San Luis Valley Aquifer Staging Comeback
By Matt Hildner, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.
Apr. 18–ALAMOSA -The confined aquifer under the San Luis Valley is continuing its recovery and may see a brighter future thanks to a recent Colorado Supreme Court decision, according to officials with the Rio Grande Water Conservancy District.
The confined aquifer is the deeper of the two groundwater formations that run beneath the San Luis Valley and, like the shallower, unconfined aquifer, suffered badly during the drought in the early part of the decade.
Allen Davey, a consulting engineer for the district, reviewed well measurements at the board’s meeting Tuesday. He said almost every one of the district’s monitoring wells showed an improvement of 1 to 2 feet over measurements from the previous year.
“There is a continuing recovery in the confined aquifer,” he said.
The aquifer may also get an assist from a recent decision by the state Supreme Court that upheld the approval of stricter rules governing new diversions from the confined aquifer.
In 2004, the state engineer’s office had issued new rules meant to prevent injury to senior surface water right holders and protect the state’s ability to deliver water downstream as demanded by the Rio Grande Compact.
The rules were approved by the division water court in 2006, but appeals to the supreme court on the case were not settled until last month.
“That’s quite a significant step in the efforts to better manage the water supplies in the San Luis Valley,” said David Robbins, the district’s attorney.
But there is still much that’s not known about the confined aquifer’s behavior and officials at the district hope to augment the information they get from their own monitoring network.
“We still don’t understand fully the response of the confined (aquifer) and again, new information would be very helpful,” said Steve Vandiver, the district’s manager.
Tuesday they inquired if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could record basic data from the wells on its refuges to augment information from the other confined wells the district monitors in the valley.
Robbins said it would be great just to have data on when the wells start and stop flowing.
“You have tons of wells on the (Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge) that probably quit flowing completely for five years,” he said.
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