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REDSTONE • REVIEW
MARCH 16 / APRIL 13, 2022
CORNERSTONE Hey, where’d all the water go? By Greg Lowell Redstone Review LYONS – If you’re like me, this time every year you get upset to find the St. Vrain River below Lyons reduced to a trickle. Lowell The fish, bug life and all that depends on a steady flow are on life support until the Highland Ditch Company turns the spigot back on. Highland diverts the entire river – “sweeps” it (a gentler euphemism than “draining”) – in order to fill Highland Lake in Mead to prepare for this year’s growing season. The sweeping of the river generally takes place mid-January through March of every year. Colorado law allows water rights users like Highland to divert all the water in a river if they can show “beneficial use.” In Highland’s case, that use is storage for agriculture. The Highland’s water rights are largely used on approximately 35,000 agricultural acres. The St. Vrain River from Lyons downstream to Longmont does pick up some residual groundwater and snow melt but the flow is drastically reduced during the two months that Highland draws off the water. Complicating the environmental impact of this decreased flow is the Town of Lyons new sewage outfall pipe. Beginning last year, effluent from the town’s wastewater treatment plant is dumped just below the Highland Dam (the outfall was previously located above the Black Bear Hole). Lyons’ effluent temperature ranges from 52 to 59 degrees F at this time of the year, while the river temperature is around 36 to 40 degrees. During the Highland’s sweep, the effluent is not diluted by the colder river water so the 150,000 gallons a day of effluent warms the river during this
time to the detriment of the cold water environment downstream. Why not let some of the river go through to at least ensure viability of the river; in other words, stretching out Highland’s allotment over a longer period? According to Sean Cronin, executive director, St. Vrain and Lefthand Water Conservancy District, Highland takes all the water because they may not have assurances that the water will be available day to day because their water rights are junior to other more-senior water shareholders. Seniority of water shares in Colorado are based on the date of their original claim, many dating back to the mid 1800s. When a senior water right holder places a “call” on a river or stream, diversions under junior water rights are shut off, starting with the most junior, until the senior right is satisfied. Therefore, Highland exercises its water rights when it can before some more-senior water rights holders downstream decide to exercise their rights. Highland takes the water when it can – just like all other ditch companies in this convoluted Colorado water scheme – and the river ecology be damned (or dammed, as it were). Cronin does note that “great strides have been made to recognize environment and recreation as high values for water in Colorado,” but admits progress being made in that regard is admittedly slow. Subterranean hells I learn something new about my adopted state almost every week. Now it’s burning, abandoned coal mines. Such a mine just off Rt. 93 in Marshall is being looked at as the source for the devastating Marshall Fire, but it’s only one of 38 such subterranean hells in the state. Given the right kind of coal, oxygen, and a certain temperature and moisture content, coal
The St. Vrain is reduced to just a trickle in spring because of water rights. will spontaneously combust. The Denver Post reports that state agencies are keeping tabs on these underground smolderings as it worries about them igniting surface fires. Tara Tafi, with the Colorado Division of Reclamation Mining and Safety, keeps an eye on coal mine fires for the state, but admits that there’s no real cost-effective way to put out the fires short of excavating out an entire area to pull out the burning coal. Colorado lists the Marshall coal mine at number 19 of 38 on the list of coal fire priority with a “low” overall risk. (I shudder to think what the top 12 “high” and “medium” risk mines are like.) The Lewis mine, also in the Marshall Mesa area, is rated “very low” risk. Both the Marshall and Lewis mines were part of the coal mining done in Boulder County from 1869 to 1938. Brown harbingers of spring As if dry rivers and burning coal mines aren’t enough, here’s one more thing to get you riled up. As winter winds down and
Death and taxes “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” From a quote in a letter by Ben Franklin to French scientist Jean-Baptiste Leroy in 1789.
LYONS – It’s mid-March so you’ve got about four weeks left. The chances are, if you were expecting a refund you’ve already done your taxes, but if you have a balance due then what’s the rush? None of your options are terribly appealing: you can go and stand in line at one of the big name preparation offices or you can buy the most patronizing and badly designed software in the world and grind your teeth while you type. Maybe you’re the independent type – just a tiny bit cheap but smart enough to design a 96-line spreadsheet. Whichever way you are doing it, there are going to be some surprises and changes this year. The pandemic encouraged our government to be fairly generous to most people. Every year Congress adds new tweaks to the tax code and recently there has been a trend towards reducing taxes. I have fantasies about the old days. Pa would sit at the kitchen table with a big fat black pencil and write down the numbers on a real paper 1040 tax form. Two additions and one subtraction later and he was finished before his coffee stopped steaming. But here come the 1980s and some of us are getting home computers: big ol’ clunky beige boxes with a tiny display screen. It wasn’t long before manufacturers designed programs to do the work for us. The software companies loved this new offering. You might buy their word processor for $129 and that thing would still be working 20 years later – the everlasting light bulb dilemma. But tax software offered annuity: Washington fiddled with the rules every year so you could sell the punters a new piece of junk for $29 every year. Then $49 a year. Hey this is great.
Lyons resident Greg Lowell is a Lyons Town Board Trustee and serves as a liaison to the Ecology Advisory Board.
ing for disabled relatives. Also it’s more expensive to be a college student and pricier to get childcare. Every 30 years, or so, the government has a reset. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was the last big reducer of complexity. But President Reagan’s signature was hardly dry on the page before a confetti sprinkle of new details started raining down. Every year saw more exceptions and footnotes. Even if you were a tax professional it was harder to rely on your historical knowledge without checking the latest Pub 17, the nickname for Publication 17, the all in one bible for tax preparation. In 2010 there was an article in CityLine, the Longmont utility bill newsletter. An organization called VITA was looking for volunteers. VITA turned out to be Voluntary Income Tax Assistance and the organ-
By Peter Butler Redstone Review
Butler
the sun gets higher, the snow recedes to reveal one of spring’s perpetual harbingers – piles of dog poop and the plastic bags of it that supposedly conscientious dog owners leave behind. Here in Lyons, the turds of spring line our sidewalks, parks and open spaces. If it’s any consolation (and it sure as heck isn’t), we’re not alone. A recent article on the OutThere Colorado website said a Jefferson County Open Space ranger team reported that they picked up 2,220 bags of discarded pet waste in 2021. Unfortunately, the trend is statewide; Colorado has more dog poop complaints per capita than any other state. C’mon, people. Can we band together, my fellow Lyons dog owners, to help reverse this trend? If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for my shoe treads.
Continue Taxes on Page 13
A few years ago a presidential candidate ran his platform on a fixed tax rate of 7 percent for everybody. The number was easy for him to remember in debates and he claimed it was fairer. No more headaches at tax time. But it occurred to me that lots of incentives would disappear:
like the very low tax rate on qualified dividends that encourages savers to hold their investments for longer. But the idea illustrated an eternal truth. Taxes can either be simple or they can be fair. Make them simple and you eliminate help for low-income folks, families with children, or people car-
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