Rio Grande River basin: The San Luis Valley Irrigation District is looking for ways to fund reservoir repairs
August 20, 2011
From The Pueblo Chieftain (Matt Hildner):
Beaver Creek Reservoir, which sits roughly five miles south of South Fork, currently can store only half its capacity of 4,400 acre-feet. The development of a sinkhole last year forced the reservoir to be drained down.
The district owns the 52,000-acre-foot reservoir that sits on the Rio Grande, roughly 20 miles southwest of Creede. Built in 1914, the Rio Grande Reservoir is in need of a spillway enhancement, a new outlet tunnel and a fix for seepage problems — repairs that are estimated to cost between $16 million and $23 million. “That’s a tall order,” said Travis Smith, the district’s superintendent…
A key aspect of this proposal is that the DOW is looking at partnering on the reservoir repairs so it can store up to 5,000 acre-feet at Rio Grande Reservoir. That amount of storage in the Rio Grande’s only on-channel reservoir could give the DOW more flexibility in how it moves both water from the basin and transmountain water, said Tom Spezze, a DOW regional director. The DOW, which is the largest holder of water rights in the valley, uses the water to enhance habitat for fish, waterfowl and other wildlife and to increase hunting and fishing opportunities. The repairs also would benefit agriculture because the irrigation district delivers water to roughly 60,000 acres of farm ground in the north-central part of the valley.
More Rio Grand River basin coverage here.
Rio Grande River basin: Some ditches to start running early
March 24, 2011
From the Valley Courier (Ruth Heide):
At the request of the majority of water users attending the Rio Grande Water Users Association meeting Wednesday afternoon, Colorado Division of Water Resources Division 3 Division Engineer Craig Cotten agreed to permit an early irrigation start date for irrigators on the Rio Grande main stem (District 20.) Irrigators in District 27 (La Garita Creek and Carnero Creek) will also be permitted to turn on their water on March 28, not quite a week before the normal start date. In keeping with a new irrigation policy, the presumptive irrigation season for the Rio Grande Basin (the San Luis Valley) is April 1 to November 1. However, the current dry, warm conditions in the Valley have prompted irrigators to seek an earlier irrigation season start date this year. The irrigation season for La Jara Creek drainage began on March 16. Saguache Creek irrigation season began a couple of days ago, and Schrader Creek has also been permitted to turn on…
Some farmers said a small amount of water immediately would make a big difference in their crop success, and they believed they would require less water later in the irrigation season if they could begin irrigating sooner, on this end of the season. On the other hand, every week irrigators wait to turn on their sprinklers and ditches means less curtailment during the irrigation season to meet Rio Grande Compact obligations to downstream states, Division of Water Resources staffer Patrick McDermott said. He estimated that each week the irrigators held off, the curtailment would drop by 1-2 percent. Cotten estimated curtailment to meet the compact at 11 percent but said return flows have been 4 percent, so he was looking at a 7-percent curtailment, if the irrigation season began April 1…
Cotten said as of Wednesday, the Rio Grande at Del Norte was only running 200 cubic feet per second (cfs). Taking reservoir water out of storage would only push the cfs up to 250, he added…
Cotten said this is the first year the new irrigation policy has been in effect, so it is a learning process for his office as well as irrigators. This is also the first year well users have to follow the same irrigation season as surface water users.
More Rio Grande River basin coverage here.
From The Mineral County Miner:
“We wanted to ask the basic questions first,” Irrigation District Superintendent Travis Smith told the Rio Grande Interbasin Roundtable on Tuesday. He said the results of two previous hydro feasibility studies completed on the reservoir in the last 40 years showed that hydro would not pay for itself without reservoir repair and other changes…
Technical Consultant Kelly DiNatale discussed the hydropower feasibility analysis performed so far. He looked at the potential for generating 500 kilowatts and 2 megawatts . The 500 KW hydro generation would supply enough power for the local area through the existing transmission line while 2 MW would provide for local needs plus power that could be exported via Rural Electric Cooperative, DiNatale said. He said the Rio Grande Reservoir has about 90 feet of net head to work with when it is full (54,000 acre feet), and if 70 cubic feet per second (cfs) were released from the reservoir at that capacity, it would generate 500 kilowatts. Releasing 300 cfs would generate 2.1 megawatts…
To get that kind of flow, the reservoir would need to be full, and the reservoir reach its full capacity without rehabilitation, DiNatale explained. Increasing the amount of water in the reservoir would take cooperation from various entities, he added. For example, the reservoir could store water for the Rio Grande Compact, Division of Wildlife, sub-districts and other groups. Reservoir rehab would cost about $22 million, Smith said. Reservoir rehabilitation would involve construction of a new outlet, enhancement of the spillway and correction of a seepage problem. With another approximately $8 million the rehabilitated reservoir capacity could be expanded by another 10,000 acre feet, according to Smith.
Here’s an update on the San Luis Valley Irrigation District’s plans to enlarge Rio Grande Reservoir, from Alex Rice writing for The Mineral County Miner. From the article:
The final design stage is in the fourth of five phases of the project, which would expand the large reservoir approximately 20 miles southwest of Creede by 10,000 acre-feet. The fifth stage would include the expansion of the reservoir, which is near the headwaters of the Rio Grande…
Currently in the third phase, the district is looking at its Reservoir Allocation Enhancement Model, which deals with how to operate the reservoir once the expansion project is completed, specific to the needs of the district and its water users, along with compact and direct flow storage. Smith, also the chairman of the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) and its representative on the Rio Grande Roundtable, said that this third phase will cost $100,000, and is being funded through the CWCB’s water supply reserve account. The district is currently consulting with the Colorado Division of Water Resources, the District 20 Water Commissioners, the Rio Grande Water Users Association, the Nature Conservancy and Trout Unlimited on the expansion project.
“It’s a 100-year-old reservoir, and it needs a fix,” Smith said when asked why the SLVID undertook the project in the spring of 2002. “It has physical repair issues that need to be addressed so you have a reservoir to meet the needs of the next 100 years.”
