Hello ENVS Blogging Universe,
My name Zach Campbell, and I am a senior at Western State University of Colorado majoring in Environmental Studies with a water emphasis. I grew up in Summit County, Colorado in the town of Montezuma where I first learned the importance of water. Our well water had high iron levels, which required cleaning methods to ensure the water was drinkable. Working the drinking water in my home sparked my interest in water. There was a river and waterfall that ran through the backyard, which I always enjoyed being around (picture below).

This semester I am interning with Gunnison Public Works, focusing on water treatment facilities. The purpose of the internship is to allow me to gain a deeper understanding of how important water is in our culture. I intend to learn about aspects of water treatment from establishing wells all the way through to water sanitation. I want to get a feel for the industry of waste water treatment, and meet new people in the industry. I also intend to study for and take the level D water licensing exam.

I started working with the Gunnison Wastewater Treatment plant, and have toured the facility. Dale Picard showed me testing procedures for the properties of water. He explained state mandates for levels (such as nitrogen, alkalinity, oxygen, and many others) in water released after treatment.

There is a lot to learn in this industry, and I look forward to the rest of my internship.

I thought for at least one of these entries I would discuss a topic that does not directly relate to water….Unfortunately there really is not a whole lot that doesn’t relate, but there are a few files that discuss mining impacts on water that I thought interesting to read.  Also, abandoned mines are scattered all over this valley, acting as pollution sources to our rivers, and therefore it is an important set of files to bring attention to.  Let’s face it, these mines make up a very important part of the history of the area, but we certainly known their safety standards were not up to par with having this many people live in the area.  This file discusses just some of the major mines that were pollution problem sources throughout the Valley.  This is of course also the location of the information regarding the famous Mt. Emmons or as it is commonly referred to “Red Lady”

Red Lady is not the file that I find the most interesting though. If you guide yourself to the file that contains information on the Standard Mine, this is where the interesting information is contained.  For those familiar with the term Superfund, this mine is one that was put on the list to be cleaned up using the Superfund.  The Superfund was established after the Love Canal incident took place in Niagara Falls, New York.  It was established as a way to clean up serious environmental threats, usually ones that can threaten human health as well.  Perhaps comparing the Love Canal incident to cleaning up the Standard Mine is a little extreme, but it is enough to make this one stick in my mind real well.  I have also taken frequent trips to this area for hiking and rock hounding so it was already very familiar to me. 

Link: http://www.uppergunnisonwaterdocs.com/?page_id=4980

The next file set that I found interesting was the files that pertained to the Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program.  As a fisherman myself it was good for me to get to see the fish that are endangered in the Colorado River just in case I ever ran across them.  More importantly, it was good to see that they Recovery Program was so well organized and popular.  I had assumed this was only a sate-wide effort, however it is much more of an effort enforced by the entire river basin.

The important section to our Valley is the one that pertains to the Dallas and Dolores Creek endangered fish.  Earlier I had discussed that there was not a lot of public information present since our area is not very popular or populated. This is a prime example of some key information that may be difficult to find elsewhere.  Neither of these areas are heavily visited or studied, but since there is information available it opens the door for further study especially when utilized in an academic environment.  Enough talking, I will let you dive in and see what you can come up with. I am off to see some fish for myself….

Link: http://www.uppergunnisonwaterdocs.com/?page_id=4805

Another File that I already mentioned but found to be extremely interesting and useful is the compilation of files titled Cloud Seeding. There are files for each year from before 2002 to 2007. Currently there still remain small efforts to have private cloud seeding projects in the Valley, but after reading through many of these files, I can see why the concept needs more development to continue in the Valley. 

A good portion of the files that make up this chunk are simple emails discussing cloud seeding activity in the area.  At first glimpse these seem meaningless and excessive because generally they are short and there is A LOT of them in each section. However after getting a chance to read through all these a pattern began to emerge that seemed a bit unsettling.  After each winter storm was seeded, often times there still would not be a drastic change in the amount of snowfall.  Once and a while they would be able to report a couple inches extra, but most of the time they would see no change or the storm would not be acceptable to seed for one reason or another. 

This was also an interesting topic because it is one that I had heard a lot about throughout my time spent in the classroom at Western.  In these folders you can also find very useful articles and designs for how these seeding projects took place.  Again a lot of the designs for the seeding devices looked a little outdated, for instance they use devices that release the silver iodide from the ground rather than current trends that use planes to deliver the dose.  However, it does give an interesting look into how cloud seeding has developed through the years.  Perhaps we can expect to see more new developments to increase the effectiveness of this process. 

Link: http://www.uppergunnisonwaterdocs.com/?page_id=4898

On a rainy day like today, I can’t help but think about the amount of water that we have in the Valley.  With this being such a wet summer and winter, it is obviously doing wonders to the water supply that was destroyed by the previous two years.  Obviously the UGRWCD has kept pretty key information about the water supply in our area, but there is a slight disturbing trend to be seen in these files.  While there is currently enough water to satisfy most of the water rights in the valley, there is a water rights system in place for a reason.  UGRWCD and other conservancy districts have documents that they produce each year that measure the projected depletions for certain water rights.  These kind of documents are very apparent throughout the Water Supply category, which just goes to show real proof of the fact that no everyone gets water each year or for the entire year. 

The documents on water supply also have interesting information in the form of data sheets.  While these are very long and sometimes impossible to even understand, the summaries are where the real information lies.  In here we can see rain and snow summaries for each month depending on the year.  This section also shows that water rights system in action.  I have learned a lot about how the system works, but it is interesting to be able to read through these documents and see what it is we were talking about.  This also continues into the thousands of applications present in the website, but that is something that we will have to discuss in another topic.

Link: http://www.uppergunnisonwaterdocs.com/?page_id=8648

Damn the Cement Creek Dam!

Blog Number 5

Now that we have cleared up any confusion on what the categories contain, the next step is to dive into some specific topics that interested me and that have the potential to be resources for my final paper.  While I am still a little fuzzy on what the overall theme of the paper will be, I am hoping that by reflecting on some of these interesting documents I will obtain a working outline for the final product or products.

The first interesting topic that struck me personally and was prevalent consistently throughout the project was the conflict of developing areas in the Valley.  While there are multiple files pertaining to development in the Valley, the particular event that struck me the most was the proposed dam that would have flooded Cement Creek.  The most interesting aspect of this was the amount of feedback that came in after the proposed plan had been released by the Bureau of Reclamation.  Not only were just people from Crested Butte writing in protest, but people from all over the country had comments about the proposed project.  Although my personal favorites come from locals.

This was not just an interesting thing to see a small community fighting back a federal organization like the Bureau of Reclamation, but it also provided a good comparison to other projects where this has occurred.  Many other water storage projects have gone through successful and had benefited the community in a way that is perhaps worth the sacrifice.  It takes a pristine area such as Cement Creek to really make people stand up and decide that loosing this area is not worth the risk. The most interesting think I saw from reading through these letters was that each argument was about the same.

Link: http://www.uppergunnisonwaterdocs.com/?page_id=9719

The Last Two Categories

I believe my original post stated that there were only four categories included in our website.  This information was false as there are most definitely five total categories that the files where broken down into.  The last two categories are titled Legislation and Other Conservancy Districts.  I chose these two categories for last because they are the most self explanatory categories that we have.  However this does not mean that they lack any significance as a good source of information about things and people affecting the Valley. 
The first one I will talk about is the category of Legislation.  Obviously this category is going to contain mostly legislation that pertains to water and mostly legislation that pertains to the state of Colorado.  Although, there still is a decent chunk of Federal Legislation that made its way into this category as well.  If you are having a desire to investigate the Water Rights system in action, this is the category to start.  It shows examples of all the laws that shape water use in Colorado and examples of the processes involved in protesting a water right, or applying for a water right (although this is something that is present in many categories throughout the site).  This category still remains somewhat unorganized so of you haven't checked out any of them, I encourage you to help me design this in a more organized fashion.
The next category is called Other Conservancy districts and it has information on other water conservancy districts around the state......This may seem very obvious, but the idea is to create an obvious starting point to help people navigate through the thousands of documents. In this sense, this category is one of the best organized of them all.  I discovered many new conservancy districts after going through the documents contained in this category, and the number of organizations was downright shocking.  If you happen to look through this category you my see the reasoning behind my previous statement that our state is "littered" with water conservancy districts. 

Below are the links in order of how they were discussed.  Please check them out.
http://www.uppergunnisonwaterdocs.com/?page_id=3717
http://www.uppergunnisonwaterdocs.com/?page_id=3721