Hello again and welcome back to the Roundup. While the dog days of summer have been slow for our newsletter department, our water and environment desks have been hard at work pondering critical questions.
Elizabeth Stewart-Severy checked in on the city of Aspen’s new commercial composting requirement, enacted last fall, which requires that the 104 Aspen businesses with a food-handling license compost their scraps, part of a larger effort to reduce waste and preserve the life of the landfill. While compost mandates, particularly those enforced on residential customers, can backfire if not executed properly, so far Aspen’s seems like a success, driving up compost volume at the Pitkin County Solid Waste Center 70% above 2023 numbers for January-April, with minimal contamination. Severy also dug into the latest wildlife survey conducted at the North Star Nature Preserve, which demonstrates that management practices have enhanced wildlife habitat, despite pressures from increased recreation.
Over at the water desk, Heather Sackett’s contacts and experience helped deliver important news and perspective. She reported that the Army Corps of Engineers — the federal entity responsible for enforcing the Clean Water Act — has some questions about the sediment release from the Grizzly Reservoir rehabilitation project that fouled the river on July 16. Her photos of the drawn-down reservoir are striking, as is the admission from project managers that while they had the best intentions of trying to prevent the incident, they had no idea what was going to happen when they began slowly draining the bucket that normally collects Roaring Fork headwaters and funnels them east.
Most recently, Sackett was on top of the story when the Upper Colorado River Commission took a big step this month toward establishing a program that looks a lot like demand management, by officially seeking a way to track and credit conserved water sent to Lake Powell. This goes beyond previous efforts to simply pay farmers and ranchers to use less, since the water they bypass could under a federally approved “provisional accounting” system in theory be used to satisfy a future Lower Basin compact call or meet other conservation targets.
And speaking of using less, Sackett also gave us an analysis of the trajectory of water-sharing agreements that provide a mechanism for users to donate their flows to the environment. It’s a practice that goes against the grain of the 19th century water laws that still govern us, and the number of users participating in such programs remains low, but there are two worthy case studies in our watershed, involving the city of Aspen and Carbondale rancher Bill Fales.
To get the full story on all that and more, including an announcement about three new awards recognizing Aspen Journalism excellence from the Society of Professional Journalists, plus Sackett’s latest newsletter sharing odds and ends from her river coverage, take a look around below.
That’s all for this edition of The Roundup. As always, thank you for reading, and supporting, Aspen Journalism’s nonprofit newsroom. Now, back to school!
– Curtis Wackerle
Editor and Executive Director
Aspen Journalism
Upper Basin states propose MOU with U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
‘Provisional accounting’ to understand how much water would be conserved
By Heather Sackett
August 13, 2024
There is urgency to figure out how the Upper Basin states can track, measure and get credit for conserved water because there will soon be more opportunities for water conservation programs.
Army Corps investigating Grizzly Reservoir releases that discolored river
Did sediment discharge as part of reservoir repair require a permit?
By Heather Sackett
August 3, 2024
Water quality in Lincoln Creek has long been a concern because of high concentrations of metals, which may be increasing.
Ranchers and city share water with the environment
Crystal River ranch and City of Aspen partner with nonprofit to leave water in rivers
By Heather Sackett
July 12, 2024
The environment does not have equal standing to other uses under Colorado’s current water law, and relentless demand and climate change continue to rob rivers of their flows, ensuring a drier future.
Habitat growth fosters wildlife use at North Star, study shows
Despite heavy river-based recreation, sensitive species continue to use nature preserve
By Elizabeth Stewart-Severy | July 22, 2024
The data from Lowsky’s report highlights a few areas of concern — including the decline of red-winged black birds and the fact that there are no current great blue heron or red-tailed hawk nests on site — but largely shows that habitat is improving and a wide variety of wildlife use the nature preserve.
City helping Aspen restaurants comply with compost mandate
Landfill compost intake up sharply in early months of new waste law
By Elizabeth Stewart-Severy | July 14, 2024
Keeping food waste out of the landfill is beneficial not only because it helps to preserve space in the rapidly filling dump 8 miles downvalley from Aspen, but because it keeps that food from rotting under layers of other trash and turning into methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas.
The Runoff | Reclamation’s cool water releases sound fishy to these scientists
Aspen Journalism wins with three awards in Society of Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies contest
By Aspen Journalism Staff
July 9, 2024
Aspen Journalism was recently honored by the Society of Professional Journalists with three awards in the Top of the Rockies Excellence in Journalism competition for long-form, in depth and data driven reporting projects completed in 2023.
There are always stories that need a journalist to pursue them. These Aspen Journalism investigative stories are published for you, the community, and our collaborators as a public service, thanks to the generosity of our readers and funders. Will you join them?
