafrost (at least for now).

where is earth's water slide — Oceans account for 96.5% of all the water on Earth, and nearly all of the remaining water is either saline, locked up in glaciers and ice caps, or buried under ground. Source: U.S. Geological Survey

Follow the water

Water is an essential, scarce commodity that we all need to survive. That sounds like another substance: money.

To find truth, journalists are supposed to “follow the money,” a famous line from the 1976 film All the President’s Men. (The phrase actually isn’t in Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s book about the Watergate investigation but was apparently uttered in a congressional hearing in 1974.)

“Follow the money” is sound advice because money is something that journalists, detectives, auditors and others seeking facts can at least try to count and track.

“Follow the water” is how one might summarize the goal of water journalism. Just as the “sports desk” at a newspaper covers the hometown teams and the “business desk” is for reporters and editors who track the economy, a “water desk” is supposed to follow this all-mighty substance as it flows throughout our economy and environment.

Today, it’s rare for general interest media outlets, such as newspapers, radio and TV, to dedicate an entire position to covering water. Many publications lump water coverage into the “environment” beat, which can also encompass a staggering number of other issues: climate, energy, wildlife, wildfires, development, public lands, air quality and more.

Defining water coverage as solely a sub-discipline of “environmental journalism” can pose some challenges. Don’t get me wrong: I think environmental issues are paramount in the water world. The Water Desk is based at the Center for Environmental Journalism, and I’m a card-carrying member of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

But water is more than just an “environmental” topic to be covered by “environmental journalists.” To be sure, the subject is immersed in green issues—climate change, biodiversity, pollution, growth and so on. But water stories can and should cover plenty of other terrain: it is a “business” and “economics” story because water it is crucial to everything from global supply chains to mountain-town economies, including the $1.4 trillion in annual economic output fueled by the Colorado River and its tributaries. It’s a “government” and “politics” story since public policies are so pivotal and many key decisions are made by government agencies or quasi-public entities.

Given that each of us depends on drinking and eating to survive, and most of us pay to use water, there are also “consumer,” “food” and “agriculture” dimensions to water journalism. Water is an “energy” story because there is such a strong nexus between the two sectors: fossil fuel and nuclear power plants require gobs of water while our waterworks demand tons of energy to treat, pump and move water.

Water journalism can also have a major “recreation” or “sports” component: think of all the publications that focus on leisure-time activities dependent on clean, reliable water, be it liquid or frozen. In many communities, the rivers, streams, lakes and snowpack are essential to not only the local economy but also the culture, so water generates plenty of stories for the “lifestyle” or “weekend” section of a publication.

I’m usually not a fan of quote marks, but I’ve added them above because so often our journalism and other narratives are shoe-horned into such categories. I want water journalism to transcend these quotational buckets and cover all of the above to ensure that the public understands what everyone in the water field knows in their gut: water is intertwined with nearly everything and is absolutely integral to life. As 12-term Colorado Congressman Wayne Aspinall once said, “In the West, when you touch water, you touch everything.”

aspinall quote photo — A memorial to Wayne Aspinall in Palisade, Colorado. Photo by Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism

Defining our geographic scope

The Water Desk is all about water in its manifold forms and functions: source of life, basis for food, feedstock of the economy, not to mention fun stuff to fish, ski, and paddle.

One of the tricky yet fascinating aspects about covering water is that it’s constantly moving around and being reused downstream. Water is also the ultimate shape-shifter: the liquid can freeze solid, then sublimate into vapor, then condense back into liquid, then evaporate into the sky before precipitating—and on it goes around the globe. Fog, drop, flake, glacier, river, ocean, cloud—water transmogrifies through an amazing variety of forms ranging from the microscopic to the hemispheric.

While acknowledging the planetary nature of the hydrologic cycle, we have more humble and realistic ambitions for our work at The Water Desk. At least for starters, we’re focusing our coverage and grantmaking on just one part of North America.

Broadly speaking, The Water Desk is interested in a field that is often described as “Western water” or “water in the West.” As I discuss below, our focus is even a bit narrower since we are concentrating on the drier, Southwestern portion of the region, but suffice to say that among hydrologists, lawyers, policymakers, funders, publishers, conference planners and others, there is a field known as “Western water” that concerns management of the resource west of the 100^th Meridian, the longitude that has traditionally marked the start of the more arid region where irrigation is necessary to support agriculture.

For this iconic demarcation, we can thank John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran and second director of the U.S. Geological Survey who explored the Green River and Colorado River in an epic expedition 150 years ago. The map below, from an 1891 USGS report, shows how Powell defined the arid region, which excludes the wetter areas of the Pacific Northwest and Northern California.

powell map photo — This 1891 map shows how John Wesley Powell defined the arid West, which excludes the wetter areas of the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. *Source: U.S. Geological Survey’s* 11th Annual Report, 1891

Despite the primitive technology of his time, Powell was onto something. The map below visualizes the 30-year average of precipitation across the United States from 1981 to 2010. I’ve superimposed the approximate location of the 100^th Meridian, which really does demarcate a much drier portion of the nation, especially if you exclude the wetter Pacific Northwest.

precipitation map — The 100^th Meridian (line added by author) has traditionally demarcated a much drier portion of the nation. Data source: PRISM Group, Oregon State University

But before you get too attached to the 100^th Meridian, you should know that it has become obsolete due to climate change. Recent research has found that drier conditions have spread east by some 140 miles. It’s one of many climate zones around the world that are on the move in the Anthropocene, the modern epoch in which humans are transforming virtually every natural process on the planet.

In 2019, “beyond the 98^th Meridian” might be the better definition for Western water issues. In fact, the issue of aridification—a long-term drying of the region due to changing temperatures and precipitation patterns—is fertile ground for some great journalism.

Although the West has the nation’s driest weather, one of the many awesome features about the region is that it simultaneously boasts the lowest- and highest-elevation terrain, as shown in the left map below. In fact, just 85 miles separates the top of Mount Whitney and the bottom of Death Valley, the highest and lowest spots in the 48 states. Not only that: the West is also home to some of nation’s hottest and coldest mean temperatures, as shown in the right map.

elevation and temperature map — One of the many awesome features about the region is that it simultaneously boasts the lowest- and highest-elevation terrain, as shown in the left map. The West is also home to some of nation’s hottest and coldest mean temperatures, as shown on the right. Data source: PRISM Group, Oregon State University

Focus on the Colorado River Basin

The Water Desk is concentrating on issues west of the ~98^th Meridian, where the relative scarcity of freshwater and the region’s more recent development has yielded a legal landscape and physical infrastructure that’s distinct from the political and hydrologic regimes back East. Within this sprawling and diverse geography, we are focusing on a smaller region centered on the Colorado River Basin.

The emphasis on the Colorado River Basin and surrounding areas stems in part from the priorities of our initial funder, the Walton Family Foundation, which has a large grantmaking program in the region. The Water Desk maintains a strict editorial firewall between its editorial content and its funders, but the foundation’s grant does specify the broad geography we should focus on (for more on the foundation’s role in Colorado River issues, see this series from Jeremy Jacobs of Greenwire).

Focusing on the seven states of the Colorado River Basin and Northwest Mexico leaves out a big chunk of the West, and we mean no disrespect to our friends in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana. But with the limited resources of a start-up, we’d be on a fool’s errand to extend our coverage to that part of the country. If, however, The Water Desk can acquire additional financial support, I can easily imagine expanding to the Pacific Northwest, Texas or other regions!

The graphic below from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation illustrates the hydrologic boundaries of the Colorado River Basin and also adds another critical dimension: areas beyond the physical watershed that still depend on the river and its tributaries for their water supply, at least in part (see this post for more maps of the basin).

Colorado River Basin Map — This map illustrates the hydrologic boundaries of the Colorado River Basin and adds another critical dimension: areas beyond the physical watershed that still depend on the river and its tributaries for their water supply, at least in part. *Source:* U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

In and around the Colorado River Basin, we built herculean dams that turned rivers into reservoirs. We bored colossal tunnels through mountains. And we constructed a sprawling network of infrastructure to not only to move water uphill to desert cities such as Phoenix and Tucson but also to export the Colorado River beyond the watershed’s boundaries to supply Denver, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City and Southern California.

Basin states: one-fifth of U.S. population and economy

As director of The Water Desk, I can assure you that the region around the Colorado River Basin is more than enough to keep us occupied. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the seven basin states had 61.3 million residents in 2018, or 18.7% of the nation. Nearly two-thirds of the basin’s population lives in California, which is home to almost one in eight Americans. Looking at economic activity, the basin’s GDP of $4.2 trillion accounts for 20.3% of the national total, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Within these seven states lie extremes in climate, topography, wealth, politics and people. The map below, which I created using data from The Nature Conservancy, shows that this one part of the country is also home to a tremendous diversity of ecoregions.

The West's terrestrial ecoregions — This one part of the country is also home to a tremendous diversity of ecoregions. Data source: The Nature Conservancy

The West boasts an impressive spectrum of weather, elevation, vegetation, geology and cultures. But one thing that unifies the region is its rapid population growth over the past century or so. The Colorado River Basin accounted for just 2% of the U.S. population in 1850, when only a half-million people lived in the region that would eventually encompass seven states. Today, it seems like I see a half-million people in a single morning on Colorado’s I-70 while driving up to the mountains to ski a powder day.

Population of Colorado River Basin States

A fundamental dilemma facing water in the West is that the region’s meteoric growth rate has deposited millions of people in places where there’s not a whole lot of water available without massive human interventions, which tend to be economically and environmentally costly. Most of California’s water is in the northern half of the state, but far more people live down south; in Colorado, most of the precipitation falls to the west of the Continental Divide, but the great majority of the population lives on the other side of the mountains.

Population growth and climate change are some of the defining challenges for the American West, especially its water resources. But there are certainly other threats, such as the armada of invasive fish, plants, crustaceans and other non-native species that are causing chaos in ecosystems already disrupted by human activity. In many areas, critical water infrastructure is crumbling and in need of expensive repairs.

As any water journalist will tell you, there is no shortage of news in the field and trying to keep up with it all can feel like drinking from a firehose. It’s our job to distill that ocean of information into something digestible for average citizens. Compared to guns, immigration, health care and other political issues, water may not be top of mind for most people, but I think there’s a deep reservoir of interest and concern in the public that we should be tapping into.

I hope you’ll come aboard and join us on this journey as we follow water issues! If you’d like to stay connected, please sign up for our email newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Decades later, abandoned mines continue to haunt Colorado’s waterways

By

Julia Medeiros

-

September 25, 2019

Decades later, abandoned mines continue to haunt Colorado’s waterways

Captain Jack Mill Superfund site near Ward, Colorado The Water Desk video

Nestled at the headwaters of Lefthand Creek, a mile south of Ward, Colorado, sits the Captain Jack Mill. From 1860 to 1992, the area was a hot spot for gold and silver mining and though the tunnels of the mine have long been empty, the legacy of pollution continues to damage nearby waterways, aquatic life and drinking water.

According to a 2017 study, there are over 23,000 abandoned mines across Colorado and 1,800 miles of streams that are impaired due to pollutants related to acid mine drainage.

The pollution is formed when pyrite (an iron sulfide) is unearthed during mining operations and chemically reacts with air and water. The reaction forms sulfuric acid and dissolved iron, which causes the red, orange or yellow sediments that can be seen at the bottom of contaminated streams. The acid runoff can further dissolve heavy metals such as copper, lead and mercury, which can then leach into and contaminate streams, lakes and groundwater.

That’s what happened in 2015, when the Animas River turned orange after workers accidentally released toxic wastewater from the Gold King Mine in southwest Colorado.

Acid Mine Drainage Sites Span Colorado’s High Country

The state’s Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety has identified hundreds of inactive mine sites with potentially hazardous water drainage conditions. The map below shows both sites that are currently under restoration and those that have not yet been addressed. The Captain Jack Mill site, below, was designated a U.S. EPA Superfund site in 2003, and construction was completed in 2012; last year, the site was associated with a fish die-off in a nearby creek.

In Colorado and beyond, acid mine drainage has the potential to pollute vital waterways long after mineral extraction has ceased. Part of the problem is the lack of environmental safeguards put in place in the late 1800s, when mining operations started to boom. By the time the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act was enacted in 1977, much damage had already been done.

“Most of the books that address these kinds of problems often start off with, ‘Mines from the Roman times are still generating acid mine drainage,’” said Joe Ryan, an environmental engineering expert at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Working with the nonprofit Lefthand Watershed Center, Ryan traced the source of dissolved metals contaminating the Left Hand Creek watershed, which provides drinking water to 20,000 customers.

In 2004, Ryan and a team led by the University of Colorado’s Alice R. Wood released a report that ranked the Big Five Tunnel at Captain Jack Mill as high priority for reclamation, shortly after the mine was designated as a Superfund site. Even so, it took more than a decade for a remedy to be implemented.

Cleaning up the past

In 2016, the EPA attempted to plug up the mine’s opening by filling the mouth of the Big Five Tunnel with limestone and a bulkhead valve. The limestone was meant to decrease the acidity of the water that collected behind the valve so that it was less harmful to the creek.

But it didn’t quite work.

When the water was released from the bulkhead seal inside the Big Five Tunnel in October 2018, it was too acidic and polluted a five-mile stretch of the river, leaving hundreds of dead fish in its wake.

Following the 2018 release from the tunnel, a portable treatment system was installed to process water from the bulkhead valve before it flows into Lefthand Creek. Though effective, this method is an expensive addition to the already steep cleanup costs.

“There have been anecdotes about fish being back in locations that they haven’t been seen in for quite a long time,” said Ryan, who plans to revisit Lefthand Creek to determine if the cleanup efforts have improved the stream’s water quality.

Between 1998 and 2003, the U.S. Forest Service estimated that more than $310 million was spent cleaning up acid mine drainage around the country.

“I think people didn’t really understand the connection between some of what they were doing and the long-term impacts associated with it,” said Jeff Graves, director of the inactive mine reclamation program for Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources. “These old miners that did the work weren’t bad guys, they just had a different mindset.”

Graves, who helps enforce mining regulations in the state, assesses and develops plans related to the safety and environmental impact of legacy mines, including those designated as Superfund sites like the Captain Jack Mill. Though some of these plans may take many years to implement and will include decades of monitoring, Graves remains positive.

“It’s a finite list and each one that we work through is one less that we have to next year,” Graves said. “We’re getting there one step at a time.”

Of course, pollution from legacy mines is not just a problem in Colorado. The National Association of Abandoned Mine Land Programs, which includes 23 states and three tribes, lists acid mine drainage along with underground mine fires and landslides as major hazards.

acid mine drainage captain jack mill photo

Climate change could worsen problem

When Diane McKnight began to research acid mine drainage in 1978, she thought that it was a problem on the verge of a solution.

“It became clear that these are really wicked problems with a lot of challenges,” said McKnight, founding director of the University of Colorado’s Center for Water, Earth Science and Technology and former researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Part of McKnight’s research focuses on how climate change may increase acid mine drainage. She has observed large decreases in stream pH during summer months, which she believes is due in part to rising temperatures. McKnight and other scientists theorize that the intense warming and drying of the soils allow more pyrite to oxidize. As temperatures continue to increase due to climate change, warmer and longer summers could mean more acidic streams.

The Colorado Water Plan, released by the state in 2015, acknowledges that with growing demand for water, ongoing pollution from legacy mines is a water quality concern that needs to be addressed as Colorado faces a possible doubling of its population by 2050.

McKnight is optimistic that advances in science and technology will yield effective options for stream remediation. Just as robotics have been used to explore planets in space, McKnight wonders if they can be utilized for remote cleaning of acid mine drainage, especially in the winter months in Colorado, when avalanches pose threats.

“We can figure this out,” McKnight said. “This is an avenue to meet some of Colorado’s water needs in the future.”

Download media from this story

Photos, video, and the map used in this story, plus additional unpublished, full resolution media, are available in the Captain Jack Mill media gallery page on our website.

Some Western cities offer residents “cash for grass” to reduce irrigation

By

H2O Radio

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September 24, 2019

A study in 2016 showed that lawns are the largest irrigated crop in America. There are over 40 million grassy acres in the continental U.S., and they take a lot of water to thrive. But in the West, where rainfall is less plentiful, many water providers have been offering rebates to residents willing to tear out turf and replace it with drought tolerant plants. The programs are working and thousands of gallons of water are being saved. So why are two major cities punting on the idea?

DENVER, Colo. — It’s hard to avoid getting swept up in Wendy Inouye’s enthusiasm when she talks about her garden.

“I love it!” she gushes. “I have so much joy from my garden. Every time I come out I always pause and look at it. You know that saying, take time to smell the roses? I literally do that every single day I come and go from my home.”

Inouye’s front yard at her home in Thornton, Colorado, just north of Denver, is full of “xeric” plants—shrubs and groundcovers adapted to survive in dry climates.

Inouye took out her lawn last summer and replaced it with a Colorado-friendly landscape, including red rock penstemon, hopflower oregano, and a plant called red-birds-in-a-tree. She didn’t want to waste any more water and said the grass in her front yard had no function. It was in full sun and its water needs were astronomical. By taking out 750 square feet of turf and replacing it with a variety of water-saving plants surrounded by rocks and mulch, she and her husband have reduced their water usage from 413 gallons a day to 200.

Pointing to a larger area Inouye said, “This was just one big flat piece of grass that was full of weeds.” She was tired of fighting nature, using pesticides and herbicides. Now she says, she has fun with all her beautiful flowering plants.

Ditching the “Green Carpet”

It was a lot of work for Inouye to transform her landscape even though she hired contractors to assist with turf removal and changes to her irrigation system. But she got support for her decision from the City of Thornton through a turf removal rebate program that paid her $1.00 for every square foot of turf she took out.

Water conservation and efficiency are important to every utility across the country, and especially in the West where “aridification” is occurring. That’s the term being used in the Colorado River Basin to describe the region’s transition to a water scarce environment due to climate change—a condition that will result in a shrinking supplies.

Water utilities have various strategies to get customers to lower usage. Many offer rebates for installing low-flow toilets and efficient showerheads in older homes to reduce indoor use. With outdoor use, water providers can use “cash-for-grass” incentives as Thornton did for Wendy Inouye. They can also offer free mulch, rebates for efficient irrigation systems, and audits of outside water use.

Recently the Alliance for Water Efficiency (AWE), a non-profit dedicated to efficient and sustainable use of water, produced an assessment concluding that utility-sponsored programs to promote sustainable landscapes save water. Tom Chestnutt, the lead author of AWE’s study, said that turf removal programs have been very successful, and they hit that tipping point causing customers to do something different with their front yards.

The idea of a “green carpet”—lots of grass in front of homes, buildings, and sometimes, even medians—has been described as an aesthetic (inappropriately, many say) imported from the East. In the West, where lawns require irrigation, some water providers see them as out of sync with a western lifestyle.

“Grass? That’s Weird!”

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWDSC) is the largest water supply district in the United States, serving 19 million customers.

Bill McDonnell, the conservation manager for MWDSC, said that they started asking why do people realistically need to have a 1,500 square-foot rectangle of grass in their front yard that they’re never using? Mowing, fertilizing, adding waste, McDonnell said, “There’s a lot going on there to have a green patch.”

So they started to pay people to take out their lawns.

MWDSC has the largest cash-for-grass program in the country, and its board recently renewed the program increasing the rebate to $2.00 per square foot removed—even though there’s not a current drought emergency.

McDonnell said that when they began turf replacement rebates people went crazy. “People were like, ‘I want this, I don’t want to be watering my lawn; I want a smaller water bill.'”

In Southern California, people irrigate their yards 12 months of the year, and on average, 50 to 60 percent of a home’s use of water is outside. Farther east in the district where it can get really hot, a water bill could easily be based on as much as 70 percent for outdoor use.

In an email, Rebecca Kimitch, who works with McDonnell at MWDSC, said they estimate the water savings from turf removal to be 44 gallons of water annually for every square foot of grass taken out.

McDonnell tells his children that someday they’ll be walking down the street with their kids who will point to a yard with grass and say, “That’s weird.” The whole idea, he says, is to flip it so that the person with grass will be the one who is different.

Enough Lawn to Wrap Nearly Around the Globe

Southern California is not alone in incentivizing customers to transform their landscapes. Doug Bennett, Conservation Manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), agrees with McDonnell that having lots of grass serves no functional purpose. The Las Vegas area is the driest metropolitan area in North America, so conservation is always forefront.

SNWA has been running a turf replacement rebate program nearly 20 years and has saved almost 13 billion gallons a year. Bennett said, “There is no room in this city for ‘keep off the grass’ signs,” meaning all grass must be used, not there solely for ornamental or aesthetic purposes.

When asked if SNWA’s program had been successful, Bennett said, “Absolutely. We’re at about 190,000,000 square feet” of turf removed. To illustrate this he said, “That’s enough sod, 18 inches wide to go 95 percent of the way around the world.” But he added that they still have a long way to go having addressed only about half of the non-functional turf in the area.

Turf Removal Rebates—A “Gimmick”?

Given that two of the largest water providers in the drying Southwest region are deploying “cash-for-grass” programs, one might assume that the idea took off in other major cities. And it has—except in two cases—Denver, Colorado, and Phoenix, Arizona.

Phoenix, Arizona, is the country’s fifth largest city, and its water department serves about 1.5 million people. The city doesn’t offer a turf replacement rebate, and Cynthia Campbell, the Water Resource Management Advisor for Phoenix said that even without one, there has been a 30 percent decline in water use overall since about 1980.

Campbell said that in the late 1970s about 80 percent of single-family homes had a majority of their landscaping in turf, but today that number has dropped to about 14 percent.

Even with the decline in turf use, Phoenix homeowners are still using about 60 percent of their water outside their homes. However, Campbell views some conservation rebates as reactive to a special event like the drought in California. Those programs can “take on a gimmick kind of idea,” she said, “unless they can be sustainable for the long haul.” Instead, she thinks that Phoenix is better off trying to educate the public about how to use water in a desert, instead of saying that this year they’re going to pay residents to rip out their grass.

Campbell also noted that the pricing in Phoenix may discourage grass watering, especially during the summer months. A homeowner who wants to water then would be a heavier user and would pay more for it.

But many cities surrounding Phoenix—Glendale, Scottsdale, Mesa, Chandler, Peoria, and Tempe—offer turf replacement rebates.

Glendale, Arizona, is a city of about 240,000. Joanne Toms, its Environmental Program Manager, said they have had a rebate program since 1986. She roughly estimates that an acre of turf converted to desert landscaping saves about a million gallons. Toms said that she would hate to see the rebate program dropped because it shows the city’s leadership and forward-thinking that began in the 1980s. She sees the rebates as an incentive to homeowners who may be on the fence about whether to convert.

Lawns As a “Dispersed Version of a Reservoir”

In comparison to cities in the Southwest, Denver has a semi-arid climate—it gets more precipitation in the spring and summer and has winters—meaning people don’t have to water year-round to maintain a landscape.

A cash-for-grass program would not result in nearly as much water savings as in drier regions. Still, such an incentive could save water. However, Denver Water, the largest provider in Colorado, has decided it’s not a wise use of customers’ money.

Jeff Tejral, the manager of water efficiency for Denver Water, says there has already been a lot of change in customers’ landscapes without a turf replacement rebate program. Similar to the city of Phoenix, Tejral attributes the switch to a public education program that Denver Water started in the 1980s.

In addition, Tejral says that Denver Water did an analysis of a cash-for-grass rebate in 2016 and it did not make sense to start one. Tejral’s group calculated the water savings and the cost of the rebates to be $75,000 dollars per acre foot of water conserved, which the agency concluded was not a wise use of its ratepayers’ funds. He said that it would make sense to spend that amount, if they were in dire straits, and a turf rebate were the last option available.

However, there may be another reason that Denver Water doesn’t have a turf removal program—lawns might be a safety net where use could be restricted in extreme drought conditions. At those times of severe need, Denver Water could drastically cut back outdoor usage which would be tolerated more easily than restricting use inside homes. Cutting back lawn watering is much easier to get customers to accept than limiting their shower times or their clothes washings.

This idea was expressed by Colorado University historian Patricia Nelson Limerick in the book she wrote about Denver Water, Ditch in Time: The City, the West and Water. As Limerick writes, Denver water managers see lawns offering a service that is far from evident to most observers. Lawns are devices that receive water that would otherwise bypass Denver unused. She adds that lawns offer a cushion if severe drought should arise, and without that cushion demand would be hardened. “Take out the lawns and water would be directed only to needs that would not be susceptible to restriction.” Limerick writes that to the late Chips Barry, former manager of the Denver Water Department, lawns looked a lot like a dispersed version of a reservoir, holding water that could, in urgent circumstances, be shifted to respond to genuine need.

In response, Tejral said that they are shifting away from viewing turf the way Barry did. He insists there are other benefits to having lawns and landscapes in general, and it’s important to manage landscapes for what is best in the long term for a lot of different purposes, which could include aesthetic. He said that Chips Barry was reflecting on where Denver was, but as it matures as a city and integrates with others, people are going to have to learn the true function of landscapes, which is complicated.

Similar to the municipalities surrounding Phoenix, Front Range municipalities near Denver including Thornton, Centennial Water and Sanitation District (Highlands Ranch), Fort Collins, and Aurora all have rebates for removing grass.

One might think that Tejral would be a big advocate for such an incentive program. Before he worked at Denver Water, Tejral worked at Aurora Water, the water provider for the city of Aurora, just to the east of Denver, and he helped start that utility’s turf rebate program. But, he said, while the two cities are adjacent, Aurora started in a different place than Denver, and the former was more turf-centric. In contrast to Denver, not a lot of people in Aurora were modeling the change to either xeric or more water-efficient landscapes. That led Aurora to start a turf rebate program, in Tejral’s words, “to catch up to what its bigger neighbor Denver had been doing for some time.”

“Smarter Than…Dams, Reservoirs, and Pipelines”

Ten years ago, Drew Beckwith was with Western Resource Advocates, an environmental organization. At that time he told the Boulder Daily Camera, when talking about Denver Water’s plans to expand its water supply in nearby Gross Reservoir, the agency had done a great job with conservation, but what it lacked is what others offer: cash-for-grass incentives.

Beckwith recently moved into the public sector and is now the Water Resources Specialist with another Denver neighbor, the City of Westminster. That municipality plans to offer turf replacement rebates next summer. He said 50 percent of Westminster’s drinking water supplies go to outdoor use, and just like other cities, the water used on grass and plants is highly treated to drinking quality standards, not a cheap process.

According to Beckwith, conservation through cash-for-grass and other incentives, is cheaper, faster, and smarter than building structural projects like dams, reservoirs, and pipelines. He noted there is a cultural shift going on along Colorado’s Front Range moving toward more “Colorado-friendly” landscapes, and Westminster wants to spur that shift.

Meanwhile, back in Thornton, Colorado, Wendy Inouye admires her xeriscape where grass used to be. She said that the rebate she got covered only about a tenth of her conversion expenses. But transforming her landscape gave her the sense that she is doing something for the planet, the community, and herself. And, she added, the rebate made her feel like the city is on the same mission as she is.

This story originally appeared on H2ORadio.org and is republished here by permission.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism. The Water Desk is seeking additional funding to build and sustain the initiative. Click here to donate.

Data viz: surveying Colorado River Basin maps

By

Mitch Tobin

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September 9, 2019

Confession: I’m a map junkie.

My office walls are plastered with them. Some of my favorite publications are gazetteers. Given my cartographic obsession, it should be no surprise that I’ve picked maps to launch a new feature of The Water Desk: creating, aggregating and sharing data visualizations related to water issues.

We’re building a multimedia library that includes photos, videos, charts, graphics, maps and other visual content that can help tell the story of water, especially in the American West and Colorado River Basin. In addition to creating our own multimedia material and data visualizations, we’ll be pulling together public domain imagery from government agencies as well as platforms that offer content with a Creative Commons license, such as Wikipedia.

In this post, I’ve collected a variety of maps depicting the Colorado River Basin, the region that we’re initially focusing on at The Water Desk. Covering nearly a quarter-million square miles, the basin supplies water to around 40 million people and supports $1.4 trillion in annual economic output.

Click the maps below to see and download full-size versions of the images.

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation maps

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has created several maps of the Colorado River Basin, including this one:

The map above not only shows the boundaries of the hydrologic basin but also adjacent areas that receive Colorado River water thanks to massive water works such as the Colorado River Aqueduct, Central Arizona Project, Central Utah Project, San Juan-Chama Project and the many transmountain diversions under Colorado’s Continental Divide.

Here’s a map from Reclamation showing many of the tributaries and major dams in the basin:

Colorado River Basin map 2 — Source: Bureau of Reclamation https://www.usbr.gov/uc/img/crsp/CRBMap.jpg

Native American tribes hold significant water rights in the Colorado River Basin. The map below from Reclamation shows reservations of members of the Ten Tribes Partnership, an organization that represents the federally recognized tribes with reserved water rights in the basin.

Map of Ten Tribes Partnership of Colorado River Basin — Source: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

U.S. Geological Survey map

If you’re looking for a simpler map of the basin, the U.S. Geological Survey offers this image:

Colorado River Basin map 3 — Source: U.S. Geological Survey

A user-created map from Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s Colorado River page offers an overview map of the basin created by user Shannon1, who has created a variety of river-related maps.

Colorado River Basin Map Wikipedia — Source: Wikipedia user Shannon1

Dams and water providers: an interactive map

If you’d like to search for dams and water providers in the basin, the Colorado River Water Users Association offers an interactive map:

Colorado River Water Users Association Map — Source: Colorado River Water Users Association

Another good source for Colorado River maps is a gallery created by the Colorado River District. Here’s a screenshot:

Colorado River District screenshot — Source: Colorado River District

John Wesley Powell’s basin map

Finally, I would be remiss in writing a post about these Colorado River maps and not include one from famed explorer John Wesley Powell that outlines the boundaries of river basins throughout the West.

The map below, from an 1891 U.S. Geological Survey report that Powell authored as the agency’s second director, not only shows the watershed boundaries but also demarcates the arid region he explored and explained. On the east side, the boundary of the region approximates the 100th Meridian; to the west, the arid region excludes the very wet areas between the Pacific Ocean and the crest of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges.

Powell Western water map — Source: U.S. Geological Survey’s 11th Annual Report, 1891

Do you know of other helpful Colorado River Basin maps? Please contact us so we can add them to this page and our multimedia library.

A dry subject: how scientists map drought conditions

By

Greg Ramirez

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September 4, 2019

Desolate mud flat basin in Death Valley, CA - Adobe Stock photo — Photo: Adobe Stock

This spring, headlines proclaimed that Colorado was drought-free for the first time since 2017, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The welcomed proclamation came after the state’s waterways and reservoirs swelled thanks to abnormally high snowpack levels, a cooler-than-average spring and an unusually rainy summer. But while the drought monitor is good for identifying overall drought conditions in the short-term––which scientists define as a period of less than six months––it’s not as useful for evaluating long-term trends.

The term drought implies a temporary state––precipitation will eventually return to normal; reservoirs will recharge; streams will continue to flow as expected. But some scientists are now using the term aridification to describe the long-term drying out of the West.

The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor map, which is compiled by dozens of scientists at a handful of organizations, is used by researchers, water managers, farmers and others for short-term planning. It provides a snapshot of drought conditions by comparing historic conditions to current data.

“It’s not a completely mathematical product,” said Becky Bolinger, a climatologist at Colorado State University. “It’s actually a human being who’s looking at all these different things and assessing how bad each of those different indicators are compared to their normal.”

David Miskus, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, prefers the phrase “convergence of evidence” to describe the melange that makes up the Drought Monitor.

He said they use more than 40 indicators, including soil moisture, precipitation, streamflow and other observational data from a network of over 400 individuals. Once compiled, researchers determine a region’s drought intensity, which is delineated on the weekly map through a color-coded system.

The drought monitor determines the drought intensity of a region, which is delineated on a map using a color-coded system.
Source: U.S. Drought Monitor

“We try to keep it simple, because believe me, this is a very complex procedure,” Miskus said of putting the Drought Monitor together every week. “We take a lot of evidence into account, both the data and the impacts that are out there.”

Making things more complicated is the fact that there are four different types of drought: hydrologic, meteorologic, agricultural and socioeconomic.

There are four different types of drought: hydrologic, meteorologic, agricultural and socioeconomic.

For example, when media outlets report that the Colorado River basin is experiencing a 20-year drought, what they are referring to is hydrologic drought – defined by shortages in streamflows and reservoir levels. However, some may confuse that with meteorological drought, which is an overall decrease in precipitation.

During the prior drought, the Four Corners region and Southwest Colorado were experiencing exceptionally dry conditions, which abated due to a wet winter only to start creeping back this summer. The hydrologic drought, however, remained in place, which is not evident from looking at the Drought Monitor, but which is obvious at Lake Powell. The reservoir created by Glen Canyon Dam was 56 percent of full capacity at the end of August.

“We’re still in a drier climate and we still need to be aware of the water we use,” Bollinger said. “We still need to be aware that there are issues with the future of our water long-term in the Colorado River Basin, which affects all of the southwestern states.”

Explore our dashboard with weekly reports from the U.S. Drought monitor dating back to 2000:

Welcome to The Water Desk

By

Mitch Tobin

-

September 2, 2019

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of water journalism. We’re focusing on Western water issues and the Colorado River Basin—the lifeblood for some 40 million people and a $1.4 trillion economy.

The Water Desk is starting up at a pivotal moment for both journalism and water, not only in our home region but also around the world. Digital disruption and other forces are posing existential threats to media outlets just as climate change, population growth and other stressors are creating unprecedented challenges for managing our most precious natural resource.

The Water Desk will strengthen water journalism in a variety of ways:

Support for journalists: We’ll provide funding, training and other resources to journalists and media outlets.
Original content: Our own coverage will emphasize data, multimedia, explanatory, investigative and solutions-oriented journalism.
Education and community engagement: We’ll work with students and others beyond the campus to advance learning, train the next generation of water journalists and engage the community.

The Water Desk launched this spring with support from the Walton Family Foundation. As a journalistic effort, The Water Desk maintains a strict editorial firewall between its content and funders. Likewise, The Water Desk has editorial independence from the University of Colorado Boulder, where we’re based at the Center for Environmental Journalism.

The Water Desk will work across platforms and will be looking for ways to support journalism through newspapers, magazines, websites, radio, podcasts, television, video and other media.

Because water is intertwined with so many issues, we’re interested in a broad spectrum of topics: climate change, biodiversity, public health, environmental justice, food, agriculture, drinking water, economics, business, recreation and more.

In short, The Water Desk will operate as a small news organization that also provides resources, training and other support to journalists, media outlets and students so that the public and policymakers are better informed about water.

To receive updates on The Water Desk, please subscribe to our email newsletter. We’re on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram so please connect with us on those networks.

Check out our about page and FAQs for more information about The Water Desk.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us at waterdesk@colorado.edu.

Denver developer, former governor make $118M play for San Luis Valley water

By

Fresh Water News

-

August 5, 2019

Denver developer, former governor make $118M play for San Luis Valley water — A powerful sprinkler capable of pumping more than 2,500 gallons of water per minute irrigates a farm field in the San Luis Valley June 6, 2019. Credit: Jerd Smith

By Jerd Smith

Henry, Colorado: As the sun sets at the Colorado Farm Brewery, a light breeze plays over a deep green rye field that borders the patio. As they do most Thursday nights, nearly two dozen people have wandered into this scenic, rural bar 250 miles southwest of Denver to relax and visit with neighbors.

The brewery is part of a 300-acre farm which grows grains and hops, and which also operates a malting company. Wayne Cody, the farm’s 61-year-old patriarch, has just come in from hours of work, roasting malt, examining fields, and preparing to plant buckwheat the next day.

As he visits with customers, it’s clear that most people in this bar tonight know that something almost unholy is in the works here in the San Luis Valley.

3.Deb Anderson tends bar at the Colorado Farm Brewery June 6, 2019. — Deb Anderson tends bar at the Colorado Farm Brewery June 6, 2019.

A well-connected metro Denver water developer, backed by former Colorado Governor Bill Owens, Front Range real estate interests, and absentee ranchers who themselves control huge amounts of water here, is proposing to export millions of gallons of water out of this drought-stricken, scrappy place for delivery to fast-growing Douglas County.

Sean Tonner, who once served as deputy chief of staff for Owens, is leading the group, which has proposed spending $118 million to acquire water from the farmers here. That sum includes a $50 million community fund to help bolster the poverty-stricken region.

Tonner’s company, known as Renewable Water Resources, is at least the fourth in a stream of developers who’ve beaten a path to this remote region in the past 50 years, intent on harvesting its water. All, up until now, have been decisively turned back.

In February, at a water conference in Alamosa, just up the road from Henry, a man suggesting that Tonner’s proposal had merit was booed.

The proposal to bring water from the San Luis Valley to the metro area would require a pipeline of more than 200 miles. Credit: Chas Chamberlin

Former U.S. Senator Ken Salazar’s family has farmed here for generations. Salazar also spoke at the conference and reassured the 200-plus people in the packed auditorium that no water would ever flow out of the valley into the metro area.

“Over my dead body,” he said to cheers and applause.

In a minute

For Wayne Cody, it isn’t nearly that clear cut. He and his sons, an energetic, muscular lot, are pouring everything they have, including beer, into saving their family farm.

Cody’s grandparents bought the farm in the 1930s, and the family has grown alfalfa profitably, then raised dairy cows, again profitably, for some 80 years. But as farm costs rose, and dairy prices dropped, they turned to a new industry, brewing, with Coors and others as customers.

In 2008, they started the Colorado Malting Company and last year they opened the Colorado Farm Brewery on County Road 12 South. Its custom beer snifters urge guests to “Drink Like A Farmer.”

Wayne Cody bags malt for shipment to a distillery in Longmont, Colo. Cody’s grandparents bought the 300-acre farm in the 1930s. Now he and his sons are seeking ways to keep the farm profitable, even as farm incomes erode. — Wayne Cody bags malt for shipment to a distillery in Longmont, Colo. He and his sons are seeking ways to keep the family farm profitable, even as farm incomes erode. June 7, 2019 Credit: Jerd Smith

Until a corporate malting company entered the valley two years ago, the Cody clan was selling 1 million pounds of malt a year, but they haven’t been able to compete well with the big operation, and so this year they have contracts to sell just 600,000 pounds of malt, Wayne Cody said.

Last month, the family laid off a full-time and part-time employee. Still they’re pushing ahead, hoping to make inroads into California’s malt market.

In the interim, the notion of selling some of their water each year to generate additional cash has a certain appeal.

“I would hate to see the water leave the valley,” Cody said, “but would I sell some? In a minute.”

Unequivocally no

Eight miles north, in Alamosa, Cleave Simpson runs the Rio Grande River Water Conservation District, an agency created by state law in 1967 to manage the Rio Grande River. It serves roughly 1,000 farm entities in the valley. Simpson and others are deeply worried about the export plan because the valley’s water supplies are already under severe stress.

The region’s sprawling farm economy is supported by the Rio Grande River and a giant underground aquifer, a sort of bathtub that is refilled by snowmelt and runoff.

But the aquifer has been over-pumped and hasn’t been able to refill itself for decades, thanks largely to the giant thirst of the valley’s thriving potato industry. It is the second-largest potato growing region in the United States.

A conveyer sorts potatoes at the Monte Vista Potato Growers' facility in Monte Vista. June 7, 2019 Credit: Jerd Smith — A conveyor sorts potatoes at the Monte Vista Potato Growers’ facility in Monte Vista. June 7, 2019 Credit: Jerd Smith

A stubborn 19-year drought, that broke at least temporarily this year, and a warming climate that is causing declines in western rivers are compounding the problem.

So depleted is the aquifer that the state has ordered the valley to bring water levels back up to where they were prior to 2000, or face a massive shut down of farm wells in 2030.

It wasn’t always like this. When farmers began drilling powerful irrigation wells into the aquifer in the 1950s, subsurface water was thought to be so plentiful that they could irrigate their fields almost endlessly. But as modern hydrology caught up with pumping technology, it became clear that there was a close connection between the aquifer and flows in the river, and that the pumping was harming the aquifer, the river, and other farmers’ water rights in the river.

Soon, the Rio Grande Basin was under legal fire. Eventually the courts determined that the farmers of the San Luis Valley were overusing their fair share.

Still, bringing the aquifer back into balance is no small task. To get it done, valley farmers are voluntarily taxing themselves, and using those revenues to pay other farmers to reduce their pumping and fallow fields. But last year’s drought stripped the Rio Grande River of much of its water, and forced the farmers to pump heavily to protect their crops, wiping out much of the water their voluntary conservation program had placed underground in the prior seven years.

Source: Rio Grande River Water Conservation District. Credit: Chas Chamberlin

Now, even in a good water year like this one, the valley must pay back the water it has overused in the past so that the Rio Grande can be made whole as it flows south to irrigate fields in New Mexico and Texas and refill reservoirs for the citizens and farmers of those states.

It is a bitter reality in the San Luis Valley, one that makes the notion of outsiders taking even more water out of the depleted region particularly painful to many of its farmers and water officials.

“This basin is just highly over-appropriated,” Simpson said. “There are way more decrees for water rights than can be delivered in any one year. We have water rights that haven’t been able to draw from the river in 20 years. Likewise the groundwater system is also over-appropriated.”

Tonner and his team made a presentation to the district’s board in January, asking that the district support its export proposal and help manage the $68 million water purchasing effort.

That’s big money down here. But the district’s board said no. Unequivocally no.

Simpson and other water leaders here believe that most farmers will oppose any Front Range deal to export San Luis Valley water, no matter the dollar figures involved.

Town by town

Tonner is not discouraged.

Since last October, he’s been traveling the mountain passes and dusty two-lane highways that link the San Luis Valley to the Front Range, bringing his 11-slide PowerPoint presentation to the tiny towns of the valley, from Saguache to Moffat to Crestone.

Sean Tonner, a principal with Denver-based Renewable Water Resources, is leading a group of investors who want to export water from the drought-stricken San Luis Valley. Credit: Jerd Smith — Sean Tonner, a principal with Denver-based Renewable Water Resources, is leading a group of investors who want to export water from the drought-stricken San Luis Valley. June 25, 2019. Credit: Jerd Smith

His plan: To buy 22,000 acre-feet of water, a purchase that would dry up roughly 10,000 acres of farm fields and provide enough water for some 44,000 urban homes annually.

He also proposes paying more farmers to fallow enough land to forego the use of another 30,000 acre-feet of water, allowing it to remain in the vast, complex underground water system. According to RWR’s math, even after their 22,000 acre-foot export, ensuring that 30,000 acre-feet is no longer pumped means an 8,000 acre-foot net gain for the system.

Tonner’s Renewable Water Resources is only the latest company to attempt this controversial task. Three others have tried since the 1980s. Tonner was involved with an earlier effort that stalled out due to a ranch owner’s death. Tonner and his backers came back and bought that ranch and are now moving forward with RWR.

RWR says it has raised $28 million from private investors to help fund the deal, but documents on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission indicate that $750,000 has been raised. Tonner said those figures are out of date and that the rest of the money will come once the company has signed a deal with an “end user” in Douglas County.

He says no agreement has been signed yet, but that the end user would need to sell enough bonds to pay the farmers, RWR, and the cost of the massive well fields, pipeline and delivery system that will be needed to bring the water up Highway 285 and across to the Front Range. How much money is that? Tonner estimates construction costs of more than $600 million, depending on the final route of the proposed pipeline.

Tonner said he has signed sale agreements from roughly 40 farmers and that more than 100 farmers have approached him about selling their water. Tonner declined to identify them, citing the tensions in the valley and the potential for public backlash. Wayne Cody is not among them.

But Jerry Berry, a local ranch manager in the town of Moffat who has an ownership interest in RWR, did agree to talk about the proposal.

“This is an 8,000 acre-foot net gain. How does that not benefit the aquifer? You have to be open minded enough to see where the true benefits are. $50 million in a trust fund that they can use for economic growth is more than that water would ever produce agriculturally,” Berry said.

Berry, who is on the local school board, said he believes RWR is looking for a deal that benefits all parties. “I’ve done business with these guys. They are reputable. If it’s not a win-win for everybody they won’t do it.” Other developers, says Berry, have gone straight to water court without seeking community input.

And they’ve all been defeated there.

Having fought off water-hungry invaders before, the San Luis Valley, aided by such powerful politicians as Salazar and former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth, among others, and such powerful environmental groups as The Nature Conservancy, has established a long list of protections that will make any kind of a water export proposal difficult to execute.

Backers would have to prove that the exports don’t harm other users on the Rio Grande River and that they would not harm the aquifer itself. The plan would also have to demonstrate that it would not diminish the groundwater that maintains the Great Sand Dunes National Park and other conserved areas.

Still farmers are entitled to sell their water rights under Colorado law, even if their neighbors disagree.

Insatiable thirst

In his quest to protect the farmers in his district, Simpson too has been traveling the state and in February briefed Colorado’s Interbasin Compact Committee, a group created in 2005 under Colorado state law to facilitate cooperation between river basins.

Jeris Danielson, a former Colorado water regulator who sits on the IBCC, said the RWR proposal exemplifies a long-standing problem in Colorado — how to protect the state’s individual river basins, while ensuring the seemingly endless thirst of the Front Range, whose South Platte and Arkansas basins are also stretched beyond capacity can be satisfied.

“The problem is the six-county sucking chest wound called the metro area,” said Danielson, who represents the Arkansas River Basin on the IBCC. “That’s where all of the people are moving. So how do we solve this problem?”

Transbasin diversions (TBDs), which move water from one river basin to another, are not new in Colorado. More than two dozen pipelines have been harvesting West Slope water and delivering it to the drier Front Range for nearly 150 years, often leaving some of the state’s most scenic, fragile mountain areas and wetlands forever altered.

However, they have become so controversial, and expensive, that no new ones have been built since the 1980s. And Governor Jared Polis, when he was campaigning last summer, said he would do everything in his power to stop any newly proposed TBD.

But that doesn’t address Colorado’s urban thirst. The Front Range needs roughly 300,000 acre-feet of water by 2050 to stave off shortages, according to the Colorado Water Plan. In Douglas County, the number is smaller but the problem is more urgent. Douglas County, along with parts of El Paso and Elbert counties, relies on an aquifer that, unlike the one in the San Luis Valley, cannot renew itself. And aquifer levels are dropping. Cities such as Castle Rock rely on the aquifer for roughly 70 percent of their water, and though they have acquired some surface water rights and they operate a water recycling plant, they still need more fresh water to ensure they don’t drain their own underground supplies.

Will new surface water come from the San Luis Valley? That’s not clear yet.

Construction workers build a single family home in Castle Rock. The needs new surface water supplies to reduce its reliance on non-renewable groundwater. Credit: Jerd Smith — Construction workers build a single family home in Castle Rock. The city needs new surface water supplies to reduce its reliance on non-renewable groundwater. Credit: Jerd Smith

“RWR has presented to us,” said Castle Rock Director of Utilities Mark Marlowe. “But it’s not part of our long-term plan at this point.”

Tonner said RWR has talked with several major water districts in Douglas County, including Castle Rock and Parker and, very early on, Colorado Springs. But he says he’s not ready to identify the lead water district in the deal thus far.

Marlowe says it isn’t Castle Rock, but that the city might be interested in the plan if the price was right and if there was local support for the proposal in the San Luis Valley.

Colorado Springs said it has not met with RWR and it will not participate under any circumstances, planning instead to pull more water from places such as the Colorado River, where it already has some supplies.

$50 million worth of indifference

Jason Anderson is a Saguache County Commissioner. If this export plan becomes a reality, the well field and pipeline for the project would be built within his district. Saguache is one of the poorest counties in Colorado, with a median household income of $34,765, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Across the Continental Divide, in Douglas County, that figure is $111,000. The chasm between rich and poor isn’t lost on anyone in the San Luis Valley.

Cattle have their evening meal in the San Luis Valley. June 6, 2019. Credit: Jerd Smith

“It seems like every five years or so, the Front Range tries to figure out how to tap our water,” Anderson said. “I’m trying to keep an open mind because some of the folks in the proposal are from Saguache County. On the other hand, I haven’t had many folks speak to me in a positive manner about the plan.”

So far, Anderson said, the proffered $50 million community development fund, which might be used to support food banks and new industry, hasn’t swayed public opinion, despite the region’s poverty.

“That $50 million doesn’t seem to be playing much of a role in anyone’s decision down here,” he said.

But a look at Front Range water prices makes clear why there is so much pressure to find more and sell it on the Front Range. RWR says it is willing to pay double the market price for an acre-foot of San Luis Valley farm water. That’s roughly $2,000-plus 3,000.

That same acre-foot of water piped east across the mountains would easily sell for ten times that. And in some communities, $30,000 an acre-foot is a blue-light special.

RWR’s Tonner says his backers are now examining whether they can create an additional financial incentive for farmers that could include a sort of annual royalty payment in addition to the economic development fund.

“Look,” said Tonner, “I’ve had some people say we should pay them $1 billion for their water. That’s not going to happen. But we are trying to put some bones on a proposal that would include an annual royalty payment.”

Tonner said he would go public with his plan in six months and begin making presentations to the public water roundtables in the San Luis and in metro Denver.

Once it starts

Among locals, though, there is a much bigger concern than the cash behind the deal. The worry is that if another pipeline is built to the metro area, it will be only the first in a series of urban water exports that sooner or later will permanently strip the region of its agricultural economy and its proud farm culture.

“There is a reality that when you take the water that is being used in the San Luis Valley and open up a 22,000 acre-foot spigot — I can guarantee in 20 years it opens up to 220,000 acre-feet,” Salazar said in February at the Alamosa water conference. Salazar did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Tonner says his backers have agreed that they will insert into any eventual water court decree an absolute limit of 22,000 acre-feet on their export plan. But that would not necessarily limit others from using the same pipe to export more water, said David Robbins, an attorney who represents the Rio Grande Water Conservation District.

“I don’t care what RWR says, no one is going to build a pipeline out of the valley and simply take 22,000 acre-feet. That is absurd. You would have to be so insanely naïve as to believe in the tooth fairy. Once it starts, it never stops,” Robbins said.

A sign at the Colorado Farm Brewery pays homage to the farm. June 7, 2019. Credit: Jerd Smith

Saving a farm

Out in Henry, the Cody family has grown accustomed to hard work and risk. In recent weeks, they’ve unveiled a new lager and brought in beer steins to sell. It’s not clear that any of this will sustain the farm.

But if selling a small portion of their water and deriving an annual royalty payment from it could help, Wayne Cody might consider such a proposal.

“Everything we’ve done here is to save this farm,” he said. “Selling some of the water is the most profitable thing I could do.”

Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News. She can be reached at 720-398-6474, via email at jerd@wateredco.org or @jerd_smith.

This story originally appeared on Fresh Water News, an independent, non-partisan news initiative of Water Education Colorado. WEco is funded by multiple donors. Its editorial policy and donor list can be viewed at wateredco.org.

Aurora, Colo. Springs seek to drill on lower Homestake Creek dam sites

By

Aspen Journalism

-

July 30, 2019

Homestake Creek photo — Homestake Creek, flowing toward the Eagle River, near the Alternative A dam site being studied by Aurora Water and Colorado Springs Utilities, about three miles up Homestake Road from U.S. 24. The photo was taken on July 13, 2019 by Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

By Brent Gardner-Smith

Minturn, Colorado— The cities of Aurora and Colorado Springs are increasing their efforts to develop a reservoir on lower Homestake Creek in the Eagle River basin that would hold between 6,850 acre-feet and 20,000 acre-feet of water.

The two Front Range cities, working together as Homestake Partners, have filed an application with the U.S. Forest Service to drill test bores at four potential dam sites on the creek, renowned for its complex wetlands.

They briefed members of Colorado’s Congressional delegation in April about federal legislation they are drafting that would adjust the Holy Cross Wilderness boundary near the dam sites.

And Aurora spent $4.1 million in 2018 to purchase a 150-acre private inholding parcel that accounts for about half the surface area of the 20,000-acre-foot version of the reservoir, removing one obstacle in the way of submitting a comprehensive land-use application to the Forest Service.

“We are in preparation to permit this overall project, to try and get that larger application in, so every piece of the project has had more time and effort spent on it,” said Kathy Kitzmann, a water resources principal with Aurora Water.

Homestake Creek photo 2 — One of four potential dam sites on lower Homestake Creek, about four miles above U.S. 24, between Minturn and Leadville. From this location, the dam that forms Homestake Reservoir higher up the creek can be seen. Photo by Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism

Eagle River MOU

The Whitney Reservoir project is defined in part by the Eagle River Memorandum of Understanding, a 1998 agreement that gives Aurora and Colorado Springs a basis to pursue 20,000 acre-feet of water from the Western Slope.

Parties to the MOU include Aurora, Colorado Springs, Climax Molybdenum Co., Colorado River Water Conservation District, Eagle River Water and Sanitation District, Upper Eagle Regional Water Authority, and Vail Associates.

Peter Fleming, the River District’s general counsel, told the district’s board in a July 1 memothat the River District is “not participating in any Homestake Creek based alternative at this time, this effort is now being carried forward solely by the Homestake Partners.”

Under the MOU, various parties can pursue projects on their own, and the other parties are bound to support those efforts, but only to the degree that a proposed project meets the objectives of the MOU, including whether a project “minimizes environmental impacts.”

Homestake Creek photo 3 — A view, from the Alternative A dam site, of the Homestake Creek valley. The triangle shape in the distance is the dam that forms Homestake Reservoir. Photo by Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism.

Serious intent

Whitney Reservoir takes its name from Whitney Creek, which flows into Homestake Creek just above the four potential dam alignments now being studied. The dam that would form Whitney Reservoir would stand across Homestake Creek, not Whitney Creek. Homestake Creek flows into the Eagle River at Red Cliff.

Asked how serious the two cities are about the Whitney Reservoir project, Kevin Lusk, the principal engineer at Colorado Springs Utilities, said, “We’ve been serious about it for the last 20 years.”

And he said the recent drilling application “is another step in the continuum from concept to reality.”

On June 25, the two cities submitted an application with the Eagle-Holy Cross Ranger District for permission from the White River National Forest to drill 13 test bores 150 feet to explore the geology under the four sites.

The sites are clustered on the creek between 3 and 5 miles above the intersection of U.S. 24 and Homestake Road, shown as Forest Road 703 on most maps. The intersection is not far below Camp Hale, between Minturn and Leadville.

The drilling application says Aurora and Colorado Springs are conducting “a fatal-flaw level reservoir siting study” that “comprises subsurface exploration to evaluate feasibility of dam construction on lower Homestake Creek.”

White River National Forest supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams said review of the drilling application itself is “fairly standard stuff.”

“We’ll definitely send out a scoping statement, asking for public comment, but it won’t be about a dam,” he said. “It will be about drilling the holes.”

Each of the 13 borings would take up to five days to drill, so there could be 65 days of drilling this fall or, if the application is not approved this year, in 2020, according to Lusk.

The project includes taking a “track-mounted drill rig or a buggy-mounted drill rig,” a “utility vehicle pulling a small trailer” and a “track-mounted skid steer” onto public lands along 10-foot-wide “temporary access routes.”

The drill rigs are about 8 feet wide, 22 feet long and 8 feet high. To get the rigs to drilling sites, some wetlands may need to be crossed and trees will be cut as necessary.

The information about the geology under the four sites will help determine the size of a dam on a given alignment and how much water a reservoir would hold, Lusk said. And that could affect how much wilderness area might be encroached on.

Holy Cross Wilderness Map — A map prepared by Aurora Water that shows a potential 500-acre adjustment to the Holy Cross Wilderness boundary near the potential Whitney Reservoir on lower Homestake Creek. The map as current as of July 16, 2019.

Wilderness boundary

Given that Aurora and Colorado Springs are still working through various options, it’s not clear yet how big of an adjustment to the wilderness boundary they might ultimately seek from Congress.

The current proposed legislation developed by the cities asks to remove 497 acres from the wilderness boundary, but it is also expected to include a reversion provision so if all 497 acres are not needed, the boundary adjustment could be reduced.

According to Lusk, in one the of the alternatives studied, about 80 acres would need to be removed from the wilderness area if Whitney Reservoir was to hold 20,000 acre feet of water. However, the cities have yet to rule out the option of building an alternate reservoir below the Whitney Reservoir location – Blodgett Reservoir – which could require a larger boundary adjustment, although not the full 497 acres.

An adjustment to a wilderness boundary requires an act of Congress and the president’s signature. In April, representatives from the two cities described the potential boundary change to staffers of U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner and U.S. Reps. Scott Tipton, Jason Crow, Joe Neguse and Doug Lamborn.

Fitzwilliams said Monday the Forest Service won’t accept a full-blown land-use application for Whitney Reservoir until the wilderness boundary issue has been worked out through federal legislation, if that is still needed after the final version of the reservoir is better defined.

Kitzmann said she is reaching out to stakeholders to continue to refine the legislative language and the map showing the extent of the proposed boundary change.

wetland photo — A wetland area along Homestake Creek in an area that would be flooded by a potential Whitney Reservoir. Aurora and Colorado Springs, seeking to build the reservoir, have recently submitted a drilling application to the U.S. Forest Service to search for fatal flaws in the geology under four potential dam alignments. Photo by Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism.

Wetlands and fens

On another front, Aurora Water and Colorado Springs Utilities staffers are hosting a tour this week for the directors of the Colorado Water Conservation Board of the Homestake Plant and Fen Relocation Project, near Leadville.

The CWCB directors, holding their July meeting in Leadville, also will hear a presentation at their meeting about the fen-relocation effort, which consists of moving “fen-like organic soils and plant life” from one location in blocks or bales to another location and “reassembling them in a specially prepared groundwater-fed basin.”

Many regulatory agencies do not believe it’s possible to re-create complex fen wetlands, according to a CWCB staff memo, but that regulatory stance “may be related to the lack of scientific investigation on fen mitigation.”

A 2016 study estimated between 26 and 180 acres of wetlands on lower Homestake Creek would be impacted by Whitney Reservoir.

“This is one of the finest wetlands we can find on our forest — it’s unbelievable,” Fitzwilliams said. “From an environmental impact standpoint, this would not be a project that we would be favorable to.”

But Lusk said the fen-relocation project near Leadville is “proof of concept” that replacing fens, while “a tough nut to crack,” can be done.

Fitzwilliams may be hard to persuade.

“You can mitigate,” he said, “but you can’t replace 10,000 years of work.”

Homestake Creek map — A map from Colorado Springs Utilities that shows how tunnels could bring water to Whitney Reservoir from Fall and Peterson creeks, and from the Eagle River. The map also shows the route of a pipeline to pump water from Whitney Reservoir to Homestake Reservoir.

Homestake Creek photo 4 — Homestake Reservoir, which is partially in Pitkin County, but mainly in Eagle County. Below the reservoir the Homestake Creek valley is visible, as well as short section of what’s known as Homestake Road. Water held in the potential Whitney Reservoir would be pumped up to Homestake Reservoir and then sent to the Front Range. Photo by Brent Gardner-Smith/Aspen Journalism.

Forebay and pumping

Despite the wetlands and wilderness challenges, Lusk and Kitzmann said no fatal flaws have been found yet in what they view as an important future element of their water-supply systems.

The new reservoir would serve as a collection point for water brought in via tunnels from the Eagle River and Fall and Peterson creeks, and for water captured from Homestake Creek.

The reservoir would also serve as a forebay, as the water captured in Whitney Reservoir would be pumped 7 miles up to Homestake Reservoir. Once there, it can be sent through a tunnel under the Continental Divide to Turquoise Reservoir, near Leadville, and then on to Aurora and Colorado Springs.

The two cities own and manage Homestake Reservoir, the upper end of which is in Pitkin County. The reservoir opened in 1967 and normally stores 43,600 acre-feet of water from seven high-mountain creeks behind a 231-foot-tall dam. About 25,000 acre-feet a year is sent through the Homestake Tunnel each year to the Front Range.

Homestake Partners also has a conditional water-storage right from 1995 to store 9,300 acre-feet of water behind a potential 110-foot-tall dam in what is called Blodgett Reservoir, located on Homestake Creek below the Whitney Reservoir sites. Blodgett Reservoir also has a longer history, and has been viewed as an alternate location for older water rights – appropriated in 1952 and adjudicated in 1962 – that are tied to Homestake Reservoir.

Aspen Journalism covers rivers and water in collaboration with The Aspen Times and other Swift Communications newspapers. The Times published this story on Wednesday, July 17, 2019. This version includes a clarification concerning the size of the adjustment to the wilderness boundary and the date of the water rights for Blodgett Reservoir.

The Water Desk’s mission is to increase the volume, depth and power of journalism connected to Western water issues. We’re an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Water Desk launched in April 2019 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. We maintain a strict editorial firewall between our funders and our journalism. The Water Desk is seeking additional funding to build and sustain the initiative. Click here to donate.

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