The Rockies Project Source to Sea trip continues south.

In the last few weeks our Rockies Project Field Researchers left the Grand Canyon, crossed Lake Mead, traveled over Hoover Dam and down through Black Canyon and have just crossed Lake Mohave. Up next is Lake Havasu and Parker Dam before continuing south towards Mexico. Follow their progress through their SPOT GPS here: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=03tlc4QaiXLxIl397nG6BRPCsFzK69usD.

State of the Rockies Project: Experts weigh in on impact of “climate disruption” on the Colorado River

The 2011-2012 Monthly Speaker and Conference series, sponsored by The Colorado College’s State of the Rockies Project, continues to draw hundreds of students, faculty and area residents. The series, titled “The Colorado River Basin: Use, Restoration and Sustainability as if the Next Generation Counts,” features experts talking each month through February about issues surrounding the Colorado River.

On Monday night, Dec. 5, in the Gates Common Room in Palmer Hall, the project presented “”Perfect Storm for the 21st Century” Three experts participated:

  • Moderator Beth Conover, a founding partner at Econover LLC, a consulting firm specializing in environmental issues;
  • Stephen Saunders, founder of Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and
  • Jeff Lukas, an associate scientist for Western Water Assessment, where he studies climate change and its impact on the environment.

Saunders told about 175 people attending that “global warming” is a misnomer because it doesn’t convey the real danger of the condition and that humans are mostly to blame for it. His preferred phrase is “climate disruption.”

Quoting the 1970s comic strip character Pogo, Saunders said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

The Colorado River Basin, Saunders said, is in the “bull’s-eye” for climate disruption because studies show the area has increased in temperature more than any other part of the United States.

Climate disruption is said to be caused by emissions from cars, factories and other human creations that create a greenhouse effect, trapping heat in the atmosphere. This increases evaporation on oceans, lakes and rivers, which brings tremendous energy into the skies that have created massive tornadoes and hurricanes, scientists say, as shown by the many this year.

But the energy in the sky doesn’t result in rains that replenish the earth’s water bodies like the Colorado River, explained Lukas during his talk. Much of it evaporates before reaching the bodies, a phenomenon he calls “evapotranspiration.”

“The evapotranspiration dial is being turned up in a big and consistent way,” Lukas said.

Lukas also pointed to evidence in tree rings that droughts are a recurring condition in world history. Combining a natural drought with climate disruption could be a real disaster, Lukas said.

Lukas and Saunders proposed efforts to reduce emissions in America to lessen the process, and to use less water for agriculture and more water for human use. Upping reclamation water use was also suggested.

During a Q & A period, the speakers were asked about the factor of population growth on bleeding the Colorado River dry. While both acknowledged that population growth in the West was a problem, they said most scientists see climate change as a greater danger to the river.

A student asked if there were efforts to enable the Colorado River to complete its journey to the Sea of Cortez, a feat that would have no utilitarian value. Since 1998, the river has run dry before reaching the delta because of overuse.

The speakers were doubtful that any effort toward that would be successful. “No one in the basin is compelled to do that,” Saunders said.

There is, however, at least one person, and he’ll be one of the speakers at the next event on Jan.30, titled “Unheard Voices of the Colorado River Basin: Bringing Mexico and Native American Tribes to the Table.”

Scheduled to speak are Bidtah Becker, a lawyer and member of the Navajo Nation Department of Justice who focuses on protecting Navajo water rights; and Osvel Hinojosa-Huerta, the director of the Water and Wetlands Program whose contributions to environmentalism include efforts to restore the Colorado River delta.

There will also be another update on two young men from Colorado Springs who in October set out on their goal of paddling the entire length of the Colorado River.

The Conference and Speaker series continues through February. For more on its speakers and events, go to http://www2.coloradocollege.edu/stateoftherockies/speakerseries.html.

Written by Rockies Project writer Mark Barna

Tonight! Colorado River and Climate: Perfect Storm for the 21st Century?

Join the State of the Rockies Project tonight for our fourth Speakers Series event of the year as we host a panel on- The Colorado River Basin and Climate: Perfect Storm for the 21st Century? The talk will be held at 7pm in the Gates Common Room of Palmer Hall on the Colorado College campus.

The Colorado River Basin is at the nexus of environmental and demographic pressures that will converge in the 21st century; what will the result be? The region’s projected population growth means increased water demand on the Colorado River from municipalities, industry, agriculture and recreation.  International and federal agencies from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to the Bureau of Reclamation have predicted a significant decrease in water availability throughout the Basin due to a changing climate.  Some expert studies predict that by 2050 the river system will not be able to supply all of its allocated shares two-thirds to nine-tenths of the time. Furthermore, the Basin’s diverse geographic attributes from the headwaters high in the peaks of the Rockies to the arid deserts of the American Southwest make it difficult to predict the impacts of a changing climate. How are future generations of Colorado River water users going to cope with these changes? What can the current water managers of the Basin do to prepare for a changing climate? Different proposals have been made from adapting to the changing climate through measures like increased water efficiency to augmenting water supplies from other river basins.  What will the projected climate of the Colorado River Basin look like and what are the possibilities for addressing the water needs for the future?

For the fourth State of the Rockies Project Speakers Series event of the year, the Project will be hosting a panel on: The Colorado River Basin and Climate- Perfect Storm for the 21st Century? The panel will consist of three experts dealing directly with climate change in the Basin. Beth Conover will be the moderator for the evening’s event. Beth is a Colorado native and has spent much of her education and career in the environmental field. This includes being the editor of the recently published book How the West Was Warmed, as well as being the founding partner of the consulting firm Econover LLC.  Stephen Saunders is the Founder and President of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, which works to protect the West and its climate by bringing about action to reduce heat-trapping pollution and to prepare for the impacts of a disrupted climate. He has spent much of his career in government addressing environmental issues. Jeff Lukas is an Associate Scientist for the Western Water Assessment. Jeff’s research focuses are climate variability and climate change in the interior West and their impacts on human activities and ecosystems, extraction of multi-century climate records from long-lived conifers, and the application of tree-ring data to water resource management.

Rockies Project Article- Three experts spoke Monday night of the challenges the Colorado River faces in coming years

The 2011-2012 Monthly Speaker and Conference series, sponsored by The Colorado College’s State of the Rockies Project, continues to draw hundreds of students, faculty and area residents. The series, titled “The Colorado River Basin: Use, Restoration and Sustainability as if the Next Generation Counts,” features experts talking each month through February about issues surrounding the Colorado River.

On Monday night in the Celeste South Theater, located in the college’s Cornerstone Arts Building, the project presented “Environmental Perspectives and Action.” Three experts participated:

  • Bart Miller, the water program director of the Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit law and policy organization that influences water use through lobbying, civil litigation and legislation;
  • Jennifer Pitt, a manager of the Environmental Defense Fund who focuses on legal and policy issues involving the Colorado River; and
  • Tom Chart, director of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program.

For millions of years, the Colorado River was an unbroken chain from the headwaters of Longs Peak in the Colorado Rockies to the Sea of Cortez delta in Mexico. But since 1998, overuse of the river’s water has left 90 miles of dry delta.

The Bureau of Reclamation maintains that Westerners are using every drop of the river, yet the demand for its water is expected to increase substantially over the next decades. The federal government says use of the river is expected to increase 8.5 percent by 2050.

Monday night, Miller, Pitt and Chart discussed problems and solutions involving the river.

Miller told about 350 people attending that oil companies have bought up water rights on the Colorado River in areas where they hope to mine for oil shale, which uses tremendous amounts of water and energy to squeeze oil out of rock. He also said the Flaming Gorge pipeline, if completed, will drain 250,000 acre feet from the Green River, which will greatly impact recreational activities on the river in Wyoming, and result in extremely expensive water for Coloradoans.

He suggested that through legislation, oil companies and the proposed pipeline can be limited in their river-water allocation. Miller also said that now is the time for parks along the river to legally nail down their future water rights. An example is Colorado’s Gunnison National Park, which three years ago won water rights that will keep substantial river water flowing through it.

Pitt began her talk by pointing out that 25 to 30 million Americans drink the river water, and that agricultural needs account for 80 percent of river-water allocation.

But, she said, “we are now living in the age of limits,” as water supply cannot keep up with demand.

She explained that, during flood years, four times that of a year’s Colorado River flow is held in reservoirs, and that’s the only reason demand is being met today. “We sip and gulp our way through storage,” Pitt said.

She suggested that the solutions to balancing the integrity of the river with its utilitarian use are conservation; “alternative transfers,” which involves water sharing of, say, agriculture with city use; water banking, which, among other things, protects water for those least able to go without; and in-stream flow protections, which would monitor streams that normally flow into the river to make sure they weren’t being bled dry, which negatively impacts wildlife.

“There is growing recognition that we live in the age of limits,” Pitt said. The positive aspect of this is that “we might be able to right some of the wrongs done to this river.”

The final speaker was Chart, who is leading a team to protect endangered fishes in the Upper Colorado River Basin.

Chart said that there are four endangered fish species in the Upper Colorado. And though it’s been difficult, some headway has been made to protect them, with the biggest success story being the razorback sucker.

Helpful to the return of endangered native fishes is flow management of the river water through a delicate part of the Upper Colorado. “We are able to (control the water) at a time that makes biological sense,” he said.

Among the factors for native fish depletion is climate change, Chart said, but he didn’t elaborate.

For detail, you’ll have to wait till next month. The December 5 State of the Rockies speaker event will focus on the impact of climate change to the Colorado River Basin. Scheduled to speak are Beth Conover, a partner at Econover, LLC, a Denver consulting firm involved in climate change and resource sustainability issues; and Stephen Saunders, founder of Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and former deputy assistant of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

There will also be another update on two young men who in October set out on their goal of paddling the entire length of the Colorado River, which is expected to take four months. A video of their launching their rafts high in the Wyoming Rockies on the Green River was shown at Monday’s event.

The Conference and Speaker series continues through February. For more on its speakers and events, go to http://www2.coloradocollege.edu/stateoftherockies/speakerseries.html.

Written by Mark Barna, State of the Rockies Project Writer

The third State of the Rockies Project Speakers Series event is tonight!

Come out to the South Theater of the Cornerstone Arts Center on the CC campus at 7pm tonight to hear a panel on The Colorado River Basin- Environmental Perspectives and Action.

The panel will consist of experts from across the environmental field working on different issues throughout the Basin. Bart Miller, of Western Resource Advocates, heads up the organization’s water program. At WRA he works to promote urban water use efficiency, minimize water-related impacts of energy development, and protect and restore river flows. Jennifer Pitt manages the Environmental Defense Fund’s efforts on the Colorado River, specifically to restore the Delta and reform water policy. Her expertise includes the US-Mexico border environmental issues, the legal and policy framework for Colorado River management, the economics of water use and water transfers, and the science of river restoration. Tom Chart has spent his career largely working for State and Federal agencies and is now the Director of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program. His graduate studies got him hooked on the native fishes of the Colorado River system when he studied the initial effects of mainstem impoundment on the fish community of Colorado’s White River, and he has largely remained in the field ever since.

The next State of the Rockies Speakers Series event is on Monday!

Join us on Monday 11/7 @ 7pm in the South Theater of the Cornerstone Arts Center to hear a panel on The Colorado River Basin: Environmental Perspectives and Action.  The panel will consist of experts from across the environmental field working on different issues throughout the Basin. Bart Miller, of Western Resource Advocates, heads up the organization’s water program. At WRA he works to promote urban water use efficiency, minimize water-related impacts of energy development, and protect and restore river flows. Jennifer Pitt manages the Environmental Defense Fund’s efforts on the Colorado River, specifically to restore the Delta and reform water policy. Her expertise includes the US-Mexico border environmental issues, the legal and policy framework for Colorado River management, the economics of water use and water transfers, and the science of river restoration. Tom Chart has spent his career largely working for State and Federal agencies and is now the Director of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program. His graduate studies got him hooked on the native fishes of the Colorado River system when he studied the initial effects of mainstem impoundment on the fish community of Colorado’s White River, and he has largely remained in the field ever since. To see more on each of our speakers for this event and information regarding the rest of this year’s Rockies Project Speakers Series go to the Rockies Project Speakers Series page.

The third State of the Rockies Project Speakers Series event is a week away. Come out and hear a panel on: The Colorado River Basin- Environmental Perspectives and Action.

For the third State of the Rockies Project Speakers Series event of the year, the Project will be hosting a panel on: The Colorado River Basin- Environmental Perspectives and Action. The panel will consist of experts from across the environmental field working on different issues throughout the Basin. Bart Miller, of Western Resource Advocates, heads up the organization’s water program. At WRA he works to promote urban water use efficiency, minimize water-related impacts of energy development, and protect and restore river flows. Jennifer Pitt manages the Environmental Defense Fund’s efforts on the Colorado River, specifically to restore the Delta and reform water policy. Her expertise includes the US-Mexico border environmental issues, the legal and policy framework for Colorado River management, the economics of water use and water transfers, and the science of river restoration. Tom Chart has spent his career largely working for State and Federal agencies and is now the Director of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program. His graduate studies got him hooked on the native fishes of the Colorado River system when he studied the initial effects of mainstem impoundment on the fish community of Colorado’s White River, and he has largely remained in the field ever since.