The Roundup | Asking the right questions

Hunting for phantom dams

Recently at Aspen Journalism, Water Desk Editor Heather Sackett published a new investigative project. Like most great pieces of journalism it started with a question, which in this case rose to the top about a year ago, when Sackett was writing about a company with ties to oil and gas development that had conditional water rights dating back almost 60 years for an unbuilt reservoir in the heart of the Thompson Divide. If developed, these conditional water rights would have resulted in nearly 24,000 acre feet of water storage behind a dam on Thompson Creek — something at which the community coalition that has been working for more than 20 years to prevent mineral extraction in the backcountry zone would shudder to think.

But there it was on the water court docket. The applicant, Puckett Land Co., which has drilling rights on 17,500 acres in Garfield and Rio Blanco counties, had filed a diligence application, which is required every six years in order to keep the conditional water rights alive, in case it might want to use them, someday in the unknown future to bolster the water supply needed for its drilling operations on the other side of the hill. 

After an initial story disclosing the otherwise under-the-radar pending legal action, advocates that had been working on Thompson Divide oil and gas drilling chimed in on what they saw as another threat to the fragile environment, and Puckett withdrew its diligence filing. This phantom dam and reservoir had been exercised, but how many more are out there, lurking on the books, with the prospect of upsetting the balance? 

Quite a few, it turns out. Sackett teamed up with Luke Runyon, a longtime Colorado water journalist now based at the University of Colorado Water Desk, and began combing through the records of the state Division of Water Resources and water courts on the Western Slope, hunting down conditional water rights and corresponding diligence filings. It took some time, but by their count, there are 94 conditional water rights, either for new reservoirs of 5,000 acre feet or more, or for refill or enlargement projects of at least that size on existing reservoirs, and that’s just on the Western Slope, directly impacting the Colorado River basin. The total additional water storage accounted for in this portfolio comes to more than 2.6 million acre-feet, or more Colorado River basin water than the state of Colorado uses in a year.

With that data in-hand, Sackett set out to understand the implications of this vexing subplot in our shared story of water scarcity. How are these conditional water rights allowed to hold their place in line for so long, to the potential detriment of actual water users whose rights are junior to these? And if these dams and reservoirs are developed, what might be the effects on and implications for the Colorado River basin as a whole? Sackett’s piece unpacks it all, highlighting why some water managers hang onto these rights, why others have given them up, and calls for reform coming from experts in the field.

The piece also features an incredibly cool interactive data visualization, mapping where each of these projects is located and incorporating more information about many of the projects, courtesy of Geoff McGhee, a data and infographics correspondent affiliated with The Water Desk.

Notably, this is Sackett’s second significant long-term investigative undertaking of the year, produced in collaboration with the CU Water Desk and featuring ground-breaking data visualizations. Back in February, we published the Crystal River mapping project and an accompanying story, digging into what drives water shortages along the free-flowing Roaring Fork tributary. In that case, working with our in-house data editor Laurine Lassalle, Sackett looked at water diversion records for the most significant irrigation ditches drawing from the river, and compared the amount  of water taken to the amount actually consumed by agriculture, according to open-access satellite data. The results showed that efficiency for many ditches on the Crystal is low, which could point to challenging geography, the structural incentive built into the water system to divert more than is actually needed, other complicating factors or some combination of the above and more.

Also, don’t miss Sackett’s recent reporting on the Colorado River District and Pitkin County commissioners having an adult conversation about where their values align and how they can work together to bridge differences where they exist. 

Updated AJ snowpack tracker features real-time data

Speaking of cool data visualizations, Lassalle has created a new version of the snowpack tracker we have posted the last few winters as part of our local public data reporting efforts. Our new snowpack tracker represents a step forward as it presents the snow-water-equivalent readings from SNOTEL stations across the Roaring Fork watershed in real time. It’s a handy tool to see what’s going on all in one place. What’s at once surprising but what I’ve come to expect after watching these counts at multiple sites around the basin for a few seasons is how different the percent of median can look between sites. For example, snowpack at Ivanhoe is much farther above normal than it is at any other site as of Dec. 17. Perhaps temperatures have stayed cooler up along the more northern reaches of the Continental Divide, or the wind patterns with those early season storms produced more snow in that specific area. We will update the post’s narrative periodically based on what’s going on with the snowpack, but the data readings will always be live. 

Just transition and an entrenched industry 

Over at the multimedia social justice desk in collaboration with Aspen Public Radio, Eleanor Bennett contemplated the notion of a just transition  — meaning supporting communities reliant on fossil fuel production as climate change drives the need to decarbonize the energy sector — in the context of Garfield County, which is the state’s second largest producer of oil and gas. She tracked down a former oil patch worker who now is employed by a geothermal company, and checked in with a proposal to create a geothermal heating district around the Third Street Center in Carbondale. Project proponents recently learned that their application for $18 million in federal funds was passed over, and the challenges of scale are immense in a county where more than half the assessed property value is tied to oil and gas parcels. But her reporting opens a window into the considerations in play and the resources available to help make the eventual transition more equitable.

In addition to the audio versions of each story we publish, Bennett has also been filing additional broadcast news features you can hear on Aspen Public Radio, including recent coverage of a bi-lingual book fair and breaking news on the hotly contested appointment process for seats on the Garfield County Libraries board.

Chautauqua success

Thanks to all (we had a turnout of 50 people or so) who attended our latest chautauqua discussion, at Morgridge Commons at Colorado Mountain College in downtown Glenwood Springs. We partnered with Community Builders  — a Glenwood-based nonprofit that helps communities around the West tackle big challenges — and a panel of regional leaders to discuss the existing conditions and future prospects for the notion of community in the Greater Roaring Fork Region. The discussion — with plenty of input from the audience — stretched on for almost two hours, and I came away struck by the hunger in the room for platforms that foster debate and consensus around setting a shared vision. This is easier said than done — and sometimes finding the right language can even be hard — but I firmly believe that Aspen Journalism is a critical part of engaging this community and  region around these generational questions.

The NewsMatch Colorado needs 

Which brings me to the last part of the newsletter, where I’d be remiss not to mention that we are closing in on the end of our year-end fundraising push, which secures our ability to continue to exist and thrive in the new year. If you haven’t contributed yet, please consider the importance of an independent press and free inquiry in our community. Your donation made before Dec. 31 will be matched by the Colorado Media Project, NewsMatch, and philanthropic local donors.

Thank you for reading, and supporting, Aspen Journalism.

– Curtis Wackerle
Editor and Executive Director
Aspen Journalism

Your gift will be matched! This journalism is available for free to all who want to read it. That’s possible because some of you, with only thanks in return, donate to fund this journalism. Will you help us reach our goal of $190,000 by Dec. 31 to keep this newsroom going strong?

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