News from Neighbors
Western Sugar wants to move forward with plans to improve; it’s in the state’s hands now
FORT MORGAN TIMES, July 16 — After a long and arduous battle with the state, Western Sugar Cooperative has made another step toward updating their Fort Morgan facility in efforts to mitigate what can be addressed as nothing other than “the smell.” This time, it comes in the form of an analysis being submitted to the state regarding the wastewater treatment system.
According to Heather Luther, vice president of Western Sugar, this analysis was submitted to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on its due date last Friday, July 13.
After being slammed with a $2 million fine from the CDPHE, Western Sugar has been kept in the public eye with pressure to make amends regarding the wastewater ponds that are kept on the north side of Interstate 76. Since then, they made a long list of promises to bring them into compliance with state regulations for their operation.
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Group submits water storage proposal
STERLING JOURNAL-ADVOCATE, July 11 — The Lower South Platte Water Conservancy District will submit a proposal to act as fiscal agent for the Water Supply Reserve Fund Proposal being drawn up by the South Platte Regional Opportunities Working Group. That decision came during Tuesday’s meeting of the district’s executive committee.
The $390,000 project, described in the nearly impenetrable technical language of water experts, is essentially the next step after the South Platte Storage Study, which was completed late last year.
The study, authorized by the Colorado General Assembly in House Bill 16-1256, looked at the stretch of the South Platte River between Kersey and the Nebraska state line in an attempt to find water storage to fill a crippling water gap that is just 12 years away. According to the 2015 Colorado Water Plan, by 2030 the need for water in Colorado will exceed supplies by 560,000 acre feet, or 182 billion gallons per year, and most of that is here in the South Platte River Basin.
Joe Frank, general manager of the LSPWCD, said the study is good at indicating what can or should be done to meet the growing water gap, but it says nothing about how to do it or by whom. And it’s the “by whom” part that needs to be addressed next, Frank said, because without an entity to fund an promote projects, nothing gets done.
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