Water News Roundup – August 24, 2010

Deseret News: Lake Powell ruled mussel free zone – The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has officially ruled Lake Powell mussel-free three years after a false positive detection.

Salt Lake Tribune: West can lead the new energy economy – The West, with its wealth of wind, solar, geothermal and other clean, renewable energy resources, is poised to lead the nation toward a new energy future.

The Hill: EPA unveils strategy to modernize clean water programs – The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday floated a draft strategy to improve water quality nationwide, one that bluntly recognizes that today’s pollution sources are often difficult to target with traditional Clean Water Act controls.

New York Times – Science: Levels plummet in crucial reservoir – Water levels in Lake Mead, the Colorado River reservoir, fell sharply again this summer and are nearing an elevation that would set off the first-ever official water shortage on the river, The Arizona Republic reported last week.

Indian Point nuclear plant’s toll on river stirs debate – Just beneath the wind-stippled surface of the Hudson River here, huge pipes suck enough water into the Indian Point nuclear plant every second to fill three Olympic swimming pools.

Water News Roundup – August 17, 2010

Salt Lake Tribune:  Mexico, US talking about Colorado River water – A powerful Easter Sunday earthquake along the Mexico border has had ripple effects in Nevada, spurring international talks about future use of the Colorado River and the water level in Lake Mead.

Salt Lake Tribune – Editorial: Shrinking Mead – Some marinas at Lake Mead are high and dry; new roads now meander on dry ground that used to be far under water. The huge reservoir is shrinking.

New York Times:  Lake Mead’s water level plunges as 11-year drought lingers – Lake Mead, the enormous reservoir of Colorado River water that hydrates Arizona, Nevada, California and northern Mexico, is receding to a level not seen since it was first being filled in the 1930s, stoking existential fears about water supply in the parched Southwest.

City Brights w/ Peter Gleick: Water and energy: obey the law on cooling systems – The connections between energy and water are significant and complex. We use vast amounts of energy to collect, move, treat, use, and clean water. And we use vast amounts of water to produce energy, including for mining, drilling, and processing fossil and nuclear fuels, and especially for cooling power plants.

Water News Roundup – June 8, 2010

*** I’m headed for hot Moab for a bit of vacation tomorrow.  Water News will be back on Monday!**

Salt Lake Tribune:

Time to water, but just a little – OK, go ahead and water the lawn this week — but only once.  So advises the Utah Division of Water Resources, which posts a weekly lawn-watering guide at slowtheflow.org that is updated every Thursday.

Utah Lake Festival marks 6th year – Reed Price readily admits that Utah Lake doesn’t get the same respect as Utah’s other lakes.

High waters still threaten across Salt Lake County – From the backyard of his home on Canyonview Road, Jim Wilcox looked out over a rushing torrent of chocolate brown water that used to be little more, he said, than a “babbling brook.”

KSL: Officials confirm presence of Quagga mussels – Wildlife officials have confirmed the presence of quagga mussels in Sand Hollow Reservoir.

HCN:

One tough sucker – The razorback sucker evolved in a wild Colorado River. Now, humans are its biggest problem — and its only hope. (Article has a great video vignette on razorback sucker recovery efforts from biologist Abraham Karam’s point of view.)

Photo by Abraham Karam

A boring diagram – Las Vegas’ primary water supply — has been drawing down like a leaky tub over the past decade, thanks to prolonged drought in the Colorado River Basin.

Water News Roundup – May 6, 2010

Not much in the way of local water news today, so a few national tidbits instead.  Enjoy!

Washington Post: New EPA water infrastructure policy seeks to encourage smart growth – If you build it, they will come. And, if you don’t, they won’t.  Such is the thinking behind a policy released late last month by the Environmental Protection Agency that instructs states to adopt smart-growth principles in allocating the $3.3 billion in water infrastructure funding that the federal government doles out each year. States, it asserts, should prioritize projects that upgrade the drinking water and wastewater infrastructure in cities over projects intended to serve new developments on the suburban fringe.

Waterwired (NSFW? You decide…probably if you live/work in Utah ;)): Colorado River as the butt of many jokes

“Hope these folks are not upstream of a drinking water intake.

First, Kay craps out, now this! Rumor has it that David Zetland has the photo taken from the other riverbank and is checking its market value.

Seriously, check out SavetheColorado.org.“

(Really great maps of the Colorado on this site.)

On the Water Front Blog: A Bay-Delta photo tour

Technorati Tags: Bay Delta,EPA,water infrastructure,Water Funding,Colorado River

Water News Roundup – April 26, 2010

Daily Herald:

Pipeline to bring 400 jobs, $235 million to local economy – As a massive project to pipe the Murdock Canal gets underway, officials are lauding the work as a boon to the local economy.

CUP pipeline construction will start this fall – Engineers for a 5-foot water pipeline project are looking for input from the public on where the pipeline should go.

Santaquin gets $7 million for water treatment plant – Representatives of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development stopped by to present Santaquin with a $7 million loan/grant for its forthcoming wastewater treatment plant.

Deseret News:  Bishop and Chaffetz join water fight in congress – A frontier proverb said that whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting over. Holding true to that, a big water fight broke out in Congress on Wednesday.

Salt Lake Tribune:

Official: Water deal is critical – A top Nevada water chief made a splash during a recent Las Vegas television interview, trash-talking Salt Lake City for being too bucolic, its residents for not being able to spell conservation and Utah Gov. Gary Herbert for not signing a contentious Snake Valley water-sharing agreement.

Back on the Green – Emmett Heath caught his first trout on the Green River below Flaming Gorge Reservoir before the dam was even completed.

Will we be ready when drought comes to stay? – In 1934, the driest year of the Dust Bowl, Big Cottonwood creek, which supplies almost 25 percent of Salt Lake Valley water, ran dry. In 1935, the year of Black Sunday, Utah Lake was empty.

Salt Lake Tribune – Editorial: Bridging Utah Lake – Leon Harward wants to build a 5.8 mile-long private toll bridge across Utah Lake. Because this project would alter the air and water quality in Utah County in multiple ways, the importance of an environmental assessment cannot be overstated. Yet this project will not be subject to a federal environmental impact statement.

Technorati Tags: Clean Water Act,Colorado River,CUP pipeline,drought,Green River,Murdock Canal,Pat Mulroy,provo reservoir enclosure project,Santaquin,Snake Valley,Utah Lake,Utah Lake bridge,water legislation,water treatment plant

Water News Roundup – April 21, 2010

Salt Lake Tribune:

Analyst: Utah Lake Bridge will lose money – Environmentalists have attacked the proposed Utah Lake Bridge as harmful to Utah Lake’s environment and a potential enabler of urban sprawl on the lake’s west shore.  Now, the Sierra Club and other environmental groups say studies show the bridge will not be cost-effective.

Colorado River water policy faces an age of shortage – Change comes hard to Western water policy. The Prior Appropriation Doctrine, interstate compacts, groundwater law, the “law of the river” — all of these seem set in stone in the minds of the region’s policymakers.

Utah water dubbed world’s best – It’s sweet and has a perfect PH balance — water from southern Utah’s Tushar mountain range.  The spring water was judged the world’s best for bottlers in a prestigious contest.

Opinion: Mulroy’s Addiction – The recent hot-headed ranting and raving about Utah and Salt Lake City by Pat Mulroy, director of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, reminds me of a deranged crack addict who can’t support her habit any more and whose whole world is about to collapse.

Technorati Tags: Beaver City,Colorado River,Las Vegas,Law of the River,Pat Mulroy,Utah Lake,Utah Lake bridge

Water News Roundup – April 13, 2010

Salt Lake Tribune: Culture Vulture: City Creek’s promise begins to show – The reflecting pools weren’t reflecting much on Friday, as the winds bouncing between the twinned 10-story buildings of Richards Court churned up the water into a succession of waves.  In calmer weather, these reflecting pools will look up at the promised glory of City Creek Center, the massive shopping/office/residential complex The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is building in downtown Salt Lake City.  (Sean Means comments specifically on the water features that run throughout the new City Creek Redevelopment Project.  The water features installed as part of the ‘open space, green development’ plan are not an actual daylighting of the historic southern fork of City Creek, but they do show how water can be used to augment and beautify an urban setting.  It should be quite a nice place to visit.  The food court even has a Red Iguana III! WOOT!)

KCPW: Author, photographer, document reemergence of Glen Canyon – The construction of the Glen Canyon Dam to create Lake Powell in the 1960s monumentally changed the landmark on the Utah-Arizona border as it was flooded with water from the Colorado River.

Via Water Conserve and The Guardian: Shell fights shareholders’ campaign for oil sands review – A group of institutional investors, led by campaign group FairPensions, had tabled a special resolution ahead of the Anglo-Dutch company’s annual meeting next month. They want Shell to review the commercial and environmental viability of going ahead with its new projects in Canada’s boreal forests.

Technorati Tags: City Creek,Colorado River,Glen Canyon,oil/shale development,water aesthetics,water/energy nexus

Water News Roundup – February 4, 2010

Salt Lake Tribune: Green River power plan generates big questions – A fledgling company’s plan to build a 3,000 megawatt nuclear power plant near the Green River in eastern Utah is generating more questions than answers.

Deseret News: Utah groups challenge uranium mill’s plan to divert groundwater – Two Utah-based conservation groups have filed a challenge in Colorado Water Court to three applications for groundwater that flows into the Dolores River.

Utah Water News wants to let you know that February 12th is RIDE UTA FREE day in support of Governor Herbert and Mayor Becker’s ‘Clean Air Challenge‘!  If you happen to be out and about that day, take advantage of a free bus, Trax or Frontrunner ride.

Water News Roundup – January 20, 2010

KSL: Optimistic ruling won’t hurt water deal – Colorado’s top water official is optimistic that a setback to a California water conservation plan won’t derail an agreement affecting the use of Colorado River by six other states in the West.

Salt Lake Tribune:

States walk fine line with law of the river – Question: Could Wyoming or Utah block a Colorado entrepreneur’s plan to pipe Green River water to Denver?

Colorado proposal stirs water fears –  A big gulp of the little stream that splits these sagebrush prairies might take a $3 billion detour across the Great Divide and into Colorado’s bullish future.

Salt Lake Tribune – Editorial: Guv and Snake Valley – The National Parks Conservation Association commends Gov. Gary Herbert for stepping back and taking a thoughtful approach to the proposed Snake Valley water-sharing agreement with Nevada.

Ogden Standard Examiner: Water totals should be up by the end of the week – Top of Utah snow totals as of Tuesday morning were no better than a week before, which sounds odd considering how much it snowed and rained Monday.