Pronunciation, Meaning, Synonyms & phonetic transcription

Cortney Brand said. Denver Basin Water is exploring the feasibility of pumping water far under the city, into the massive Denver Basin aquifer system to keep it there until the next dry spell. As Denver Water Resource Engineer Bob Peters points out, in the already arid American West, Drought is always on the horizon. We only get 15 inches of rainfall a year here in Denver Basin, and most of Denver Water comes from the mountain snowpack. That mountain snowpack melts and runs downstream, supplying water for much of the nation including the parched Southwest. When the snowpack fails the effects reach far beyond the region according to Doug Kenney, Director of the Western Water Policy Center at University of Colorado Law School. The California drought has really illustrated to people why drought in the West is important. If you consume vegetables in winter, you're probably getting those from Southern California, so from farm products to general economic health, not only do these things resonate throughout the rest of the country but throughout the rest of the world. A secondary source of water comes from underground aquifers which nature filled over the course of millions of years, and which humans are draining at a massive rate. Even though the aquifer system under the city of Denver Basin covers an area the size of the Connecticut, Peters said, The Denver Basin ground water is non-renewable so if you pump that water it's gone. What we're talking about is taking our renewable water supplies and injecting them into the aquifer to keep the aquifer replenished. With core samples taken every 10 feet down, the bore holes being drilled beneath Denver Basin will provide geologic data about how well the various open bowls in the rock will hold water without losing any to seepage or cracks. Cities like Phoenix, Wichita and San Antonio are already banking water underground and because it doesn't have the same downsides as above-ground reservoirs the method will surely become more common. Reservoirs are really tough to build, politically and financially, Kenney said.

There's been limited improvement, but reservoirs are still very low, and the snowpack is still well below average.

What we're hearing, because of the snowpack and rain and the wet ground, is that farmers are going to be dealing with this throughout the spring. So we're in it for the long haul.

It's a matter or managing a big snowpack with full reservoirs and making sure there's not any downstream damage from high releases, we've gotten so much snow and rain in the lower elevations that the reservoirs have filled up. We know we have a ton of snow still sitting up there. Flooding is coming. It's going to be tough on the water managers this year to capture that water and lose a bunch of it.

We aren't going to solve large climate shifts in areas, but if you went back and you looked in California and said if we had an additional 10 %, 15 %, 20 % of snowpack and precipitation over the last 10 years... it would be significantly different.

The snowpack is the critical resource in the western United States, civilization is built around it existing and replenishing groundwater and making that water supply available. So we have to take care of it and we have to understand how it is changing if we are going to survive out here.

We are going to experience one of the worst droughts in the history of our state. Snowpack is at historic lows and severe water shortages are nearly a certainty in many areas.

A snowpack that might look clean to our eyes can be more effective in absorbing solar radiation than a dirty one, overall, what matters, it is the total amount of solar energy that the surface absorbs. This is the real driver of melting.

A second year with such little snowpack would be a crisis.

We'd be flying along at 10,000 feet, where there should be an abundant snowpack this time of year, and it's dry, dusty ground.