Daniel Salzler No. 1103 EnviroInsight.org Six Items May 21, 2021
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1. Don’t Expect Miracle May This Month On The Colorado River. Tony Davis Arizona Daily Star. May 7, 2021 Updated May 10, 2021.
A bathtub ring of light minerals delineates the high-water mark on Lake Mead at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area near Boulder City, Nevada. As the lake level drops, a first-time shortage is now likely to slash deliveries of Colorado River water to Central Arizona farmers starting in 2022. John Locher, Associated Press 2020.
The Colorado River Basin appears to be out of miracles this spring. Five years after a “Miracle May” of record rainfall staved off what had appeared to be the river’s first imminent shortage in water deliveries, the hope for another in 2021 “is fading quickly,” says the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center’s latest report, released Thursday.
That’s one more piece of bad news for the Central Arizona Project. A first-time shortage is now likely to slash deliveries of river water to Central Arizona farmers starting in 2022 but won’t affect drinking water supplies for Tucson, Phoenix and other cities, or for tribes and industries that get CAP water.
Federal forecasts for spring-summer runoff into Lake Powell plunged this week, predicting the third-lowest such flows on record into the big reservoir at the Arizona-Utah border.
The river forecast center predicts that runoff into Powell from April through July will be 28% of average, down from a 45% projection in its April forecast.
The difference in these forecasts amounts to 1.2 million acre feet of lost water. That’s about nine months worth of CAP supplies in a normal year.
“I expect that the forecast for Lake Powell will stay in the 1.6 million to 2.0 million acre-foot range through the end of the runoff season,” said Eric Kuhn, an author of a book on Colorado River management and a former general manager of the Colorado River District in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. “We all need a decent monsoon.”
Short- and long-term forecasts for the entire river basin are calling for above-normal temperatures and below-normal rainfall through the next 90 days.
As of now, key indicators of available future runoff such as snowpack and soil moisture are below normal and, in the case of soil moisture, well below normal, the forecast center said. Snowpack levels are less than 10% of normal in the Virgin and Dolores river basins in Utah and Colorado.
The Upper Green and Upper Colorado River river basins have about 75% snowpack of normal, while the Yampa Basin has 65%, the Gunnison Basin has 55% and the Duchesne Basin has 50%.
Overall, there’s always uncertainty in the long-range weather forecasts, and things can change. But given current conditions, a Miracle May like that of 2015 seems “highly unlikely,” said Ashley Nielson, a senior hydrologist for the river forecast center, in an email to the Star on Friday.
The National Weather Service’s forecast is for below-normal rainfall from May 15 through May 21 across the entire river basin, except for southwest Arizona and Southern California. There, rainfall is likely to be at normal levels.
By contrast, in May 2015, the lower 48 states had not just their wettest May but their wettest month since records started being kept in 1895. Parts of Colorado — home of the river’s headwaters — got 200% to 400% of normal rainfall that month.
Grim outlook for Lake Mead
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, in its latest forecast that looks 24 months ahead, predicted on April 15 that the “most probable” scenario for Lake Mead is for it to stand at 1,067 feet at the end of December.
If that forecast holds through the rest of the year, the federal government will declare its first round of significant, mandatory cutbacks of water deliveries for the CAP. That’s what it’s supposed to do when Lake Mead falls below 1,075 feet at the end of a year.
Such a shortage, cutting deliveries to Arizona by 520,000 acre-feet, or nearly one-third of total CAP supplies, would particularly strike at Pinal County farmers. They would lose most of their CAP supplies next year and would lose their entire supply in 2022 should Lake Mead fall far enough over the next year. Until now, the state has only been sustaining cuts of 192,000 acre-feet per year in CAP deliveries. For more information go to https://tucson.com/news/local/dont-expect-miracle-may-this-month-on-the-colorado-river/article_b6dc882c-aed5-11eb-8e57-630ca6a6a886.html https://tucson.com/news/local/dont-expect-miracle-may-this-month-on-the-colorado-river/article_b6dc882c-aed5-11eb-8e57-630ca6a6a886.html
2. NEW APP TO STREAMLINE ROOFTOP SOLAR PERMITTING PROCESS – Pima County and the City of Tucson will relaunch the Solar One Stop as a portal to the new Solar Automated Permit Processing Plus Platform (SolarAPP+) that automates the approval of residential solar permits. The County and City are some of the first and the largest jurisdictions in the United States to help the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) pilot the permitting software. It was created with help from the International Code Council, UL, the solar industry, the Solar Foundation, and others. Using SolarAPP+, registered solar contractors can submit their system designs for immediate code compliance review and subsequent permits. The app launched on May 12, for widespread use in Pima County and the City of Tucson, and it will be available nationally in June. Solar installers can access the new app via the Solar One Stop website linked below.
Solar One Stop/Solar APP+
3. Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (AEQ) Welcomes Comments
ADEQ welcomes comments on the preliminary decision to issue a significant amendment to an Aquifer Protection Permit (APP) for the City of Goodyear – 157th Avenue Water Reclamation Facility in Maricopa County, Arizona.
View Public Notice/Related Documents >
ADEQ encourages and values your input and participation.
Preliminary Decision to Issue a Significant Amendment to an Aquifer Protection Permit (APP) for the City of Goodyear — 157th Avenue Water Reclamation Facility
Public Notice No. 20-64
Published in: Arizona Business Gazette on Thursday, May 13, 2021
Pursuant to Arizona Administrative Code, Title 18, Chapter 9, Article 1, the ADEQ Director intends to issue a significant amendment to an Aquifer Protection Permit (APP) for the following applicant:
Facility Name
City of Goodyear – 157th Avenue Water Reclamation Facility
Permit Type
Individual Aquifer Protection Permit No. 101324, LTF No. 87461
Permittee
City of Goodyear
Location
Maricopa County, Arizona, in Township 1N, Range 1W, Section 30, Gila and Salt River Baseline and Meridian
4. Navajo Safe Water Video A new documentary, “Working Together for a Better Future,” highlights the efforts of the Water Access Coordination Group (WACG) to provide water services to the Navajo Nation. Created in April 2020, WACG is a coalition of 20 entities led by the Navajo Nation and the Indian Health Service. According to Dr. Karletta Chief, Associate Professor and Extension Specialist in the Department of Environmental Science at UArizona, WACG “is an excellent model that supports collaboration with Navajo Nation entities so that we can collectively bring our resources and our data and our minds together to address a pressing need, especially during this pandemic, with the lack of access to water.” This 23-minute video offers interviews with coalition participants and depicts the quick mobilization and emergency response deployed to bring safe water to the Navajo Nation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
To help tribal members without access to running water follow CDC handwashing guidelines, WACG launched efforts to deliver portable handwashing stations to 500 Navajo families in need.
In addition, the Indian Health Service used funding from the CARES Act to install 59 watering points on the Navajo reservation and distributed 37,000 storage containers with 3.5 million water disinfection tablets for people to haul safe water to their homes. While most of those efforts are transitional, long-term solutions have been sought out. Large water cisterns have been placed underground for residents to pump and receive fresh running water in their bathrooms and kitchens, and new septic tanks have been connected by the Navajo Engineering and Construction Authority. Nikki Tulley, PhD Student, UArizona Department of Environmental Science, who was also interviewed in the video, hopes to keep collaborating and taking into consideration feedback from residents to improve and adjust water access efforts deployed on the Navajo Nation. This video was funded by Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the UArizona. To watch, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OBvKbhFXDs.
5. What Are the Most Environmentally Safe Refrigerators?: Is being Energy Star certified enough? A refrigerator’s footprint boils down to the appliance’s energy intensity and emissions. An Energy Star certification only accounts for the former: A fridge could have the certification but still emit polluting hydrofluorocarbons, a family of greenhouse gases whose global warming potential can be thousands of times higher than that of CO2.If you really want to play it cool, buy a refrigerator from the list on Climatefriendlycooling.com
6. Watch The “Super Flower Blood Moon” Lunar Eclipse May 26th. The most spectacular full moon of 2021 is quickly approaching, gracing the night sky in all its glory on May 26. That date marks not just a supermoon, but also a blood moon, thanks to a lunar eclipse.
According to NASA, a blood moon occurs during a total lunar eclipse, when the Earth is positioned directly between the moon and the sun, hiding the moon from sunlight. It’s named for its red glow.
According to NASA, a blood moon occurs during a total lunar eclipse, when the Earth is positioned directly between the moon and the sun, hiding the moon from sunlight. It’s named for its red glow.
“When this happens, the only light that reaches the moon’s surface is from the edges of the Earth’s atmosphere,” the space agency explains. “The air molecules from E arth’s atmosphere scatter out most of the blue light. The remaining light reflects onto the moon’s surface with a red glow, making the moon appear red in the night sky.”
NASA says the result will be a “ring of light” around the moon.
“Just how red it will look is hard to predict, but dust in the atmosphere can have an effect. (And keep in mind there have been a couple of prominent volcanic eruptions recently),” NASA said.
Not only does May bring a lunar eclipse, but also the year’s best supermoon. A supermoon occurs when the moon appears larger than usual in the night sky because it is at its closest point to Earth in its orbit, known as perigee.
May’s full supermoon is known as the “Flower Moon,” and it marks the second of three supermoons this year. It’s appropriately named for the abundance of flowers associated with spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
How to watch
On Wednesday, May 26, the cosmic phenomenon will be at least partly visible anywhere on the night side of the planet, NASA said. Under clear weather conditions, skywatchers around the world will be able to enjoy the show.
For skywatchers in the U.S., the best viewing will be in Hawaii, Alaska, and the western states, though the eclipse is partially visible further East during dawn twilight. And if you’re in the U.S. you should wake up early to see the rare celestial event.
According to NASA, the peak of the eclipse will last for about 14 minutes, but the entire event will last about five hours, from 08:47:39 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) to 13:49:41 UTC. It will peak at 11:19:52 UTC.
This means that while on the west coast of the Americas, it occurs in the early morning hours, when the moon is setting.
Don’t worry if you’re not located in the best place to spot the eclipse. The Virtual Telescope Project will have a live feed of the entire event, starting at 3 a.m. PT on May 26
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