Sunset over the Rio Grande near Monte Vista, Colorado
The Colorado Water Conservation Board, Department of Natural Resources next Water Availability Task Force meeting will be held on TUESDAY, July 19, 2016 from 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm at the Colorado Parks & Wildlife Headquarters, 6060 Broadway, Denver in the Red Fox Room.
The Colorado Department of Agriculture has issued a Pest Bulletin on the Emerald ash borer which has now been detected in the City of Longmont. Boulder County surveys for emerald ash borer (EAB)-infested ash trees continue for the 2016 season. The entire City of Boulder is presumed infested. EAB has been detected in one location in Longmont, but many other trees in the city are likely already infested and we anticipate other detections in the near future. Adult emerald ash borers (beetles) are flying in Boulder and Longmont. First sign of adults was May 23 in Boulder. The adult flight period is estimated to last until mid -to late August with a peak in early to mid -June. For the latest information, visit their website at www.eabcolorado.com.
Brown and Caldwell’s has a new web news series that brings together water leaders from around the country to talk about how we can all advance One Water thinking to secure water for generations to come. By 2030, it will take an estimated $384 billion to maintain the nation's drinking water infrastructure, and it won't be easy getting there. Projects often take too long to complete and regularly suffer from cost overruns. But a growing number of water and wastewater utilities are using the design-build project delivery method to overcome cost challenges and scheduling problems. In this first of a multipart series, Gus Hrncir explains why more and more water utilities are making the switch.
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.