Denver Water to seek emergency appeal of judge's ruling on Gross Reservoir expansion in Colorado
"Our main concern is to bring our workforce back, be on the ready. Be ready to take care of the dam safety issues we have by quickly raising this dam," said Denver Water's program manager of the Gross Reservoir expansion project, Jeff Martin.
Denver Water has been working on enlarging the dam since 2022 to nearly triple the reservoir's capacity. Crews were about to start the Spring construction season when Federal District Court Judge Christine Arguello issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the enlargement of the reservoir in her October decision on a lawsuit filed by some neighbors of the project and several environmental groups.
"We're looking at every way to make sure that we can keep pushing the completion of Gross Reservoir expansion forward and make sure that we can supply a reliable water supply for Denver," said Martin about remedies that could include requesting help from the Trump Administration.
Planning for the reservoir expansion began in 2002. Martin said they had met all requirements of permitting at local, state, and federal levels before starting construction, meeting requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.
"All of the environmental impacts were analyzed in the NEPA process," said Martin.
However, in October, Judge Arguello found that the Army Corps of Engineers violated NEPA and the Clean Water Act when permits for reservoir expansion were approved. And she backed many of the opponents' claims.
"Among other things, the permitting process requires the applicant to consider the least environmentally damaging practical alternative," said neighbor Scott Engle, a member of an opposition organization that calls itself The Environmental Group.
"There were other alternatives available that would cost the ratepayer a lot less money," said Engle. Opponents favored a pipeline from Denver Water's southern water system and opposed drawing water from the headwaters of the Colorado River on the opposite side of the Continental Divide. The water is to be moved via the Moffat Tunnel to the Gross Reservoir, but Denver Water has maintained that it will only draw during periods when the tributaries are flowing well.
On Wednesday, Martin told journalists who visited the Gross Dam after an invite from Denver Water that the project will help Denver Water create a better supply and reserve in its Northern system. The project, he said, was to prevent shortages.
"We want to be able to solve the issue and weather a drought. We want to be able to weather the next catastrophic event. The next climate uncertainty. We want to make sure we have water for a growing Denver area."
But, opponents have noted that per capita water use has been falling and believe Denver Water should opt for more conservation.
The two-week stay meant some workers were on the job Wednesday. However, the pouring of additional concrete has not happened yet with the project's future in question.
"Right now, the best way we can take care of our workforce is by giving them a job," said Martin. "We're getting absolute ready so we can place concrete and start raising the dam," he said about hopes for a successful appeal.
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Miami Herald
6 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Detention center driving out wildlife, damaging Everglades, critics contend
The sales pitch for erecting a detention center for detainees in the heart of the Everglades is the swamp and creatures surrounding it. The wildlife has become both a presidential punchline and the government's official name for the controversial camp: Alligator Alcatraz. But environmentalists worry that the rapidly constructed facility — which they contend sidestepped all required environmental permitting — will be harmful to the animals and ecosystem that surround it. Contrary to Gov. Ron DeSantis' claims of 'zero' impact, they say parts of the property are already are being covered in trucked-in dirt and rock — possibly damaging surrounding wetlands and robbing habitat from Florida panthers, bonneted bats and wading birds that normally frequent the site. They warn the increased number of people and facilities on the property comes with an increased risk for spills into the sensitive waters nearby — and the fear that the 'temporary' facility may well morph into something permanent. 'This project has been rushed through with zero analysis of the impacts of all of the vehicles and thousands of people who will be detained or work on the site. That is contrary to law,' said Alisa Coe, deputy managing attorney of Earthjustice, one of the groups suing the federal and state government to stop the detention center, at a Tuesday press conference. 'The Everglades deserves more, which is why we're in court.' But proponents of the project, which is set to house anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 detainees in bunk beds ringed with fences inside temporary tents, say it's being built on land that was already cleared for a 10,500-foot runway and administrative building — not untouched swampland. DeSantis, who has campaigned on his record in the Everglades and stresses the state's investment when talking about the controversial detention center, has dismissed environmental concerns. 'Obviously, I've invested how much billion and billions of dollars into increasing and improving the hydrology of the Everglades,' he said at a press conference Tuesday. 'If I thought somehow this was going to hurt that I obviously wouldn't do it.' Lawsuit on NEPA Environmental groups filed a lawsuit last week to stop the facility on the grounds that it completely bypassed the federal rules for assessing environmental harm, the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA. Paul Schwiep of Coffey Burlington, lead attorney for the case, said he has found no exception that applies to allow the federal government to skip this step. 'In the rush to get this done, the federal government and state have totally thumbed their nose at NEPA,' he said on a Tuesday press call. 'Why? Because they say there's no environmental impact.' That, the environmental groups argue, isn't true. They point to a steady stream of dump trucks ferrying dirt and asphalt to the site all week — to expand on the paved areas of the site that already exist. 'When the governor says they haven't expanded the footprint at all, that's just wrong, and the proof is in the photos,' Schwiep said. Schwiep asked the federal judge in the case to block the site from opening Tuesday, but the judge has yet to review or rule on that request, even as state officials trumpeted the arrival of the first set of detainees Wednesday evening. 'The request for an injunction does not become moot the moment a detainee steps foot on the site,' Schwiep said. Eve Samples, head of Friends of the Everglades, is leading the charge on the lawsuit. The group was initially formed decades ago by Marjory Stoneman Douglas specifically to fight the development of a jetport on this exact plot of land, which she called 'one of the most ecologically sensitive regions of Florida, arguably the United States.' This new lawsuit is a continuation of that fight, she said. 'Remember, the jetport wasn't halted until one runway was built,' she said. Conservation or detention? Two weeks ago, multiple suitors were in line to potentially purchase the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a 6,000-acre property with one long runway in the middle of Big Cypress National Preserve. The Miccosukee Tribe was in loose talks to purchase the property and conserve it, and the state of Florida was interested in snapping up the land to use as a staging ground for hurricane supplies while agreeing to halt any future development on the rest of the site. A few years ago, Rodney Barreto, chair of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, suggested Miami-Dade should donate the land to the federal government to increase the footprint of the preserve. 'The Jetport property is ecologically important to the health of the entire Everglades,' he wrote. Now, the property is covered in tents, trailers, generators and rows upon rows of portable bathrooms — far from the vision of conservation many environmentalists had hoped for. Curtis Osceola, senior executive policy adviser for the Miccosukee Tribe, said the tribe sees preserving this property as 'critical' to the success of the Western Everglades Restoration Project. 'I don't think there's any debate that this is perhaps one of the most important features of WERP to restore, just because of the volume of water that gets diverted, mostly to the east, by this runway,' he told the Miami Herald. Animals at risk While the most common human visitor to the mostly idle airport over the years has been pilots of small planes practicing their 'touch and go' flight maneuvers, environmentalists noted that plenty of animals and birds that once called the site home will likely be displaced now. 'It has massive impacts on the species that call Big Cypress home,' said Elise Bennett, senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, during a press conference Tuesday. 'We will not stop our work until we know they're protected.' She's particularly concerned with the endangered Florida Panther. Fewer than 300 still survive in the wild, mostly in the preserve. About 20 to 30 a year are killed in car accidents, and multiplying the number of trucks and vans moving in and out of the site could increase the risk of squashing even more. 'To lose any more is simply untenable and would prevent the survivability of this species,' she said. Data from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission show that the site has been a popular spot for panthers over the years. But the most recent 'ding' of a confirmed visit — from a panther wearing a radio collar to track its movement — on the site itself was from 2008. The most recent visit from a radio-collared panther near the site was in 2014. Bennett noted that fewer panthers wear radio collars today than they did in decades past, and there are also far fewer of the big cats roaming Florida's last remaining wild spaces, so this isn't the full picture of how often these endangered animals may pass through or near the property. The new floodlights and bright lights at night on the site are also a hazard for Florida bonneted bats, the rarest bat in the nation. Tribal members who live nearby have already reported that light pollution from the site makes the sky glow from miles away, potentially scaring away the tiny nocturnal creatures. 'To put any kind of development in the middle of this haven is really a death knell,' Bennett said. Spill risk One of the biggest environmental concerns that worries advocates: Potential spills of fuel, sewage of other damaging chemicals of material. Year-long court battles have been waged over exactly how clean the water in the Everglades has to be without fouling up the whole system. The answer? Pretty darn clean. Everglades advocates say that the portable bathrooms, diesel fuel for generators and potentially jet fuel for deportation flights all represent toxins that could harm the nearby waters if they spilled. Osceola said the tribal neighborhood near the site has a couple hundred Seminole and Miccosukee residents who have spent decades designing and financing solutions to move toward cleaner water and sewage treatment that are less harmful to the environment. 'The government wants to inject about 10 times the amount of people in an even more remote location. The intensity is definitely going to come with some problems that basically have to do with creating a city in the middle of nowhere,' he said. 'Eventually you're going to have runoff into the water supply. You're going to have a situation when there's a storm.' On opening day of the facility, a typical South Florida rainstorm dumped about an inch and a half of rain on the site, enough to cause puddles to form inside the newly constructed tents and soak the bases of the twin U.S. and Florida flags brought in for the ribbon cutting. The state says it quickly solved the problem.
a day ago
California just rolled back a landmark environmental policy. Here's what it means.
The landmark California environmental legislation that lawmakers have voted to revise will allow for crucial infrastructure to take place within the state, some environmental policy experts told ABC News. On Monday, state lawmakers passed a trailer budget bill that will now exclude certain construction projects from being subject to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), such as water system upgrades, advanced manufacturing facilities -- like EV plants -- and wildfire fuel breaks. Signed into law in 1970 by then-Governor Ronald Reagan, CEQA requires developers to consider environmental issues, traffic, air pollution and noise when proposing a new building project. Individuals and groups can challenge a project if they believe it violates the law. However, the revisions could have positive benefits for "desperately needed infrastructure," like infill housing -- or new construction of housing on vacant lots within established neighborhoods -- water system improvements in under-resourced communities and daycare centers, Alice Kaswan, who specializes in climate change and environmental justice at the University of San Francisco School of Law, told ABC News. "The CEQA exemptions could start to chip away at the many obstacles these investments encounter, and existing local and state regulations should limit potential adverse impacts," Kaswan said. In 2023, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to reform CEQA after a Bay Area court blocked the construction of a student housing complex at the University of California, Berkeley. The California Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in 2024 to allow construction for the 1,200-unit complex to begin. Some kind of reform to CEQA has been "long overdue," David Victor, a professor of innovation and public policy at the University of California, San Diego, told ABC News. "The State needs to figure out how to build things, and Democrats need to learn how to say 'yes' to investment," he said. Unlike the National Environmental Policy Act, CEQA's federal counterpart, the California state law has been subject to "substantial legislative tinkering" for years, mainly to streamline the process for certain types of activities, Deborah Sivas, a professor of environmental social science at Stanford University, told ABC News. "In the last several years, most of that tinkering has been in connection with housing development, although there is little empirical evidence showing that CEQA itself is actually a substantially contributing to the housing crisis," Sivas said, adding that she is not convinced that the changes will substantially alter the outcome of California's housing crisis. The trailer bill will now provide additional CEQA exemptions for rezoning that complies with state-approved housing elements in local jurisdictions, Sivas said. This will help move along the planning and zoning process, where the state has tried to incentivize urban housing development and disincentivize local foot-dragging on new housing projects, she said. More housing everywhere would make existing properties appreciate less, which could impact homeowners since homes are the principal financial asset for many families, Michael O'Hare, professor emeritus of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, told ABC News. Property owners who oppose the building of more housing have been using CEQA to oppose the builds, O'Hare said. "It's not politically acceptable to seem to oppose new housing for reasons of greed, so the opposition takes morally comfortable stands, like environmental concerns and abstractions like 'neighborhood character,'" O'Hare said. The bill goes further by also exempting or streamlining infrastructure projects, including high-speed rail; community water and sewer systems; certain types of daycare centers, health clinics and food banks, wildfire risk reduction projects; and "advanced manufacturing" located in industrial zones, Sivas said. However, the particular approach of exempting some kinds of projects without fixing the whole of CEQA could be too blunt and haphazard, Victor said. "But its most important impacts, perhaps, will be in forcing a more systematic and practical look at CEQA reform," he added. Ideally, policymakers should be "smart enough" to figure out how to have both environmental quality and enough housing, O'Hare said. Where the rollbacks could cause some harm is the provision for the exemption for advanced manufacturing facilities, Kaswan said. "The opposition seems to be centered around the exemptions for high-speed rail and advanced manufacturing, which is quite broadly defined," Sivas said, adding that environmental groups and labor interests are "unhappy" about those two exemptions. Opposition groups also objected to the method used by the California Legislature to pass the legislation -- including quite substantive changes in a budget trailer bill, "similar to what Congress is trying to do with the budget reconciliation package," Sivas said. However, in Congress, the general rule is that non-fiscal policy changes cannot be included in that process, whereas California has no similar rule, Sivas said. Because the advanced manufacturing exemption applies only in areas zoned for industrial use, it could steer new plants to these areas and intensify the disproportionate burdens people living there already experience, Kaswan said. "State policy-makers appear to have bought into a narrow 'jobs versus environment' mentality, rather than prioritizing clean energy and technology pathways that would avoid past environmental injustices," Kaswan said. The new exemptions do not apply to "oil and gas infrastructure" or "warehouse distribution centers" larger than 50,000 square feet, Sivas said. "Natural and protected lands" are also excluded from the exemptions. "I am hopeful that we can make progress on housing and restart the high-speed rail process, but I am also concerned that CEQA is the primary way that disadvantaged urban communities can voice concerns about project impacts, and this legislation could reduce their ability to participate meaningfully in the process," Sivas said. "We will have to wait and see how all of this sorts out over the next couple of years."
Politico
2 days ago
- Politico
California's green rule rollback ignites firestorm
California Democrats' dramatic policy move to address the state's housing crisis has put party leaders on a collision course with environmental advocates and labor unions. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic state lawmakers on Monday agreed to exempt a wide array of projects from the California Environmental Quality Act, which requires construction projects to assess and address environmental impacts, writes Camille von Kaenel. Newsom conditioned passage of the state's $320 billion budget to approval of the exemptions, which he said were necessary to get more homes built. This is 'the most consequential housing reform that we've seen in modern history in the state of California,' Newsom said at a press conference. The reform also exempts projects such as wildfire fuel breaks, water system upgrades, portions of the high-speed rail project and advanced manufacturing facilities like semiconductor and electric vehicle plants — outraging many environmental and labor groups. 'They're conditioning the funding of essential services like health care, education, to this huge policy change that would dramatically roll back environmental review for some of the most polluting facilities in California,' said Asha Sharma, the state policy manager at the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability. Teamsters, United Auto Workers and United Steelworkers likened the measure to the Trump administration's rollback of the National Environmental Policy Act and warned it 'would give carte blanche to companies like Tesla to expand without any environmental oversight.' But critics of the foundational law, which was passed by Republican governor Ronald Reagan 55 years ago, say it has been weaponized to allow lawsuits to slow or halt housing development, fueling the state's housing shortage and driving up homelessness rates and the cost of living. Building more densely in urban areas, they argue, is better for the environment. It allows for more energy efficiency and facilitates public transit, cutting down on super commuters who spend hours in traffic emitting climate pollution. Still, that doesn't explain why advanced manufacturing facilities such as semiconductor and EV plants would be exempt from review, argue environmentalists and labor groups representing auto workers, machinists and scientists. Such facilities can leach toxic waste into neighborhoods, they said. That argument seems to have stuck, Camille writes. Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener said the California Senate is 'committed' to working on provisions related to advanced manufacturing, tribal consultation and endangered species protections in potential follow-up bills. It's Tuesday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Arianna Skibell. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to askibell@ Today in POLITICO Energy's podcast: Zack Colman breaks down how a record-breaking heat wave strained the U.S. power grid last week, highlighting the risks of rising electricity demand and extreme weather. Power Centers Senate passes its megabill after an all-nighter The Senate narrowly approved its version of the Republican tax, energy and border security bill, after making changes that eased up on provisions opposed by the wind and solar industry, write Timothy Cama, Amelia Davidson and Nico Portuondo. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky joined Democrats in voting against the measure, requiring Vice President JD Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote. The sprawling domestic policy measure now heads to the House, with Republicans hustling to get it to the president's desk by July 4, writes Jordain Carney. That will be a heavy lift: Moderates are worried about changes to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits included in the Senate bill, and conservatives are up in arms that it doesn't go far enough in cutting spending. Megabill debate mirrors state battlesBefore Republican Senators passed their version of Trump's megabill, the party found itself embroiled in a debate about how harshly to treat the wind and solar industries, mirroring a major battle playing out in Texas, Oklahoma and other deep-red states, writes Jason Plautz. The debate is one of ideology versus economics. While Republicans tend to look down on clean energy, the fiscal incentives are strong. In Texas, for example, business groups — even including oil and gas producers — were crucial in spreading the message that restricting solar and wind could drive up electricity costs. Trump attacks the Montreal ProtocolAs treaties go, the Montreal Protocol is often considered one of the most successful. But the United States' continued participation in the 1987 agreement to save the ozone layer is suddenly in question, writes Sara Schonhardt. Trump's proposed rescission package calls for eliminating funding to the agreement, as part of a plan to claw back $437 million appropriated for international organizations and programs during the Biden administration. Experts say that could undermine new markets for U.S. goods while threatening protections from the sun's harmful radiation. In Other News Water infrastructure: Flint finally replaced its lead pipes. Impacts: What does climate change mean for agriculture? Less food and more emissions. Subscriber Zone A showcase of some of our best subscriber content. Trump ordered federal agencies Monday to begin sharing grant application details for critical mineral and energy infrastructure projects with the National Energy Dominance Council. The EPA's proposal to reconsider its 16-year-old bedrock finding on the dangers of greenhouse gases is now in the White House's hands — a move that sets the stage for a broad climate rule attack. Links to the nation's most comprehensive climate reports disappeared from the internet on Monday — along with the official government website that houses them. That's it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.
