Cadillac Desert

The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District hopes to divert as much of its 30,000 acre-feet of water as possible from the Colorado River every year to the East Slope.

With about 60 percent of the upper Colorado already being diverted by Northern and Denver Water, this project would take another 20 percent of a river struggling to survive.

LINK (Via: The Denver Post)

The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, a public agency created in 1937, provides water for agricultural, municipal, domestic and industrial uses in northeastern Colorado.

LINK

Anglo American mining executive visits Alaska

Promises to store some of the Pebble Mine tailings in his eyebrows. 

LINK (Via: THe Anchorage Daily News)

Salmon and Culverts

19 tribes are suing Washington State over the slow pace of repairing culverts that block salmon from reachhing their spawning grounds.

By the state’s count, more than 1,800 fish barriers associated with state highways block more than 3,000 miles of potential stream habitat. The Legislature has funded culvert replacement since 1991, but the pace of construction is such that it could take up to 100 years to fix the problems. And that does not include county roads, which are not part of the lawsuit.

LINK (Via:The Kitsap Sun)

Federal agency won't defend Bush's bull trout cuts

The Obama administration won't defend the Bush administration's cuts to habitat protections for the threatened bull trout, whose need for cold, clean water can stand in the way of logging and mining on national forests.

LINK (Via: The Seattle PI)

Proposed Pipeline Sparks B.C. Oil Spill Fears

More news on the proposed pipeline project that the Dogwood Initiative is fighting with their No Tankers Campaign.

Pipeline megaproject would result in heavy tanker traffic on B.C.'s north coast

Concerns are mounting over a proposed twin pipeline megaproject running from Alberta to British Columbia that would cross hundreds of kilometres of untouched wilderness.

Friends of Wild Salmon (FWS), a citizens’ coalition based in northern B.C., is calling for a public enquiry into the project. FWS coordinator Pat Moss says that aside from tanker traffic, the location of the pipelines, which will cross hundreds of salmon streams and two major rivers, is a worry.

“Certainly the biggest single concern would be a major oil spill from a tanker on the coast as there’d be so much oil spilled at one time. But the pipeline also crosses over a 1,000 kilometres on its way to the coast, which includes numerous crossings of the Fraser and Skeena rivers.”

LINK (Via: Epoch Times)

Previously on MC. LINK

Quality Waters?

One of the biggest impacts on the quality of steelhead fishing on the Skeena is the commercial gillnetting bycatch that damages critical early steelhead runs. Despite reports that have shown the economic benefits of the sport fishery far outweigh those of the commercial fishery, the Canadian Department of Fisheries continues their misguided management of the resource.

With just three months before the start of the commercial fishing season, the North Coast Steelhead Alliance has sent an open letter to the Canadian Department of Fisheries, taking them to task for not implementing strategies to reduce the commercial harvest impact on steelhead runs. 

LINK  (Via: Skeena Fisheries Blog)