Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- Time for a TurnaroundWell, my friends, things are finally looking up, and good timing, too, since I’m sure you’re all sick of me bitching. Recent bike build, including wheels… fun! In what feels like a fairly short time, I’ve come from sitting around … Continue reading → […]
- This Raised My PulseHey, baby… wanna ride? I may be injured, but I’m not dead yet. I can still have racy thoughts. Here’s more info. In other news, UBI was an awesome success! I had a blast. I highly recommend it. Overhaul day…. … Continue reading → […]
- Time for a Turnaround
- Edgy Veggie
Opponents of Gross Reservoir expansion want Denver to conserve more water
The Gross Reservoir dam | Denver Water
Opposition to Denver’s plan to nearly triple Gross Reservoir in southwest Boulder County seems to be heating up.
To slake the thirst of its growing number of customers, Denver Water wants to raise Gross Reservoir’s dam by 125 feet, which would add 72,000 acre-feet of capacity to the reservoir’s existing 41,000 acre-feet of storage.
But for the bigger reservoir to be useful, it has to be filled with water. And that water would come from the already depleted (and, some would argue, over-appropriated) Colorado River watershed. Read more
A thirsty Denver wants to expand Gross Reservoir
A man makes an (illegal) jump into Gross Reservoir over the summer | DailyCamera.com
Denver is thirsty — and only getting thirstier.
By 2030, in fact, Denver will be short about 11 billion gallons of water to quench the thirst of Denver residents (and their lawns…)
So Denver is proposing a plan to pump more water from the headwaters of the Colorado River over the Continental Divide to Gross Reservoir in southwest Boulder County. And to do that, Denver wants to almost triple the size of Gross Reservoir.
The draft environmental impact statement for the project, which would fill the newly enlarged reservoir with more water from tributaries of the Colorado River near Granby, was released this month.
A public hearing will be held Tuesday in Boulder to collect comments on the environmental impact statement. … Read more
High temps, low water killed 263 Boulder Creek fish
A dead fish lies on the bank of Boulder Creek just west of 28th Street last month | Paul Aiken
The 263 dead fish found scattered on the banks of Boulder Creek last month were killed by a combination of high temperatures and low water flows.
Sections of Boulder Creek were just a trickle on Aug. 20 — with water flowing by the Millennium Harvest House at only 1 cubic foot per second — because of high demand by area water uses. And the high temps pulled the oxygen out of the streamflow that was left.
From today’s Daily Camera:
Carol Ellinghouse, water resources coordinator for the city of Boulder, said a natural — but dramatic — decrease of about 20 cfs was measured in Boulder Creek’s flow at Boulder Falls on Aug. 20.
She called the drop an unusual “natural phenomenon” but couldn’t say specifically what might have caused it. Officials traveled upstream of Barker Dam in Nederland to see if there had been any illegal diversions of water but found none, she said.
Ellinghouse said the state water commissioner for Boulder Creek, who controls how much water is diverted by rights holders along the waterway, was unable to react quickly enough to the sudden drop in stream flow Aug. 20 to prevent the fish kill.
“It was a very dramatic drop,” she said. “He assumed there was a larger influx of water into the river.”
Read the full story at DailyCamera.com or learn more about fish kills in Boulder after the jump. Read more
Build more dam, save more fish
- Denver is planning to nearly triple the size of Gross Reservoir in southern Boulder County.
The city of Denver wants to build a bigger dam in southern Boulder County, nearly tripling the size of its reservoir.
And environmentalists have something to say about it: They want to know if Denver would mind making that dam even a little bit bigger.
It’s an odd request from a group like Trout Unlimited, which has partnered with the cities of Boulder and Lafayette to try and negotiate the bigger dam, but it actually represents a calculated effort to make the best out of a bad situation.
Denver — thirstier now than ever – is trying to push through a plan to expand Gross Reservoir by 72,000 acre feet, which would require making the current dam 125 feet taller. The water to fill the new reservoir would be pumped from the other side of the continental divide, sucking more water out of the tributaries that feed the now-not-so-mighty Colorado River.
The Colorado office of Trout Unlimited, based in Boulder, thinks this is a terrible idea, but they’ve come to accept the reality — there may be no stopping the project. But there may still be an opportunity for a small victory to be had in the Gross Reservoir expansion.
Environmentalists are asking Denver to consider adding an extra 5,000 acre feet of water to the reservoir, creating a bank of water that could be used to guarantee that South Boulder Creek, which flows from the dam at Gross Reservoir through the stunning cliffs in Eldorado Canyon State Park.
Most winters, South Boulder Creek completely dries up as Denver draws down the water in the reservoir, causing devastating fish kills and compromising the stream’s ecological integrity.
Read more about this project in a story by Boulder Daily Camera reporter Laura Snider after the jump, or check out a story from the Denver Post that details this new trend here. Read more
