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WATER AND WASTEWATER NEWS
News Courtesy of U.S. Water News Online
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| Officials worried about Snake Valley deal |
Local officials are worried about a pending deal between Utah and Nevada to pipe water from Snake Valley to Las Vegas.
The deal would split the shared Snake Valley aquifer, eventually allowing water to be piped south to Las Vegas. Environmentalists are concerned that the project could dry up the valley around Great Basin National Park and send dust storms toward Utah's Wasatch Front.
The Utah Department of Natural Resources says a draft agreement on the plan is likely by August or September, but officials from counties in both state are already wary of the deal.
“By the time they realize what the impacts are, it'll be too late,” Millard County Commissioner Daron Smith said.
Mike Styler, director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, said the plan protects existing water users, air quality, and fish and wildlife.
Nevada officials aren't scheduled to hear the Southern Nevada Water Authority's case for the pipeline until 2011, so opponents want Utah to hold off on an agreement.
Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon said scientists still need to resolve how the pumping would affect the aquifer, desert vegetation and the potential for dust pollution if the region becomes even drier.
“It might hurt our air quality and our pocketbook,” Corroon said.
Officials on the Nevada side of the border are also concerned.
Gary Perea, a White Pine County, Nev., commissioner, wants the states to hold off for at least another year and wait for the groundwater studies.
Utah Association of Counties attorney Mark Ward, who represents Juab, Millard and Salt Lake counties in the issue, said county officials fear the agreement will protect water currently used by Utah residents and allow the remainder to be pumped to Nevada.
“The counties have pressed this repeatedly with the state, that they should slow way down on the negotiations,” Ward said.
The Southern Nevada Water Authority argues the fear is overblown. Spokesman J.C. Davis said the sooner the details can be worked out, the better the agreement will be for everybody involved.
Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert, who is set to take over when Gov. Jon Huntsman resigns his post once he is confirmed as U.S. ambassador to China, plans to discuss the plan with the public once he is more familiar with it.
“We want to make sure we understand this issue well,” said Jason Perry, Herbert's transition director. “It's going to require a lot of public participation.”
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| Vt researcher warns of spiny water flea |
Researchers warn that the invasive spiny water flea is expected to show up in Lake Champlain soon, disrupting the lake's ecosystem and making game fishing more difficult.
The Burlington Free Press reports the flea has invaded a nearby New York lake. The matter has lent new urgency to talks about how to stop invasive species from traveling through the Champlain Canal between the Hudson River and Lake Champlain.
The threat has mobilized new cooperation between the New York State Canal Corp., the Lake Champlain Basin Program and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Canal Corp. Director Carmella Mantello said the partners are pursuing a study of ways to keep the spiny water flea out of a feeder canal, and a bigger project to install a barrier in the main canal.
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| Kansas and Colorado end Arkansas River case |
The two states filed an agreement with the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the final technical issues about monitoring Colorado's use of water from the river. The agreement is designed to prevent the river's depletion as it flows into southwest Kansas.
Disputes over the river date back more than a century, and Kansas sued Colorado in 1985, claiming Colorado was improperly diverting millions of gallons of water. The Supreme Court ruled a decade later that groundwater pumping took water rightfully belonging to Kansas, and Colorado paid its neighbor more than $34 million in damages.
The lawsuit continued because of other issues, including the monitoring of water use, and in March, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decree spelling out how future disputes would be resolved. The agreement filed recently was the last step toward closing the case.
“We're pleased to put this long-standing water dispute behind us,” Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said. “We're looking forward to working with Kansas to prevent future water disputes.”
Kansas Attorney General Steve Six said the agreement should avoid litigation and save both states money. David Barfield, Kansas’ chief water official, said the two states are working better together than in the past but acknowledged continued monitoring of Colorado's water use — and development in that state — make future conflict possible.
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| NM city launches conservation effort |
Wireless irrigation control units have been installed on all of Rio Rancho's parks and recreational facilities as part of a new water conservation initiative.
The control units will allow the city to delay or stop watering cycles when its windy or raining by simply calling a phone number and entering a code.
City Councilor Steve Shaw says the new equipment allows the city to conserve its most precious natural resource and reduce irrigation costs.
The city purchased 55 irrigation control units from Albuquerque-based Contact Wireless. The equipment supplied by the company was developed through a $500,000 award from Gov. Bill Richardson's Water Innovation Fund.
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| Scientists checking Nevada Test Site groundwater |
Radioactive groundwater laced with the remnants of Cold War nuclear weapons testing is inching its way beyond the Nevada Test Site boundary, where scientists expect to soon find it for the first time.
The concentration of tritium is much higher than safe drinking water guidelines, but Department of Energy officials note it will still be contained within the surrounding Nellis Air Force Base test and training range, in an area not accessible by the public.
A pad and sump, or pit, for what's labeled Well EC-11 are being completed, with the first samples to be collected as drilling proceeds in the next three months, the federal scientist in charge of the project said.
“Under our strategy we don't do any remediation. The only thing we can do at this point is adopt a long-term monitoring plan,” said Bill Wilborn, director of the drilling and monitoring project.
Water from a recently completed upstream well, near a cavity of the powerful Benham nuclear test of 1968, has found tritium levels 3,000 times above the safe drinking water limit, Wilborn said.
The effort outlined in a 687-page report is to determine where the tainted water is traveling. It relies on plugging data from a network of wells in Nye County into a sophisticated computer model.
A state official said that if the contamination appears to be heading toward a public water well, the Department of Energy will be required to provide water to affected residences and communities.
“Obviously we're not close to that,” said Tim Murphy, federal facilities bureau chief for the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.
Murphy said there is no current technology to clean up the contamination. But authorities want to know where and how fast it is flowing to protect the public.
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News Courtesy of U.S. Water News Online
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