by John Orr
Runoff
Most of Colorado’s water users – municipal, agricultural, recreational and industrial – depend on annual snowmelt for their supplies. So it’s no wonder that many across Colorado watch the snowpack closely through the beginning of the water year and then anxiously anticipate the runoff. Will it come off too fast to be stored or will there be enough to fill? Will there be flooding? Will the holes and rapids along the whitewater sections be navigable?
An early warmup, dust events and wind battered what had been a good snowpack in the Rio Grande and Gunnison basins, which led to an early runoff. Storage numbers, however, rose to near average across the basins. June runoff into Blue Mesa Reservoir was 205,000 acre-feet or 70% of average.
Decent April and May snowfall and cooler than normal temperatures increased what had been a below average snowpack in the Arkansas and South Platte basins. The South Platte Basin snowpack was 113 percent of average on May 20 while the Arkansas River Basin was sitting at 95% of average.
The cool daytime temperatures continued across Colorado until the end of May, when a rapid warm-up triggered a fast and furious runoff on the Arkansas River and others. The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported that the, “Snowpacks retreated faster than your 401(k) and the searing wind made a lot of that snow simply disappear.”
On May 25 the Parkdale gauge was reading 1,260 cfs – a doubling in just a week – and by May 30 it was nearing a record when the river peaked at 4,200 cfs. At the same time the Ark was running at 3,150 cfs, through Browns Canyon, the Salida gauge read 3,130 cfs and whitewater guides were predicting an Arkansas boating season lasting until the end of August. While flooding from snowmelt had not been expected this season, by June 6 warnings were posted along the Arkansas.
A second peak on the Arkansas River arrived around June 9 with the Parkdale gauge reading 5,000 cfs and the river running at 4,500 cfs at Buena Vista. At Avondale – west of Pueblo – the river peaked at 5,610 cfs on June 9.
Perhaps the most telling statistic characterizing the 2010 water year runoff was that Lake Powell rose four feet in one week, and on June 13 inflows were 74,000 acre-feet per day. Kara Lamb, commenting on this year’s runoff, said, “We didn’t think that Ruedi Reservoir would even fill this year and it filled in five days,” according to a report from The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.
2010 election for Colorado Governor
As we go to press, former west slope U.S. Representative Scott McInnis’ gubernatorial campaign is unraveling due to the way he is handling of plagiarism allegations from The Denver Post. While not a water story exactly, it started out as one.
McInnis was explaining a payment from the Hasan Family Foundation while on a radio show in May. His statement that the payment was for a series of water education articles he authored caught the ear of Jason Salzman, former media critic for the old Rocky Mountain News. Mr. Salzman wondered if the claim was true, and if so, where were the articles? He queried many water reporters (including myself) asking if we’d heard or seen them. No one had. After a period of time the articles ended up on the Hasan Family Foundation website. At the time $300,000 seemed like a sweet deal for McInnis – some $12.50 a word – but the foundation produced them, McInnis claimed authorship, so that was the end of the story.
Well, it would have been the end of the story except for the fact that an unnamed researcher started looking for evidence of plagiarism. He/she hit pay dirt and notified The Denver Post, informing reporter Karen Crummy that some of the material closely resembled an article written by water attorney Greg Hobbs published by the Colorado Water Congress. Crummy reported that Hobbs – now a Colorado Supreme Court justice – told her after seeing McInnis’ work, “There are definite similarities. I would expect there would be some attribution.” Crummy’s article ran on Sunday, July 13.
Ed Quillen said in his Denver Post column that week, “At least McInnis had the good sense to steal from a good source.”
Elections can bring out the silliness in candidates, and scandal occasionally leads to an unscripted scramble. The ever-ambitious McInnis apparently thought he could wordsmith his way out of this one quickly by claiming that it was a “non-issue” with voters, admitting a mistake had been made and by throwing the researcher he used under the bus.
That researcher, veteran water engineer and former leader of the Colorado River District in Glenwood Springs, Rolly Fischer, failed to fall on his sword. Many news reporters tried to get the elusive interview with Mr. Fischer, and Denver’s Channel 7 reporter John Ferrugia did. Channel 7 reported:
Ferrugia asked, “Rolly, is Scott McInnis lying to us?”
“Yes,” said Fischer.
Fischer went on to explain that he did not know why McInnis wanted the articles but assumed they were for a planned U.S. Senate run. He also said that if he knew that Hobbs’ work was going to be used, “I would go see Greg – personally,” according to Channel 7.
The scandal rolled on, and by Saturday, July 17, McInnis had been blasted in a Denver Post editorial by Hasan Foundation President Seeme Hasan, urged to quit the election by The Denver Post, the Fort Collins Coloradoan and by Democrats of course, while being told he can’t win the election now by former U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo, who admits that he would be happy to be a Republican write-in candidate.
McInnis’ wallet will also be $300,000 lighter, as the Hasan Family Foundation wants their dough back.
The Republican primary election is August 10 when McInnis faces Dan Maes. The winner will square off with Democratic candidate Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper in November.
Short takes
• Down in the San Luis Valley, Judge O. John Kuenhold approved the rules for groundwater Sub-district No. 1 in late May. The sub-district is being set up to protect senior rights holders from groundwater pumping and help restore the valley’s unconfined aquifer by taking some 40,000 acres irrigated by wells out of production. The next step is litigation of the objectors’ appeal filed in late July.
• Earlier in the summer landowners and two rafting companies operating on the Taylor River signed a four-year river access agreement. Recently Governor Ritter created a panel of landowners, commercial and recreational river users to find common ground around the issues. They plan to check in with the Governor before the 2011 legislative session so that the legislature can fix things.
• The San Luis Valley Irrigation District is crunching the numbers around a hydroelectric retrofit for Rio Grande Reservoir. They’re trying to find an economic combination of releases and excess capacity storage for wildlife or Rio Grande River Compact obligations. Reservoir rehab is also in the cards including a new outlet, spillway and measures to reduce seepage.
John Orr follows Colorado water issues at Coyote Gulch (http://coyotegulch.net/)