AWRA-CO Winter 2022 Newsletter

2022 AWRA-CGWA Annual Symposium

Save the Date! Friday, April 15, 2022

This year's symposium theme is The Future of Colorado's Water: Doing More with Less. The symposium will be a hybrid event that can be attended in person or viewed virtually. In person attendance will be limited. Details coming soon.

Call for Abstracts 

The Deadline to Submit is this Monday, February 28, 2022

We are seeking technical and informative presentations that pertain to any and all aspects of either groundwater or water resources and exemplify the theme of the symposium. Colorado faces numerous hurdles within water resource planning, all of which are underscored by the need to optimize existing water supplies to meet our State’s growing water demand. Our hope in selecting this theme is to highlight water-related examples of individuals or groups implementing creative and collaborative solutions amidst an environment marked by diminishing resources. 

Find more details here: https://awracolorado.org/AnnualSymposium2022

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Renew Your Membership Today

Haven't updated your membership yet for 2022? It's not too late.

Your support allows us to continue our ongoing work of connecting existing and future members of the water resources community through education, networking, professional development, and scholarship opportunities. While the past twelve months have not provided ideal conditions for the traditional structure and timing of our events, they certainly have not dissuaded our efforts to fulfill this mission. Most notably, we continue to develop the next generation of water resource professionals through outreach and our long-standing scholarship program. 

We continue to focus on adding value to our members and have achieved this in the following ways:

• Support AWRA-Colorado Section Scholarship program
• Enhanced members-only area on AWRA-Colorado website including access to recordings of past AWRA Lunch presentations, job postings, and AWRA-Colorado blog
• Distribute event invitations, newsletter, and other water industry news
• Significant discounts and early access to annual symposium and other program fees
• Complimentary annual holiday party and networking events with water industry students and professionals
• Eligibility to vote in AWRA-Colorado elections and serve on committees

• Corporate and Institutional Memberships also include recognition on the Annual Symposium Program and on the AWRA Colorado website

Renew your individual, corporate, institutional, or student membership at https://awracolorado.org/Membership. 

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2021/2022 Scholarship Recipients

We are pleased to announce the 2021/2022 Rich Herbert Memorial Scholarship Recipients.  Each year we recieve excellent candidates and make the hard selection based on relevance of research to CO Water Resources, previouse work experience and academic background and their writing and organization as well as a few other contributing items.  This year we received twenty-three qualified applications from 11 Ph.D. candidates, 10 M.A./M.S. candidates, and 2 B.A./B.S. candidates. Applicants represented a variety of departments at Adams State University, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, Denver University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder and Denver.

Congratulations to our 3 scholarship winners.  Their research will be featured at the Annual Symposium or a future lunch talk.  More details coming soon. 

Elizabeth Hjelvik	Mickey Means-Brous	Sarah Dunn
CU Boulder - PhD	CSU - MS	CSU - MS
Increasing Colorado water supplies using novel distillation-based membrane technologies	Geomorphic influences on salmonid recolonization in a post-fire environment	Post-disturbance sediment dynamics in a high-elevation water supply reservoir, Chambers Lake, CO

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Student Networking Event

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2022 Holiday Party

On January 11, 2022 AWRA-CO members celebrated the holiday season and the new year at Punchbowl Social with some festive drinks and good food and a few rounds of bowling.  It was nice to see a few familiar faces and meet new members of the board.  We hope that in future we'll be able to continue to gather and celebrate together.  

Congratulations to our Board President Beth - that's not just a bowling ball ;) We hope that all goes well with the welcoming of your new little one.

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AWRA-CO Mentorship Program

AWRA-CO is now offering a mentorship program for any actively enrolled college students interested in pursuing a career in the field of water resources in Colorado. AWRA-CO will match mentees with an experienced industry professional based on shared career interests. Our goal for this program is to create lasting professional relationships that provide value to individuals and strengthen our local water resources community as a whole.

Apply and get more details here: https://awracolorado.org/Mentorship_Program

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Lunch Talk Recaps

September Lunch Talk - Lawn Irrigation Contributions to Semi-Arid Urban Baseflow

Aditi Bhaskar, Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University, presented their study on excess lawn irrigation and it's impacts on baseflow. This work gives a new way to analyze how much flow is coming from different sources in urban areas, which is important for understanding consequences for water quality and water rights for downstream users.

October Lunch Talk - Improving Tradeoff Understanding in Water Resource Planning Using Multi-Objective Search

Leon Basdekas, P.E., Ph.D., Upper Columbia Senior Water Manager for the Seattle District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, gave a brief introduction to multi-objective search and then presented the four different case studies conducted as part of Water Research Foundation project 4941. The case studies included 4 different utilities that looked at long-term storage, reservoir rule curve development, reservoir operations, and source water allocation timing and budget impacts.

November Lunch Talk - Updates on the Colorado River

Amy Ostdiek, the Section Chief of the Interstate, Federal, and Water Information Section at the Colorado Water Conservation Board, presented on Colorado River matters, including an overview of relevant background and context, an update on implementation of the 2007 Interim Guidelines and Drought Contingency Plan, and next steps.

Missed a Past Lunch Talk?

As a reminder, members can access presentation materials and recordings of past lunch talks on our website in the member portal:  https://awracolorado.org/Lunch_Presentations

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Colorado Water History

In honor of Black History Month we wanted to share the story of Deartown, CO.  Founded in 1910 by Oliver Toussaint Jackson who had a vision of a thriving African-American settlement not far from Denver.  It has been documented that there were 25 black communities in Colorado in the early 1900s but Deartown was the only Black agricultural community.  For about the first decade of the town being founded the farming became well established due to the climate and the amount of rainfall that the area had, which incrementally decreased each year.  The town was able to raise surplus crops known as "truck garden" crops as they would drive them to nearby markets and sell potatoes, strawberries, alfalfa, corn and more.  The town was even described as being lush at the time. They also got a boost in the economy during World War I with price surges for produce.  By 1930 with the dwindling rainfall and the onset of the Dust Bowl, the town population was a meager 25 and it was hard to get people to come back to the once flourishing town.  Ultimatley the lack of rain and dust storms led to the towns demise. 

A documentary was made in 2020 documenting oral and written histories of Deartown and it's founder and can be found at the link here.

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