Colorado & Western Water Project Notes

We had a great WWP staff retreat in Wyoming, with: a guest presentation on how the media in the Rockies report on climate change and water; a field trip and slide shows of WY restore/reconnect projects; good discussions about strategic issues as well as upcoming grant applications and reports; a cancelled telemetry tagging opportunity due to high, muddy water conditions (which also meant "challenging" fishing that resulted in two rods broken); and inspiring camaraderie with hard working folks who love their jobs.

We attended and spoke at the Natural Resources Law Center's Annual water law conference.

The Denver Post published an oped commentary by the WWP Director about why the Clean Water Restoration Act matters for Colorado: http://www.denverpost.com/guestcommentary/ci_12736157

We have been working several other conservation groups on an analysis of the gap between water supply and demand on Colorado’s Front Range. We hope to offer an alternative to a future, additional diversion of water from Colorado’s Western Slope.

The water judge referred Shell’s water rights application to a water referee to preside over preliminary, informal proceedings in the case. The first status conference before the referee will be held mid July.

TU’s Dry Gulch oral argument to the Colorado Supreme Court was held in June. We await a decision from the Court.

Scoping comments on the forthcoming environmental impact statement for Aaron Million’s proposed Flaming Gorge Pipeline project are due to the Army Corps of Engineers at the end of July.

We are performing an analysis of barriers to Colorado River cutthroat trout in the Yampa basin. An aerial survey of barriers was made last week, identifying nearly 400 potential barriers. The next phase of the effort is to narrow our focus to a more workable number of barriers and then perform ground-level surveys.

We Can't All Be in the Same Boat - So Why Not Win Your Own?

DON'T MISS YOUR OPPORTUNITY to own a TU 50th Anniversary edition ClackaCraft 2009 LP Fly Pod drift boat valued at $9,500. Raffle tickets are $100 each. Drawing will be held August 22, 2009. This is no ordinary driftboat. Click here to take a look.

Restore the Clean Water Act

By Melinda Kassen The Denver Post - Opinion

Many people may not remember what America's waters were like before the Clean Water Act. The Cuyahoga River caught fire. Lake Erie was a dead zone. Rivers and streams across the country were foaming, foul-smelling dumps for industrial waste. Reckless development destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat each year.

 The sorry state of our waters was more than a national disgrace — it also was a clear and present threat to public health. Then, in 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act. The law ushered in a new era of stewardship of all "water of the United States," and it was widely understood to protect every stream, river, marsh and lake in the nation.

For almost 30 years, the CWA worked to make America's waters clean, fishable and swimmable. And our country moved from an ethic of "out of sight, out of mind," to "everyone lives downstream." Now that ethic is under assault — and so again are our rivers and streams.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has issued confusing and muddled rulings that have distorted the original language of the Clean Water Act and drastically narrowed its scope. Worse, the justices themselves have not agreed on what the law means, with four justices suggesting that only rivers that flow year-round and can float logs or boats deserve protection. As a result of this legal confusion, some 20 million acres of our country's wetlands and millions of miles of rivers and streams have been stripped of protections.

In Colorado, about 75 percent of rivers and streams — some 76,000 miles of waterways — run either seasonally during spring runoff or after summer rains, and thus may no longer qualify for CWA protection from dredging operations, oil spills, discharges of industrial waste or sewage, construction or unregulated development.

That's why Congress must pass the Clean Water Restoration Act. Critics portray CWRA as a federal power grab, but the bill does precisely what it says — it restores the original scope of the Clean Water Act, no more and no less. A key clarification at the heart of the bill — changing the phrase "navigable waters" to "waters of the United States" — follows the interpretation used in the original Clean Water Act and applied by the Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency for decades. The bill also continues existing exemptions for farm and ranch operations. Even small, seasonal streams have immense biological value as fish habitat. Field and Stream magazine recently called CWRA a top legislative priority for sportsmen, citing its protection of wetlands that are "among the most important habitats for waterfowl and a host of other wildlife."

The Clean Water Act is based on a commonsense truth: Our waters, large and small, are interconnected — and to pretend otherwise is to invite disaster. When we allow polluters to dump toxins or trash upstream, we can expect pollution and devastation downstream, in our most prized rivers and streams.

Colorado Sen. Mark Udall and Sen. Michael Bennet expressed opposition to CWRA when it was introduced, calling its language overly broad. But their concerns about impacts on agriculture have been directly addressed in the compromise bill approved June 18 by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

It is time for both senators to support the bill. The Clean Water Restoration Act protects Colorado's streams and rivers from polluters who want the right to trash our state's waters. Melinda Kassen of Boulder is director of Trout Unlimited's Western Water Project.

Workshop addresses invasive freshwater zebra, quagga mussel threat

by Will Grant, Aspen Daily News Staff Writer - Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The DOW first reported zebra and quagga mussels in Colorado last year and lists seven bodies of water containing them: Pueblo Lake, Lake Granby, Grand Lake, Willow Creek Reservoir, Shadow Mountain Reservoir, Taryall Reservoir and Jumbo Lake. The agency also officially lists Blue Mesa Reservoir as at risk for the mussels, but all bodies of water where boats come in and out can be threatened. Read more

Volunteers repair mine damage to Kerber Creek

By Joe Stone - Special to the Mountain Mail About 20 people installed nearly a mile of wattles in Kerber Creek west of Villa Grove in the San Luis Valley Saturday as continuing damage repair caused by upstream mining.

Volunteers from Collegiate Peaks Anglers chapter of Trout Unlimited worked with various agency employees and local land owners to repair damage that began at least 130 years ago in the Bonanza Mining District.

http://www.themountainmail.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=16670

Colorado vs. federal roadless rules: 3 letters

These letters on DenverPost.com are in reply to the Post's endorsement of the Colorado Roadless Plan in favor of the federal 2001 Roadless Plan.

Your editorial voiced support of the Colorado roadless rule that currently is being finalized. The Post mentioned that exceptions in the draft rule would allow for oil and gas development and coal exploration in certain areas. What it failed to address is that the Currant Creek roadless area would be opened to coal mining under that draft.

Beetles Add New Dynamic to Forest Fire Control Efforts

New York Times - By KIRK JOHNSON - Published: June 27, 2009

The study said that 70 percent of that forest-fringe land was now privately owned in the 11 states west of the Plains States (not counting Alaska or Hawaii), and that partly because of ownership difficulties, only 11 percent of the fire mitigation work had occurred in the places it was needed most. Read more

In Defense of Wild Trout and Salmon

Learn the history and accomplishments of Trout Unlimited’s first 50 years.By BETH DURIS

Read all about it in: Trout Magazine

Development leases retired on Front

June 17, 2009Great Falls Tribune (MT)

Another 19,000 acres of oil and natural gas leases have been retired on the Rocky Mountain Front. Curry & Thornton and David R. Wilson have transfer leases in the Badger-Two Medicine area to Trout Unlimited, which plans to turn them over to the Bureau of Land Management to be permanently retired, said Chris Hunt, a Trout Unlimited spokesman. The conservation group previously received 50,000 acres in transfers located on the Front. Read more

Holland & Hart’s Castle named to Interior Department post

Denver Business Journal

Castle will oversee water and science policy for the sprawling land-use agency, and will be responsible for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey. Read more, including a bio.