# Coming down the pipe again, more proposed dams in Colorado.



## gnoble1 (Jul 31, 2018)

Drilling for feasibility just got approved:


https://www.fs.usda.gov/nfs/11558/www/nepa/113772_FSPLT3_5606795.pdf


----------



## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

gnoble1 said:


> Drilling for feasibility just got approved:
> 
> 
> https://www.fs.usda.gov/nfs/11558/www/nepa/113772_FSPLT3_5606795.pdf


Damn... I wish I had heard about this sooner, doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of community outrage, yet...


----------



## Wallrat (Jan 19, 2021)

Denver has become a blight on the Front Range, as has Salt Lake City on the west. There are just too darn many people. Can’t we start an ad campaign telling them how wonderful life is in Southern California?


----------



## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

Wallrat said:


> Denver has become a blight on the Front Range, as has Salt Lake City. There are just too darn many people. Can’t we start an ad campaign telling them how wonderful life is in Southern California?


or Texas, there's always Texas... Oklahoma is close and it's a relatively open state...All of the Californians are moving there anyway, and I think that's a good thing. The ones that move to Idaho are apparently not liking it there and heading south to Texas. I'll buy them gas money if they run out in Colorado!


----------



## Andy H. (Oct 13, 2003)

Wallrat said:


> Denver has become a blight on the Front Range, as has Salt Lake City on the west. There are just too darn many people. Can’t we start an ad campaign telling them how wonderful life is in Southern California?


No kidding! After I got here, they should've raised the drawbridge! 

But seriously, between the downstream Colorado River Compact obligations and climate change, there may never be enough water to even fill this reservoir....


----------



## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

And drama just to set the record straight, it's the fort love denveradoPueblo area that you're talking about? The other 98% of the state is red lol


----------



## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

Andy H. said:


> No kidding! After I got here, they should've raised the drawbridge!
> 
> But seriously, between the downstream Colorado River Compact obligations and climate change, there may never be enough water to even fill this reservoir....


The funny thing is, is back in the '60s when they built Glen canyon dam, they were using figures on a 20-year high, everybody is saying, at least the people I know that deal with weather, that those were abnormally wet years, and not normal years, which were experiencing now. Everybody wants to call it a drought But who really knows, what's normal? They went back a hundred years to declare 1959 through 1998 wet years, that was suggestification for Glen canyon dam. It turned into a justification and here we are today


----------



## Roseldo (Aug 27, 2020)

MNichols said:


> or Texas, there's always Texas... Oklahoma is close and it's a relatively open state...All of the Californians are moving there anyway, and I think that's a good thing. The ones that move to Idaho are apparently not liking it there and heading south to Texas. I'll buy them gas money if they run out in Colorado!


If they move to Texas, then they’ll all be coming to Colorado for Summer vacation.


----------



## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

Roseldo said:


> If they move to Texas, then they’ll all be coming to Colorado for Summer vacation.


Shit I hadn't thought about that, or even worse winter vacation.,

Damn, there's a downside to everything.

But seriously folks if the forest service is considering it it's because the legislature told them to. Raise your cell phone and whoever the hell you else can figure out and make our voices known.. I hate to use this term, but this is government for the people by the people etc etc call your representative and let them know you oppose this.. I'm not going to go into current administration, but they're probably going to be most receptive we're going to see for a while


----------



## Andy H. (Oct 13, 2003)

MNichols said:


> The funny thing is, is back in the '60s when they built Glen canyon dam, they were using figures on a 20-year high, everybody is saying, at least the people I know that deal with weather, that those were abnormally wet years, and not normal years, which were experiencing now. Everybody wants to call it a drought But who really knows, what's normal? They went back a hundred years to declare 1959 through 1998 wet years, that was suggestification for Glen canyon dam. It turned into a justification and here we are today


Yeah, the period that they based the Upper-Lower Basin allocation on was basically 1900 - 1920, the wettest 20 years in the last three centuries. At the time there were hydrologists that knew this was an anomalously wet period of record but the Hoover Dam boosters ignored them to get the dam and the Colorado Compact approved. No one wanted to hear that there wasn't all that water in the river and every year now the Upper Basin states have to send 7.5 million acre feet to the Lower Basin states even though there's not enough water in the entire system to support this.

I've seen Brad Udall speak on this issue - it's referred to as the "Structural Deficit" which means that the Upper Basin's perennial deficit is part of the structure of the system. It's baked into the cake. A good source of info on the topic is John Fleck who wrote a whole book on the topic. Science Be Dammed How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River. He's also got a blog that's a great source of big-picture water info. He's a former reporter and so he knows how to write about complicated issues in an understandable way, and has lots of good stuff.









jfleck at inkstain


A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico



www.inkstain.net





Here's his writeup about the Shoshone section of the Colorado:








Shoshone hydro plant, the most fascinating water right in the West - jfleck at inkstain


On what is apparently Colorado River Day (who decides such things?) I made a little pilgrimage this afternoon to see the Shoshone hydro plant, just up river from the little town of Glenwood Springs on Colorado's west slope. Shoshone has a unique place in the water management of the Colorado...



www.inkstain.net


----------



## Roseldo (Aug 27, 2020)

As far as totally screwed up water rights go...does anyone know how many shares of Montezuma Valley Irrigation the boating community would have to buy up and then sell downstream to Phoenix to get a regular Dolores release. I assuming tens of millions of dollars worth.

Another excellent book that addresses the Colorado river compact and the wide varieties of ways in which we are all screwed is "Where The Water Goes" by David Owen.


----------



## Deagol (Jun 16, 2017)

issues like this are far more important IMO then they get credit for. Hate to see these posts get buried.


----------



## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

Well, for what it's worth, I post them when I find them, hopefully people will wake up to the fact that there's less and less water to go around unless we start conserving it, we're screwed.. I remember back to the drought quote-unquote crisis in 2002, the peak on the Arkansas was 250 cubic feet per second, I had the unfortunate experience of driving to Denver and all I saw were sprinklers pouring water everywhere, small rivers running down streets from watering their landscape. It was like nobody seemed to really give a shit. I hear the same stuff goes on in Arizona all the time, Kentucky bluegrass lawns swimming pools sprawling golfing pastures, if people don't wake up and start tightening their belt, there's going to be a world of hurt unlike any we've ever seen...


----------



## Sawatch Rescue (Apr 17, 2010)

For accuracy, the Arkansas peaked at around 600 cfs in 2002.


----------



## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

Sawatch Rescue said:


> For accuracy, the Arkansas peaked at around 600 cfs in 2002.


I stand corrected, I was going from memory, and didn't bother to research. Thank you sir


----------



## Andy H. (Oct 13, 2003)

MNichols said:


> I stand corrected, I was going from memory, and didn't bother to research. Thank you sir


It peaked at the usual August flow in regular seasons, and was about 250 for most of the season.


----------



## Sawatch Rescue (Apr 17, 2010)

Andy H. said:


> It peaked at the usual August flow in regular seasons, and was about 250 for most of the season.


It was actually in the mid 300 to 400 CFS for the majority of the 2002 river season. Certainly low, but runnable and the most notable drought season in recent memory.


----------



## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

Yep, you're right.. Didn't seem that high..


----------



## Andy H. (Oct 13, 2003)

Sawatch Rescue said:


> It was actually in the mid 300 to 400 CFS for the majority of the 2002 river season. Certainly low, but runnable and the most notable drought season in recent memory.


I stand corrected. It just _seemed_ like it was really low water.


----------



## MNichols (Nov 20, 2015)

One of my fondest memories, my wife and I rode our horses across the river at heckla junction and rode the train tracks down to browns Creek, we crossed the river again and we're sitting there just below photographers rock having lunch. Down the river comes a line of Noah's ark boats, and they all stopped at the bottom of zoom flume, we're one by one they had their customers move to one side of the boat and they lifted the other side of the boat up and pushed it through the last few feet of zoom. One lady looked at one of the guides and remarked, this doesn't seem like much fun, and I haven't seen any whitewater yet. The guy without missing a beat replied, God wants you to carry your boat through the rapids lol


----------

