Two Fort Collins legislators have petitioned the state to strengthen proposed rules governing in situ leach uranium mining — the method Powertech Uranium Corp. plans to use at the Centennial Project northeast of the city —to prevent groundwater contamination, the Coloradoan reports.

In situ leaching is a method of uranium extraction that dissolves uranium ore with a fluid and pumps the solution out of the ground to be processed.

State Rep. Randy Fischer wrote a letter also signed by Rep. John Kefalas and Rep. Liane “Buffie” McFadyen urging state mining officials to ensure mining companies can’t slip through a loophole in new rules being written to govern in situ uranium min-ing statewide.

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Gov. Bill Ritter has signed Senate Bill 52, which makes it clear that a final permit for ground water wells in a designated ground water basin is final, The Fort Morgan Times reports.

Under the bill, the Ground Water Commission, which manages the eight designated basins along the Eastern plains and the Front Range, could revise a basin’s boundaries to remove previously-included areas only if the area does not include wells for which final permits have been issued.

The bill includes an exception for current legal cases winding through the courts, a nod to the 2006 Gallegos v. Colorado Ground Water Commission case where the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that a surface water rights holder who has senior water rights can challenge the permit of a ground water well in a designated basin if the senior water rights holder can prove their surface water rights are being affected.

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Rafters and anglers are squaring off over rights to prized Colorado waterways, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The debate has spilled into the state legislature and inspired at least 24 citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives. The core question: Do paddlers have an absolute right to float down any river in the state, even rivers that run through private property reserved for fly-fishing?

Steve Roberts says no.

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The state and water users need to get the Environmental Protection Agency on board sooner in the planning process of providing water for future generations, a member of Gov. Bill Ritter’s Cabinet said Wednesday, according to the Greeley Tribune.

Jim Martin, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, was the luncheon speaker for the 2010 Spring Water Users meeting of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District at the Radisson Conference Center.

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By Debi Brazzale, COLORADO NEWS AGENCY

With debate over next year’s budget soon to unfold, two southeastern Colorado lawmakers say they are prepared to dig in their heels if more money is taken away from water projects affecting their region.

Early indications are that the funding will be left largely in tact in the coming budget year after having been diverted last year to help cover the state’s budget deficit. Neverthess, Rep. Wes Mckinley, a Democrat from Walsh, and Republican Sen. Ken Kester, of Las Animas, say they are on guard and that the Colorado Water Conservation Board’s funds need to be protected to keep water projects going in their districts.

Of special concern is the Arkansas Conduit Project, which took a temporary hit last year when more than $100 million was diverted from the water conservation board to help the state through its fiscal straits and balance the state budget. Some $35 million of that total came out of the conduit project’s funding, putting federal matching dollars at risk as well. The project provides treated water to southeastern Colorado.

That money since has been recouped through higher-than-anticipated revenue from the state’s severance tax, according to Colorado Water Conservation Board Direction Jennifer Gimbel. Gimbel also said that, so far, next’s year’s pending budget takes $11 million from the board’s funds but that the diversion won’t affect the conduit or any other current projects.

McKinley acknowledged the budget process is far from over.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they did take some more,” said McKinley. “It seems like if there’s money out there, there’s several hands grabbing for it.”

Recommendations from the staff of the legislative Joint Budget Committee, which drafts the state’s budget,  indicate there won’t be any diversions imperiling the water projects in the coming year. If so, Mckinley said, he might try to get the budget amended to include even more funding.

Kester echoed McKinleys assessment.

“We have to have that money … and we can’t just take it down to nothing and continue to operate the water programs,” Kester said.

Mckinley said he is not just concerned about the water fund but also about the state’s Branding Board cash fund, which has about $500,000 in savings that he says the Department of Agriculture would like to have. McKinley said that he was successful in keeping the fund in tact last year despite attempts by the department to tap into that money.

“It’s a savings fund, a users fund. The Brand Board has managed to save up a pretty good chunk of money, and there’s people trying to get it,” said McKinley.

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A battle pitting river rafters against private landowners could shift from lawmakers to voters after both sides Friday filed a record 24 proposed ballot initiatives on the subject before Friday’s deadline for trying to get issues on the November ballot, The Denver Post reports. Rafters believe they should be allowed to use the rivers they have floated on for decades and are upset that the Senate turned a bill on the issue into a study. Robert Hamel and Jay R.K. Kenney filed four measures on behalf of rafters. Landowners believe they should be able to protect their property rights. John Leede and Charles Thrailkill, members of the Creekside Coalition, filed 20 measures, limiting the use of rivers or targeting rafters with strict liability provisions.

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Editor’s Note: HB10-1188 was most recently debated in the Colorado Senate on March 22. State Bill premium users may listen to the floor session by pressing on the audio player published here:

Rafting and fishing supporters are floating last-minute compromises in hopes of avoiding a fight over a bill that was originally intended to protect rafters’ rights to continue using Colorado rivers, the Associated Press reports. Rep. Kathleen Curry, a registered independent from Gunnison, said Friday that groups from both camps are threatening to take the issue to the ballot box in November. Curry said she hopes to force the Senate to back down on an amendment to the bill that would delay it for a year to study its impact. She said lawmakers should deal with the real issues: whether rafters should be allowed to use the rivers they have floated for decades, or whether landowners should be able to bar them to protect their property rights.

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A coalition of municipal water suppliers from the south Denver Metro area and Wyoming announced Thursday at the Capitol that they’re banding together to study a project that could end up competing with the Fort Collins entrepreneur’s proposed Regional Watershed Supply project and potentially call for new reservoirs to be built in Larimer County somewhere east of the foothills, The Coloradoan reports.

Each utility in the coalition will contribute $20,000 to a feasibility study for a massive municipal water pipeline project called the Colorado-Wyoming Cooperative Water Supply Project, which would pipe water for 532,000 people from Wyoming’s Flaming Gorge Reservoir to the Front Range.

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Gov. Bill Ritter has signed a bill that extends the deadline for companies to get water permits for their natural-gas and oil wells, The Durango Herald reports. Senate Bill 165 gives the companies until Aug. 1, instead of the end of this month, to get their permits in order.

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By Debi Brazzale, COLORADO NEWS AGENCY

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers wants to send a message to Congress and President Obama asking them to reconsider federal policy that has put a clamp on some current as well as some prospective water projects in Colorado.

The policy that Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, wants Congress to look at involves a requirement that federal stimulus dollars comply with the Davis-Bacon Act–a 1931 law that says prevailing wages must be paid for labor on most federally funded public works projects.   Harvey said that the problem is not with Davis-Bacon but with the EPA’s interpretation–that the new rules apply retroactively to water projects, a move that some say was too swiftly applied.

“Regardless of how anyone feels about Davis-Bacon, there are some discussions that should have happened,” said Harvey. He said Senate Joint Resolution 18, which he presented today to the Senate Committee on Business, Labor and Technology, initiates that conversation.

Hundreds of water projects in Colorado are generally paid for by a revolving fund of federal and state dollars that is loaned out and repaid over time. Federal money in the revolving fund had not historically been subject to the provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act—until 2009, when Congress declared that the prevailing-wage provision would apply to all stimulus dollars spent, even retroactively.

SJR 18 states that the new interpretation, “will jeopardize or subject to costly renegotiation numerous existing contracts that have already been signed or are about to be signed …” for water projects around the state.

The problem, said Kevin Bommer of the Colorado Municipal League, who came to testify in support the resolution, is not about prevailing wages or about future projects, but about whether the new conditions Congress applies to stimulus money that is doled out for water projects should be applied retroactively to the projects that were already on the table but not yet funded.

“To say that this applies to projects that weren’t finalized was totally unfair for the folks who were in the middle of the process,” said Bommer. “We’re not asking for an up or down vote on Davis-Bacon…..what we’re asking for is fundamental fairness.”

Colorado has received about $34.4 million for clean drinking water projects and about $31.3 million for clean water projects in federal stimulus money.  According to the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority, the cost for meeting the Davis-Bacon requirements for metro area projects would increase 4 to 5 percent per project and 20 to 25 percent n rural areas.

The final committee vote on whether or not to move the resolution forward has been put on hold until next week.

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