Colorado has long been known as The Mother of All Rivers.
I know that because I taught 4th grade in Colorado for a long time, which included Colorado history and geography. I’m not really sure if it’s common knowledge — even to people who live here. It should be, and not just to us, but to everyone paying attention to the escalating water crisis rising in the West and across the nation.
Most people know Colorado has a lot of mountains. They might not know thatColorado has 58 fourteeners, more than any other state. These mountains comprise many of the peaks of the Continental Divide, making Colorado the highest (in elevation) state in the country. Think of this in terms of snow falling and accumulating and later melting and running in little rivulets to a brook and on down the mountain to a stream and eventually to a river which soon enough reaches another river which, not really so surprisingly, eventually reaches the sea.
(I always sang a little bit of the Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody song “Lonely rivers run to the sea, to the sea..” to help get this point across to my students — rivers run DOWN, not south! One year a few went on to tell their math teacher that, and she came in to argue with me that I was teaching them wrong! I had to sing to her as well. Lol!)
Now, why does this matter? Aside from the critical issues of drought and water rights that are...absolutely critical, the resulting wildfires throughout the state over the past year have created another devastating effect on the water systems of Colorado — and thus beyond.
Last fall I wrote a diary about two massive wildfires — the largest ever in Colorado history — one blew through the town of Grand Lake and whew — it was basically gone. This morning Lefty Coaster wrote about a town in BC that went up in flames overnight. But it’s not over even when it’s over. Yesterday I saw this in the headlines as well:
Donna Bryson tells us the frightening story of how the city of Ft. Collins, Colorado started sending water conservation notices to its residents early this spring. Not because of the drought, but because of fears of contamination.
Huge forest fires last year denuded vast areas of Colorado’s mountains and left them covered in ash – ash that with sediment has since been washed by rains into the Cache la Poudre River. The river is one of two sources for household water in this college town of 165,000. With more and fiercer storms expected this year, officials worry about water quality worsening beyond what treatment systems can handle.
The problem could apply to watersheds across the U.S. West, which has faced ever-increasing extremes in heat, drought and wildfire amid climate change in recent years. The United States relies on water originating on forested land for about 80% of its freshwater supply, according to a government report.
The Cameron Peak Fire last August was the first in Colorado history to burn more than 200,000 acres. The EastTroublesome Fire burned 193,812 acres across the Continental Divide.
Both fires ravaged forests where major Colorado rivers originate. Exactly where the snowpack – a “frozen reservoir” – accumulates in winter.
I am not equipped with any solutions to this “problem” though the reuters article goes on to list some possible interventions.
Those measures include laying mulch on burn scars to hold down soil, and funding further fire impact research. To make up the balance, officials in Fort Collins, Greeley and other communities are pooling resources and seeking state and federal help.
Katrina Jessoe is an economist at UC Davis who has advised utilities on seeking funding to decontaminate water supplies from pollutants such as fertilizers.
“You can’t get around the fact that the cost of water is getting higher,” which could be a concern for low- and middle-income earners, Jessoe said.
Water managers say they need also to explore new ways of raising funds and making capital improvements to deal with fire-related contamination, for example, removing tastes and odors left by algae fed by nutrients in the sediments washed into reservoirs. The tastes and odors don’t mean the water is unsafe, but customers don’t like it.
www.reuters.com/...
This problem is no longer just a problem but an emergent and growing crisis and though I don’t have a solution, I do have knowledge and awareness of it, and that I can share. This crisis is impacting more and more people in more and more ways and it will take all of us to make a difference. We’re talking life-source here.
I heard this saying when I moved to the mountains a decade ago and found out what it was really like to live with limited water:
WATER WILL SOON BE THE NEW OIL.
People, it already is. Those still waving their arms trying to convince us that fossil fuels are the one true way? FFS. You can’t bathe in it. You can’t drink it. You can’t grow food with it. (You need water to get it.)
We’re living in a different reality now. And this particular new reality began with Climate Change.