{"id":1268,"date":"2017-06-10T17:22:58","date_gmt":"2017-06-10T23:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/?p=1268"},"modified":"2017-06-10T17:22:58","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T23:22:58","slug":"comments-on-mitigation-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/comments-on-mitigation-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Comments on Mitigation Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Comments on the Chatfield Reallocation Mitigation Company\u2019s Open House, May 30, 2017<br \/>\nFrom the Audubon Society of Greater Denver<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Proposed Mitigation is Better, But Our Basic Concerns Remain<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In a 2.5 hour session on the evening of May 30, 2017, the entity known as the Chatfield Reallocation Mitigation Company presented current plans for mitigation of the Chatfield Reallocation project. It was a very slick presentation with good visuals and experts to answer questions, and it answered some of the concerns we have voiced for years.\u00a0 However, <strong>there was no opportunity for the public to submit comments.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s better:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>More of the mitigation will occur in Chatfield State Park.<\/li>\n<li>Wetlands mitigation has been moved from the uplands into the riparian zones.<\/li>\n<li>Severe downcutting on Plum Creek will be addressed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, our basic concerns remain:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There will be a net loss of habitat, since what is destroyed at Chatfield State Park will not be replaced; the off-site conservation easements protecting riparian habitat protect EXISTING areas and no new riparian habitat is being created.<\/li>\n<li>There will be a net loss of accessible recreation lands. We will lose riparian areas and lake shore in Chatfield State Park that are open to the public to inundation or conversion to mud flats; \u00a0the mitigation lands put into conservation easements will not be open to the public.<\/li>\n<li>The Corps of Engineers has refused to consider less-damaging practicable alternatives.<\/li>\n<li>The Corps has manipulated the project documents to avoid compliance with the Clean Water Act\u2019s requirement that they choose \u201cthe least environmentally damaging practicable alternative.\u201d Instead, they chose the MOST damaging.<\/li>\n<li>The Corps has determined that the \u201cdependable\u201d yield of the project \u2013 how much water it will provide in severe drought years &#8211;\u00a0 is 0.\u00a0\u00a0 We fail to see why so much money should be spent for a project that cannot deliver a dependable yield.<\/li>\n<li>Because the providers have very junior water rights, they will only be able to store additional water in Chatfield 3 years out of 10, according to the Corps of Engineers\u2019 calculations. Most of the time the fluctuation zone will be dry with great possibilities for dust and noxious weeds.<\/li>\n<li>There is still uncertainty about the fate of the mature cottonwoods in the Park.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The visuals for the recreational mitigation have been posted on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chatfieldreallocation.org\/\">www.chatfieldreallocation.org<\/a>.\u00a0 As of June 5, the environmental mitigation visuals,\u00a0 the schedule of work and the Ecological Function Unit calculations used to plan the environmental mitigation had NOT been posted for future reference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Comments on the Chatfield Reallocation Mitigation Company\u2019s Open House, May 30, 2017 From the Audubon Society of Greater Denver The Proposed Mitigation is Better, But Our Basic Concerns Remain In a 2.5 hour session on the evening of May 30, 2017, the entity known as the Chatfield Reallocation Mitigation Company presented current plans for mitigation &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/comments-on-mitigation-plans\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Comments on Mitigation Plans&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1270,"href":"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions\/1270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.savechatfield.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}