The Once-Great Colorado River Rises on the Colorado Plateau - 2015

 

A Once-Great River Rises on the Colorado Plateau

The Upper Colorado River Basin -

By the time the Colorado River passes Moab, Utah, it already carries a heavy load of minerals, trash and sewage. By mid-summer, water levels drop, exposing driftwood, sewage and trash along the shore. Only the next spring flood will loosen these stinking mixtures of organic material and plastic from the shoreline. In 2014, when I saw methane bubbles rising from one such stinking mass, it opened my eyes wide to the damage already done to this once great river.

A Place Called Potash, Utah -

After skirting the Matheson Wetlands along one bank and the Moab Pile on the other, the Colorado River descends through the Portal and on to a place called Potash, Utah. To make potash sound more interesting, the owners of the Cane Creek Potash Plant named themselves "Intrepid" Potash-Moab, LLC. Using dubious and undocumented Colorado River water rights, Intrepid Potash-Moab infuses millions of gallons of river water annually into the Cane Creek Anticline.

After injection, the anticline collapses ever so slightly. This subsidence burps out untold acre-feet of a brine solution, which is rich in potash salts. After drying and processing, Intrepid-Moab ships the resulting product out via rail and interstate highway. Later, agents and retailers resell the packaged product to farmers and home gardeners. The success of the corporate farming, as we know it today depends on finished potash and other synthetic fertilizers for its success.

Intrepid-Moab uses solar power to dry its potash brine in shallow, lined ponds. These ponds cover many colorful acres of bench land overlooking the Colorado River. From the Potash Road, four-wheelers access the Shafer Trail by traversing through the Cane Creek Plant. If terrestrial scenes of chemical degradation and poor stewardship of the land are not enough for you, I suggest an air tour of the area. On a Redtail Aviation flight out of Moab’s Canyonlands Field several years ago, our pilot banked the plane sufficiently for me to capture some revealing photos of the Cane Creek Plant.

Gushing from injection well sites that are high up on the bench land, the upwelling brine cascades unchecked until it reaches the settling ponds below. Any miscalculation of volume could result in overflow of the settling ponds. From the air, you can see a white crust that has dried upon the walls of small canyons leading down to the Colorado River. This tells me that Intrepid Potash-Moab has experienced both overflow and leakage at the settling ponds. Dwarfing any inputs upstream in Utah and Colorado, Intrepid Potash-Moab could be the largest contributor of organic solids anywhere in the Upper Colorado River Basin. After potash spills into the river, it goes back into solution, adding to the salinity of the water and turning the river into an organic time bomb.

Mudflats and Methane Volcanoes -

After its confluence with the Green River, the first full stop for the Colorado River is at the upper reaches of Lake Powell in Southeastern Utah. Soon after the lake reached its full potential size in the early 1980s, its water level began to fluctuate and then decline. During the past fourteen years of persistent drought, Lake Powell lost nearly half of its peak volume. Today, optimists might say that Lake Powell is “half full”. Almost unanimously, climate scientists agree that the reservoir is “half empty” and will continue to decline.

With many miles of former lakebed exposed to sunlight at the upper end of Lake Powell, the environment on those mudflats has deteriorated significantly. As water laden with heavy metals and organic material arrives at the upper end of the lake, it mixes with silt and sand. The result is a phenomenon known as methane volcanoes. Methane gas can be a byproduct of flatulence in cattle, coal mining or the baking of organic mud. Most people are familiar with carbon dioxide as our most ubiquitous “greenhouse gas”. Fewer people might know that methane is fifteen times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide puts the effervescent fizz in our soft drinks. Methane smells bad, is flammable and if contained, may explode.

The Navajo Reservation is Coal Country -

First, the stinking, organic mudflats at the upper end of Lake Powell create and release untold amounts of methane gas. Usually, warm air and light gases like methane rise from the surface and dissipate in the upper atmosphere. Often methane from Lake Powell remains in the lower atmosphere, trapped near the ground by an atmospheric inversion layer. If an atmospheric inversion is present, warm air aloft traps hot and volatile gasses below, thus creating a bubble of noxious air at or near ground level.

Not ironically, a huge methane gas bubble now floats above the Four Corners region. Is this unprecedented bubble of volatile gas the result of Navajo Nation coal mining, cattle flatulence or the stinking mudflats and methane volcanoes at the upper reaches of Lake Powell? Personally, I am betting on a combination of coal mining and fertilized mudflats. Thank you for your fertile potash input, Intrepid Potash-Moab, LLC.

Glen Canyon Damned -

After flowing over and sifting through the mudflats, the Colorado River enters many miles of forced confinement between sandstone canyon walls. There it drops its remaining sediment to the bottom of what once was a desert garden of legendary beauty. Known as Glen Canyon, living humans who saw it in its untrammeled glory are now few and elderly. Only through old black and white photographs and essays by such writers as John Wesley Powell and Edward Abbey do we know about a place once visited only by dory boat or river raft.

Once the water in Lake Powell reaches the penstocks and electrical turbines at Glen Canyon Dam, it is cold, dark and nearly devoid of oxygen. The portion of lake water that rests below the deepest intake on the dam, we call the “dead pool”. The lake water in the dead pool is as near to dead as fresh water can be. Once released downstream, dam water is clear, cold and capable of supporting no life higher than green fronded algae. Such algae grow wherever the water flow is slow enough to support life. If Colorado means, “colored red” or “Red River”, immediately below Glen Canyon Dam, that name does not apply. Running clear, cold and fringed with green algae, its name should revert to “Green River”.

This is Part 1 of a three-part article. To read Part 2, please click HERE.

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By James McGillis at 02:56 PM | Colorado River | Comments (0) | Link

Potash, Utah - That Sinkhole Feeling, Again - 2009

 

Potash, Utah - That Sinkhole Feeling, Again

During a 2009 visit to the Intrepid Potash - Moab, Utah website we were pleased to see new safety related information regarding the mining and processing of potash (potassium chloride) and salt (sodium chloride) crystals at their Cane Creek potash plant. In an earlier article, we had criticized the company for not providing holding ponds designed to catch leaks or overflow from settling ponds at a higher elevation.

 

Their website now states that, “the solar ponds are lined with heavy vinyl to prevent valuable brine from leaking into the ground and the Colorado River. A series of holding ponds have been constructed to catch any spills and return potassium-rich brine to the ponds.” Whether these safety features existed all along, or are recent additions, we do not know. Either way, Intrepid's release of more information about their operation, rather than less is laudable.

 

In the event of a catastrophic failure at the upper ponds, what percentage of the brine might the holding ponds catch and retain? With the continued absence of information regarding holding pond capacity, we can only guess and hope that it is adequate. “Adequate for what?” you might ask. We can think of at least two scenarios in which a catastrophic failure might test Intrepid's holding pond design and capacity.

 

First is weather. What is the expected level of water flow into the settling ponds during a “one hundred year flood”? What about the "one thousand year flood"? In order to determine the size of a one hundred or one thousand year flood within the Shafer Basin and Potash, researchers must consider both historical data and paleoflood records.

 

Now that a drier climate in the Four Corners region is an established fact, we can expect storm and flood activities to increase in intensity, if not in number. Lack of an historical record does not preclude the formation of larger storms there in the future. In that regard, we would not be happy with a holding pond system that provides less than full containment of all settling pond brine.

 

A second threat at the Cane Creek Plant and its ponds results from the solution mining of potash itself. The Intrepid Potash - Moab Utah website indicates that, “water from the nearby Colorado River is pumped through injection wells into the underground mine. The water dissolves the potash from layers buried approximately 3,000 feet below the surface.” Missing from the company’s website is information on injection well locations, and their proximity to the fragile holding ponds.

 

In order to understand the importance of proximity, we need look no further than the City of Carlsbad, New Mexico. According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, New Mexico mines used a solution-mining technique similar to that of Intrepid, at Moab. Over the years, six million cubic feet of brine solution mining has been extracted from a salt deposit located directly beneath Carlsbad.

 

Although there has not yet been a collapse at the Carlsbad mine, in 2008 two similar mines north of the city experienced catastrophic failures. With the collapse of the overlying rock, each of those mines became a sinkhole four hundred feet across and one hundred feet deep. Since the mines operated within state and federal guidelines, there does not appear to be easy recourse against them. The state and the mine operators can simply call these unexpected events “Acts of God” and then proceed to disown any further liability.

 

In the case of Carlsbad, New Mexico, a collapse under the busiest intersection in town is a real possibility. Rail lines, an irrigation ditch and a mobile home park are now under threat of collapse. In the case of Intrepid Potash – Moab, Utah, no one knows how likely a catastrophic mine collapse might be. In an event similar to the Carlsbad scenario, might the solar ponds disappear into a sinkhole? Worse yet, could gravity cause the brine to cascade downhill towards the holding ponds and the Colorado River below?

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By James McGillis at 06:36 PM | Colorado River | Comments (0) | Link