32 The Transcript
November 20, 2014
Water year it was in Colorado Southeastern part of state gets some relief from drought By Jim Trotter
Rocky Mountain PBS I-News The 2014 water year ended gently — for Colorado, at least — as monsoonal rains and the remnants of Hurricane Odile provided enough moisture to push even the drought-stricken southeastern quadrant of the state into the 70 percent to 90 percent of normal precipitation range. It’s reasonable to think of it almost as an escape, as the state was cool and wet enough to avoid the massive wildfires of the previous two years, Black Forest in 2013 and Waldo Canyon and High Park in 2012, which claimed a total of more than 1,100 homes. There was no epic September flood this time around. In comparison to California, which continues in the throes of devastating drought, and parts of Washington and Oregon, where millions of acres burned this water year, Colorado was downright fortunate. “Water year” is a Western term, and the new one began Oct. 1. It has to do with the annual cycle that includes the first snow in the high country, the accumulation of the snowpack, the spring melt and runoff, the warm summer and whatever rain might fall. One can forgive residents of southeastern Colorado if they’re not breaking out the party hats. While the late rains boosted moisture totals there toward respectability, the region has been locked in various stag-
es of damaging drought for years. The U.S. Drought Monitor map, a product of the Department of Agriculture that is updated weekly, has five levels of dryness, from D0, abnormally dry, to D4, exceptional drought. Along with the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, a big chunk of northeastern New Mexico and southwestern Kansas, southeastern Colorado has been firmly fixed with D3s, extreme drought, and D4s, as bad as it gets. The modern map, in fact, has looked very similar to that of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, even though, as of now, it has moderated a bit. “Absolutely,” said assistant state climatologist Wendy Ryan from her office in Fort Collins. “As we were keeping track, particularly in 2011 and 2012, we started drawing comparisons to the ‘30s. It was as dry and as hot down there as the Dust Bowl.” The visual elements were also there: enormous dust storms, but not with the frequency or longevity of the 1930s, and tumbleweed melees that covered highways and buried barns and houses. “They have created havoc on the plains of eastern Colorado,” said Tobe Allumbaugh, chairman of the Crowley County Commission, of the tumbleweed conditions that began this time last year. “After three years of drought, we got moisture in the latter part of August. There was no vegetation to compete with the Russian thistle. They popped out and they were everywhere. We got more rain in September and it was like throwing fuel on the fire. “By November they began to roll and tumble.” That is a challenge that likely remains
from the summer rains this year. “After the last few years, a lot of the native grasses are gone,” said Ryan. “The Russian thistle is the first plant to come back with any moisture and we saw what happened last year. They had to use snowplows to clear the highways. It’s probably going to be bad again, but maybe not quite as bad. The hope is that the grasses got enough precipitation to compete (with the thistles).” The lower Arkansas River basin has a long way to go before recovery to normal, Ryan said. The late season moisture has allowed farmers there to get a start on winter wheat, an endeavor that hasn’t panned out in the recent drought years. The big word is evapotranspiration, which is the soil losing moisture with no rain, and through plant transpiration, or “plant sweat.” That is pretty much what happened in the Dust Bowl. Native grasses were plowed under in order to plant wheat, the bottom fell out of the wheat market, and with drought and heat and wind, evapotranspiration took care of the rest. The Four Corners were also dry this water year, as was the San Juan River basin, and the Rio Grande has been droughtplagued — which pretty much accounts for the southern tier of Colorado. In the northern half of the state, the picture for this closing water year has been dramatically different. The upper Colorado River basin has been flush, and beginning after last September’s massive floods, conditions along the South Platte basin have been extraordinary. Winter wheat yields on the northeastern plains were bountiful, conditions there “beautiful,” as Ryan de-
scribed them. A look at the “teacup” map published weekly by the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University also tells the story. Lake Granby is 128 percent of average for this time of year, 98 percent full. Blue Mesa is 74 percent full, Lake Dillon is 99 percent full. Green Mountain is at 85 percent. All of this munificence is a matter of scale, of course. Downstream on the Colorado River, massive Lake Powell was only 51 percent full recently, and, on the other end of the Grand Canyon, giant Lake Mead has been losing water after years of drought like someone pulled the plug. Unrelated to the Colorado River but very related to water in the West is the map published last week by the California Department of Water Resources depicting water levels in the Golden State’s major reservoirs, which ranged from 12 percent to 39 percent full. There was actually what some climate observers are calling a drought-induced mudslide on volcanic Mount Shasta in northern California. Depending on which news story one went with, it was caused by the fracturing of one of the 14,162-foot mountain’s glaciers, or the slippage of a glacier that allowed water trapped underneath to escape and tumble downhill, gathering mud and debris. Colorado Community Media brings you this report in partnership with Rocky Mountain PBS I-News. Learn more at rmpbs.org/news. Contract Jim Trotter at jtrotter@rmpbs.org.
Chess great speaks out on Putin Kasparov shares his story and views with business leaders in Denver By Mike DiFerdinando
mdiferdinando@coloradocommunitymedia.com Russian Garry Kasparov, hailed by many as the world’s greatest chess player, can no longer return to Moscow to visit his mother because his political activism against the government makes it dangerous to do so. Instead, they meet in Tallinn, Estonia. He flies in from New York City, where he now lives with his family. She comes in from Moscow. “It’s the closest capital to Moscow, so that is where I meet my mother. She’s 77. It’s too late for her to move to America,” Kasparov said at a Nov. 15 luncheon in his honor at the University of Denver’s Iliff School of Theology. The Colorado Business Roundtable and the Wyoming Business Alliance hosted the event. Kasparov gave an impassioned speech to more than 60 business and community leaders about the dangers of the Vladimir Putin-led Russian government, the importance of energy independence and social and political tension between Russia and neighboring Ukraine. “Some of the messages that Mr. Kasparov spoke to today about leadership, and globalization of the economy, and how we interact and ramifications of lack of decisions and lack of decisions of strength impact the world globally as well as us here in the United States,” Colorado Business Roundtable President Jeff Wasden said. Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, of the former Soviet Union, one of Russia’s most famous sons rarely visits the home he has dedicated his life to trying to improve — because of political pressure. Azerbaijan, which had been incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1920, proclaimed its independence in October 1991 before the USSR officially dissolved. Kasparov became the youngest-undisputed world chess champion in 1985 at age 22 by defeating then-champion Anatoly Karpov. He was ranked as the No. 1 player in the world for 225 out of 228 months from 1986 until his retirement in 2005. He is also famous for being the first world champion to lose a match to a computer under standard time controls, when he lost to the IBM supercomputer Deep
Garry Kasaparov speaks to a group of more than 60 local buissness owners and leaders Nov. 15 at the Iliff School of Theology at the University of Denver. Photo by Mike DiFerdinando Blue in 1997. Since his retirement from the sport, Kasparov has instead been trading moves in the political arena as one of the most outspoken critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “People always want me to compare Putin’s strategy with my chess expertise, and speaking about Russia, I always say it’s irrelevant because in chess we have fixed rules and predictable results and in Russia its exactly the opposite,” Kasparov said. “As for the international arena, Putin plays poker and he’s a very good player. In poker it’s not about the quality of your hand, it’s about your ability to bluff. And Putin regularly has a very weak hand — say a pair of nines — but he acts as if he has a royal flush.” Kasparov was instrumental in setting up The Other Russia, a coalition that opposes Putin’s government. He has run for office, organized and participated in protests and even been arrested back home in Russia. In 2007, he ran for president as the The Other Russia party’s candidate. He was forced to withdraw his candidacy in De-
cember 2007 due to his inability to rent a meeting hall where at least 500 of his supporters could assemble to endorse his candidacy, as is legally required. Kasparov’s spokesperson accused the government of using pressure to deter anyone from renting a hall for the gathering. In August 2012, Kasparov was arrested and beaten outside of the Moscow court while attending the verdict reading in the case involving the all-female punk band Pussy Riot. He was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing with the help of video evidence from the scene that was circulated on the Internet. Kasparov views Putin’s Russia as a global threat. Recently, he has been speaking around the world on Russia’s tensions with neighboring Ukraine and the dispute of the Black Sea boarder territory of Crimea. He describes his adversary as a shrewd man who has mastered the art of aggression without outright military force, a man he says “wages war with banks not tanks.” Kasparov, considered a left-leaning activist by many back home in Russia, sounds conservative by American standards. He’s an admirer of American President Ronald
Reagan and believes in strength through energy independence, the power of a credible threat and the use of military force against Putin if necessary. “Fracking in Wyoming did more to hurt Putin’s rule of Russia than everything the Obama administration did in six years because it eventually brings oil prices down,” Kasparov said. Many in the audience agreed with his message of a stronger stance toward Russia from the U.S. and its political allies. “I think we are still in a strategic bipolar world, at least in regard to Russia,” said Peter Moore, president of the board for Vital For Colorado, an advocacy group for oil and natural gas. “And it has become more and more clear to me that (oil) is one of our greatest strategic tools — low-cost energy to strengthen the United States and weaken Russia.” Kasparov also called for stronger international leadership and the necessity of nations to work in unison to stand up to oppressive governments and leaders. “In chess we have a saying: The threat is more powerful than the execution,” Kasparov said.