February 23, 2009

What's in Colorado Trout Unlimited's water?

Here is something I did not expect to see: A letter in the Denver Post from Drew Peternell of Colorado Trout Unlimited, doing the bidding of the "water buffaloes."

How spectacularly wrong-headed.

While cities and developers want to move water here and there, dry up farmlands, and cut stream flows, Peternell attacks the rational idea of saving a few gallons of rain water to put on your vegetables the next week when they are dry.

Yes, doing so is technically illegal in Colorado, but the Legislature might change that.

Saving a little rain water is no threat to stream flows. If the stored water is used outdoors, it is in the same micro-drainage that it would be been originally.

If used indoors with a septic system, the result is the same.

If used indoors with a municipal sewer system, it stays at least in the same river drainage.

The real problem is run-off from paved parking lots, streets, driveways, and the like. That run-off comes in a rush, polluted with petroleum by-products, and tears up streams. See, for instance, Colorado Springs' effects on Fountain Creek downstream.

What are they drinking up there in the CTU Boulder office?

No comments: