The Colorado River District is holding its annual Gunnison State of the Rivers meeting in Montrose Monday, June 1, at 7 p.m. The meeting will be at the Holiday Inn Express and directly follows the Gunnison Basin Roundtable meeting there.
“The challenges are in the bigger river picture,” Jim Pokrandt of the river district said.
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Pokrandt said Arizona, Nevada and California all have downstream water rights and Colorado is close to its limit. If the state hits its limit, that will trigger a curtailment for the whole river system, affecting everyone, especially those with ditch rights.
“If that were to happen in the whole basin, that would be pretty cataclysmic,” Pokrandt said. “We live in the arid West; water is a scarce commodity.”
Pokrandt said the basin has done well in working with what it has. But the concerns are pressing and, he said, preserving the water supply requires an informed public.
“An educated public is the best defense of Western Colorado water. ... People should come (to the meeting) to understand what’s all this to-do about water; why water is such a big issue to fight about and worry about.”
At the meeting, experts will discuss streamflows, reservoir operations, weather patterns, snowpack and runoff conditions, provide an update on the operations of the Aspinall Unit reservoirs, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park water right and the Aspinall draft Environmental Impact Statement.
“This is a heads-up on what is going to happen this year on our waters and streams,” Pokrandt said. “Then we’re going to peer into the future a little bit,” concerning the water picture over the next decade or so.
Keynote speaker is Colorado River District General Manager Eric Kuhn. Marc Catlin of the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association will discuss upcoming celebration plans for the 100th anniversary of the Gunnison Tunnel.
Bureau of Reclamation Water Management Group Chief Dan Crabtree will also speak at the meeting, concerning highlights from the Aspinall draft EIS, which includes plans to operate reservoirs to provide a peak flow more reflective of a natural hydrograph to benefit fish habitat in the Gunnison downstream of Delta.
In general, this would be higher peak- and more moderate base-flows, he said, but would depend on what water conditions were in a given year.
Crabtree said the snowpack and runoff picture for the Gunnison Basin right now is 27 percent of average — although the overall water situation on the Gunnison is good.
Crabtree said heavy dust that blew up from the Southwest and coated the snowpack in nearby mountains is thought to have accelerated runoff. The dirt absorbed the sunlight, while the white snow would have reflected it, slowing the melting.
Crabtree said the area reservoirs will fill, but will probably do so a little earlier because of the earlier melting.
Overall snowpack for the year was 115 percent of average; it’s just that the runoff came more quickly.
“We still have good volumes, it’s just the timing that’s a little different than average,” Crabtree said.
Info wrote on May 27, 2009 11:09 AM:
Well wrote on May 26, 2009 12:18 PM: