Water: Big questions hardest to answer

By CHRIS WOODKATHE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

COLORADO SPRINGS - Should Colorado curtail growth in cities to avoid drying up farms?

Should Colorado set aside water for energy development?

Has growing corn become energy development?

Should cities remove green belts or landscaping at shopping centers to conserve water?

Most importantly, does the state even have any say on issues like these or will the march of progress dictate future water development? Those were the types of questions members of the Colorado Water Conservation Board and Interbasin Compact Committee grappled with at a joint meeting last week.

“Let’s not dry up all the rivers,” said Melinda Kassen, director of Trout Unlimited’s Western Water Project. “We have to have some understanding of what it means to take water from the river.”

http://chieftain.com/articles/2008/11/02/news/region/doc490d4318a644b607759870.txt

Rainbow trout return to Blue River in Silverthorne

State biologists plant 20,000 disease resistant trout near Silverthorne

BY Bob Berwyn Summit daily news Summit County, CO Colorado

Happy Halloween!

TU appeals Dry Gulch decision

By Chuck McGuire

PagosaSUN.com

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

According to TU attorney Drew Peternell, Lyman made appropriate improvements in his Sept. 11 decree, “but there are still flaws in his reasoning, and the diversion and storage rights are still excessive.”

Therefore, in this latest appeal, TU proclaimed an “Advisory Listing of Issues to be Raised on Appeal.” They include:

• Whether applicants (the districts) demonstrated the 50-year water rights planning horizon adopted by the water court to be reasonable, as required under the anti-speculation standard.

• Whether applicants substantiated population projections, based on a normal rate of growth, for the 50-year planning period, as required under the anti-speculation standard.

• Whether applicants demonstrated that the decreed amount of water is reasonably necessary, above their current water supply, to serve projected population through the planning period, as required under the anti-speculation standard.

The appeal also states, “The transcript of evidence taken before the trial court is necessary to resolve the issues raised on appeal.”

http://www.pagosasun.com/archives/2008/10october/103008/tuappealsdrygulch.html

52: Perpetual pork

Aspen Times Letter to the editor from CTU President Ken Neubecker.

http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20081030/LETTER/810299947/1020&title=52:%20Perpetual%20pork

PAWSD vs TU, Round Four

Pagosa Daily Post Glenn Walsh | 10/30/08

Monday afternoon, Andrew Peternell, director of the Colorado Water Project for Trout Unlimited, filed an appeal of Judge Gregory Lyman’s September 11 judgment awarding the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District and the San Juan Water Conservancy District an additional water storage right of 19,000 acre feet for their Dry Gulch Reservoir project and the right to pump water from the San Juan River at the rate of 150 cubic feet per second.

PAWSD presently has the right to divert 6300 acre feet of water from the San Juan River for storage and to pump 6.9 cubic feet per second from the river to its Snowball treatment facility.  The 150 cfs grant in Lyman’s decision represents a more than twenty-fold increase.  Significantly, the 150 cfs right is 700% larger than the right the water districts’ engineer Steve Harris claimed was necessary to meet 2040 demand in his initially engineering report for the Dry Gulch reservoir.

http://www.pagosadailypost.com/news/10258/PAWSD_vs_TU,_Round_Four

Trout Unlimited Appeals Dry Gulch Decision

Pagosa Daily Post Sheila Berger | 10/29/08

The Appeal is based upon three issues: the reasonableness of a 50-year planning horizon, whether the 50-year population projections can be substantiated based upon a normal rate of growth, and whether the applicants sufficiently demonstrated that the decreed amount of water is reasonably necessary to serve this projected population.

http://gmc.websitewelcome.com/~ownpcom/pagosadailypost.php?mode=viewnews&id=10231&cat=1

Time for truth about two amendments

By Charlie MeyersThe Denver Post

"A no vote on 58 benefits only the wildly profitable energy industry. Voting yes assists various important state programs, not least its wildlife...."

"A long list of organizations that includes every major wildlife organization, the Farm Bureau, Colorado Forum, Colorado Center on Law and Policy and virtually every water conservancy districts on both sides of the Continental Divide oppose Amendment 52."

http://www.denverpost.com/charlie

Water groups decry Amendment 52

The ballot measure would divert funds to highway projects.

By Mark Jaffe The Denver Post

"At a time when we are under pressure to get more out of our water resource and protect the environment, this would seriously hamper us," said Harris Sherman, executive director of the state Department of Natural Resources.

http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_10831618

Diversions

The Windy Gap water diversion project would deal a major blow to a portion of the Colorado River that is already struggling to survive.

Denver Post

By Gretchen Bergen

Article Last Updated: 10/26/2008

The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District hopes to divert as much of its 30,000 acre-feet of water as possible from the Colorado River every year to the East Slope. Northern proposes building a reservoir near Carter Lake for storing Windy Gap water to serve cities like Loveland, Greeley, Fort Lupton, Broomfield and Longmont.

With about 60 percent of the upper Colorado already being diverted by Northern and Denver Water, this project would take another 20 percent of a river struggling to survive. When you dry up the rivers, you dry up a majority of our tourism industry and our economy. You dry up the reason anglers, rafters, kayakers, birders and picnickers spend their vacations in Colorado. You dry up critical riparian habitat, which makes up 2 percent of Colorado land yet supports 98 percent of its wildlife.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_10799046