Triple threat imperils Colorado’s water supply
By Joe Hanel 
| September 2, 2009 | 7:01 AM
In the San Juan Mountains, researcher Chris Landry adds simulated dust to snow to study how it affects snowmelt. (Photo by Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies)
ESTES PARK — Colorado is melting, drying up and blowing away right in front of our eyes.
Treasured icons such as snow-capped peaks and alpine forests don’t quite match the scenes on the postcards anymore. Dust storms have converted the white snowpack into a muddy flood in early spring, while pine beetles continue their unchallenged march across the state’s northern forests.
Arizona Sen. John McCain was shocked Aug. 24 when he toured the pine beetle infestation in Rocky Mountain National Park.
“It’s unbelievable. Every citizen should see what’s happening here,” McCain said.
But the complex, slow-moving disaster that is befalling Colorado’s environment remains hidden to most city-dwellers.
At least three major environmental problems are unfolding: the pine beetle plague, rising temperatures and intensifying winter dust storms. Scientists say human activity is at least partially to blame for all three, and each will have an effect on Colorado’s water supply.
As is typical with water politics, Colorado’s leaders appear to be far from a consensus on what they should do, when they should do it or even what the problem is in the first place.
The multiple threats have riveted the attention of the Colorado Water Congress, a potent force at the state Capitol, even though many citizens are unaware of it. Water experts now openly talk about topics that were taboo just two or three years ago: global warming, population growth and land use.
The Water Congress’ summer meeting in Steamboat Springs last month spotlighted some of the latest research on environmental risks to Colorado’s water supply, starting with the strange “Martian winter” of 2009.
A winter dust bowl
April 3 unfolded across Colorado like a scene out of The Grapes of Wrath. A dark brown dust cloud obscured the mountains from Durango to Crested Butte and beyond.
“This was an event people could taste, could see on their car, and really was an eye-opener,” said Chris Landry, director of the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies in Silverton.
The storm’s punishment lasted far beyond April 3. Since 2002, Landry’s center has been studying the effect that winter dust storms have on the spring snowmelt. This year was especially profound.
The April 3 dust storm was just one of 12, compared with seven last year. The constant dust storms led Landry to dub the 2008-09 season as Colorado’s Martian winter.
On May 12, Landry snapped a photo on Red Mountain Pass near Silverton, where the snow was so dirty it looked like it had been scraped off the shoulder of Interstate 25.
“We’d never seen anything like this,” he said.
It’s more than an eyesore. Dust storms have the potential to advance snowmelt by a full month, Landry said.
“Snow, of course, is a highly reflective material when it’s clean. Matter of fact, it reflects 95 to 98 percent of the solar energy,” Landry said. “This is not rocket science. You know that dirty snow melts quickly.”
Early snowmelt can cut short the ski season and, more importantly, disrupt the seasonal cycle that makes agriculture possible in Colorado. In a normal year, the warm temperatures that cause snowmelt also bring the planting season. So just when farmers need water for their crops, it comes rushing down the mountains. Early snowmelt brings that water ahead of the planting season.
The problem is growing because more people are moving into the desert Southwest states, stirring up dust with construction and dirt roads. But it’s not just a regional problem. Scientists have tracked dust clouds that settle on Colorado mountains all the way back to China.
Warming and water
The question of global warming is far less straightforward.
“You hear about climate change and how it’s all bad news, but it may not be,” said Mark Waage, Denver Water’s manager of water resources planning.
Half of the computer simulations that try to predict what global warming will do to Colorado’s weather show increased precipitation, Waage said at the Colorado Water Congress meeting.
Other studies have predicted doom for the Colorado River and its tributaries, which supply water to Denver and the Front Range, parts of New Mexico and Utah, Las Vegas, Arizona and Southern California. One study last year predicted a 50 percent chance that the river’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead, would be dry by 2021.
That alarming study has been debunked, said Joe Barsugli of the University of Colorado. The latest work is predicting a 10 percent to 20 percent reduction in the Colorado River’s flow in the coming decades. That’s enough for Barsugli to call for action now to curb global warming and prepare for its effects.
“We need to make the best decisions with what we know. There’s a large consensus that we’re going to see widespread warming by the middle of the century” in the Western United States, Barsugli said.
One Western Slope water expert doubts such action is possible because of the political divide over global warming.
“(The divide) is real. It’s partisan. It very likely will prevent us from making good decisions on the water side,” said Eric Kuhn, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District.
A Mason-Dixon poll of Westerners last year showed that roughly three-quarters of Democrats believed global warming was real, while less than a quarter thought it was unproven. For Republicans, the numbers were essentially reversed, Kuhn said.
COMING THURSDAY, Part 2: Dead trees and land-use limits
climate change, colorado, environment, global warming, pine beetle, water
