Campbell seeks more money for sno

Campbell seeks more money for sno-tels

July 28, 2001

By Jim Mimiaga
Journal Staff Writer

Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) has added $8.5 million onto the 2002 Agriculture Appropriations bill to fund snowpack measuring devices.

The Snowpack Telemetry and Snow Surveys, or Sno-tels, are essential for forecasting runoff into McPhee Reservoir. Currently, McPhee managers rely on stations near El Diente Peak, Lizard Head Pass, Lone Cone and Scotch Creek to determine spring snowmelt potential.

"We would be lost without them," said Dolores Water Conservancy District general manager John Porter.

But additional funding would help the Natural Resources Conservation Service to install new units higher up where they are needed, he said. Currently the stations are around 9,000 or 10,000 feet.

"We can be off by 30 percent either way," Porter said. "When they read zero, we still get another 50,000 acre-feet of runoff from higher mountains, so it is a good point to install one there."

He said the problem is that the devices need to be accessible for maintenance, often difficult at 13,000 feet where huge, isolated bowls hold significant snowpack into early summer.

The rafting community has advocated for additional sno-tels in order to insure a more accurate runoff prediction that they hope could lead to increased rafting releases below the dam.

Campbell, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, increased the budget bill at the request of water-managers in the West.

Campbell spokesperson Camden Hubbard said Wednesday that the funding mark-up still needs to survive conference and budget votes, but that it has good support.

"With the president’s tax refund, this year it has been harder to pass additional requests, but our position on that committee (appropriations) helps to get things done so we feel pretty good about it."

Sno-tels automatically transmit data via satellite once per day. The information can then be accessed through computers and plotted onto graphs.

Currently water-managers rely on more low-tech tactics to determine high-altitude snow amounts.

Photographs are taken during spring flyovers to record high-mountain snow fields. They are analyzed and compared against previous years to determine likely results for the current year’s melt-off.