Is water really available for 'Big Straw?'

Ken Neubecker, vice president of Colorado Trout Unlimited, shares that concern. Cites such as Durango, Grand Junction and Rangely could theoretically grow now by developing unallocated water in the Colorado River system.http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20070716/NEWS/70716029

Allen Best Vail, CO Colorado July 16, 2007 How much water remains for Colorado to develop under the inter-state compacts of 1922 and 1948 is unclear. Those compacts assumed more water in the Colorado River and its tributaries than has generally been the case.

Flows could drop further. Many climatologists predict that the warming climate will make drought-like conditions persistent in coming decades, reducing river volume by at least 10 percent, possibly much more.

Should this happen, Colorado could have no additional water left to develop — and indeed, some current water diversions may be curtailed in order to meet compact obligations downstream in Arizona, Nevada and California.

While that threat “may be years or decades away,” says Eric Kuhn, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, in a memo to the agency’s directors , “my concern is that because the project is proposing to divert water to the East Slope, where the water could not be physically returned to the West Slope, the risks are almost entirely on the West Slope, primarily on West Slope agriculture.”

Ken Neubecker, vice president of Colorado Trout Unlimited, shares that concern. Cites such as Durango, Grand Junction and Rangely could theoretically grow now by developing unallocated water in the Colorado River system.

If Colorado has no water left to develop, the towns and cities will instead look to buy farms for their water rights. Thus, Western Slope farms would y be sacrificed to save Eastern Slope farms.

Unlike the other projects, Aaron Million’s plan to pump water from Utah and Wyoming’s Flaming Gorge Reservoir is moving ahead. The right-of-way application for along I-80 is now in a preliminary phase of review, says Walt George, the national project engineer for the Bureau of Land Management.

He says the others federal agencies involved —the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — are discussing which agency should have lead jurisdiction.

“More power to him if he can make it happen,” says Brian Werner, a spokesman for the Conservancy District Conservation District, which operates some Front Range water supplies. “We think he has a few more hurdles in front of him than he thinks has in front of him.”

Sign of things to come on the Roan

Two staff members with Trout Unlimited (TU) had filled an SUV with journalists to show them what's at stake on the Roan Plateau, and the drive along its ridges had led to the opportunity to fish in the creek.

http://www.postindependent.com/article/20070716/VALLEYNEWS/107160043

Dennis Webb
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado July 16, 2007

As the waters of the East Fork of Parachute Creek tumbled over a 200-foot falls Thursday, storm clouds hovered ominously at the far end of the broad canyon that opens up below this scenic landmark of the Roan Plateau.

The clouds' threat was only temporary, but below them could be seen a more serious concern for advocates of keeping the plateau as it is. In the canyon bottom perhaps a mile downstream of the falls, a drilling rig plumbed for the riches of the natural gas formation thousands of feet below.

The rig is on private land, but is one of several edging ever closer to the public lands of the plateau. And now that the Bureau of Land Management has decided to allow drilling on the plateau top, those seeking to protect the plateau worry that the forested landscape of its upper slopes is about to undergo an industrial transformation.

Keith Goddard, who has a hunting outfitting business on the plateau and has fought for years to keep rigs off the top, worries that those in a position to make a difference "have written this area off."

Goddard kicked up dust with his cowboy boots as he led the way down a stock trail to the creek above the falls Thursday. Two staff members with Trout Unlimited (TU) had filled an SUV with journalists to show them what's at stake on the Roan Plateau, and the drive along its ridges had led to the opportunity to fish in the creek.

It's one of a couple of creeks on the plateau known to hold populations of almost genetically pure populations of Colorado River cutthroat trout. A sizable population is on Trapper Creek, where the anglers were to visit the next day.

On this afternoon brook trout were far more in evidence, but they were skittish and required patient stalking. Before long, Corey Fisher, a Montana resident and energy field coordinator for TU, had taken off his striped shirt because it was spooking a 12-inch brookie. He slowly pursued the fish on hands and knees almost at creek level before catching and then releasing his prey.

It was a relaxing break for Fisher and Chris Hunt, an Idaho resident and TU's communications director on public lands issues. But Thursday's media tour was being conducted for more serious reasons, the same ones that had U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., grilling James Caswell in Washington that day over his nomination to be director of the BLM.

Like Goddard, Salazar and TU object to the BLM letting drill rigs on top of the Roan. Salazar has said he would place a Senate "hold" on Caswell's nomination until the Department of Interior gives Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, a fellow Democrat, the 120 days he has requested to review the Roan plan.

Far from a wasteland Hunt's hope for Thursday's tour was to show that the Roan isn't the "desert wasteland" that he says some energy industry representatives have described it as being.

Certainly, the view from below, down in Rifle, can be deceptive. From there, the plateau presents itself as a steep, stark cliff running to the north and west and climbing thousands of feet. And the drive on the JQS Road up those cliffs starts out in a landscape of piñon and juniper trees and sagebrush. But the vegetation begins to change after several switchbacks, until pines and aspen are encountered even before reaching the plateau top.

Beyond the Roan's rim, the desert gives over entirely to rolling, lush country full of wildflowers and aspen trees, and valleys running with spring-fed streams. Grouse, red-tailed hawk, elk and other animals make appearances in a place where deer, bear and mountain lion also abound.

"You get up here and it's a totally different world," Hunt said, before admiring the size of the aspen trees. "This is signature Colorado stuff, you know?"

The question is whether gas development could make the plateau look more like the heavily drilled landscape in the Colorado River Valley below. Some of the ridge-top jeep roads would be widened to accommodate drilling traffic, and already drill rigs can be seen along ridgelines of private lands just outside the BLM part of the plateau. A puff of black smoke issued from one of them Thursday.

Although no rigs have reached BLM lands, the traffic impacts have. Williams Production was using the road following the plateau rim to reach drilling sites on private lands on the plateau - something it no longer needs to do now that it has opened a new road of its own on those lands. Goddard is glad Williams took that step. He is concerned about the impacts of future drilling traffic on big game.

Watershed worries The drilling plan for the plateau calls for rigs to operate from ridge tops, to protect watersheds. But Goddard thinks the quarter-mile buffer zones around creeks are insufficient because many of the creeks are fed by springs that are farther away.

"All you've got to do is screw up one spring and you've lost the whole creek," he said.

Fisher, of TU, shares such concerns. He said a drilling-related spill in Wyoming wiped out one cutthroat trout population.

"Poor land management flows downhill," he said.

Susan Alvillar, of Williams Production, said the company already has numerous environmental protection programs in place for its drilling, including for protecting against spills.

"We've got a myriad of regulations that we follow every day," she said.

She said Williams has 14 wells on top of the Roan now, and three rigs that are currently drilling.

"We've operated up there since the '80s, and certainly it's on our radar screen that everything that we do needs to be in accordance with all those regulations and make sure that we don't impact any of our precious resources up there," she said.

Alvillar said many who work for Williams are avid hunters and anglers who understand the importance of protecting the environment. She also noted that the Roan plan is "very prescriptive" in aiming to reduce the impacts of drilling.

But that's not assurance enough for Goddard. He said he gets probably 50 calls a year from hunters hoping to find a place to go where they can enjoy their experience without seeing lots of people, traffic and drilling rigs. For years, he has been able to offer the Roan as one such place.

But with rigs looming on nearby horizons like storm clouds, and the BLM ready to invite them in if its plan withstands political challenges, he knows that may be about to change.

Ritter, Salazar urge slowdown on Roan

Environmental groups including Trout Unlimited released a poll Tuesday that they said shows nearly a quarter of voters in Colorado's 3rd Congressional District, which includes western Colorado, oppose any more drilling on the Roan.

http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20070704/NEWS/107040049/0/FRONTPAGE

http://www.postindependent.com/article/20070704/VALLEYNEWS/107040046/0/FRONTPAGE

GARFIELD COUNTY - With as many as 5,000 wells already drilled in northwest Colorado and another 55,000 possibly on the way, two of Colorado's top elected officials are questioning the rush to pursue natural gas drilling in unique landscapes such as the Roan Plateau.

Gov. Bill Ritter and U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, both Democrats, got a bird's-eye view of northwest Colorado's dramatic landscapes and intensive energy development Tuesday morning. Pilot Doug Sheffer, owner of DBS Helicopters, flew the two over the plateau, and they also touched down in Moffat County's Vermillion Basin, another area of controversy when it comes to energy development on federal lands.

In a press conference afterward at the Garfield County Regional Airport, Salazar said some 4,000 to 5,000 natural gas wells already have been drilled in northwest Colorado, and a total of 60,000 eventually may be drilled in the region. With so much development coming, it shouldn't be a problem for the federal government to honor Ritter's request for 120 days to review the Bureau of Land Management's plans for drilling on the Roan, Salazar said.

An opponent of drilling on top of the Roan, Salazar said he recognizes that the BLM has decided to allow gas development there and elsewhere in the region.

"But as it moves forward with leasing of those areas .... it is a perfectly reasonable thing for the governor of this state to want to make sure that we don't destroy our natural resources, our sustainability, along the way," he said.

The BLM worked with the state in developing its Roan plan, but Ritter took office this year and said his new administration should be given a chance to offer input. The federal government denied that request.

"We just want a productive conversation with the BLM," said Ritter.

He said he never has come out in opposition to drilling on the Roan, but it is one of the last places that drilling should be allowed to occur. He is hoping that directional drilling eventually might allow development to occur without well pads having to be placed on the plateau top.

Like Salazar, Ritter questioned the federal government's push for more drilling in a region where so much already is occurring.

"We don't need to be gluttons about this. We need to be thoughtful and prudent about how we go about that extraction, and we need to consider the air, water, wildlife as other resources that compete," Ritter said.

Salazar said he would use every means at his disposal to try to persuade the Interior Department to grant Ritter's request for more time. Already, he has placed a Senate "hold" on President Bush's nomination of James Caswell to be the new BLM director until Interior Secretary Kirk Kempthorne agrees to the time extension. Salazar said he plans to further press his case in an upcoming meeting with Kempthorne.

In a news release later Tuesday by state Senate Republicans, state Sen. Josh Penry of Fruita said Ritter and Salazar were engaging in "Democratic election politics" rather than developing any constructive alternative for managing the Roan Plateau.

He noted that the BLM's current plan is based in large part on a state proposal crafted under the leadership of Rifle resident Russell George, who was director of the state Department of Natural Resources under previous governor Bill Owens. George, a Republican, is now Ritter's transportation director. Penry called George's proposal "the most restrictive, environmentally minded production plan in the history of the American West."

Harris Sherman, who is Ritter's DNR director and joined in on Tuesday's overflight, said he has talked previously to George about issues such as the Roan, but not recently.

"This is a new administration. We are talking about a fresh look at past policies and practices," he said.

Ritter suggested Tuesday that Penry might be politicizing the Roan issue himself. Penry and state Rep. Al White, R-Winter Park, have proposed using much as $1 billion or more in revenues from drilling on the Roan to create trust funds to help meet higher education needs and pay for local impacts of energy development. Ritter said he wouldn't rule out that idea. But he questioned how far natural gas revenues from the plateau could go toward meeting long-term higher education needs, and said it's important not to let state budget discussions become focused on the Roan when so much other gas development is occurring.

"I think making it about the Roan Plateau is a way of introducing really a distraction into the conversation about whether we need to rush to the Roan or rush to the Vermillion" to drill, he said.

Mary Ellen Denomy, a petroleum accountant who attended Tuesday's press conference, said that another reason to slow down is that the region lacks sufficient gas pipelines serving other markets. That means local producers are having to sell for less than the national average, which reduces state and local government revenues.

Environmental groups including Trout Unlimited released a poll Tuesday that they said shows nearly a quarter of voters in Colorado's 3rd Congressional District, which includes western Colorado, oppose any more drilling on the Roan. Another half, including 47 percent of Republicans, want further drilling restricted to existing sites near its base, the groups said.

Protecting Good Samaritan mine cleanups a wise move

"We think it's a step in the right direction. We need a step further to make it really effective," said Elizabeth Russell, watershed-restoration coordinator for Trout Unlimited, who has been working with local focus groups seeking ways to clean up mine drainage in places such as Peru Creek near Keystone.

www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_6283643

By The Denver Post Editorial Board

Dotted across Colorado are hundreds of silent polluters that, drip by drip, have fouled our streams and watersheds for more than a century.

They should be everybody's concern, but most are nobody's responsibility.

They are among the 23,000 abandoned Colorado mines and mining sites that are the legacy of our state's first economic boom in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Across the country, there are an estimated 500,000 abandoned mines. By some calculations, 16,000 miles of Western waterways are tainted by mine waste.

Mines were built quickly and went out of business just as fast, victims of pinched-out veins, undercapitalization and fluctuating ore prices. Their useful lives are long in the past, and their owners are long gone, so there's no one responsible for cleaning them up. But the chemicals used to process ore - like cyanide, arsenic and mercury - and other substances released by mining remain.

With no owners to hold responsible, and with the estimated cleanup bill of $32 billion way beyond the capabilities of the federal or state governments, Westerners long have wrestled with how to even start cleaning up.

One promising answer, interestingly enough, is volunteers.

Many conservation and community groups have been interested in cleaning up mines and streams, but the threat of liability has hampered such efforts.

Cooperation between private groups and government agencies has permitted some citizen cleanup of old mines on federal land, but liability concerns continue to hamper other cleanups.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month took a step toward solving that problem by approving procedures under which private groups can do limited cleanup - such as removing waste rock and diverting runoff - under agency supervision without fear of being sued and held liable for cleanup of an entire mine site. But the procedures don't apply to work that might be covered by the Clean Water Act. Congress needs to take care of that problem.

"We think it's a step in the right direction. We need a step further to make it really effective," said Elizabeth Russell, watershed-restoration coordinator for Trout Unlimited, who has been working with local focus groups seeking ways to clean up mine drainage in places such as Peru Creek near Keystone.

Colorado Rep. Mark Udall introduced legislation in 2005 that would protect "Good Samaritan" cleanups. It didn't pass. He called the EPA's move a "harbinger" of full reforms needed to allow mine-site cleanups. Udall has been studying the issues with Western governors, and we hope he continues to make a run at the problem.

Washington lawmakers also ought to give a serious look to another proposal that would impose royalties on hard-rock mining and use the revenue to help pay for reclamation.

Snake River sampling stepped up

Feds, state agencies to test for metals, study fish populations

On a larger scale, Summit Water Quality/Quantity expert Lane Wyatt and Trout Unlimited’s Elizabeth Russell will use the information to fill in the gaps in a proposed watershed plan for the Snake River Basin.

http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20070703/NEWS/70703002

SUMMIT COUNTY — An ambitious round of water sampling this summer in the Snake River Basin will help lay the groundwork for a comprehensive watershed plan. One key goal is treating polluted drainage from the abandoned Pennsylvania Mine, near Peru Creek, where toxic zinc, cadmium and other dissolved metals are leaching into the water. Combined with pollution from other sources and naturally occurring minerals in the drainage, concentrations of metals in the Snake are so high that fish can’t survive.

The sampling this summer includes EPA tests, as well as more work by state health and water quality officials, while the U.S. Forest Service will take a close look at the status of aquatic insects, the macro invertebrates that form the base of the food chain. Among the agencies doing tests is the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which has been sampling the Snake and its tributaries for three years as part of a larger assessment of the environmental effects of historical mining in Central Colorado. The USGS has sampled at six sites, including the relatively untainted North Fork of the Snake (flowing down from Loveland Pass), Peru Creek above and below the Pennsylvania Mine, Deer Creek and Sts. John Creek (above Montezuma) and the Snake River in Keystone.

In an e-mail to the Snake River Task Force, USGS researcher Stan Church explained that preliminary results confirms a previous study by biologist Andrew Todd, showing fish will not survive in the contaminated stream segments. Zinc is directly toxic to trout and also affects the aquatic bugs that form the base of the food chain.

Church said the USGS is compiling a paper on their work and emphasized the preliminary nature of the results, but wanted to give the task force a heads up so that nobody is surprised when the results are published, perhaps by the end of the summer.

Some of the tests scheduled this summer include EPA water sampling and Forest Service macroinvertebrate research next week. The Colorado Division of Wildlife will do some fish population studies later in the month, while state environmental experts will test mine waste piles and do some low-flow sampling in August.

As concentrations of metals vary widely with flows in the streams, the EPA will return to do yet another round of low-flow sampling in late September, repeating some of the early July tests. A full sampling report is expected sometime this coming winter. Using the data, state experts will set new water quality standards for some of the affected Snake River segments, with public comment on those proposed changes to take place in June and July 2008.

On a larger scale, Summit Water Quality/Quantity expert Lane Wyatt and Trout Unlimited’s Elizabeth Russell will use the information to fill in the gaps in a proposed watershed plan for the Snake River Basin.

Wyatt and Russell said previously that a treatment facility for the toxic water from the Pennsylvania Mine could be under construction as soon as 2008, barring any unforeseen pitfalls.

For more Snake River info, check out the task force web site at http://instaar.colorado.edu/SRWTF/.

EPA awards Trout Unlimited for Good Samaritan clean-up of American Fork site

Award cites trail-blazing effort, significant environmental benefit (Denver, Colo., June 29, 2007) -- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials will present the EPA Environmental Achievement Award to Russ Schnitzer at the EPA Region 8 Headquarters in Denver on Monday.

Carol Rushin, EPA Assistant Regional Administrator, will present the award to Russ Schnitzer, formally Trout Unlimited's Field Director for Abandoned Mines, now of The Nature Conservancy.

Assistant Regional Administrator Rushin said, "Russ is one of several individuals who took extraordinary steps to clean up a polluting, abandoned mine site, helping to save a watershed and in the process blaze a trail for other good samaritans to follow."

The effort being recognized constitutes a national, precedent-setting accomplishment, requiring dedication and persistence in overcoming liability and technical environmental barriers, she noted.

Carol Russell, Region 8 Tribal Water Quality Team Leader, formerly the Region's Mining Coordinator, said, "In completing this effort and other efforts relevant to the Hard Rock Mining initiative, Trout Unlimited has been a model for other organizations."

"They have demonstrated the significance of this environmental issue so critical to the West and how important it is for others to step forward as Good Samaritans to clean up abandoned mine sites," she said, noting, "these awardees are representatives of an army of watershed protection and restoration volunteers."

The Forest Service and Trout Unlimited implemented a series of cleanup activities at the site, which is located on both private and public land and lies between Provo and Salt Lake City in the Utah Lake watershed, Utah. The mine site is adjacent to the American Fork River which now, thanks to the cleanup, can support the rare, native cutthroat trout in a 10-mile stretch downstream of the mine.

In 2003, the Forest Service performed a clean-up, removing tailings and restoring public lands. In 2005, Trout Unlimited, a Good Samaritan, working with Snowbird Ski Resort, the owner of adjacent private property, and Tiffany & Co. Foundation, spearheaded the cleanup of 33,000 cubic yards of waste rock and tailings with elevated levels of heavy metals at abandoned mines on private property. These wastes are now safely encapsulated in a permanent repository constructed near the Pacific Mine on Snowbird Ski Resort's property. Tiffany & Co. Foundation provided financial support for the project. Additional funding was obtained through Congressional appropriations, and NRCS managed the federal grants to perform the cleanup.

The American Fork site is one of more than 500,000 orphaned mine sites throughout the West. These sites profoundly impact the affected land and water resources downstream. At many orphan mine sites and processing areas, disturbed rock and waste piles contain high levels of sulfides and heavy metals. These piles, when exposed to air and water, undergo physical and chemical reactions that create acid drainage. As this drainage runs through mineral-rich rock, it often picks up other metals --such as arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury and zinc -- in solution or in suspension as sediment. When this runoff enters local streams and rivers, it can severely degrade water quality, damage or destroy insect, plant and animal life.

The Good Samaritan Initiative is an Agency-wide initiative to accelerate restoration of watersheds and fisheries threatened by abandoned hard rock mine runoff by encouraging voluntary cleanups by parties that do not own the property and are not responsible for the property's environmental conditions.

EPA recently announced its release of Good Samaritan administrative tools for helping interested stakeholders to clean up abandoned mine sites. These tools are intended to facilitate many more Good Samaritan cleanups.

When releasing the Good Samaritan Tools, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said, "President Bush is clearing legal roadblocks that for too long have prevented the cleanup of our nation's watersheds. Through EPA's administrative action, we are reducing the threat of litigation from voluntary hardrock mine cleanups and allowing America's Good Samaritans to finally get their shovels into the dirt."

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/8beba1896692bb31852572a000655942/26b44e3f31057b99852572f20060be92!OpenDocument

http://www.epa.gov/water/goodsamaritan/

http://www.coloradoconfidential.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2204

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/e87e8bc7fd0c11f1852572a000650c05/fce61d72c91cc8d1852572f2006a7448!OpenDocument

Award winners from other locations associated with the American Fork project have previously received awards and will receive further awards in the near future.

EPA Region 8 presents awards in four categories to individuals and groups external to the regional office. This award recognizes significant achievements in protection of public health or the environment, or in advancing the Agency's current strategic goals. Among the criteria is an outstanding contribution to environmental protection through a single action, or by an ongoing action over an appreciable period of time.

ACTION ALERT

Please take action online and tell your Representative to support a bi-partisan bill (H.R. 1507) that will give Congress the information they need to make sound salmon and steelhead recovery decisions in the Pacific Northwest.  All it takes is one click to make your voice heard and give salmon and steelhead a fighting chance.

WHY WE CARE The Columbia and Snake Rivers were once home to the world’s most abundant salmon and steelhead runs. The historic center of North American salmon production, the Columbia-Snake River Basin fed ecosystems and human communities, sustained local economies from Idaho to Alaska, and provided world-renowned fishing opportunities.

Today, however, every species of wild salmon in the Snake River is endangered, threatened, or extinct.

Federal efforts have been largely ineffective, wasting millions of dollars each year on unsuccessful recovery actions. Providing the best available information to Congress and the region is the first step in developing a successful federal salmon policy. To move forward with effective efforts, all viable recovery options should be given fair and full consideration.

A bi-partisan bill in the House of Representatives (H.R. 1507), the Salmon Economic Analysis and Planning Act (SEAPA) would authorize credible, independent studies from the National Academy of Sciences and the Government Accountability Office. The Act will provide Congress with the information it needs to make sound decisions about the future of endangered salmon while ensuring the efficient, smart investment of taxpayer dollars, and providing economic benefits to Pacific Northwest communities.

Tell your local Representative to support SEAPA.  This bill impacts all who care about the recovery of a heritage species, Pacific Northwest communities, appropriate use of public funding, and salmon and steelhead fishing opportunities.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

1.) Take action online and then follow up with a call to your local representative. Let them know you’re counting on them to ensure Congress is provided with the best information available to develop an effective salmon recovery effort.

2. Visit WhyWild.org and learn about consumer efforts to promote wild Pacific salmon, and please sign our salmon consumer’s bill of rights .

3. Visit Wildsalmon.org to learn about Save Our Wild Salmon (SOS). SOS is a nationwide coalition of conservation organizations, commercial and sport fishing associations, businesses, river groups, and taxpayer advocates - all joined in a commitment to restore Pacific Northwest wild salmon and the communities that depend on them.

4. Learn more about the Salmon Economic Analysis and Planning Act and Pacific salmon conservation, by contacting Robert McCormick at 703-284-9429 or rmccormick@tu.org

Thank You, Steve Moyer Vice President for Government Affairs and Volunteer Operations Trout Unlimited

Inmates help reclaim tailings dump

"The local chapter could see sediment was a concern in Four Mile Creek, a wild brown trout fishery, so we were able to come up with a small grant of $2,500 to help with restoration downstream or revegetation, plus we can provide volunteers to do some of the work," said Elizabeth Russell of Trout Unlimited.

http://www.chieftain.com/metro/1182600925/22

By TRACY HARMON THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

VICTOR - A nuisance legacy of yesteryear's gold mining heyday is being neutralized this summer in an effort to save a watershed that has dumped silt into Four Mile Creek and eventually the Arkansas River.

A huge pile of tailings, mostly fine sand, was piled up in Millsap Gulch two miles south of Victor between 1893 and the 1930s, coming predominately from the Independence Mine which was one of Victor's deepest gold mines. The massive mound of tailings was supposed to be rendered harmless by two earthen dams that would hold them in place, but the dams failed 15 years ago.

Now every time there is a heavy downpour of rain, significant amounts of the silt are washing onto the Bob and Helen Shoemaker ranch about 10 miles south of the gulch. From there it spills into Four Mile Creek, which later dumps into the Arkansas River and ends up in Pueblo Reservoir.

"This is terrible stuff. The silt kills vegetation and the bug life and although I own the water right, I can't use any of that water for irrigating the alfalfa fields," Shoemaker said. "This year was really bad for quite a while, so I am just tickled they will be saving all this water in here."

When it is not raining, the tailings move through the air on wind currents. The wind and water have carved huge gullies into the tailings pile, some of which are 70 feet deep.

The barren tailings are surrounded by a lush landscape of grasses, wild irises, sweet peas, aspen and pine trees. The tailings site resembles a miniature Badlands where precious few plants take root.

"It is unbelievable what the erosion has done. This is a massive project," said Dan Grenard, a U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) geologist who has been the adhesive force in getting partners together to tackle the problem.

The partners in the restoration of the tailings site number more than 20. Al Amundson of the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety's Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program is overseeing a four-month project that should correct the problem by summer's end.

Amundson said a total of 270,000 cubic yards of tailings will be moved to fill in the gullies and the pile will be shaped with a gentle slope that will have a 5-percent grade. After considering more than 50 designs, Amundson said he settled on one that he was able to tweak to provide the "most durable" and low-cost solution.

The rerouted tailings will be covered with 50,000 yards of clay overburden material then topped with bio-solids and revegetated so grasses and, eventually the native aspen trees, will return to the gulch and soak up the rain water.

"The design will allow the tailings pile to shed water laterally as quick as it can into a diversion ditch on each side," Amundson said.

In case of massive amounts of rainfall, a sediment pond will capture excess runoff.

Getting the problem solved has been five years in the making. The tailings are not acidic so the harm to the instream habitat is small.

"It's not like it is killing any critters," said Dave Gilbert, a BLM fisheries biologist. "More money is available and directed to solving acidic problems."

"It has been difficult funding-wise. This project is kind of like an orphan," Grenard said.

Because of the lack of funding available, the project managers decided to ask for help from the Colorado Department of Corrections Vocational Heavy Construction Technology Program based at the Buena Vista Correctional Facility.

"The project is a $1.3 million project but we only have $750,000 to work with - $600,000 from the state and $150,000 from the BLM - so you can see where the inmates come in," Grenard said.

Under the direction of Tom Bowen, inmates are learning how to operate a wide variety of heavy equipment, as well as learning character development traits like good behavior and work ethics. In turn, the inmates earn 60-cents a day, but more importantly, are learning a skill that "when they are released from prison they can make very good money," Bowen said.

Each day, the crew of 20 inmates puts in 10 hours - three of them on travel to and from the site and seven on the ground moving tailings at Millsap Gulch. Every three days, each inmate is assigned a new piece of equipment so each has experience on a variety of machinery.

From Buena Vista, the inmates will be placed into heavy equipment jobs while assigned to a halfway house. They are under contract to save 10 percent of their income for a year and a half after release so they "have a safety net in life and will have something to live on if there are problems," Bowen said.

For years the program boasted a minimal 10-12 percent recidivism rate, but Bowen has seen a small increase of inmates returning to prison after release in recent years because the inmates struggle with drug addiction problems, he said.

"The recidivism rate is still way better than the 30-40 percent state average," Bowen said. "We are teaching them - and hopefully they are going to continue - a new way of life."

Another partner helping with the project is Trout Unlimited, a group of avid anglers.

"The local chapter could see sediment was a concern in Four Mile Creek, a wild brown trout fishery, so we were able to come up with a small grant of $2,500 to help with restoration downstream or revegetation, plus we can provide volunteers to do some of the work," said Elizabeth Russell of Trout Unlimited.

"For me, to knock this out is a joy," Grenard said.

State rules have cut use of groundwater

“There is increasing concern about whether the wells should be regulated. In a report earlier this year, Trout Unlimited’s Western Water Project said unregulated wells represent a growing threat to wildlife habitat.”

http://www.chieftain.com/metro/1182600924/18

By CHRIS WOODKA THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

Well pumping in the Arkansas Valley has been reduced by a significant amount as a result of changes in regulations that began more than 40 years ago and were accelerated by an interstate lawsuit in 1985.

At the same time, smaller wells exempt from regulation are growing in numbers. Although the volume pumped in those wells is small, there’s a lot of them and their impact could add up.

Prior to 1985, wells pumped an average of more than 150,000 acre-feet of water per year, sometimes up to 200,000 acre-feet. Since then, it’s dropped to 110,000 acre-feet, Water Division Engineer Steve Witte told the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District board Thursday.

“We’re down . . . because administration has diminished the amount available for pumping,” Witte said.

The push to regulate wells first came in 1965, eight years after the state engineer was given responsibility for groundwater flows along with surface water rights administration. Permits were issued for the first time.

After a state Supreme Court ruling in 1968 diminished the state’s authority to regulate wells, the Colorado Legislature passed new laws, leading to regulations put in place during the 1970s. Those regulations permitted pumping three days in seven, but did not limit volume.

Kansas filed a U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit in 1985, prompting closer attention to well regulation. That led to measurement rules in 1994 that required wells to be measured either physically or through a coefficient.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that Colorado well-pumping violated the Arkansas River Compact, the state adopted well rules that required augmentation of groundwater depletion to surface flows.

“There has been a big learning process to get people to think about the pumping that occurs today,” Witte said. “The total depletions include the effects on streams from pumping that may have occurred two months ago.”

The 1996 rules apply to the larger wells in the basin, which include both irrigation wells and some municipal wells. Three well associations provide augmentation for 1,880 wells in the valley.

Augmentation plans come in three types, Witte said.

The first are decreed augmentation plans, which are taken through water court. An example would be the Upper Arkansas Water Conservancy District’s blanket augmentation plan, which specifies how much water will be depleted and which sources of water will be used for augmentation.

“There are numerous decreed plans,” Witte said.

Throughout the valley, there are 2,910 domestic wells covered by augmentation decrees, Witte said.

The second category are substitute water supply plans. In 2006, such a plan was challenged by cities and senior irrigators in the South Platte basin, creating a crisis when the state engineer ordered 400 wells shut down because they had not obtained decrees after relying on substitute water supply plans for years.

In the Arkansas Valley, the substitute water supply plans for wells have been for emerging or variable uses like hog farms, gravel pits or the ongoing water purification operation at Pueblo Chemical Depot that came into existence after the 1985 case was filed. Most of those eventually will be required to have a decreed augmentation plan.

“He have the advantage of being able to have flexibility in dealing with these wells, so we won’t have the same sort of problem seen in the South Platte,” Witte said.

The final category are “Rule 14 plans,” so-called because the 14th rule in the 1996 regulations spelled out conditions of augmentation. They exist only in the Arkansas River basin as a specific response to the Kansas lawsuit.

The well associations are required to file annual reports on pumping, as well as meeting other criteria.

“Rule 14 plans will probably be around forever,” Witte said. “They are in a sense dealing with older wells. We’re trying to force the newer wells to file for a decree.”

Reduced pumping from wells may simply have changed the way water was used in cases where senior water rights holders also have wells.

“A lot of the water being pumped by wells was depriving senior surface rights within Colorado,” Witte said. “But it becomes a scrambled egg. If a senior irrigator gets less water down the ditch, he pumps more.”

That depends on location, however. On ditches where water supply was more reliable, like Rocky Ford Ditch, wells never played a big part. In other cases, it was difficult to find a place to drill a well, Witte said.

Witte said his staff has located 4,566 high-capacity non-exempt wells that are subject to the rules, with 2,567 apparently inactive.

Smaller wells are exempt from the well rules, but still require permits. There are about 31,600 in the Arkansas basin, not including wells that were built before 1965 and may still be in use.

Domestic wells with under 50 gallons-per-minute capacity in use prior to 1971 are exempt. Additionally, domestic wells under 15 gpm in use since 1971 on lots larger than 35 acres are exempt. Certain commercial wells with minimal use are also exempt, Witte said.

There is increasing concern about whether the wells should be regulated. In a report earlier this year, Trout Unlimited’s Western Water Project said unregulated wells represent a growing threat to wildlife habitat. In Pueblo County, exempt wells have created concern about development near Beulah.

“If you have 100 15 gpm wells, you have a 1,500 gpm well,” Witte told Southeastern Thursday, only half-joking.

He explained that most of the smaller wells are not in continuous use like the larger wells.

“I do suspect the day will come when we regulate them, but I don’t know what form it would take,” Witte said. “It’s unlikely we’d take the same approach. One approach might be to grandfather everything that exists now and then make no further exemptions.”

PUMPED UP

Three major well associations file augmentation plans with the Colorado Division of Water Resources each year, accounting for most of the groundwater pumping in the Arkansas River basin. Here are 2007 requests.

Well association	Wells	Amount
Lower Arkansas Water Management Assoc.	520	58,000 af
Colorado Water Protective & Development Assoc.	1,033	46,000 af
Arkansas Groundwater Users Assoc.	327	7,000 af

Amount figures are projected, in acre-feet. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons.

Ritter Appoints Groundwater Task Force

Since last summer Front Range farmers who rely on ground water have been in the news. These farmers use ground water rather than surface water resources to irrigate their crops. Unfortunately, these sources are not always reliable, putting their crops and property values in jeopardy. Earlier this year Governor Ritter attended a public meeting in Wiggins, Colorado to hear from those who have been the hardest hit. Following that meeting, as many of you have likely heard, the governor appointed a 23 member task force to address the South Platte Groundwater issues.

The group will try to address the critical water shortage along the South Platte which was precipitated by many factors including the 2002 drought. The effects of the drought -- along with several technical and legal factors -- increased the scrutiny of water court cases and increased the tension among water holders, making it increasingly more difficult for some junior water right holders to pump ground water.The first meeting of the special South Platte River Basin Task Force, will be held on June 29th at the Union Colony Civic Center in Greeley. The public and the media are encouraged to attend. The Task Force will hear public testimony and comment between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. The June 29th meeting in Greeley will start at 9:30 a.m. with a briefing by attorneys Jim Lochhead and Anne Castle, and Assistant State Engineer Dick Wolfe. All three are non-voting members of the Task Force.

The public is invited to provide comment and information to the Task Force between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.  Because of time constraints, interested individuals and groups with shared concerns are encouraged to designate a representative to comment on their behalf.   This will hopefully allow each person who wishes to present to the Task Force more time to speak. A second Task Force meeting, which will be devoted entirely to public comment, will be held on July 16th, from 9 am to 5 pm, location TBA. The task force will make a final report to Gov. Ritter, legislative leaders and the chair of the legislature'a Interim Committee on Water Resources by Sept. 30 2007. To read more about the taskforce go to this article or this press release.