Announcements for Early July

Hanging Lake

The Colorado Water Conservation Board Department of Natural Resources June 2016 Drought Update, a summary of the drought information presented at the June 22, 2016 Water Availability Task Force Meeting will be posted on the CWCB website.  All of the presentations from the meeting can also be found on the CWCB website. If you have questions regarding the Drought Update, please contact Taryn Finnessey at taryn.finnessey@state.co.us.

WATER QUALITY CONTROL COMMISSION - HEARING NOTICES - June 2016. The following Notices of Rulemaking Hearings have been posted on the commission’s web site: https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/wqcc-rulemaking-proceedings.

  • Discharger specific variances for the City of La Junta, Town of Nucla and Suncor Energy in the Classifications and Numeric Standards for:

    • Arkansas River Basin, Regulation #32 (5 CCR 1002-32),

    • Gunnison and Lower Dolores River Basins, Regulation #35 (5 CCR 1002-35), and

    • South Platte River Basin, Laramie River Basin, Republican River Basin, Smoky Hill River Basin, Regulation #38 (5 CCR 1002-38.

  • Colorado Discharge Permit System Regulations, Regulation #61 (5 CCR 1002-61).

The following Notices of Informational Hearings have been posted on the commission’s web site:  https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/wqcc-public-informational-hearings.

  • Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund Rules, Regulation #51 (5 CCR 1002-51), and Drinking Water Revolving Fund Rules, Regulation #52 (5 CCR 1002-52).

  • Regulations for State of Colorado Continuing Planning Process, Regulation #23 (5 CCR 1002-23).

  • 401 Certification Regulation, Regulation #82 (5 CCR 1002-82).

  • Bear Creek Watershed Control Regulation, Regulation #74 (5 CCR 1002-74).

Water Alternatives, an interdiciplinary journal on water, politics and development has announced a Call for Papers: The (Re)turn to Infrastructure for Water Management. With a few obvious exceptions, including the construction of the world’s largest dam in China, water management around the world in the 1990s and 2000s seemed largely focused on the demand-side. More recently, however, we have begun to see a significant number of large inter-basin water transfer projects, massive dams, desalination plants, sea walls, tidal barriers and other constructions under development in Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America. Taken together, the resurgence of these types of concrete-heavy forms of water management suggest a turn back to the high-modernist reliance on big infrastructure as a strategy for addressing a range of water-related issues, including regional scarcity, sea-level rise, and flooding. The papers in this special issue will explore the questions of whether and why we are seeing a return to a 20th century water management paradigm centered on big infrastructure and, often, supply-side management principles, and what this (re)turn to big infrastructure tells us about the political-economic forces driving water management today. Deadline for submission of abstracts is July 20th, 2016. For more information go to www.water-alternatives.org.

Abstracts are being accepted for two sessions in the upcoming Geological Society of America Meeting, held September 25-28 in Denver. Abstracts are due on July 12th, 2016. Authors can submit up to 2 abstracts as first author, provided one presentation is a poster. The goal for the first session (T28) is to integrate different approaches to evaluating potential mining impacts using tools that can include remote sensing, human health, hydrology, ecological assessments, microbial assays, sedimentation, or geochemistry. The second session (T70) has a focus on the Animas River area, including the Gold King Mine incident of 2015.  This session will include both science and policy perspectives on abandoned mine lands.  For further information go to www.geosociety.org.

The United States Geologic Survey conducted its second largest assessment of potential shale & tight gas resources, updating their estimate of natural gas and oil in the Mancos Shale in the Piceance Basin. Previously assessed at an estimated 1.6 trillion cubic feet of shale natural gas, the new assessment estimated that the area contains a mean of 66 trillion cubic feet of shale natural gas, 74 million barrels of shale oil and 45 million barrels of natural gas liquids. Read the new assessment HERE.