Affordable housing is a glaring and urgent concern for metropolitan areas and their surrounding towns across America. In Denver, average home prices have almost doubled in the last decade. Boulder has seen a similarly steep trend in that time period while the average rent across Colorado is $2040 a month. Aside from inflation, these skyrocketing numbers have been attributed to the involvement of what are being widely being referred to as “corporate investors.” The logic behind the attribution is that these large investors are taking ownership of pre-existing residential units, namely single family homes (SFH) which lowers the available supply for purchase and drives up demand. The other branch of this argument is that those residential units are then turned around and rented out for prices so high that renters can’t save up to buy a home. 

In response to these affordable housing concerns, an executive order from the Trump Administration on January 20th called for greater restrictions on large investors’ purchases of SFH. “Neighborhoods and communities once controlled by middle-class American families are now run by faraway corporate interests,” Trump stated. “People live in homes, not corporations.”  An official stop on Wall Street involvement, from the president whose family legacy is built upon corporatization, makes sense from the lens of the “returning to traditional American values” messaging which has dominated the MAGA platform. 

“Buying and owning a home has long been considered the pinnacle of the American dream and a way for families to invest and build lifetime wealth,” Trump’s order reads. “But…that American dream has been increasingly out of reach for too many of our citizens, especially first-time homebuyers.”  

Colorado realtor Vivi Gloriod said that the January 20th executive order works in conjunction with an August 2025 order which, in part, allows individuals to withdraw from their 401k’s for the purpose of purchasing homes – with zero penalties and zero taxes. “A lot of people get matching [401k’s] with their employers but it was elusive money they couldn’t touch until they turned 65.” Gloriod added hopefully, “This could make a big difference in housing affordability for first time buyers.” 

Although the imbalance of Colorado’s housing supply and demand is apparent to realtors, renters, and aspirational homeowners alike, banning corporate investors from buying more property only fractionally addresses the affordable housing crisis. The housing issue spans multiple sectors, all engaging in a tug of war over supply, costs and risk. 

With the implementation of HB23-1253 in 2023, the Colorado legislature created a task force to study corporate home ownership. They published their findings in a June 2025 report. The report shows that in 2023 the share of corporate owned housing across all “owner occupiable” units in Colorado was 3%, which was less than the national average. One of the top three corporate investors, accounting for highest ownership of residential realty in the country, is Blackstone Inc. 

Gloriod said, “Blackstone has bought up a ton of houses in Colorado in the past, and this executive order really prevents that from happening again.” She was referring to a lot of 978 apartment units under Blackstone’s ownership, later sold to Equity Residential in 2024, as well as a 2007 purchase of  359 residential properties through “Tishman Speyer Real Estate Venture VII,” a partnership between two Blackstone subsidiaries. The mass of property acquired by corporate heavy hitters like Blackstone is nothing to snuff at but it cannot account for the entirety of the affordable housing crisis Coloradans find themselves in. 

Smaller LLC investors, known as “mom-and-pops,” have also played a role in lowering housing supply. According to Cotality’s 2024 data acquisition close to 1 in 5 SFH purchases made since the pandemic were done so by these so-called mom-and-pop landlords. Both Gloriod and Joe Seehusen of Compass Real Estate said that Colorado was a hot spot for small and large investors alike in the 2010s, but that has changed in recent years. Seehusen said “Ideally when you are a mom-and-pop investor, you want to buy low and rent high enough to net a profit. There were opportunities for people wanting a 10-20 house portfolio in Colorado, before prices started shooting up. So now they’re leaving town for cheaper places like St. Louis.” 

Despite federal claims that blocking large investors will increase homeowner accessibility, the trickle out of such investors from Colorado’s housing market witnessed by Gloriod and Seehusen has not significantly impacted Coloradans’ home ownership opportunities.  

Increasing the housing supply has been looked to as a possible solution for affordable housing in Colorado. In 2019, Colorado hit a historic peak – the shortfall between housing demand and supply was a gap of 140,000, meaning 140,000 residents who wanted or needed homes did not have them.  Since the HB23-1253 initiative, led by Governor Jared Polis, the State Demography Office (SDO), and Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA), the shortfall lessened to 106,000 units but, the report acknowledges that the drop was largely due to slower population growth and increased housing production. “Between 2020 and 2023, Colorado built an average of 43,000 housing units each year, significantly higher than the pace of the previous decade.”

Seehusen, who has been a realtor to the West of I-25 for eleven years, said that continuing to increase the housing supply has become incredibly difficult. Building supplies, while increasingly plasticized, have been deteriorating in quality since the pandemic, and prices have spiked with the implementation of Trump’s tariffs. Seehusen said, “A lot of builders don’t want to build because the quality of the building can go downhill. If they put in windows that give out in five years, they can get sued…They just don’t build complexes how they used to.” 

Stricter zoning has also played into liability and costs, as in the case of the Boulder and Superior areas after the Marshall Fire. With over a thousand homes destroyed, Boulder implemented new fire-preventative requirements for new developments, but residents’ insurance coverage for losing their home could not afford a re-build under those requirements.  

Along with increased mortgage interest rates in the Denver area – from approximately 3% in 2020 to 6.5% in 2025 – insurance rates for both builders and homeowners have also gone up. “Colorado is in the top three for hail in the country. With high HOA rates, owners can’t afford to repair hail or other kinds of damage, and the damage gets worse because of that,” Seehusen said. While liability increases for builders using less sustainable materials, the use of cheaper materials does make housing more affordable. “People may not like it, but they have to do it that way.” Seehusen said as he referred to the war between affordability and liability. 

“For example, there is an initiative for ‘assumable loans,’ where somebody can sell their house with the same interest rate they bought it at. So if they’re paying a 2.8% interest from a house they bought in the pandemic, the next owner would assume that amount… but a deal like that in a market with a 6 or 7% average, would drive up the value anyway,” Seehusen weighed. 

It is possible that the White House block of Wall Street investors may work in conjunction with its’ executive order to make 401k’s more fluid for potential homeowners to result in more accessibility for first time homeowners, as Gloriod predicted. But in the grand scheme of Colorado’s housing, the restriction of corporate buyers will hardly move the needle. If the complex problem of affordable housing is to be even marginally solved, it will require a more holistic approach than an executive order can provide.

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The post Affordable Housing vs Housing People Can Afford appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

How do we make practical shifts to balance an environmental concern?

At the beginning of April, Colorado scored 323 on the U.S. Drought Monitor drought severity and coverage index. At the end of 2025, that number was 127.

In a place where winter usually does its most important work quietly, this year has felt alarmingly different. Across Boulder County and the broader Front Range, snow has come in fits and starts, often melting almost as quickly as it arrives. Trails that are typically packed with snow this time of year have been dry, dusty, and unusually accessible. It is the kind of winter that makes people pause, not because of a single dramatic event, but because of a steady absence.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, much of Colorado has been trending drier than average, with drought conditions expanding and contracting throughout the season but never fully easing. While variability is part of life in the West, this year stands out. For a region that depends on snowpack to function as a natural water savings account, a dry winter is not just a seasonal anomaly. It is an early signal of what the rest of the year might demand.

For people like Kristine Johnson, who serves as co-chair of the propagation committee for the Front Range chapter of Wild Ones, the change has been impossible to ignore. “I was born and raised in Colorado. This winter has been startling,” she says. Her perspective is grounded not just in observation, but in data. As a volunteer with the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network (CoCoRaHS), she contributes regular condition reports as part of a nationwide network of more than 25,000 community scientists. Around 600 of those observers are in Boulder County alone. They track precipitation with approved gauges and share what they see. “It’s really, really cool,” she says. “My neighbors, when it rains or snows, want to know.”

The absence of snow has consequences that reach far beyond winter recreation or aesthetics. Traditionally, the snowpack in Colorado acts as a slow-release system, feeding streams and rivers, replenishing groundwater, and keeping soils hydrated well into the spring. When that system falls short, the effects ripple outward. Farmers may find themselves navigating tighter water allocations earlier in the growing season.

At Ollin Farms, those challenges are already taking shape. Owner Mark Guttridge, who spent years working as an environmental consultant before becoming a farmer, approaches agriculture with a focus on water conservation and soil health. Much of the farm relies on drip irrigation, a system that delivers water slowly and directly to plant roots. Compared to conventional sprinkler systems, drip irrigation can reduce water use by as much as 30 to 60 percent while also minimizing evaporation and runoff. By applying water in a steady, measured way, it more closely mimics natural hydrologic cycles—absorbing into the soil rather than overwhelming it all at once.

For Guttridge, the bigger picture comes down to what’s happening beneath the surface. “The best way to mitigate a flood or a drought is to have healthy soil that acts like a sponge,” he says. Soil rich in organic matter can hold significantly more water, buffering crops against both extremes.

Even so, the season is already showing signs of stress. “A lot of our overwintered perennials—onions, garlic—are coming up,” Guttridge says. “Irises are up early. But a lot of the fruit trees are starting to put out blossoms, so if we get a freeze, it’s going to be not-so-great.” That early growth, triggered by warm, dry conditions, leaves crops vulnerable to the kind of late cold snaps that are still common along the Front Range.

Water access is another concern. “We have all drip irrigation systems; we’re on Left Hand water,” he explains. “Luckily, we have a commercial rate, so we haven’t seen a huge price escalation. Ag ditches don’t really start running until May, so a lot of farmers are in a tough spot: they have decent planting weather, but the water’s not running yet…and when it does run, it’s not going to be very much this year.” While reservoir levels across Colorado remain relatively stable for now, that stability depends on future snowpacks. “If we don’t get replenished going into next winter, it’s going to be really, really bad,” he says.

Still, adaptation is part of the work. “We’re making the best of a bad situation,” Guttridge says. “Obviously, a drought is not good, in that the heat’s going to put some stress on things.” Crop selection, like irrigation, becomes another way to manage uncertainty. “Bitter greens, like arugula, don’t really mind the heat as much,” Guttridge said.

Even home gardeners and urban landscapers are beginning the spring at a disadvantage, with dry soil that struggles to retain what little moisture it receives. At the same time, the lack of sustained moisture can quietly increase wildfire risk, as grasses and other vegetation dry out earlier and stay that way longer.

Despite those challenges, there are signs of resilience, particularly in landscapes that have evolved with Colorado’s natural cycles. “What we’re seeing right now is really anomalous,” Kristine explains. “But plants that have evolved here have likely seen conditions like this at some point in their evolution. They’re better adapted than plants from climates that rely heavily on irrigation.” Organizations like the Colorado Native Grass Association have long emphasized this point. Native grasses and plants tend to develop deeper root systems that help stabilize soil and access moisture far below the surface. They are also better equipped to handle swings between wet and dry periods, which are becoming more pronounced across the region.

That reality is starting to shift how people think about their own outdoor spaces. In neighborhoods across Boulder County, traditional green lawns are slowly giving way to more water-wise alternatives. Through programs offered by Resource Central, residents can remove turf and replace it with curated native plant gardens designed specifically for Colorado’s climate. These “Garden in a Box” kits make it easier to transition to landscapes that use significantly less water while still supporting pollinators and local ecosystems. For many households, it is one of the most direct ways to respond to ongoing drought conditions. Reducing lawn size, watering more intentionally during cooler parts of the day, and improving soil with mulch or compost can all make a noticeable difference over the course of a single season.

At the community level, efforts to adapt are becoming more visible and more collaborative. Wild Ones hosts seed swaps, plant exchanges, and workshops that teach people how to propagate native species at home. The goal is not just environmental, but practical. Making native plants more accessible helps more people participate in water-conscious landscaping without high upfront costs. These gatherings also create space for knowledge-sharing, where longtime residents and newcomers alike can learn what actually works in Colorado’s shifting conditions. As Johnson puts it, the organization’s mission is to bring native plants and people together, but the benefits extend much further into community resilience and environmental awareness.

Looking ahead, the uncertainty remains. Climate projections for the West have consistently pointed toward greater variability, with longer dry periods punctuated by more intense storms. If winters like this past one become more common, Boulder County may need to continue rethinking everything from agricultural practices to urban planning. Water conservation could become less of a seasonal concern and more of a year-round mindset. Fire mitigation may start earlier each spring. The landscapes that define the region, from foothill grasslands to backyard gardens, may gradually shift toward species that can tolerate stress and recover quickly.

For residents, the path forward is not about a single solution, but a series of small, intentional choices that add up over time. Paying attention to water use at home, whether by adjusting irrigation habits or replacing high-demand landscaping, is one piece of the puzzle. Preparing properties for fire season by clearing dry vegetation and choosing more resilient plants is another. Staying informed and involved, whether through community science networks like CoCoRaHS or local workshops and conservation programs, helps build a broader understanding of what is happening and why it matters.

This winter may not define the future on its own, but it offers a clear glimpse of what that future could look like. The question is how Boulder County responds, not just in moments of crisis, but in the quieter decisions made on a daily basis.

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The post The Dry, Dry, Dry Winter appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Have you ever purchased a wonderful-looking container of strawberries from the grocery store, only to find those shiny, bright red berries are mere tasteless imposters? Or perhaps you’ve tried one of those little seedless personal watermelons on sale in February. You did all the tests—looked for the yellow “field spot,” felt its weightiness in your hand, and noted a slight softness at the stem. It’s a nice, ripe watermelon! Then you got home, cut into it, and discovered that your beautiful fruit produced what can only be described as crunchy water. How disappointing!

As Erin Dreistadt, owner of Aspen Moon Farm in Hygiene said, that tasteless February watermelon went through an epic and very unnatural journey to get to your local grocery store. It’s a journey that sapped that watermelon of its natural flavor and character. It was likely picked from its vine way too early and to keep it looking good on its adventure, the watermelon may have been sprayed with a protective coating to maintain its shine and color. Then, it was shipped in dark containers over great distances. After traveling thousands of miles and reaching its destination here in Colorado, it waited in a warehouse before finally making it into the produce section of a massive grocery store, where a weary 3:00 am produce stocker carefully placed it in a marketing-optimized display.

From seed to table, that watermelon had been expertly engineered and managed—not for taste or quality, but for production efficiency, distribution, and “shelf appeal”—all for the purpose of presenting the unsuspecting consumer with a picture of a manufactured idea of a “quality” watermelon, shined up and free of dirt. The fact that the watermelon tastes bad is not surprising. The fact that it even made it to the end of this voyage looking good is an impressive feat of modern commerce with one goal in mind: the final sale at the check-out counter. According to calculations by Gemini, a single two-pound seedless watermelon from Honduras requires almost a pound of carbon emissions (nearly half its own weight) to reach the Lafayette Walmart produce section.

There’s another way to go about this but it requires you, the consumer, to take ownership, put thought into your food-buying approach, and adjust your expectations. A century ago, the average Coloradan would not have been able to find a February watermelon at their local market simply because it wasn’t in season. The very idea would have been preposterous. A commitment to buying and eating local requires a “table rotation” approach that leverages the availability of locally produced foods well-suited for our ecology and climate.

Dreistadt educated me on much of this while walking around Aspen Moon Farm on a recent 80-degree late-March day. She pulled a single radish from the ground for me—a one-step distribution network of exactly five feet from the dirt at my shoes directly to my mouth. And it was the best radish I’ve ever eaten. Starting in April each year, Aspen Moon opens their own farmstand at 7940 Hygiene Road. They can also be found at the Boulder County Farmers Market.

Sustainable, Ethical, and Local

What does it mean for a producer to be sustainable, ethical, and local? For Dreistadt, who has been running Aspen Moon for seventeen years, sustainable agriculture goes a step beyond organic farming to embrace the concepts of regenerative and biodynamic farming.

“Biodynamic agriculture is a spiritual science,” said Dreistadt. “It takes into account that there’s a lot about nature that we don’t understand, and so we first observe.” As Dreistadt handed me a piece of fresh spinach to try, she explained that by utilizing an active microbial system, they grow crops that are stronger, taste better, and have more nutritional value.

According to the Aspen Moon website, biodynamic agriculture moves beyond the soil chemistry focus that drives most modern agriculture and re-incorporates ecologically natural processes into crop production. This involves the use of microbial-based compost, cover crops, and crop rotations based on a four-phase calendar revolving around “leaf, root, flower, and fruit.”

“We’ve been applying biodynamic preps to our entire property for over 14 years, and each year we continue to see an increase in the vibrancy of the land and the crops,” they state on their website.

This part of Boulder County is within what can be considered a “peri-urban” environment, which is ideal for local, sustainable, and ethical agriculture. Boulder County’s historic land zoning laws have created a mixed agricultural and open-space greenbelt surrounding the county’s communities. Combine that with a highly educated, socially and environmentally conscious community, and you have a strong—albeit high-cost—market for local farming. A drive along the back roads of northeast Boulder County reveals a healthy scattering of small working farms with their greenhouses and, oftentimes, self-serve farmstands.

Along 63rd Street, just northwest of Niwot, lies the Treehouse Farm Collective. Here, a small group of independent farmers collectively leases a beautiful piece of agricultural land surrounded on three sides by Boulder County Open Space. They combine resources here to offer the community a range of high-quality products. It represents another model of how sustainable, ethical, and local agriculture can work. Like Aspen Moon, the Treehouse Farm Collective operates its own public farmstand, open daily from April through November.

I walked the grounds with Helen Skiba, owner of Artemis Flower Farm, accompanied by “Elder,” an Icelandic Sheepdog. Skiba described an interesting background that took her from English literature and poetry to working with indigenous tea farmers in Ecuador, followed by a tenure at Aspen Moon, and finally to co-owning Artemis Flower Farm with her husband, Nelson Esseveld.

Skiba looked the part of a local cut-flower farmer in her wide-brimmed hat. She and her flower studio exude an aura of local authenticity—a refreshing reminder that such places still exist amidst the mass corporate production that surrounds us. As consumers, we still have choices if we seek them.

It’s not necessarily a dream job, however, as Skiba explained the stresses of making a business like this work. Often those stresses come in the form of financial and climate uncertainties, which are particularly concerning in this very warm and dry year. Expanding on the concept of biodynamic farming, Skiba explained the basics of cover crops and no-till practices that focus on ecosystem-based agriculture.

“We incorporate a lot of cover crops, making sure something is always growing and giving carbon back to the soil,” said Skiba. Looking out over one of her flower plots, she explained that cover cropping ensures there is always a root system in the soil, as opposed to a fallow field which is mostly devoid of organic material. “We think of our farm as a place where we learn from the creatures already here,” said Skiba.

It’s the collective land-lease approach that opens the door to financial viability at Treehouse. “Just the fact of being in a collective allows us to afford organic practices,” said Skiba. “And, because we are able to afford the land by leasing, we can support a more human-sustainable business practice.”

Skiba’s statement about human-sustainable practices speaks to the ethics of the operation, especially when applied both to employees and the community. A local farm must be able to support local wages, which is a challenge but an important consideration. As for the community, Skiba’s message is simple: “I’d love for people to just know that there are local cut flowers, and people deserve to have them.”

Bypassing the Big Box Store

I mentioned to Dreistadt my suspicion that the barrier to entry for many consumers is driven by a perceived inconvenience. One major advantage of big agriculture is that their massive marketing and distribution systems make it easy for the average busy consumer to use the grocery store as a one-stop shop. Local growers can never compete with that convenience. As consumers, we must adjust our approach to meet them halfway.

Dreistadt suggested two solutions. First, start small. Don’t try to replace your entire food system all at once. Start with one thing, then another. Over time, you can convert an increasing percentage of your purchasing to local producers.

Second, embrace the seasonality. Instead of insisting on tomatoes in May, look for snap peas and spinach. In late fall, switch gears from short-term shopping to winter stocking by focusing on durable produce that can take you through the winter until those snap peas return in spring.

Looking at it another way, try to pretend you’re back in 1926 and your only option is the local farmer and what they can offer at any given time. Instead of going to the store with a recipe, go to the market with an open mind and build your meals around what’s available. After all, wouldn’t you rather eat the best radish you’ve ever had than the worst watermelon? When Colorado’s true watermelon season arrives in late summer, you’ll appreciate that delicious, local flavor more than ever.

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The post The New Farmers: Supporting Sustainable, Ethical, and Local Agriculture appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Can the region make the roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists?

If you are a pedestrian out for a walk anywhere in Colorado you may want to change your posture from “relaxed afternoon stroll” to “high-alert combat positioning.” That’s because one-fifth of all traffic fatalities in the state involve pedestrians. The shock of that number is naturally followed by a question: why. Or perhaps the more accurate question is how. It’s a question with a heightened level of importance as we move into spring and summer and more of our neighbors head out for a morning ride or after dinner stroll.

An Alarming Trend

According to a March 2026 release from the Colorado Department of Transportation, 127 pedestrians were killed on Colorado roadways in 2025. This is nearly double the amount of pedestrian deaths the state saw just a decade earlier.

If you’re thinking of trading in your pedal pushers for actual pedals and making a bike your primary mode of transportation, you might get somewhere faster but it’s not necessarily going to be a safer trip. Over the past decade there has been an average of 1,370 incidents involving bicycle riders on Colorado roadways. While most of those left victims with only injuries, far too many resulted in a fatality. In 2023, twenty cyclists lost their lives on the Colorado roadways. That number dropped to fourteen in 2024 but moved back up in 2025 when eighteen cyclists were killed in separate crashes.

The ebike dilemma

Complicating this discussion has been the ascension of the eBike (and comparable electric scooters). These motorized transports have increased mobility options for residents and, in doing so, cut back on the number of cars on the road. But they have done so at a speedy price. Depending on their class rating, an eBike can travel between 15 – 30 miles an hour (although most average 15-20 mph). It’s a rate of speed that belies the “bike” part of its name because eBikes can be difficult to control at that speed and cavalier riders can create traffic incidents.

It’s become a popular question, not just locally, but around the country – how should the ebike be classified? That’s an important question because with a classification, safety regulations can follow. To determine that though, speed and shape say two different things and the answer is probably somewhere in the difference.

In 2025 the Colorado General Assembly passed HV 25-1197 which was an attempt to regulate the discussion around ebikes in the state. The law set out requirements for helmet use, labeling, and battery certification. In terms of tightening the parameters of when and where an ebike can be ridden, lawmakers settled on establishing an eBike class system. This puts control in the communities, allowing them to decide what type of bike can be ridden in what location. The (perhaps) unintended consequence of this approach is a degree of confusion for ebike operators as what’s a permitted, legal use in one town may be prohibited the next town over. The issue with what could be seen as a patchwork legal approach is that everyone in community A has one set of expectations and in community B they have a separate set. When a community member crosses over accidents can happen because of those fundamental differences in expectations they are operating under.

And yet, for now there doesn’t seem to be any appetite to return to the discussion. Colorado State Representative Rick Taggart said “At this point, I don’t see myself revisiting that issue at the state level. I believe this is best handled locally, where communities can make decisions that fit their own trails, infrastructure, and needs. Local governments are in a better position to determine what type of motorized vehicles should or shouldn’t be allowed on their bike paths and trail systems.” 

Sue Prant, Executive Director of Community Cycles in Boulder said “The state treats every road like it’s a giant highway and they want the most thru-put possible, but the truth is, in Colorado, many roads that it seems like a community should have local control over to make it safer and work with the surroundings are actually “state highways” because all state roads are considered “state highways”.”

“There are certainly areas where a statewide approach makes sense, like battery safety standards, but when it comes to how trails are used, especially dirt and gravel systems, that’s something I think should remain a local decision,” Taggart said

The focus of the issue of safety and how to draw down the numbers of preventable pedestrian and cyclist deaths in the region is found in the balance of education and awareness and legal guardrails. Like many issues, laws are needed because some people struggle with taking common sense actions. For example, not driving distracted.

A cyclist pedals through the intersection of Seventh and Williams streets in Denver on Friday, June 9, 2023. Bike safety improvements in the intersection, including white plastic posts, have drawn criticism from some neighbors. But cyclists say they will help prevent crashes and save lives.

Vision Zero Action Plan

In 2024, Boulder County attempted to set the groundwork for a path to safer streets, particularly for bike riders and pedestrians. After a year plus of studies and surveys, town hall meetings and data review sessions, the Vision Zero Action Plan team released three action plans in July and August of last year. The plans were specific to the roadways of Boulder County, Superior, and Lafayette. (Longmont has their own version of Vision Zero.) City officials hope that these plans help to eliminate deaths caused by motor vehicles by 2040. It is admittedly a long lead team but, in all respects, a practical and pragmatic one.

While the Vision Zero program is not a law per se, it follows the form and structure of one and legal experts say that there can be a significant period needed for behavioural change in circumstances like this. A study produced by the National Center for Biotechnology Information found that “changing a behavior can be an inherently unstable and unsteady process; frequent lapses and relapse should be expected to occur.” The goal of the Vision Zero programs then becomes finding ways to shorten that process because there are literally lives on the line.

Liviana Lewin, Boulder County Vision Zero Program Manager, said “In addition to engineering guidance and infrastructure projects, the plan includes proposed enforcement actions, education, and other approaches that help raise awareness about safe travel. The plan has flexibility in it to work with regional partners to address ongoing issues. For example, in the last several months we have seen an increase in the use of “e-motos”—with close calls and crashes—particularly among youth. These “e-motos” sometimes look like e-bikes but which have more powerful motors, higher speeds, and different regulations that many people are not aware of. We now have a working group of multiple agencies addressing this safety issue together.”

Brian Hannon, the owner of Boulder Bicycle Works, believes a shift in safety starts with refocusing priorities which he admits can be difficult. “How do you change people’s habits and attitudes? How do you get people out of oversized Tonka-toy trucks and SUVs that are rolling tanks that can obliterate any person that dares get in their way? How do you stop people from buying huge, inefficient vehicles in general,” Hannon said.

An Unsafe Infrastructure?

There are a number of contributing factors to the deaths of cyclists and pedestrians. Some, like operating a bike/eBike in an unsafe manner or crossing streets in unmarked areas, are decisions that people make that could lead to tragic consequences. And yet some factors are a direct result of what each community will tolerate. For example, poorly guarded bike lanes or a lack of sidewalks, but users in harm’s way, even when they are attempting to do the right thing.

Hannon suggested “We could make dedicated ‘bike thoroughfares’ that cross both north to south and east to west. And we can keep cars to other arterial routes.” He also suggested that cities can “Make more routes where the bike lanes are physically protected from the car traffic. Make more separate bike paths to nearby towns – east to Louisville and Lafayette and Erie – north to Lyons – south to Golden.” Hannon understands, though, that “This is heady stuff and realistically it takes a lot of planning and money.”

Prant said, “I think many of the communities are doing a good job, but many are not. But those are all local roads. I don’t think the state is doing that good a job. In many places, especially the more rural, but even in Boulder County, most roads are state roads. On state roads they don’t do protected bike lanes at all, speeds are too high, there are too many lanes and in many cases really crappy shoulders.”

If we make the roadways safer for cyclists and walkers, Hannon sees broader benefits. He said “We, long ago, made cars and gasoline the default way of getting around.  This needs to end and especially in the hearts of towns.  Make the city greener, quieter, less polluted, safer.  It can be done with enough political willpower.  Once you show people what’s possible, many more will become enamored and get on board.”

Changing transportation habits isn’t easy but for the safety of the community, residents still need to put in the hard work. Lewin “Addressing transportation safety is a complex, adaptive process with many inter-related parts and conditions that will continue to evolve; there is no one solution. The county will continue to approach safety with multiple tools and approaches with the goal of keeping people safe when traveling and creating a culture of safety in the community.”

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The post Red Roads appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Twenty-five years ago, Erie was just another small town on the Front Range, the kind of place you only thought about if you lived there. Scattered farmhouses sat under an endless sky, and families were happy to call the place their home. Then, developers saw money signs and started building houses, strip malls. The traffic followed.  Enough traffic to make any of these poor farmers lose it.

Now, Erie is one of the fastest-growing towns in Colorado, growing more than 9% in the last year. Over the last 20 years, it became a haven for families priced out of Boulder and Denver. These families are chasing the American dream of a backyard, good schools, and a reasonable commute. For that, you have to live close to where you work. Developers saw opportunity, and they took it. They built mile after mile of single-family homes stretching toward the horizon, the old farm roads now feeding into packed intersections and six-lane highways.

Mayor Andrew Moore believes it will stay this way. He’s made it clear that Erie isn’t meant to be a city. He calls it a bedroom community — a place for people to live, not work. In reality, a town can’t survive on single-family homes alone. Walk into any restaurant, coffee shop,  or grocery store in Erie, and you’ll hear the same story. Rent is too high, businesses can’t find workers, and there’s nowhere affordable for them to live. Teachers and first responders commute from towns an hour away or further. Meanwhile, the roads are packed, the gas stations are full, and the people who can actually afford to live here spend most of their time somewhere else.

Erie is a symptom of a growing problem that can be seen in other neighboring cities as well. As sprawl takes over Colorado, there are solutions that can be implemented, but who is willing to take action?

How sprawl took over

Colorado has always had an abundant amount of space, and for a long time, that was enough to curtail the problem. If you need more houses, you can build a new neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. If you need a bigger grocery store, just knock down some trees and call the construction company. The state’s postwar boom followed the same blueprint as the rest of the country. Local governments prioritized cars and land ownership, writing zoning laws that kept housing and businesses separate.

In all honesty, it worked for a time. Land was cheap while there was land. After all, it was abundant. Cars were everywhere, and public transit was an afterthought. Neighborhoods started popping up all over the place, and they stretched out instead of up.

Between 2000 and 2020, nearly 1.5 million people moved to Colorado. Demand for housing shot up, but the local government never adapted. Cities and towns clung to their zoning laws and prioritized single-family development, even as home prices skyrocketed and commutes got longer. Finally, some people proposed higher-density housing as a solution, and the backlash was immediate.

Neighborhood groups fought tooth and nail against new apartments, worried about traffic, property values, and “preserving community character.” In places like Erie, leaders doubled down on low-density sprawl, rejecting the very developments that could have made housing more affordable in the name of keeping towns the same.

The same cycle kept repeating — the endless cycle of more houses, more highways, and more traffic. You can really only call it growth but without a plan.

Why it was never built to last

For a while, sprawl looked like the easiest answer to Colorado’s housing boom. Land was cheap, highways were expanding, and developers had no reason to think twice before stretching neighborhoods further and further from city centers. It was the 1990s, and the priority was simple: Build more neighborhoods.

But no one stopped to ask: Who’s paying for all of this long term?

At first, it seemed like the new developments were paying for themselves. New houses meant new property taxes, new roads, new utilities. But single-family subdivisions don’t generate enough economic activity to sustain the services they require. It’s different from a dense, mixed-use neighborhood, where people are able to live near businesses, and money circulates within the community. A sprawling suburb is mostly houses, and houses alone don’t generate the kind of tax revenue that a fully functioning town needs.

The problem first manifested in public transit. The more spread out a city is, the harder it is to build a system that people actually use. In dense urban areas, buses and trains are a practical alternative to driving. But in places like Erie where houses stretch for miles with no central hub, transit isn’t just inconvenient — it’s financially impossible to sustain.

RTD tried to keep up, expanding routes across Northern Colorado, but everybody was already driving cars. Even Denver’s light rail system, which was meant to ease congestion, barely reaches the suburbs that need it most. And because transit never fully developed, most people don’t have another option.

With few other alternatives, there was no option but to expand highways to accommodate more people, a lane here, an extra interstate there. Traffic got a little better, but building more highways never works. Because of something called “induced demand,” only being able to drive makes it so you have to drive. When driving is the only realistic way to get around, people drive more. When a city makes more room for cars, more cars show up. Within a few years, the new lanes become just as clogged as before.

The cycle keeps repeating. We are stuck in a cycle of more houses, more roads, and more traffic.

Now, local governments are stuck, and the options are becoming more and more limited. Infrastructure costs are skyrocketing, but tax revenue isn’t keeping up. Schools are underfunded, police and fire departments are stretched thin, and transit still isn’t a realistic alternative for most people. Cities could raise taxes, but no one wants to do that unless it means lowering them for the poor.

Sprawl doesn’t pay for itself, and Colorado is running out of ways to avoid the bill.

Boulder’s misguided plan to stop sprawl

By the 1960s, Boulder saw what was happening in Denver — farmland vanishing, traffic piling up, neighborhoods swallowed by a never-ending sprawl of subdivisions and strip malls. Cities were growing without thinking about what that growth would look like in 50 years. Boulder decided to get ahead of the problem.

The plan was simple: Buy up the land before developers could. In 1967, voters passed a tax to fund open space preservation, securing thousands of acres that would never be developed. A few years later, they locked in urban growth boundaries — an invisible wall around the city to keep it from expanding indefinitely. Boulder wouldn’t stretch outward like Aurora or Westminster. Growth would happen in a controlled, deliberate way.

And at first, it worked. Boulder stayed green. It avoided the suburban bloat taking over the rest of the Front Range. People wanted to live here because of the open space, the mountain views, the thoughtful planning.

But there was a flaw in the plan. They didn’t build enough housing.

For decades, Boulder added jobs without adding homes. The people who worked here, people like teachers, baristas, and nurses, couldn’t afford to live here. Because Boulder wouldn’t build up, people had no choice but to move out.Boulder had protected itself from sprawl, but in doing so, it had pushed the problem onto everyone else.

Boulder’s skyline and affordable housing

It started in 1959 with the Blue Line, an elevation boundary above which the city would not supply water for domestic, commercial, or industrial uses, to protect the city’s scenic skyline. Boulder continued its efforts to preserve the mountain views by passing a law in 1971 making it illegal to build anything taller than 55 feet. In the early 2000s, that rule became an even bigger sticking point as the city faced pressure to build more housing, reinforcing growth restrictions with new policies meant to control development while protecting open space. The logic was the same as it had always been — slow, deliberate expansion instead of unchecked growth. Developers proposed mid-rise apartment buildings to help alleviate the housing crunch, but the city shot them down. They didn’t want to change the skyline.

At the same time, Boulder reinforced its growth limits by tightening the rules around urban infill. The city had long prioritized commercial growth over residential, adding new office space while making it harder to build apartments and condos. The result was a booming job market with nowhere for workers to live. By 2010, Boulder had three times as many jobs as housing units. It was an equation that made sense on paper — businesses wanted to be in Boulder, and Boulder wanted their tax dollars — but it ignored the reality that workers were commuting from farther and farther away.

In 2010, Boulder introduced inclusionary housing requirements, forcing developers to set aside a percentage of new units as affordable housing or pay into a city-run housing fund. The goal was to create mixed-income communities, but developers mostly took the buyout option, funneling money into a system that couldn’t keep up with demand.

Meanwhile, other cities along the Front Range had started looking at Boulder’s policies as a warning, not a blueprint. Places like Denver and Fort Collins relaxed their zoning laws to allow for the increase in population while Boulder did the opposite. In 2015, the Boulder city council put even stricter limits on co-op housing and accessory dwelling units, making it nearly impossible for homeowners to build a rental unit on their property. Boulder wasn’t banning new housing outright. It was just making sure most of it never got built.

The city of Boulder was spending millions on open space preservation while pushing workers into neighboring towns. In 2019, Boulder County released a report showing that more than 60% of the county’s workforce commuted from outside the city. The traffic problems worsened, air quality suffered, and businesses struggled to hire employees who could actually afford to live nearby.

Although no one can argue that Boulder, in part, succeeded in protecting its gorgeous open spaces, these policies made the affordable housing situation worse. Boulder stands at a crossroads. They can side with the state pushing for zoning reform or with the housing advocates. Now, with the state pushing for zoning reform and housing advocates demanding change, Boulder faces a choice — keep protecting the past or start making room for the future.

The domino effect on nearby towns

If Boulder had made it impossible to build new housing, where did all the people go?

Longmont. Lafayette. Erie. Towns that weren’t prepared for Boulder’s overflow but absorbed it anyway.

Longmont’s population basically doubled. Lafayette’s remaining open space filled in fast.

The twisted punchline of this cruel joke is that no one learned. They didn’t learn from Boulder’s mistake. Lafayette had a working-class history, a mix of small businesses and neighborhoods that didn’t try too hard to be anything else. Erie barely existed as a destination. But once Boulder’s housing market squeezed out anyone who wasn’t making six figures, these towns became the next best option.

There was an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of places like Boulder and add some intentionality to urban planning. These towns could have built multiple family dwelling units, invested in transit, and created neighborhoods where people could actually live and work in the same place.

Now, they’re dealing with the same problems Boulder is experiencing. They have way too many people, too much traffic, and nowhere near enough housing. They’re just 20 years behind on realizing it.

Colorado isn’t the same place it was in the ‘90s. But a lot of its cities are still acting like it is.

The consequences of stubborn growth

It’s easy to see the cracks when you’re sitting in traffic, inching your way down U.S. Highway 287, wondering why this road still looks like it was built for a town half this size. Cities across Boulder County refused to adapt and stuck fast to zoning laws that were no longer serving our best interest and propping up landowners so their properties didn’t devalue. Now, they’re paying for it.

Housing shortages aren’t just about rising prices. They help determine who gets to live here and who doesn’t. They help determine if a teacher can afford to live five minutes from their school or if they have to drive an hour each way. They help determine if a coffee shop owner can keep their doors open or if they’ll have to cut hours because they can’t find baristas. In Boulder County, approximately 58% of renters are “cost-burdened,” spending more than 30% of their income on housing, which doesn’t necessarily put you in a position to enrich the local economy.

The transit problem we refuse to solve

A region built on sprawl runs on cars. There’s no other alternative. That’s how these towns were designed, and that’s what’s making things worse.

Public transit in Boulder County isn’t built for the kind of commuting people actually do. If you live in Erie and work in Boulder, you’re probably driving. If you live in Lafayette and need to get to Longmont, that’s another drive. Even if we prioritized public transport, it’s impossible to keep up with the rates at which urban sprawl expands our cities and towns. Neighborhoods are coming together faster than we can connect them to an existing system or build a system that can accommodate all the neighborhoods that already exist for that matter.

Denver has its light rail system, but it doesn’t reach most of the people who need it. The Front Range passenger rail has been talked about for years, but it’s still just talk. Until there’s a serious commitment to connecting these towns in a way that makes public transit an actual alternative to driving, we’re just going to keep pouring money into widening highways that will be just as clogged in five years.

That’s the real issue at hand. No one wants to admit that this isn’t working.

The economic fallout of housing shortages

It’s easy to frame the housing crisis as just a problem for people struggling to find a place to live. But it’s bigger than that. It’s a problem for the entire local economy.

Take a drive through Boulder County, and you’ll see the signs. “Now Hiring” signs in restaurant windows, at grocery stores, on billboards along the highway. Businesses aren’t just looking for workers; they’re desperate for them. Too many studies have proven that it’s not because people don’t want to work, it’s because people can’t afford to live here.

When housing costs skyrocket, service workers are the first ones forced out. A barista at a coffee shop in Boulder making $17 an hour isn’t going to be able to rent a place anywhere near their job. A teacher starting out at $45,000 a year can’t even think about buying a home in the county. First responders, the people keeping these towns safe, are often commuting an hour or more just to make it to their shift.

Danielle, a preschool teacher, laments, “I’d love to live near [my job] too, but there’s no way I can afford a house here.” Danielle’s story isn’t uncommon. The majority of people have been priced out of Boulder. It’s not sustainable. When workers have to leave town just to find housing, businesses suffer. Restaurants cut hours because they don’t have enough staff. Schools struggle to retain teachers. Local economies that once thrived start to stagnate because the people who make a community work can’t afford to be part of it.

Boulder County isn’t the only place dealing with this. It’s happening up and down the Front Range. But the places that refuse to build enough housing are the ones feeling it the worst.

Why NIMBYism is holding cities back

The solutions to the housing crisis aren’t a mystery. Build more housing. Build denser housing. Make sure that new developments include affordable units. Invest in public transit, so people don’t have to rely on cars just to get to work.

But every time these ideas come up, they hit the same wall — NIMBYism.

NIMBY stands for “Not In My Backyard,” and it’s the reason so many cities in Colorado keep making the same mistakes. Neighborhood groups show up to city council meetings in full force, fighting against new apartment buildings, affordable housing projects, even mixed-use developments. The concerns are always the same: traffic, crime, property values. “I didn’t move out here just to feel like I’m back in the city,” says Allison, a longtime resident of Erie, echoing a sentiment that is heard all over the state.

But the reality is simple: Without density, without apartments, without walkable neighborhoods, cities are going to strangle themselves.

Look at Erie. Look at Longmont. These towns are desperate for more housing, yet every time a new development is proposed, the same arguments come up. Either the project gets shut down, or it gets watered down to the point where it’s just another batch of single-family homes that only the upper-middle class can afford.

The same thing happens every time only the middle class are allowed access to housing in towns: more traffic plagues our long commutes, more businesses are struggling to stay open because of understaffing, and more people leave town because they don’t have another option.

Every time the idea of density comes up, the conversation gets hijacked by people who already own homes — people who got in at the right time and now don’t want anything to change.

But change is coming, whether they like it or not.

What sprawl really means

It’s easy to think of housing as a personal issue — something that affects individual renters and buyers, something that boils down to whether someone can afford to live in a certain neighborhood. Sprawl doesn’t just make housing more expensive; it makes everything more expensive.

Public services like police departments, fire stations, and school districts have to stretch their resources further when a town sprawls outward instead of building up. With more roads to patrol, more schools to build, and more infrastructure to maintain, the burden on local government is just too high. When tax revenue isn’t keeping up because these sprawling neighborhoods don’t generate enough economic activity to pay for themselves, cities have to make a tough choice. They can either raise taxes or cut services.

Sprawl’s impact on climate and the environment

Sprawl is one of the biggest contributors to Colorado’s worsening air quality. More cars mean more emissions. Longer commutes mean more fuel burned. The Front Range has already been struggling with ozone pollution, and transportation is one of the leading causes.

And it’s not just about cars. The way we build matters too.

Low-density, single-family housing is the least efficient form of development. It takes up more land, requires more materials, and uses more energy than denser housing. Meanwhile, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods reduce emissions, save energy, and make communities more resilient.

Boulder County prides itself on environmental sustainability, but when people who work in Boulder have to drive an hour each way just to afford rent, those sustainability efforts start to look like empty gestures.

Cities don’t just need to build more housing — they need to build smarter housing.

Who’s doing it right? Comparative studies and solutions

It’s easy to point out what isn’t working in Colorado’s housing policies. What’s harder — but more important — is figuring out what cities can do differently.

The truth is, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Other places have faced the same challenges and found ways to build smarter, more affordable, and more livable communities. Some of those solutions are happening right here in Colorado. Others are playing out in cities across the U.S. and around the world.

If state and local leaders are serious about fixing the housing crisis, they need to start paying attention to the places that have actually gotten it right.

Minneapolis: The end of single-family zoning

For decades, cities across the U.S. operated under a zoning system that effectively outlawed anything other than single-family homes. That meant no duplexes, no townhomes, no small apartment buildings — just suburban sprawl by design.

Minneapolis changed that in 2018. The city became the first in the country to eliminate single-family zoning, opening the door for more housing types in every neighborhood. Duplexes and triplexes were suddenly allowed in areas that had been restricted for generations.

And it worked beautifully. More housing supply, fewer barriers to entry, and a city that’s now leading the way in tackling the affordability crisis.

Since then, other cities have followed Minneapolis’ lead. California ended single-family zoning statewide. Oregon did the same. Colorado lawmakers have talked about it, but so far, efforts to change zoning laws have stalled. NIMBY opposition has been relentless.

But if affordability is the goal, eliminating single-family zoning has to be part of the conversation. The numbers are clear. When more people are allowed to live in an area, housing becomes more accessible.

Portland: The power of infill development

Portland, Oregon has taken a different approach. Instead of sprawling outward, the city has focused on infill development, building housing within existing urban areas rather than pushing into undeveloped land.

Ultimately, this solution not only started to mitigate the sprawl problem but benefited the communities in ways no one saw coming such as preserving natural spaces and keeping sprawl from eating up the forests and farmland surrounding Portland the way it has in other growing cities. Not only that, but infrastructure costs are down. Because new development is happening in areas that already have roads, schools, and public services, the city isn’t spending millions on extending infrastructure into the middle of nowhere.

Infill development is one of the most cost-effective and environmentally responsible ways to build. It prevents the endless outward expansion that fuels long commutes, traffic congestion, and higher carbon emissions.

Colorado cities could follow suit. Denver has already started shifting in this direction, but places like Erie, Longmont, and Lafayette are still prioritizing single-family subdivisions over denser, mixed-use neighborhoods that could make housing more accessible.

Curitiba: A transit-first approach

Where other cities are struggling with lack of public transit, long commutes, and expensive car ownership, the approach Curitiba, Brazil took is worth looking at. It’s a mid-sized city that faced rapid population growth and had to figure out how to expand without turning into a traffic nightmare. The city did something that no one had done before: It established a good system of transit first, then developed the land around it.

Curitiba built a new system of public transport called the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) from the ground up, designed to use buses as efficiently as possible. And to the surprise of no one who was paying attention, it worked: lower transportation costs, less congestion, and a city that’s both affordable and sustainable.

Colorado keeps making the same mistake: building housing first, then scrambling to add transit later. That’s how you get long commutes. If cities planned development around transit from the start, they wouldn’t need to widen highways every five years.

The question isn’t whether we have the solutions. It’s whether we’re willing to use them.

Washington, D.C.: Build transit first, then build the city

D.C. gets a lot of things wrong, but it got one thing right: If you want people to actually use public transit, you have to build around it, not force it into a city after the fact.

That’s what transit-oriented development is supposed to be: Figure out where the train or bus routes go, then make that the center of a neighborhood, not the other way around. It’s simple, but most cities don’t do it.

Grocery stores, coffee shops, and small businesses are all within walking distance of a transit station. That’s how you keep people from spending half their lives stuck in traffic.

Pittsburgh: A tax that punishes speculators, not renters

The housing crisis isn’t just about how many homes are getting built. It’s always been about who owns the land and what they’re doing with it.

In Boulder, there’s a ton of empty land sitting untouched, not because there aren’t developers ready to build, but because landowners are sitting on it, waiting for prices to go up. They don’t have to do anything and can almost treat it like a stock, something that just adds value to their net worth. That’s speculation. And it’s making everything more expensive.

Pittsburgh’s solution to this problem was simple. They created a specific tax to target speculation. This tax targeted property itself, not just the building.That means if you own a vacant lot in a city, you’re paying taxes on its full value whether you build on it or not. Suddenly, holding onto land without developing anything isn’t just easy money, it’s an expensive proposition that might not be worthwhile.

A land value tax wouldn’t solve everything, but it would stop the worst offenders from making money by doing nothing.

San Francisco: Forcing developers to build affordable housing

Developers love to promise affordable housing. They’ll slap the words “mixed-income community” on their plans, throw in a couple of lower-rent units, and call it a day. But unless cities force them to actually follow through, those affordable homes never get built.

San Francisco figured this out a long time ago. The city passed inclusionary zoning laws that made one thing clear: If you want to build here, new developments are required to set aside a percentage of their apartments or homes for lower-income residents. No loopholes. No opt-outs.

If a developer doesn’t want to do that, it has to pay into a fund that builds affordable housing elsewhere in the city. Either way, the city gets more housing that regular people can actually afford.

Colorado could have done this years ago. Instead, we’re watching cities approve massive housing developments without requiring anything for lower-income residents. Erie, Longmont, Lafayette. All of these cities just keep adding new neighborhoods full of expensive single-family homes while working-class people get pushed out.

Imagine if Boulder County required every new development to include affordable housing by law. Not just a vague promise, not a deal cut behind closed doors — a real percentage, locked into policy. If a developer wanted to build a 200-unit complex, at least 30 of those units would have to be affordable. If they refused? They’d have to write a fat check to fund public housing somewhere else in the county.

Instead, we’ve let developers dictate the rules, and the result is exactly what you’d expect: big houses, big profits, no room for anyone making under six figures.

Stockholm: When you make driving expensive, people stop driving

Stockholm took a different approach to “solving traffic”:  Rather than trying to accommodate more cars, they made driving more expensive.

The city introduced congestion pricing, which means if you want to drive into downtown Stockholm during peak hours, you have to pay for it. The result? Fewer cars on the road, better public transit, and a city that actually functions.

People hated the idea — until they saw it work. Congestion tax has also worked in Singapore and London, making traffic go down significantly.

Using this tax to build an actual robust public transportation system would make it a viable option. People wouldn’t just default to cars anymore.The policies that built Boulder — and the ones that might break it.

Prospect New Town: A solution in our own backyard

Prospect New Town is a neighborhood within the city of Longmont. In the late 1990s, the people of Prospect bought an old 80-acre tree farm and started building. This time, they had a plan in mind and weren’t just building whatever was convenient at the moment. Prospect offered pleasant sidewalks and parks instead of wide roads and massive parking lots. The neighborhood was walkable, and the people of Prospect saw it as a community. Shops and offices are scattered throughout the neighborhood — not tacked onto the edges, but baked into the design, making it possible to live, work, and spend time all within the same few blocks.

It was one of the first New Urbanist communities in the state, and it’s still one of the few places in Boulder County that feels like it actually took the ideals of walkability, density, and design seriously. The homes don’t look the same. The blocks don’t stretch into oblivion, and more importantly, the community was built to be a place, not just a product.

At a glance, Prospect might feel like an outlier, but it’s not some utopian dream. It’s proof that this kind of development is not only possible — it works. The people who live there can live the suburban dream: kids bike to school, you can walk to that coffee shop nearby, and you know the neighbors. Prospect shows that it doesn’t require reinventing the wheel. It requires letting go of the car-centric approach that we’ve become so attached to.

Prospect is working so well because it was planned intentionally following the guidance of organizations like Strong Towns. Founded by civil engineer Charles Marohn, Strong Towns sounds like it’s about architecture, but it’s really about combating the spread of urban sprawl. It’s a framework for understanding why our cities are financially broken and how to fix them with small, smart decisions that prioritize long-term stability over short-term solutions.

The Strong Towns philosophy is rooted in the idea that most postwar development — especially in suburbs — simply doesn’t pay for itself. It’s obvious that 500-house McMansion neighborhoods, with all the added infrastructure and utility costs, are impossibly expensive to build and maintain. Cities have to constantly be building new roads, new schools, new everything to keep up.

The fight over Colorado’s future

For years, Boulder’s stance on growth was simple: Keep it slow, keep it controlled, and keep it from changing the city too much. It was a strategy built on the idea that if Boulder just set enough boundaries, literally and figuratively, it could hold onto the things that made it special. By 2020, that strategy was doing a lot more than just preserving the city’s character, it was boxing people out.

The people who built their lives in Boulder, the teachers, the baristas, the mechanics, were disappearing. Not because they wanted to leave, but because they couldn’t afford to stay. Even people with solid paychecks were getting pushed to the edges. Nurses, engineers, even some tech workers were starting to find that living in Boulder required either a windfall or a willingness to commute an hour each way.

Boulder tried to address the problem in a way that didn’t fundamentally alter how the city looked or functioned. Officials set a goal: 15% of Boulder’s housing stock would be permanently affordable by 2035. It was an easy headline. The problem was that it didn’t actually change anything about how housing was built or who could build it. The units that were approved weren’t woven into the fabric of existing neighborhoods — they were clustered into specific developments, keeping Boulder’s economic segregation intact.

And while city leaders talked about affordability, they weren’t touching the policies that had made Boulder so exclusive in the first place. Minimum lot sizes stayed large. Parking requirements kept costs high. Zoning codes still made it nearly impossible to build anything but single-family homes in most parts of the city.

Governor Jared Polis, however, went to war against cities that were enforcing NIMBY policies, pushing through legislation that changed zoning laws statewide.

Boulder’s leadership pushed back immediately, arguing that the law was a blatant overreach of power and that it undermined their efforts to preserve the city. Neighborhood groups rallied against the changes, bringing the same concerns they always had — density meant traffic, crime, and declining property values.

Boulder’s arguments were falling on deaf ears. The city’s refusal to grow had already shaped the entire region. People who have jobs in Boulder were by and large leaving the city in droves, leaving Boulder a weird combination of student housing and million-dollar properties. Boulder was doing everything in its power to preserve a nebulous idea of what it once was but was in reality doing everything but.

While Governor Polis was getting into a long, drawn-out legal battle with Boulder, Colorado, lawmakers started trying to fix the sprawl issue elsewhere. In 2024, three lawmakers, including U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, introduced the CORE Act to protect the land Colorado is famous for from urban sprawl.

Not everyone saw the CORE Act as a huge step forward. Housing advocates worried that locking up even more land would only make the affordability crisis worse. The state already had strict limits on where development could happen, and with Boulder resisting density within its own boundaries, some were asking the difficult question: If cities weren’t willing to build up and land use outside those cities was becoming restricted, where was housing supposed to go?

For years, Boulder operated under the assumption that it could have it both ways — that it could keep its wide stretches of open space, limit growth, and still somehow remain an accessible, livable city. But that balance had already tipped. The city had kept its views and its trails but at the cost of making Boulder a place where only the wealthiest could afford to live.

For decades, Boulder leaders stood by the idea that managing growth meant slowing it down. Now, state lawmakers aren’t so sure. Governor Polis has made his stance clear: Colorado needs more housing, especially near transit, and cities like Boulder would have to do their part. The city, so far, has refused to budge.

At its core, this fight isn’t just about zoning codes or land conservation. It’s about who gets to be here, who gets to build a life in Boulder, who gets pushed out — in other words, who is welcome, and who isn’t.

The city has spent years crafting policies to protect what it already has. The question now is whether those policies are protecting Boulder’s character — or just making sure it stays out of reach.

At the crossroads

Colorado has spent decades betting on sprawl, single-family homes, cars over transit, and growth policies that keep housing supply strangled just enough to drive prices up. Now, Colorado is a state at war with itself. Booming cities that can’t house their workers, once-affordable towns now out of reach for middle-class families, and a transportation system buckling under the weight of congestion are the sad realities for the citizens of Colorado.

Even though it seems like the consequences of sprawl are just compounding, towns all over Northern Colorado seem to be doubling down on these low-density housing zoning policies. Housing prices will keep rising, forcing even more workers into hour-long commutes just to keep their jobs. Traffic will worsen, no matter how many times we widen I-25 or US-36. Local businesses will struggle to hire, leading to shorter hours, higher prices, and a workforce that increasingly can’t afford to live in the communities they serve.

And it’s not just an economic problem — it’s an environmental one. Boulder County prides itself on its environmental leadership, but those green initiatives start to look hollow when the people who work in the city are forced to drive 50 miles each way to afford rent.

A different future is possible

Other cities have proven that it doesn’t have to be this way, like Minneapolis, Portland, and Curitiba. None of these places is perfect, but they’ve made real progress. Colorado could, too — if it stops clinging to the idea that a house with a yard and a three-car garage is the only acceptable way to live.

We’ve seen a few cities around the world successfully battle this problem with different strategies. End exclusionary zoning like Portland did. Push for inclusionary housing that allows for duplexes, triplexes, and multifamily housing in areas that have long been reserved for single-family homes. Or you could follow Curitiba’s path to success and invest in transit before expanding roads, which in turn would make it easier and more affordable to take a bus or train than to sit in gridlocked traffic. San Francisco took a different approach altogether and worked to tie development to affordability. All in all, we just need Colorado to prioritize walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods that let people live closer to where they work.

What if we were to adopt a different — better — approach? What if, instead of approving another sprawling neighborhood four miles from any town center, we focused on building MFDUs? What if towns like Erie took the Strong Towns approach and focused on infill development and financial solvency before we focused on constant sprawl? It’s a beautiful future that seems so close yet so far.

We already have blueprints for a different future — examples of what it looks like when communities stop doubling down on sprawl and start imagining something more connected, more sustainable, more human. You can see it in Longmont, a city that looks nothing like the rest of Boulder County. You can hear it in the language of a movement that’s been quietly challenging the entire postwar development playbook.

Without reimagining our relationship with development and nature, this shift is not possible. A shift like this means challenging the powers that be, making them change, and having an honest conversation about what Erie wants to be. With our current leadership, that sounds like threading a needle in a hurricane. But it’s not impossible. The models exist, the data corroborates it, and the benefits aren’t hypothetical. Things like lower infrastructure costs, more vibrant local economies, and healthier communities are within our reach. They’re happening in places that were willing to rethink what a “normal” town should look like.

Prospect New Town didn’t just build houses — it built a community. Strong Towns didn’t just write blog posts — they built a movement. Together, they represent a vision for what Colorado towns could be if they stopped chasing sprawl and started building for people. Because the real question isn’t whether we can afford to build differently. It’s whether we can afford not to.

At this point, the problem isn’t that we don’t know what to do. We know exactly what works: density, transit-oriented development, zoning reform, and infrastructure investment that prioritize people. Cities across the country and the world have proven that these strategies create livable, sustainable, and affordable communities. The question isn’t what to do — it’s whether Colorado is willing to do it.

Colorado is at a breaking point. The state can either double down on the policies that got us here, endless expansion, skyrocketing prices, and communities designed for cars instead of people, or it can take a different path. We can choose to value density, sustainability, and housing policies that actually work for everyone, not just those who got in before the housing boom, and build a community that is made to last.

The future isn’t set in stone, so we need to do something now.

The post Colorado’s 25-Year Housing Gamble appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Fourteen years ago we at Yellow Scene Magazine (YS) published the article Down the Road: Ten Transportation Issues Impacting You in the Next 10 Years by James Burrus which examined planned transportation developments in Boulder and the Denver metro area. We looked at several transportation proposals and issues and wrote about their prospects. At the time, Boulder and Denver were ever-growing cities in need of an expanded transportation network. The planet was rapidly warming and new and cleaner transportation methods were greatly needed to combat climate change. We had a president in office who had a penchant for green energy and clean mass transportation. There were a lot of exciting ideas aimed at making the Denver metro area a faster-moving and modern city. The future was bright. Our ambitions were huge. The budgets were reasonable. We were ready.

What has changed?

Well, Boulder and Denver are still growing. We still need an expanded transportation network, and the planet has gotten even hotter! But we have a new president who supports the oil and gas industry and refuses to accept climate change. In reviewing our YS article from 2011, we noticed that some things panned out. For example, BCycle, which had just launched their programs in Boulder and Denver, has since greatly expanded and now offers 300 e-bikes and provides a reduced cost for low-income residents. Obviously, that is great in expanding access, helping the environment, and easing the transportation strain. BCycle is supporting the micro mobility trend — that is, the rise of transportation with small, lightweight, and often electric vehicles  used for quick journeys in an urban area. The city of Boulder announced a partnership with BCycle and the electric scooter company Lime to expand access to this exciting new path. The population of Boulder has grown nearly 12% since 2014 with a current population of 330,262. If we do not begin to plan for transit in a fast-growing Boulder, we may end up with the same problems that Denver currently has.

Other proposals in the article still haven’t happened. Case in point: Jefferson Parkway, a proposed regional toll road intended to complete the Denver metropolitan beltway system by connecting the Northwest Parkway in Broomfield to State Highway 93 in Golden, Colorado. The Jefferson Parkway has been a contentious issue since its conception. The tollway is meant to go through Broomfield and Jefferson counties. A major delay and near fatal blow to the project came in 2019 when elevated levels of plutonium were discovered in the soil which had many concerned about the potential safety of the project. Aside from that, the projected budget for such a project continues to balloon. The Denver Post reported in December 2024 that a recent dispute over the project cleared up, but the article noted that the project was still plagued by debates over its feasibility and continues to remain a quagmire. Completion of the project could lead to more development in the outer limits and have possible positive economic impact in Boulder. However, it also poses a risk for increased urban sprawl.

Aside from significant environmental concerns and costs, it might be better if we avoided a major tollway project. Currently, Colorado has one of the most expensive toll roads in the country. E-470 goes around the eastern side of the Denver metro area, and it currently costs a driver 33 cents per mile. Proponents will argue that toll roads are user-fee based, saving non-users money and having a fairer form of tax. But toll roads are also designed to allow for drivers with a means to avoid congestion on publicly-funded roads. This means that drivers who do not pay to use the toll road are forced to deal with more traffic. Publicly funded highways are also on average more dangerous than toll roads because they tend to be less well funded, which leads to worse road conditions and less lighting among other things.

In a way, toll roads are a way of the government not dealing with the original problem. As traffic patterns worsen on the tollway, it will eventually demand building new (possibly tolled) roads, and the cycle will continue, which is why we need to start looking at alternatives to the car and road system.

Currently, 49% of Denver residents use their cars for most of their trips. Without new public transportation infrastructure the number of cars will likely increase. Lower income residents, though, are less likely to be able to afford a car. About 10% of Denver residents do not own a vehicle. Increased congestion, pollution, and income inequality are the futures that await if we do not invest in our public infrastructure today.

The slow track to FasTracks

Let’s now turn to Regional Transportation District’s voter-approved transit expansion program, FasTracks. We wrote in 2011 that FasTracks is “a noble vision [that] is an unmitigated success.” We proposed then that it was time to “just build it so we can all move on.” Remember, 2011 was the perfect time for these sorts of proposals, politically (trains and public transportation were in vogue) and morally (global warming). At the time of the original article, tax revenues were lowered because of the Great Recession and funding for the project was more or less put to a stop. YS recognized the need for an expanded public transit system and proposed an additional .4% sales tax to finish the project. And we do not regret that proposal. A modest tax increase would have paid dividends by now.

The project started in 2004 with the passage of Senate Bill 24-230. The goal was to provide efficient and cheap transportation and curb the use of fossil fuels. Between 2004 and 2022, according to the FasTracks 2025 Finance and Planning Committee packet provided to YS, 75% of the project had been finished with four corridors awaiting construction: the Northwest Rail, North Metro, Southwest Corridor extension, and the Central Corridor Extension. According to RTD’s website, all four projects are currently unfunded. The Northwest Rail’s failure is particularly troubling as there was a proposed stop in Boulder — the second to last stop. It goes without saying what a missed opportunity this has been. If we stuck to the plan, we could have had an easy alternative to get from Boulder to Denver, and we could have done it with a fraction of the carbon footprint made by driving.

Despite being so close to the end, nothing much has changed. Our demand to “just build it” has not happened. What is going on? In 2011, the Denver population was 2,428,000. The population of Denver is now 23% larger at nearly 3 million people, and Boulder has grown by 12%. Denver’s increase in population has not affected its average commute time, which currently stands at 25.5 minutes. This accounts for about two days stuck in traffic for the year. It can be inferred that newer residents are bringing cars with them. Car users will have the advantage of being able to live farther away from the city center. This will lead to more demand for roads. While this might not be a problem now, it most definitely will be in the future.

Where are we now?

In 2004, voters authorized an increase in the district’s sales to finance the development of FasTracks. As stated earlier, YS proposed an additional (and modest) tax increase to continue FasTracks development, yet that has not come to fruition. Currently, sales tax makes up 66.6% of FasTracks’ budget while an additional 18% comes from grants. Only 4.9% of revenue comes from passenger fares. There are advantages to this system. It is not dependent upon passengers to generate profit. This is important to ensure that a new industry can survive in the beginning. It also helps low-income residents. Because the majority of revenue comes from sales tax,low-income residents, those most likely to benefit from any sort of public transportation system, are not subject to price hikes and rising costs.

The downside to this current economic model is that it is subject to the shocks of economic downturns, such as The Great Recession. As has already been noted, that economic downturn and the following reduction in sales tax revenue lead to the project being stalled. Then, as you may already be well aware, another shock came in 2020 with the COVID crisis, which severely reduced transit ridership. These economic shocks caused the project to be heavily delayed. According to Professor Juan Carlos Lopez, associate professor specializing in urban economics at the University of Denver, one consequence is that the cost of the project will continue to rise. “This isn’t surprising, “ Professor Lopez told us. “Long-term investments require projections on [what] costs are going to look like in the future.” None of us could have foreseen the Recession nor the pandemic, and we continue to have the same budget outline from the early 2000s.

Ridership reached its peak in 2019 with 105,824 boardings. The pandemic squashed those numbers, and FasTracks has yet to recover. Ridership for 2024 was at 65,230 boardings, a nearly 40% decrease. Lower ridership obviously decreases any continued revenue stream and puts more strain on the need for tax increases. Professor Lopez pointed out how the lack of development creates a catch-22 for the transportation system. “The system is pretty good at getting people downtown but not very good at getting people anywhere else. As you expand the set of places you can travel in the metro area via public transit, the more attractive the system looks.” Currently, about 6% of all trips are by either bus or rail. Without expansion, many residents will be forced to continue commuting by automobile, further compounding the problem. This lack of FasTracks seems much more like a shark in that once it stops moving, it begins to die.

Denver, Colorado, USA-June 22, 2016. Amtrack train ready for departure at the Denver Union Station.

The problem is that we are once again entering into choppy economic waters, and the appetite for another tax increase might not be there. But a failure to raise revenue via taxation would most likely mean that expansion would have to fall on the passengers by increasing the cost per ride, which would defeat the whole point of a public transportation system. Currently, base fares for Denver are some of the most expensive in the country at $2.75. This is 50 cents more than the national average.

In addition, as is the case with many public transportation projects, projected budgets were vastly outpaced by reality. The project was originally projected to cost $4.7 billion. The budget quickly exploded and reached $6.5 billion,which caused delays in building and scaling back the project’s ambitions. Contributing to these challenges is FasTracks’ greatest expense: deterioration — the wear and tear of its infrastructure, such as its trains and tracks. Eventually, this infrastructure will need to be replaced, which further strains FasTrack’s budget as funds will need to be diverted towards maintenance and replacement of infrastructure as opposed to going towards investment in the continued expansion of the transportation network. FasTrack’s history of going over budget remains a cause for concern considering that the Denver to Boulder train is currently in talks again.

In 2012, YS published Derailed by Greg Cambell which explored the issues that slowed FasTracks over 12 years ago. The article ended with the following quote, “‘Whatever the price,” added Director Matt Cohen, “let’s just get it done sooner than later.’” Time is truly a flat circle, and we are demanding the same thing now.

What can we do to solve this?

Denver Moves Everyone 2050, the strategic transportation plan issued in April 2023 for the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, provides a comprehensive look at Denver’s current transportation situation as well as its possible future. Currently, 14% of all trips are made by walking, rolling, cycling, and transit. The project hopes to get this number up to 51%. Part of this goal, as has already been covered, is greater expansion of the transportation network.

Currently, sales tax represents FasTracks’ greatest revenue stream. However, according to Denver Moves Everyone 2050, the city “does not presently have the funding necessary to keep up with the maintenance needs of the current transportation system.” FasTracks operates at a loss, but it must be noted that it is still considered a “safe investment” by Moody’s, indicating that there is no risk of the network going under anytime soon.

If we want to fund FasTracks properly and allow it to expand, then we will have to increase its revenue source. Admittedly, an additional increase in sales tax is politically infeasible. A rise of sales tax, which functions as a flat consumption tax, would fall mostly on lower-income residents who see a greater share of their income go towards consumption rather than savings and investment. This would defeat our noble goal of fighting income inequality. We could try to raise ridership fees to make up revenue deficits, but this would threaten an already decreasing ridership, potentially lowering it further and dissuading future passengers from utilizing the service.

One solution proposed by our Down the Road article 14 years ago was a gasoline tax of 25 cents per gallon to fund public transportation. The truth is, we want to dissuade gas-powered automobile use. More cars lead to more congestion and more pollution. Higher-income residents are more likely to own cars and less likely to use public transportation. We could utilize this tax both to increase funding while damming destructive tendencies. We cannot continue down our current path, which will lead to byzantine spaghetti roads clogged by cars all the while our ozone layer gets thinner and thinner. In addition, we can seek additional revenue by taxing dirty industries. If they are going to create pollution, then we need to invest in a cleaner future. It’s a fair deal. And of course, we can always start taxing the wealthy more.

Another more pragmatic solution would be to divert funds towards other means of transportation. Professor Lopez believes that perhaps it’s time we invest more in buses: “Light rail is often seen as attractive, but it is expensive, and the infrastructure is fixed. You have to commit to that line. Buses provide a lot more flexibility in terms of routes and timing in that you can easily adjust how often buses run and where they should go.” The data does bear this out. According to RTD’s Unaudited Monthly Financial Statements from December 2024, bus ridership has increased 4.1% while light rail ridership has seen a decrease of 12.4%. This suggests that buses are picking up the slack. The demand for transportation is still there — it’s just that buses have been more efficient in expanding their routes to cover a greater area.

While much of this article has been devoted to expanding public transit, we also must consider ways to make Denver more walkable for residents. Not only is walking the greenest option for transportation, it is also the healthiest and can help build up a strong society. It is imperative that we start improving pedestrian infrastructure and safety now. According to a recent report by NPR, 7,500 pedestrians were killed by drivers in 2023, which marked the highest total since 1981. This is in line with the Colorado Department of Transportation’s report that pedestrian deaths in the state have “increased 77% since 2018.” If we were to continue expanding our reliance on automobiles, we will have to continue to put more land towards streets. Shockingly, as of today, only 1.2% of land in the 35 largest metropolitan areas are “walkable” according to the World Economic Forum.

Boulder has made PBS’s list of most walkable medium or smaller cities while Denver managed to take 16th place according to Conde Nast Traveler. Surprisingly for such an active city, Denver fares poorly when ranked by cities with the most green space (calculated by total green area and parks). Denver sits at 68th, beaten out by its sister city, Colorado Springs, ranked 27th. Colorado’s reputation for active lifestyles and populations does not match its lack of walkability and green spaces. Our cities should better reflect this. The DME 2050 plan recognizes the importance of walkability. The plan calls for car-free zones in heavy pedestrian zones. The estimated budget of the project is $4,000,000 per mile. That might sound like a steep price, and, after reading about the boondoggle projects in this article you might be skeptical that the city is even capable of keeping that budget.

A major theme that this article would like to impart upon you is that all public work projects, if property funded and executed, could pay off dividends for the economy, public health, and the betterment of society. According to the World Economic Forum, walkable urban areas are less costly to maintain and run due to close proximity of destinations and require fewer, not more, government subsidies as the city no longer has to fix and repair deteriorating roads nor deal with the consequences of automobile accidents. More walkable areas and more public parks and playgrounds would, according to Denver’s Parks and Recreations Department, help expand access to active areas to which 52% of Denver’s children do not have access. Boulder’s Transportation Master Plan shares many of the same goals as Denver. Boulder hopes to create more separation between cars and pedestrians to make the city safer and create a more welcoming atmosphere.

Where do we go from here?

As we look at what has (or has not been) done and what is being proposed, it’s important to remind ourselves that there are major innovations on the horizon that could dramatically reinvent what we think of as transportation and that could reshape how we think of urban design. You have probably already seen driverless cars picking up passengers or tiny robots delivering food. Drone technology is slowly being introduced for package and food deliveries, and there are some exciting developments with the Jetsons fantasy of the flying car. In five or 10 years we could be having a very different discussion on what is being developed in our city and state than we are having now.

We have seen some changes and improvements in our infrastructure since the last time we explored this issue 14 years ago. Yet several major projects have either stalled and are, as of yet, unfinished or have not even gotten off the ground. But the problems still remain, have gotten worse, and will continue to worsen until action is taken. We should continue on, to just build the damn thing and get it over with. And we should continue to think about new ways we can give more residents greater access to transportation throughout our state and cities. We need to strive to make a sustainable, efficient, and equitable city. We can’t afford to wait. Let’s hope the next time we write about this, it will have a different tone, reflecting on the great progress we’ve made.

The post Transportation: Then, Now, Maybe Later appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

The picturesque red barn stands in contrast to the Flatirons and snowy peaks in the backdrop. Blocked by a major road to the north, fields spread out towards housing developments. Happy dogs run while barking, chickens cluck, and two sweet donkeys look onward. Theresa Schuller, prior to buying this Boulder County urban farm, had worked in agriculture education. She knew how to run a business, work the land, and care for animals. A hard worker, she has leaned into the challenges of keeping the farm afloat, but it has not protected her from the many trials that face Colorado farms and ranches.

For those who work the land, Colorado’s unique and varying climate offers benefits like sunshine and a longer growing season as well as challenges such as warm temperatures and arid conditions. Furthermore, an increase in the cost of living and land prices in Colorado has made it more difficult for farmers and ranchers to afford to grow their operations. Regardless of the hardships, those who work the land continue to adapt, finding new and creative ways to make money and engage with the consumer. Not all of the responsibility falls to the agriculturists — local government and the consumer are also taking on active roles to save the spirit of the American West.

Why Colorado flourishes

Both those who are indigenous to the land and those who originally settled in Colorado have cultivated resilience, thanks to the extreme terrain and weather. There is evidence that the ancestral people throughout the state adapted to the land and what it had to offer, foraging a wide variety of plants and roots for a diverse diet. While settlers came to Colorado for mining in the mid-nineteenth century, the Puebloan people had been using irrigation techniques to work the land for centuries.

As frontiersmen came to the state in search of precious metals and new opportunities, they became more desperate for food. In 1870, territorial governor Samuel Elbert told legislation, “You cannot work your mines profitable on imported bread. The thousands who now and will hereafter delve in these mountains and lift their glittering treasures to the sunlight must draw their sustenance from the fertile valleys that lie enveloped in their arms and stretch away from their feet.” This quote and movement demonstrate the growth of two major Colorado industries, which are still flourishing: mining and agriculture.

With a long history as an agricultural state, many of the generationally owned farms and ranches have found longtime success. Dawn Thilmany, agricultural economist and professor at Colorado State University, explains how the state’s environmental diversity has made it a place of prosperity historically. “We are a very unique agricultural state and the fact that the eastern side of our state looks a lot like the Midwest with lots of grain production supplies hot production [plants that can grow in extreme heat], and most recently in the last two decades, a lot of dairy production which mostly supports cheese for pizzas.”

Thilmany goes on to explain that the high-elevation mountainous zones and expansive public land have been the reason we’ve been a big player in the cattle and lamb industries for a long time. She goes on to mention the Western Slope and the West Coast-like climate are perfect for the abundant fruit trees.

Today, Colorado ranks in the top ten nationwide in several production areas, including cattle, potatoes, alfalfa, apples, peaches, onions, grapes, and even lemons. It is also the number one producer of proso millet, which is used in gluten-free products, beer production, and livestock feeding.

Obstacles in agriculture and how they are being addressed

Despite Colorado being a top producer in many areas, obstacles and hardships such as drought, land cost, water rights, and consumerism have all made it difficult for local farms and ranches to thrive.

This irrigated field in the Grand Valley is made green with Colorado River water. Upper Colorado River basin officials are restarting a program that could pay irrigators to conserve water. Photo courtesy of Aspen Journalism.

Problem: Water and climate change

Historically, the hardships faced by farmers and ranchers were taken for granted. The harsh and arid climate, while nurturing, also needed substantial work. According to the book “Adapting to the Land: A History of Agriculture in Colorado,” when the first agricultural settlement was founded in Greeley, it was referred to as The Great American Desert. Irrigation and water recirculation were crucial to keep plants thriving. However, drought and water rights laws have complicated this process.

According to the Statewide Water Supply Initiative, 89% of water in the state of Colorado is used in agriculture. Even with this high use, only 80% of the demand is met, meaning many farms and ranches cannot irrigate all of their commodities thoroughly. Water rights in Colorado is a complicated topic, but it is essential to know that less than 40% of the water that originates in Colorado is allocated to the state.

Water, or the lack thereof, has always been an issue in Colorado and only adds to the pressures of climate change. Like so many industries, agriculture is directly tied to the increase of greenhouse gases. However, unlike many industries, climate change directly and negatively impacts farmers’ and ranchers’ livelihood. Decreasing snowpack, warmer and drier seasons, and the constantly evolving growing season are making it harder for farms and ranches to continue to grow or raise livestock as they have done historically.

Solution: Water conservation

While it might be difficult for golf enthusiasts or those with well-manicured lawns to accept water restrictions, it is even more unreasonable for agriculture to cut down on water usage. According to Water Education Colorado, agriculture is one of the biggest industries in the state, employing 195,000 people and generating $47 billion in economic activity annually.

There are numerous strategies that farms and ranches can employ to conserve water, including:

• • Regenerative agriculture: Engaging in practices such as no-till agriculture, diverse crop rotation, and grazing rotations to allow the land to rest and encourage regeneration of the soil to increase nutrients.
  • Upgrading agricultural infrastructure and operations: Using up-to-date agriculture technology research and programs to streamline water use, which includes monitoring irrigation gauges, checking soil for changes, and using newer tools to prevent water loss.

• Crop shifting: Switching to less water-dependent crops that grow better in the arid climate.

• Voluntary and temporary fallow: A deliberate practice to allow land to rest and recover for at least one season. This will help restore some waterways and create more ecological diversity, helping pollinators and plants alike.

Unfortunately, none of these solutions is extremely affordable. Currently, federal grants through the Water-Saving Commodities Program are designed to help farms and ranches prioritize conservation without the risk of losing income or their livelihood.

Problem: Land costs

Cost per acre has gradually increased since 2004, going from $891 to $2,610 per acre in 2023. The average size of a farm in Colorado is 818 square acres, making the purchase of land for a new or growing farm a serious investment. Even for already-existing farms, the increased land costs also increase property taxes.

With Colorado becoming a popular place to live in the past few years, available land decreases as the development of new homes increases, resulting in greater demand. This can incentivize land owners to sell to developers and diminish the existing farms in return for a lucrative payday.

Danielle Trotta, the Colorado Proud program manager, explains that this has put many long-time farmers and ranchers in the difficult position of being under-employed. “Many farmers and ranchers need to find jobs and employment elsewhere because they are seeing less of that dollar.” She explains that many who are not looking for part-time employment outside of their farm or ranch are looking for ways to diversify their income.

Solution: Diversifying revenue and making the most of the land

Many farms and ranches are getting creative in how they make money, leaning into tourism and engaging the local economy. Shuller, who runs her small farm in Boulder, has found that leaning into community service can be a symbiotic relationship.

I have had CSU classes come here as part of their programming. I have a solar corporation locally that has its employees come and volunteer here as part of its community program. We have farm dinners here where people can come and have a meal that’s farm to table, where they can eat local food and enjoy the farm. We grow and sell food to the school food program for children’s lunches, as well as host the school district kitchen staff, so they can learn about one of the farms that produce their food. We hosted a benefit for People and Pollinators Action Network, which is a nonprofit that supports policy and community around pollinators.

On top of these community-based events, Shuller also hosts weddings and company events in the rustic and historic barn, giving people a unique opportunity to celebrate on a working farm. While there are many opportunities, resources are not readily available for farmers to find these creative solutions, meaning those with business savvy are more likely to flourish.

Solution: Government programs and grants

Even if finding ways to make the most of the expensive land, a farm or ranch might still need assistance in starting or expanding. Trotta explains, “Land in Colorado is a super rare commodity, especially up on the Front Range with urbanization. And so there are some programs that that department supports.” She goes on to say that whether it’s a first-time farmer or rancher who needs help getting started, an agriculturist who is looking to scale up, or farmers and ranchers who are looking to hire interns or employees, the goal is to make the farmer or rancher successful in either staying on their land or growing their land size if desired.

Problem: Bigbox stores

With inflation, the affordability of food is a significant stress, not just to farmers and ranchers but also to the average consumer. Thilmany explains, “Farms are competing with very, very big retail food stores.?Finding a Walmart, Safeway, or Costco is easy, but it will be pretty hard to find local products there.”

While the average local farmer or rancher, also dealing with inflation, has to face the costs of tools, fertilizer, and feed, they are also trying to turn a profit, causing them to increase their prices. Big-box stores employ buyers, whose job is to find the cheapest solution, though it is not always the most environmentally sound.

In a recent Colorado Attitudes Survey completed by the Colorado Department of Agriculture, 73% of the 1,100 households questioned believed that local farms and ranches were crucial to the economic resilience of the state. Furthermore, 79% of those households believed that the existence of farms and ranches increased their quality of life living in Colorado. Furthering this, 60% of respondents stated that food being locally grown or raised influenced their purchasing decisions, meaning, if given the option, consumers would lean local.

Solution: Consumer-to-production relations

Trotta emphasizes the idea that buying local not only helps the farm or ranch but is also empowering to the individual and the community. “Building your community and your backyard with your food dollars and how you spend them is just a great way that everyone can feel like they’re making a difference.” She goes on to explain that using the Colorado Proud webpage can be a resourceful way to find what is in your area. “It will give you a list of farms, ranches, roadside stands, and agritourism.” Also recommended is the Facebook Group Shop Colorado Farms, which helps people find meat, dairy, veggies, and other homegrown products in their area.

Those who want to depend less on technology can use the farmer’s market season to build relationships with local growers and raisers and learn how to support their business. Thilmany recommends allocating a certain percentage of a monthly food budget to local use, acknowledging food is expensive, but it is crucial for our economy to flourish.

Solution: Increased local products sold in grocery stores

Taking the load off of the consumer and the rancher to connect directly, there is also the option for more prominent grocery to support local food production. Beyond helping the individual consumer find local farms and ranches, Colorado Proud also works to market and increase sales of state-produced products in box grocery stores. While the food might still be slightly more expensive, it has cut out the mental load of finding the product. Continuing to buy these products will encourage grocery stores to keep them in supply.

Agriculture is something that Coloradans should be proud of — the state sources an array of food and beverages that have notoriety nationwide. However, the responsibility of protecting the industry does not just fall on the shoulders of farmers and ranchers. It is up to the government and consumers to work together to support programs and incentives that encourage conservation while financially aiding food production. From peaches to pollinators, cattle to corn, our land is worth protecting.

The post The Evolution of Agriculture in Colorado appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

We’re over three months into the Trump administration’s second 4-year term, and the Colorado legislature has roughly a month left in their 2025 legislative session.The Trump administration’s bloodlust for dinosaur juice is no secret, but neither is the fact that Colorado’s oil and gas regulations comprise the most “robust” program in the nation and worldwide per Stefanie Shoup, director of the Office of Innovation and Planning at Colorado’s Air Pollution Control Division.

Colorado is the seventh highest oil and gas producing state in the country just behind Texas. On a local level, Broomfield is the eighth highest county in the state for production, and Weld County is No. 1 in the state and fifth nationally. To outsiders, Colorado is full of mountain views, red rocks, and nary a fracking pad in sight. The inclusion of three oil rigs on a ceramic Starbucks mug for our state led to local outrage that didn’t take into account the reality of Colorado’s oil production.

According to one angry X user:“@Starbucks, CO is a beautiful state represented by mountains, blue skies, and skiing. Oil and Gas harms our kids and environment. #OilAndGasIsNotColorado”

On a state level, Colorado officeholders hail most often from the Democratic Party. We even have cute names like “ trifecta” and “triplex” to capture when the Democratic Party controls the offices of governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and both chambers of the state legislature. I’d argue Governor Polis eschews all labels except for “billionaire.”

Something Polis did that was “innovative” to his fans but equivocal in my opinion, was brokering a truce between oil and gas and environmental groups in mid 2024. Democrats agreed to squash three bills meant to reduce ozone and rein in the oil and gas industry’s air pollution. In turn, oil and gas producers tabled their ballot initiatives banning restrictions on gas appliances in new buildings and adding Republicans and Independents to the state air pollution commission.

The trade off codified the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission’s (formerly known as Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Committee until 2023) rules to reduce nitrous oxide nitrogen from oil and gas operations in certain areas by 50% by 2030 relative to 2017 levels and mandated an orphan and marginal well mitigation fee of $115 per well in SB 24-229. Even though SB 24-229 became effective May 16, 2024, the logistical details for the marginal well fee are about as clear as our air quality. “Our staff will develop that criteria this spring for the April (2025) launch,” said Kristin Kemp, public information officer and community relations manager for the ECMC.

Any blowback against oil and gas is more likely to come from inside a courtroom. In a stunning rebuke, a state court judge earlier this year ruled against a Denver oil and gas company’s attempt to toss out a regulator’s’ 2023 order fining the company,  (K.P. Kauffman Co.,) almost $2 million and could revoke the company’s license to operate in Colorado. But until K.P. Kauffman ceases operations in Colorado, it’s premature to call this a regulatory win.

In a business as usual 4-to-1 vote, the ECMC just approved Civitas Resources’ plan to drill 26 wells, extending five miles underneath Erie from a 19-acre location in Weld County just outside city limits. The so-called Draco site is next to the Southern Land Company’s planned 1,400-home subdivision. Prior to approval, the ECMC had asked Civitas to find another site, but when Civitas said it looked at two other sites and determined them “infeasible,” the ECMC approved the original site they wanted.

Ok so there’s bills, commissions, and judicial rulings, but what about our champions in the state capitol? Under the 24k gold dome at Colfax and Broadway, Democrats have a 22-to-12 advantage in the Colorado State Senate and a 43-to-22 advantage in the State House. But besides a bipartisan push for nuclear power to be deemed a clean energy source in HB25-1040, the so-called push to regulate oil and gas looks more like a shoulder shrug.

In areas like Erie, neither Republican State Rep. Dan Woog, House District 19, or Democratic State Senator Katie Wallace, Senate District 17, sponsored any bills related to oil and gas. In Broomfield, State Senator Faith Winter was one of four Democratic sponsors to adopt rules regarding the implementation of advanced leak detection of gas pipelines with HB 25-1280, but as of now, it’s still making its way through committees.

Newly confirmed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said he views those who want to develop resources on federal lands as “customers” who are contributing to the national “balance sheet.” Note that Burgum was confirmed 80-to-17 with Colorado’s two Democratic Senators voting yes. It’s true that federally owned land is predominantly located west of the Continental Divide and greenlighting more oil and gas operations depends on state and local factors, but those who share the Trump administration’s desires to plunder and pillage, or just acquiesce, make up these groups.

What does this complicated but overall favorable landscape mean for the health of our state’s oil and gas sector? What about Coloradans’ health?

Let’s look at how many oil and gas wells currently exist, whether more permits are being approved in our state with a particular focus on Weld and Broomfield counties where Yellow Scene Magazine (YS) is created, sourced, and distributed.

There are 123,491 wells that have been drilled in the state since data recording began in 1998. Currently, there are three pending wells for Adams County and 28 for Weld County.

Looking at the trend of oil and gas wells completed in Colorado on a year-to-year basis, there has been a significant decline since a peak in 2008 of 3,898 to to 40 2017, which was the last year with completed wells. But what about spills, active and resolved, from operations approved years before?

Adams, Broomfield, Boulder, and Weld counties had 1,459 spills for those four counties in 2024. Remember, these are just spills when there are operators present. What about orphan wells where operators cannot or will not clean up?

The risks to health and environment are numerous and even more of an issue without someone to foot the bill. Orphan wells can leak oil, gas, and other pollutants into groundwater, potentially contaminating drinking water sources. Leaking wells can release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and other harmful substances like hydrogen sulfide, benzene, and arsenic into the air, contributing to air pollution and climate change.Leaks can contaminate the soil with oil, gas, and other chemicals, harming plant life and potentially impacting nearby ecosystems. Pollution from orphan wells can harm wildlife by contaminating their habitats and food sources.

Exposure to methane and other pollutants from leaking wells can cause respiratory problems, including asthma attacks. Exposure to benzene and other carcinogens can increase the risk of cancers, notably leukemia, blood, liver, and kidney. Long-term exposure to pollutants, like hydrogen sulfide, from leaking wells can irritate the eyes, nose, and throat; cause breathing problems, headaches, dizziness, and nausea; and are especially problematic for those who already have respiratory issues like asthma, COPD, etc. If you can smell rotten eggs, it’s already a problem, and good luck getting the emitter to stop.

Methane, an odorless gas, can seep into homes, offices, schools, and other nearby buildings without a trace, causing serious health problems and symptoms like nausea, weakness, vomiting, and convulsions. In high concentrations, methane exposure can cause coma and even death. It is also highly explosive.

But didn’t we do something about orphaned wells?

Yes, in 2022, the Colorado Legislature passed SB22-198 to address orphaned wells in Colorado by creating a fee-based system where oil and gas operators pay per well, and monies from the fund go to pay the nearly $100,000 to clean up and seal each orphan well. The latest estimate is that 1,725 abandoned wells exist in Colorado.

On Aug. 1, 2022, the first mitigation fee payment was due, and on April 30,2023 forward, operators were required to pay the annual fee. The initial fees were $225 per well for operators with an average daily per-well production greater than 15 barrels of oil equivalent or 22 one thousand cubic feet of natural gas equivalent for the previous calendar year; and $125 for operators with an average daily per well production less than or equal to 15 BOE or 22 MCFE for the previous calendar year. Effective April 2025, oil and gas operators will pay a flat fee of $115 per well to fund the plugging of marginal wells in Colorado.

When contacted by this reporter about how someone can get data about the payments from producers, ECMC employees Megan Adamczyk, community relations liaison, and Kristin Kemp, community relations manager, replied:.“Payments for both the orphan well mitigation fee and marginal well mitigation fee are due by April 30th of each year. In FY 2024, the amount of mitigation fees collected equals $8,789,326. There is currently no data to provide for the marginal well fee since this is the first year of this fee.”

But who is paying? Who isn’t? If this went into effect in August 2022, we should have had three payment dates by this point.

“An operator will pay the orphan well mitigation fee for every well it operates as of December 31 of the previous calendar year,” Adamczyk and Kemp explained further. “After a well is spud, the operator will pay an annual mitigation fee for the well until it is properly plugged and abandoned. Mitigation fee amounts are dependent on the amount of production activity for each well. The operators who pay the orphan well mitigation fee will also pay the marginal well fee. There is no breakdown for the marginal well fee because the fee payments are not yet paid since the due date is April 30, 2025.”

And are there consequences for companies who are late paying or who aren’t paying?

“If an operator is late with a payment,” Adamczyk and Kemp said, “we contact the operator and notify them the payment is past due. The operator will typically pay the fees which rectifies the situation. If a payment is not received, the staff can notify ECMC’s Enforcement Unit, and they may issue a warning letter to the operator regarding missing fee payments. This would be a rule 205.c violation.”

Are oil and gas companies leaving Colorado with all of these rules, agencies, and regulations?

It appears yes, a few are, but not the big players. Ryan Hill, an analyst at Enverus Intelligence Research said there is concern that lawmakers and regulators will continue to add new environmental rules. But the companies operating in Colorado, he called them the “Big Three:” Chevron, Civitas Resources, and Occidental Petroleum, can largely manage the challenge.

Getting an industry perspective is difficult outside of company spokespersons and dedicated marketing and public relations staff. This is by design as a former oil and gas employee, Karen Tonso, relayed, “It’s almost a closed society. You cannot talk to anyone or be interviewed about your work. We all signed upon exit NDAs.” But those in adjacent and complementary roles were more willing to talk about what is happening in the industry the last few years.

Industry insiders weigh in

Jack Rosenthal, geologist and founder of Scale Geo, a company formed to provide geological and strategic consulting services to oil and gas producers, replied when  asked about the effects of oil and gas regulation and if oil and gas companies are doing more, less, or the same business in the state due to the regulations.

His answer? “There are four key elements that have steered changes in oil and gas development over the past five years: commodity prices, regulation, cost, and a shift towards less growth and more cash flow or dividends, which has been market driven. Oil and gas companies have certainly shied away from development activity in Colorado due to the regulatory environment.”

Rosenthal continued, explaining exactly how the rulemaking works. “Western Colorado is dominated by federally owned mineral rights,” he said, “which are governed by the Bureau of Land Management. There, federal rulemaking associated with leasing and permitting is impactful. As I recall, many of the emission monitoring rules and permitting rules were put in place prior to the pandemic.

“Those changes have made it harder (more costly) for small companies to operate and have influenced the rash of company consolidation in northeastern Colorado more recently. It is also easy for the new administration to say they’ll roll back lots of regulations, but since the local state regs are in place, I don’t think that will change anything.”

But so much of the oil and gas industry’s activities are dictated by the cost of materials, Rosenthal explained. “When prices are high, companies are eager to drill, and they generally slow down activity during periods of lower pricing. Oil prices have a major impact on activity in northeast Colorado, while western Colorado is controlled by natural gas pricing.” With the cost of materials, especially steel, rising significantly since 2020, companies have been particularly interested in drilling new wells.

“Last but certainly not the least is a broad industry shift towards less growth over the past five years or so,” Rosenthal explained. “Before the pandemic, companies poured money into new drilling to increase their daily production rates, and valuations increased as daily production (and associated reserves) increased.”

The larger picture is a complicated one indeed. If we focus too intently on what regulations, commissions, legislators, and industry are doing, we’re going to become overwhelmed and confused. It’s by design. If you think having more Democrats in state office means they’re fighting against the industry, news of oil and gas donations to Democratic House Speaker Julie McCluskie and the Colorado Democratic Party should give you pause.

All the commissions and regulations are meaningless if industry doesn’t change their behavior, and why should they when the potential of fines and recordkeeping seems to be the most severe repercussions they face? The rare wins, where oil and gas producers pick up their ball and go home — but they keep looking to play elsewhere — have happened when community members organize, run for office and commissions, and make “doing business” more of a headache than profitable.

If the decision makers are local and would be affected by oil and gas development, there’s a better chance they would be more likely to listen to their constituents who they’ll have to see on a regular basis. After all, many oil and gas executives call Boulder, Cherry Creek, or Greenwood Village home and even though the Denver-Julesburg Basin extends to these high-income zip codes, oil and gas operations never will. In the least crass way to put it without losing the point, you don’t go to the bathroom if you also have to eat there.

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The post Colorado’s Oil and Gas Landscape May Seem Complicated, but the Reality Isn’t appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Living in Colorado is hard. It’s not just the 8-foot snow drifts in the driveway. It’s the sheer cost of housing. Average housing costs range from $1,282 to $2,309 per month across the state, which is a contributing factor to issues like rising homelessness, reduced access to healthcare, and less money for basic needs like food and clothing. The rising strain on the housing market is partially due to national problems like inflation. Colorado is also a highly desirable place to live, creating a shortage of housing opportunities. Another issue revolves around corporations and investors that buy hundreds of properties across the state, single-handedly causing a spike in cost for the rest of us.

The Impact of Investors on Local Residents

The 2008 housing crisis created a new generation of homeowners and investors intent on reaping the benefits of an emaciated housing market. One concerning trend over the past 16 years revolved around the growing number of investors, as well as a cultural shift that demanded a higher return on the investment, contributing to skyrocketing rental prices in places where rent control is not present. The result is that it has become increasingly difficult to become a first-time homeowner in places like Colorado, and some populations are suffering more than others. 

A 2022 report showed that investors were more likely to head to cities where mortgage applications were being denied, a significant non-white population existed, and home prices were lower than the national average. Some states have begun to regulate investor activity like Georgia, Texas, and Arkansas, which could indicate that the nation is experiencing a growing problem. Colorado is experiencing a similarly distressed housing market. 

In 2022, a California corporation that had a history of raising rents by 50% announced its intention to buy a mobile home community in southwestern Colorado. Recognizing the potential devastation such a purchase would cause, community members rallied to fight the purchase. The city of Durango was already under duress since the post-Covid housing boom caused a 30% increase in property values across the region. Rising mobile home costs would further heighten those circumstances, likely resulting in community members leaving the area. 

After several months of effort, the community was able to work with the Elevation Community Land Trust to halt the sale. Today, the trust is working in conjunction with locals to make home ownership more feasible, although many towns in Colorado haven’t been so lucky. 

In 2021 alone, Texas-based corporation Invitation Homes purchased 350 homes in the Denver area. In 2019, the company purchased 193 homes. And in many cases, the company pays significantly over the asking price to acquire property. Today, Invitation Homes owns more than 80,000 properties across the nation. 

This trend indicates a growing interest in popular real estate markets like Colorado’s. It also falsely increases the value of properties, which pushes out the average home buyer in the region. Some studies even show that corporations are more likely to increase rent, evict tenants, and poorly maintain the properties in question. The corporate buyout of residential properties also means that decisions regarding the properties are typically made without local input. 

Invitation Homes declined to comment on its recent participation in the housing market in Colorado. 

The big buyout

After the 2008 financial crisis, the federal government started to provide incentives for corporations to buy foreclosed, residential properties. Fifteen years later, it was estimated that investors owned about 30% of residential properties across the country. This number sparks frustration from potential homebuyers who cite that investors inflate the cost of desirable markets in addition to providing cash offers well above the market price to sellers that the average American cannot match. Supporters of the buyouts claim that the market share is small enough to be inconsequential. 

In 2021 alone, investors spent $50 billion to buy about 80,000 houses across the nation. Three-quarters of those homes were purchased in cash, and 75% of the purchases were single-family homes. The city of Atlanta suffered the most from this particular buyout after investors purchased 32.7% of all homes for sale in the region. Some estimates suggest that investors will maintain a 40% market share of single-family homes by 2030. 

While slightly lower than the national average, Colorado contains a desirable market that has seen similar investment trends. In fact, in 2021, investors purchased 24% of residential properties across the region. 

Although anecdotal evidence suggests that some sellers are resistant to working with investors, the amount of money and cash value that many corporations provide is difficult to refuse. Investors often allow the seller to avoid costly repairs and remodeling prior to selling, which is another reason why working with a corporation can be appealing. The same moral dilemma is also prevalent among realtors, who make a living based on the percentage of a sale. The higher the listing, the more profitable it is for the broker, which incentivizes working with buyers who can offer more than the listing price. 

Are investors slowing down?

Colorado Springs-based realtor and analyst, Rob Thompson, has been an agent in the region for more than a decade. His focus is primarily on residential or multi-family properties. As a result, Thompson has had front-row seats to the latest investor trends across the city. 

In an interview, Thompson told Yellow Scene Magazine that he is personally witnessing fewer investor transactions in Colorado Springs. “…originally there [were]  a lot. Now though, [they’ve] backed off”.

Likely as a result of the rising cost of real estate, Thompson noticed a downward trend from investors. “ …A hedge fund actually called awhile back and they were…asking me about the market and what I thought. An analysis showed the top 100 sub-areas at the time were selling above 100% on the close to list price ratio”. Agreeing on the market’s status, the hedge fund told Thompson, “They were leaving the market, and they wouldn’t be back for a couple of years.”

The hedge fund was not the only company to make this decision. While many realtors and market watchers suggest that Colorado’s real estate market is trending in favor of sellers, Thompson noted that 23% of homes are currently being pulled off of the market, withdrawn, expired, or canceled. “So is it really a seller’s market if 23% of the market is pulling off the market? No, it’s not,” he said. Investors and average home buyers are witnessing a reduction in affordability, which is what Thompson thinks is driving the downward trend. 

Yet Thompson suggested the slowing investment trend is largely beneficial. “I think it’s a good thing, because it’s hard to compete with somebody who has a million dollars in cash. So, it’s a good thing for the average consumer”. 

Market Implications for the Average Buyer

As housing prices continue to climb, one of Thompson’s greatest concerns revolves around the average buyer’s ability to climb the real estate ladder. At one point in time, locals would purchase a property, sell it at a slight profit, and use the excess to land a better home. Today many buyers are facing low wages as well as inflated home prices, which makes owning a property extremely difficult. As a result, many buyers may be getting in over their heads, which could result in foreclosures. 

An increase in wages or reduction in cost could level the market, but Thompson thinks neither is imminent. “…I don’t think we’re going to see significant price drops…So when people say [the market is] gonna crash and burn, I don’t think it is. The government’s already showing that they will backstop the market to the tune of trillions of dollars in free money essentially to these institutions, right when you look at the M2 money supply”.

Another reality is that manually lowering home prices could be detrimental to some existing homeowners. “…consider what would happen if they did let prices fall? Or if a black swan event occurs, does that drop those prices? You’re talking about wiping out the equity of tens of thousands of homeowners, especially those who bought through COVID,” said Thompson. 

Studies Surrounding Investor Ownership

One recent Netherland-based study prohibited investors from purchasing single-family homes in a certain neighborhood. The investor ban increased middle-class home ownership in the neighborhood, although those who purchased homes were affluent, and the shift led to increased rent in the region. However, the home value did not increase like it often does when investors are at work. 

A common argument that anti-investors pose revolves around gentrification. However, a 2022 study demonstrated that investor home ownership maintained diversity but increased the cost of rent. Both of these studies demonstrate that some common assumptions surrounding the impact of investor properties are unfounded. So, the path to more equitable housing is unclear. 

The Future of Residential Home Ownership in Colorado

Determining when to buy a home can be a difficult process for anyone, but the current market is particularly challenging. Experts suggest that Colorado’s housing prices will continue to climb into 2025, although the rate of price growth may slow. 

In October of last year, available properties for sale in the United States fell by 2% over the previous year. Realtor.com noted that while there was a slight decline in property values nationwide, they’ve largely stayed the same due to declining inventory, and it is unlikely that the market will correct before the end of the decade. 

Thompson agreed that local real estate is unlikely to become more affordable in the near future. “I wouldn’t be surprised if home prices double in the next 10, 15, or 20 years as a function of inflation. Not as a function of market health,” he said. 

One potential reason why the average person won’t be able to keep up with investors is because of lagging wages. “What someone could afford 5 years ago is much different from what they can afford now. Affordability is driving a lot of the tension in the market”.

Budding Investor Regulations Across the State

It is easy to write corporations off as the “bad guys” while measuring housing analytics across Colorado. But who or what is at fault for the affordability crisis is complicated. 

“I wouldn’t blame institutional investors solely — they are a side effect,” said Thompson. 

He said that even if the government attempted to limit corporate buyouts, “the system will simply react by coming up with a workaround. …they would have designated someone as a primary purchaser and done it anyway. We’re chasing a problem that’s a systemic problem, in my opinion”. He added, “That’s not to defend the corporations.” 

Some government officials have taken notice of the rising housing share among investors and suggested heavily taxing investor purchases. Last year, a task force was established to investigate corporate ownership of housing in Colorado since 2008. The bill highlights the need for an investigation into corporate housing ownership to reduce its negative impacts. 

The bill was approved in June and enacted in August of last year. The task force’s main focus is on single-family homes, townhomes, and condominiums, and the data is expected to be used to make suggestions to Congress. The main purpose of a task force is to collect information. It is not yet clear whether or not Colorado’s government will make adaptations based on the task force’s findings. 

Creating More Affordable Housing Options

Nationally, the Biden administration has also taken steps to create more affordability across the housing market by supporting the conversion of commercial properties into residential properties. At the beginning of 2021, about 12,100 properties had been successfully converted from offices to apartment buildings across the United States. Three years later, the country contains 55,300 properties of the same description — a 357% increase. 

In August of last year, Governor Polis also signed an executive order into effect that should speed up the approval of loans and grants for affordable housing projects. 

At this point in time, Baby Boomers own 72% of the nation’s wealth and 38% of the nation’s homes. That wealth will be passed down to future generations, continuing to support a disproportional market share while those who do not inherit money and property will be forced into co-ownership.

Thompson suggested that single buyers are suffering the most from this market, but that there are ways to fight back. “There is a middle layer of things we can do. For example, what if you and I got the correct license and created a real estate investment trust and a charter? We raise the money and buy an apartment building. We set the rates at affordable rates. The market rent might be $1800 but we’ll set them at $1100. And we’re going to determine that profit is enough for us and our investors…But it’s got to be me and you – an individual acting with other individuals for community-oriented solutions.”

Jonathan Self, a Chicago-based broker, told Forbes that multi-generational homes and co-ownership will be the future of home ownership. “It’s simply going to happen — the restriction of inventory, the average American’s spending threshold, and the demand for housing are all conspiring to change how we view housing in America,” he said. 

The path to equitable housing is complicated, but as states become more and more impacted by rising home prices, some people are calling for transparency surrounding the entity that owns the home, tenant protections, and systematic change. Colorado is currently struggling with unaffordable housing like much of the nation, but renewed attention and efforts to collect data surrounding the changes could help to enact change to support the average person.

The post Are Residential Corporate Buyouts Slowing Across Colorado? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

In Nevada’s monstrous Lake Mead Reservoir, the term “dead pool” has a dual meaning. For hydrologists, dead pool represents a catastrophically low water level in a reservoir below which the water can no longer pass through the outlet works of the dam or produce electricity. Dead pool in Lake Mead might also relate to the hundreds of human bodies concealed within its depths, some of them Las Vegas mob hits, most of them unrecovered drowning victims. In recent years Lake Mead’s water level has plummeted alarmingly towards dead pool and, as it does so, has exposed human remains along new shorelines.

Lake Mead currently sports a giant white “bathtub” ring indicating the newly exposed land. When the lake reached its lowest level in 2022, the ring was nearly 200 vertical feet, and the reservoir held only 30% of its capacity. Apocalyptic predictions of the reservoir’s doom flooded the national media. Should Lake Mead reach dead pool, tens of millions of Americans would lose power, water faucets would run dry in many cities, and hundreds of thousands of acres of some of America’s most important agricultural land would dry up.

The water level has since risen about 30 feet because of a lucky break. The southern Rockies had an epic snow year in 2023 and unleashed a monster runoff which helped replenish the Colorado River Basin including Lake Mead. But one very good snow year cannot reverse a multi-decade megadrought, and demand for Colorado River water continues to grow year by year. It’s been decades since the river flowed regularly into the ocean. All of its water is now used up before it gets to the sea. In northern Mexico, south of the Arizona border, what used to be a vast wetland delta full of wildlife has turned into a dusty wasteland. Demand for the river system’s water continues to grow while the megadrought in the Southwest marches on in the near future harbors a potential water catastrophe.

Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona, USA. The Colorado river behind the dam, surrounding by red rocks, desert, and mountain.

A river by any other name

The official source of any river is mostly an arbitrary designation based on the happenstance of geographic naming. Both the Colorado and Mississippi Rivers, for example, have official sources that make little logical sense. A river, if viewed from above, resembles a giant leafless tree with ever smaller branches extending in all directions throughout the river’s basin in a fractal pattern. A river like the Colorado does not have a single source; rather it has hundreds of thousands of them throughout its vast drainage basin spread out over thousands of miles.

However, if we were to consider a river’s most logical single source to be the point on the river system that is the farthest from its mouth in river miles, then the source of the Colorado River is in west-central Wyoming where the Green River begins, not in the Colorado Mountains. The Green and Colorado Rivers merge in the middle of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. Upstream from there, the Green is more than twice as long as the upper Colorado River branch. Had the entire river been named the Green — which it almost was — then its official source would most certainly be in Wyoming, not Colorado. Similarly, the source of the Mississippi should be the headwaters of the Missouri River in Montana instead of its officially recognized source in Minnesota, which is hundreds of river miles closer to the Gulf of Mexico than it is the start of the Missouri.

Where does the water come from?

Some of the water that fills Lake Mead starts as snowmelt high up in the Never Summer Mountain Range near Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Even up there where the Colorado River system is nothing more than a series of tiny mountain creeks, we begin to consume its waters. The first users of the Colorado’s water are you, me, and the rest of our neighbors here in the cities of the Front Range.

Unless you are on a well system, when you turn on your water faucet you are probably consuming water that was brought to you through a tunnel under the Continental Divide from the headwaters of the Colorado River. There are eight such water diversions from the Western Slope to the Front Range, the biggest of which is the Big Thompson Project. There is also the Grand Ditch, the Moffat Tunnel, the Roberts Tunnel, the Continental Hoosier System, the Homestake Project, the Twin Lakes Tunnel, and the Fry-Ark Project which provides water for Colorado Springs. Collectively they transfer almost a half million acre-feet of water annually from the Western Slope to the Front Range, all from the Colorado River’s headwater streams including the Eagle, Fryingpan, Roaring Fork, Blue, and Fraser Rivers.

The longest of these tunnels is the Alva B. Adams at 13.1 miles long and 10 feet wide, part of the Big Thompson Project. It passes right under the middle of Rocky Mountain National Park and emerges near the aptly named East Portal Campground.

dam on the South Platte River in northern Colorado below Denver, late fall scenery

Why don’t we just use the water from the South Platte? The reason is that 80% of Colorado’s population lives east of the Continental Divide while 80% of the state’s natural water supply flows west of the divide. Add to that the needs of Colorado’s thirsty Eastern Plains farms, and you have a mismatch between the location of water demand and the location of most of the water supply. The South Platte River just isn’t big enough.

This is a scenario that plays out in similar ways along the entire length of the Colorado River into northern Mexico. Along the river’s course, there are no large cities on or near its banks. The cities, Indian tribes, desert farms, and golf courses that depend on the river’s waters are scattered throughout this sparse land from the Pacific Coast to the High Plains. Forty million people use Colorado River water, most of them residing in cities far too large for their arid environments. And while the South Platte River isn’t big enough to meet the demand of the Front Range, the larger Colorado River is no longer big enough to meet the water demands of all seven states in its basin plus northern Mexico.

Mighty demand on the mighty Colorado

We think of the Colorado River as one of North America’s largest, and in terms of the geographic size of its basin, that’s true. It drains a vast area from northern Wyoming south to Mexico and from eastern California west to a thousand-plus-mile stretch of the Rocky Mountains. But in terms of water volume or discharge, the Colorado River is surprisingly small.

Thirty-six rivers in the United States carry more natural water than the Colorado River. The Mississippi carries 27 times the amount. The Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest is about 13 times larger by volume. The Yukon? Ten times larger. Even the lowly Mobile River, which is only 72 miles long, carries three times the amount of water compared to the Colorado River. We are expecting a lot from a river that is far smaller by volume than most of us realize and highly susceptible to climate changes, natural and man-made alike.

Human-caused climate change is widely believed to be a contributing factor to the current stress on the Colorado River Basin, but it is only one of many compounding variables. This is a land where even natural climate change is believed by many experts to be the primary cause of the rise and fall of whole civilizations. The climate and geological record show that megadroughts lasting several decades or more are normal here. The current megadrought is about 23 years running and coincides with significant population growth in the Southwest. It’s possible that it may turn around soon. We can hope that the big winter of 2023 — and thankfully another healthy snow year in 2024 — represents the beginning of a turning point into a wetter trend. If that happens, we will have gotten very lucky. Or it may just be a blip in a drought that has another century or more to go, for even megadroughts have wet years within them. Nobody knows which way it will go. Therefore, we must adapt and plan for the worst-case scenario.

Studying the ancient human artifacts and geologic strata of the area can unlock secrets of the past that can help us plan for the future. According to the book “Where the Water Goes” by David Owen, around the year 600 A.D., the Hohokam people “built and maintained what was then one of the world’s largest and most advanced irrigation systems in what’s now southern Arizona.”

This ancient agricultural society “diverted water from two Colorado River tributaries, the Gila and the Salt, and fed it into extensive networks of canals and ditches, with which they irrigated tens of thousands of acres of agricultural land roughly where metropolitan Phoenix is today,” wrote Owen. “Then, around 1450, the Hohokam and their complex agricultural society disappeared.” No one knows definitively why the society vanished, but one theory is that the cumulative effects of irrigation on the soil caused massive crop failures because of dissolved salts that leached into the soil and groundwater over the centuries, ultimately killing the harvest.

If that’s the correct theory, it demonstrates the importance of adaptation to changing conditions, which is exactly the kind of thing we are facing now in the same region. And, again, the needed adaptation likely must look to agriculture as the single most important contributing factor. The urban demand for the Colorado River’s water is dwarfed by the agricultural production of the area. California’s Imperial Valley sees less than three inches of annual rainfall, and yet it is an enormous producer of year-round produce, including 85% of America’s winter harvest from leafy greens to citrus fruits. The Imperial Valley alone receives an annual allotment of 3.8 million acre-feet of water from the river, which is about what the entire state of Colorado receives and a full 1.5 million acre-feet more than the entire state of Arizona.

Despite popular belief and convenient assumptions due to its proximity to Lake Mead, Las Vegas is only a minor contributor to the pressure on the Colorado River Basin. In fact, Las Vegas represents an exemplary example of urban water management headed in the right direction. Three quarters of a million more people live in the Las Vegas area now compared to just 20 years ago, but during that same period, the city has managed to reduce its water consumption by a staggering 30% or more, mostly through practical laws and incentives.

As admirable as Las Vegas’ water policies have been, the reality is that urban water management, no matter how successful, can only make a small dent in the problem. Desert golf courses and casino fountains make for easy scapegoats, but it is irrigation-based agriculture that is by far the largest draw of Colorado River water. Food production along with the multi-decade megadrought is why Lake Mead is falling and threatening to reach the dreaded dead pool level.

Who owns the water?

Water rights law is extremely complicated, and in the West, it can seem to make little sense in some cases. Unlike most of the world, even in the eastern United States, western water rights are based on the principle of “prior appropriation.” In layperson’s terms, this means that the first person to use the water has first rights to the amount of water they use regardless of where they are.

In the Colorado River Basin, the “law of the river,” as they say, was established over 100 years ago in the Colorado River Compact. This legal agreement divides the seven states in the basin into two halves, the upper basin and the lower basin. Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico are in the upper basin. California, Arizona, and Nevada make up the lower basin. One of the long-standing issues is that most of the water comes from the upper basin, but most of the consumption demand is in the lower basin, and this misalignment is getting bigger. The Colorado River also flows into northern Mexico before its mouth at the Gulf of California, so Mexico also has a small portion of the water rights. The Colorado River Compact gives each basin 50% of the U.S. rights to the water, but the upper basin states have never used their full legal allotment, even in the driest of years.

How can it be that the upper basin never uses its full legal allotment, and yet all the water in the river is used before it reaches the sea? The reason is called “paper water.” When the Colorado River Compact was written, it was based on years of historically higher than average flows in the early 1900s. Because of this, the total legal distribution of the river’s water is more than the real water that flows in the basin today. In short, the water is over-allocated.

The result is diminishing water levels in Lakes Mead and Powell as the “bank” of saved water in the reservoirs is depleted more than snowmelt each spring can replace. This also results in a river that is used up completely before it reaches the sea, creating an ecological chain reaction in Mexico and the Gulf of California as a once vast wetland delta has literally turned to dust.

Despite the difficult circumstances, there are reasons to be hopeful that the Colorado River water crisis can be mitigated to avoid a disaster, even if the megadrought persists and snowbirds keep moving to the desert to play golf. Doing so will require seven states and the federal government, specifically the Bureau of Reclamation within the Department of the Interior, to work together. In today’s political environment that might seem challenging, but the process is already moving. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bi-Partisan Infrastructure Bill include a combined $14.5 billion to “enhance the West’s resilience to drought, the largest investment in climate resilience in our nation’s history.” That money will be supplemented by state-level investments from the seven basin states.

Another positive is that, ultimately, the federal government has the final authority. States’s rights advocates may not like the sound of that, but river systems cross state and national boundaries and a central point of authority is a necessity when it comes to interstate commerce and resources, especially one as critical as this.

Long-term initiatives from 2027 onward are yet to be confirmed, but in general, there are supply-side and demand-side opportunities that likely need to be pursued together. Supply management is about increasing the amount of water available to meet growing demand. Demand management is about using that water more efficiently to reduce consumption. In both cases, there are many things that can be done with a combination of infrastructure investment, education, a focus on more sustainable practices, and political will. This must all be achieved while simultaneously limiting the impact on the ecosystems within the basin and, hopefully, restoring past damage.

After decades of little to no Colorado River water reaching the ocean, a “pulse” of 100 thousand acre-feet of water was released from the last impoundment in Mexico in 2014. For nearly two months the river flowed once again all the way to the Gulf of California, and the dry delta immediately sprang to life with greenery as astounded ecologists measured the resiliency of nature.

Lake Mead National Recreation Area – Low Water Level on Colorado River Reservoir Shoreline – Drought, Water Rights

Lake Mead may never again reach full pool unless there is a major decades-long shift to a wetter climate, but it does not ever have to reach dead pool either, even if the megadrought continues. There are many things that can and likely will be done in the years to come to ensure the lasting health of the Colorado River system and the well-being of all that depend on it.

The example set by the city of Las Vegas gives us hope that it is possible to achieve similar results on a much larger scale. Agriculture can be made much more efficient through incentivizing the planting of less thirsty crops. Untapped water tables can be utilized in places to relieve pressure on the comparatively little surface water. New technologies can be deployed to reduce waste and improve efficiency.

Regardless of the specific solutions, changes must be made for a sustainable Colorado River Basin, and some of those changes might impact us right here in the Front Range as the first consumers of Colorado River water. The alternative of dead pool is not an option.

The post The Colorado River Water Emergency appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

December 30, 2021. Louisville. Photo: Patrick Kramer of the Longmont Fire Department

It has been over two years since the Marshall Fire swept through the grasslands of Boulder County. The most destructive fire in Colorado history in terms of buildings destroyed, the fire took the lives of two and created irreparable damage for many more.

The initial response to the fire focused on ensuring safety in the moment but as the dust settled, Boulder County and its residents realized they needed to do more to prevent future events like this one.

As nice as it would be for the Marshall Fire to be a one-off event, a changing climate only increases the likelihood of future destructive fires. Earlier and warmer springs lead to more rapid snowmelt, drying out grasslands and increasing flammability of the surrounding environment. Additionally, as populations increase, more communities are located adjacent to, or in, grasslands and forests. This means naturally occurring wildfires are more likely to impact people and their properties.

As a result of this inevitable future threat, partnerships between scientists, community groups, local government, and individuals aim to find a solution to the multifaceted issue of wildfires in Boulder County and surrounding areas. Sharing resources between these groups is an essential aspect of creating an efficient wildfire mitigation plan. One example is The Watershed Center.

Marshall-Fire-damage_youtube-screencap_ys_2023_04

Protecting and restoring watersheds

“Fires don’t recognize jurisdictional boundaries and fires could go through multiple properties, towns, and municipalities, so if you have one entity that is managing their land but they’re adjacent to another entity that are not doing that or doing it differently, that’s going to affect how the fire would potentially spread and behave,” said Matt Bitters, ecologist at The Watershed Center.

The mission of The Watershed Center is “to protect and restore watersheds for people and the environment using a collaborative and science-based approach.” Established in 2005, the organization has been led by a diverse group of stakeholders, seeking science-based and people-oriented solutions.

Boulder creek in winter, Boulder Colorado

Among other things, The Watershed Center studies and shares information about response of vegetation after fires, fire mitigation, and post-fire recovery.

Every part of the organization relies on information sharing to communicate the best strategies for lowering fire risk. While not many overall practices have changed since the Marshall Fire, groups like The Watershed Center have allowed the community to divide and conquer on the specifics of what works in a variety of circumstances.

While grazing and mowing have been fire prevention practices for decades, figuring out how big of a buffer is needed where, taking wind speeds into account, and finding the balance between protecting natural spaces and stopping the fire spread.

Bitters said an all-or-nothing approach was a common sentiment directly after the Marshall Fire. “We heard a lot of concerns from residents saying ‘just mow the grasslands, get rid of the open space,’ and while that reduces fuel, it’s nuanced because the grass will grow back,” he said.

Without considering the time of year, the maintenance required, and how removing grassland impacts the natural ecosystem, a mow-it-all response is not beneficial. Weeds may replace the grass that are even less fire resistant, animal habitats may be destroyed, and the balance of the natural replenishment of land may be off-kilter. Removing vegetation can lead to other environmental troubles like erosion and soil loss.

Bitters reminded community members that “fires have been here long before any of us have been, and these ecosystems depend on fires.” Understanding how these environments functioned before people arrived is essential in proper land management.

Boulder Office of Disaster Management

The Boulder Office of Disaster Management focuses directly on communication with individual community members. They encourage folks to make a specific plan to ensure the least damage when a disaster hits.

“We’re all at the crap sandwich picnic together when one hits, and so the preparedness is kind of like the mustard, the hot sauce, whatever you want to put on it to make it a little bit better,” said Monika Weber, disaster management coordinator at the city of Boulder’s ODM.

Preparedness does not prevent a disaster from happening but rather decreases the physical and emotional damage when one occurs.

The ODM is a direct result of the Marshall Fire. Prior to the fire, a program called Better Together attempted to encourage residents to protect themselves and their community. The Marshall Fire alerted the local government to the need for more comprehensive resources for emergency preparedness.

Weber said that people’s interest in her work ebbs and flows. At times, when there has not been a disaster for a while, people get preoccupied by the other things going on in their lives. It is her job to remind people that preparedness is most important when things are calm.

The department has several trainings for community members to get information about preparedness and how to inform others about how they can do the same.

One of the most important parts of these trainings is: “Make a plan for your household,” said Weber. “And that really should encompass how you are going to communicate with one another, evacuation, knowing your routes, knowing what modes of transportation you’re going to take, and then also a grab list.”

Grab List

A grab list should encompass the important emotional items that you would like to take with you in an emergency evacuation. Creating a list with items and their locations and posting it somewhere easily accessible — like the inside of a kitchen cabinet — is important to avoid emergency panic. And, with a list, if someone else is at your home when an emergency occurs, they may be able to locate some of those important items for you.

Questions to ask to help you make a grab list:

• What are items that you’d want to take with you in the event of an evacuation? Be sure to consider items that are important to you that may be irreplaceable.
• What items do you need to maintain your wellbeing? Are there medications, supplies, etc. that you need to take with you?
• What are key items that you would want to be prepared with to help you maintain your lifelines?
• Write down your grab list including both the item and its location in your home.
• Consider ordering items on your grab list in terms of priority. This allows you to make your list scalable, so you can grab your most important items if you have very limited time to evacuate.
• Have every household member complete their own personal grab list of a few items.
• Provide a trusted person with access to your home — this gives you a backup option of someone who can help gather individuals, pets, items, etc. in the event of an evacuation if you’re away.

Be prepared, sign up for alerts

While a plan is an important tool for disaster preparedness, above all, Weber recommended that people sign up for emergency alerts. This can be through BOCO Alert or ReachWell, two platforms that send messages to people’s smartphones alerting them to possible emergency situations.

The Office of Disaster Management has created many physical tools to support folks in their disaster preparedness. These documents were recently translated into Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Korean, and Russian — the five most common languages in the county other than English.

Other resources include a Disaster Preparedness Conversation Card. This tool was originally created to help community members with disabilities communicate during emergencies, but Weber said it is also a good tool for anyone to start a conversation with their neighbors about a disaster preparedness plan.

“The first thing on our list is: Trust your gut,” Weber said. While the office plans to host more trainings, conduct further outreach, and continue spreading preparedness tactics, she encouraged everyone to trust their instincts and do what keeps them and their community safe during an emergency.

Wildfire Partners

Knowing how to respond to an emergency is an important skill. The threat of wildfires is not going away, but Wildfire Partners, a subsect of Boulder County, is working to help residents make their homes and properties more fire-resistant.

“We’ve been around for 10 years, and most of our work was in the West because traditionally that’s where fires start,” said Stephanie Buchanan, wildfire mitigation program specialist. “We know that that’s not always the case now, but we focus on individual home assessments, and we basically show people, give them the tools for what they would need to do to make their home itself and 100 feet around their home fire safe.”

Essentially, Wildfire Partners helps folks build a metaphorical bubble around their homes so that when a fire does occur the likelihood of damage to their property is lower. They focus not on preventing wildfires but on community resilience in the face of such events.

Buchanan said that the biggest change post-Marshall Fire was the spread of resources to the eastern part of the county. People who choose to move to the mountains often know that wildfire is a possibility; it is the folks who live in town who have never had to think about it before.

Even Buchanan herself, who lives in a neighborhood in Louisville and has been a fire safety educator for 10 years, said that she did not think about protecting her own home until the Marshall Fire.

“For those communities like ours where we live so close together, mitigation has to look different,” she said. “We’re really focusing on community mitigation and education in those neighborhoods who’ve never really thought about it until the Marshall Fire.”

In these communities where homes back right up to one another, one neighbor’s mitigation efforts are nearly pointless without the collaboration of the surrounding properties. This has led Wildfire Partners to change the language and tactics they use around mitigation to meet these communities where they are. One big focus is getting people to see how they have an individual responsibility to make their community safer.

Similar to Weber’s work, a challenge is keeping people engaged when there has not been another fire close to communities in over two years. “Everybody kind of wanted to do something right after,” Buchanan said. “And now we’ve had a wet season without fires and time, and those things put together make it so that it’s not so much in the forefront.”

This new community outreach program did not begin in full force until December of 2023, so its effectiveness has yet to be evaluated.

Buchanan is hopeful about the future resources coming to mitigation efforts. “There will be more money coming to community members to do mitigation that will come in different forms,” she said. “We’re all paying into this mitigation tax that passed in November of 2022 … so as we’re all paying into it, we’re going to be pushing it back out to the community in different ways.”

Through social media and newsletters, Wildfire Partners is working to make resources easily accessible. Buchanan acknowledged that it can be a daunting task to begin making your home and community safer. She recommended approaching it one piece at a time.

“It takes time, it takes money, it takes know-how, and we have the help now for people in all those areas, but if you just start with one little thing at a time, we can all be collectively making a difference for ourselves, and our neighborhoods, and the greater community,” she said.

Community Wildfire Protection Plan

This united effort to move towards fire-safe communities is culminating, most recently, in an updated Community Wildfire Protection Plan. The plan currently in place in Boulder County was completed in 2011 with far different environmental circumstances and a different population.

The county has stated that the plan “identifies and prioritizes measures to protect life, property, and critical infrastructure in the wildland-urban interface during a wildfire event.” All of Colorado’s CWPPs must meet the Colorado State Forest Service’s minimum standards.

A CWPP is not legislation. It is not a legally binding document. Rather, it is a way for the community to get on the same page in order to effectively prevent future wildfire damage.

One important aspect of this is gathering community feedback. This is done through public open houses hosted by the county, where residents can gather information and address their concerns. If folks are unable to attend these events, they may fill out a survey to have their voices heard.

The final community open house is being hosted on Saturday, April 20 at LeftHand Fire, with the hopes of a finalized, updated Community Wildfire Protection Plan completed by June.

As of March 25th, 2024, a draft of the CWPP is available on the city of Boulder website, alongside a forum for public comment, which was open until April 8th, 2024. These steps to share information and gain feedback are essential to creating a more fire-resistant community. Government officials, local experts, and informed community members seem to agree: The time to act is when things are relatively stable. The time to prepare is before you need the resources, and the time to be informed is now.

The post Boulder County Is Revamping Their Efforts for Wildfire Mitigation Two Years Post Marshall Fire appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Ean Tafoya recalled riding the bus with his mom when he was younger. “I was public transit-dependent, and I used to ride the bus until I was like 16,” he shared. He recalled positive memories and pride in taking the bus but experienced first-hand the difficulty surrounding public transit use in the area. Stops without shade or shelter, lack of public restrooms, and bus stops surrounded by open parking lots and not much else. He noticed the expansions of highways to the detriment of the environment and witnessed how transit access was segregated, not just along race and class, but also by rural and urban divides. 

“Transit is an important equalizer to allow people to have access to get to their jobs to get wherever they need to go for school, among other things,” Tafoya said. Tafoya is the Colorado State Director for GreenLatinos, an organization that focuses on climate and transit equity and justice.

Roberta Ayala, a local politician and activist, also recalled the difference in transit and walkable connections. “I grew up in like the original neighborhood of Thornton when it was developed like you can see that but it’s still more walkable, as you go further north, it gets worse,” she shared in a previous interview with Yellow Scene Magazine.

Walkability, safe and reliable transit, and affordable places to live sit atop the wishlist for many Coloradoans. All are interrelated and all help foster a sense of community and place that many feel is currently missing from modern suburbs. The way we design and build cities affects how they are used, and in turn, how the people living there experience daily life.

“Social cohesion exists because of a meaningful and moral intention of settlement which in turn expresses itself in the organization and appearance of buildings, which in turn promote a sustained social identity,” stated award-winning Syrian architect and author Marwa al-Sabouni in her novel “Building for Hope.” Creating public transit hubs that invite people in, offer mixed-use areas, encourage people to leave their cars behind, and have proper amenities is essential as Colorado looks to expand rail and other public transit options in the coming years.

Psychology & architecture

We are not Europe. Our cities did not grow organically from villages designed for humans and animals. Colorado’s suburbs, in fact, the nation’s as a whole, sprung up rapidly in the decades following WWII. The chosen solution to the nation’s baby boom was mass-produced single-family homes built near interstate offramps. The massive interstate system is a product of the Cold War. They were built to ensure the military could rapidly move things like tanks and artillery across the nation if the need ever arose. They also functioned as America’s new primary mode of transit.

“Of course, mass production did not begin in the world of building. Cars, rather than houses, led the way — and in due course, the buildings made room for cars,” al-Sabouni wrote. “The infrastructure built for vehicles dictated the nature of the urban fabric — low density and suburban sprawl…” she continued.

The idea that each family should have their own patch of land, fenced in, away from the bustle of inner cities, may also be a subconscious rejection of the communal solutions offered by political rivals such as the U.S.S.R. and China in the post-war years. These psychological influences affected the way modern American cities were built, and how they function today.

The architectural design of the typical suburb physically distances neighbors from each other, which in turn results in more mental and emotional isolation. This cannot be solved overnight. It is impossible to transform the suburbs into European-style towns, plus many residents prefer their suburban homes and yards. Our culture values home ownership and takes pride in personal automobiles.

Ayala explained a major complaint for many Colorado residents along the Front Range: “It’s just been built with a lot of housing but not any resources nearby.” This low-density style promotes individualism but also isolation. It is also the reason why public transit is so difficult to properly implement in Colorado, many places were designed with car ownership in mind, disregarding public-transit dependent people and eliminating the need for walkable, human-scale, pedestrian-friendly areas. The individual freedom of the car eroded the sense of community and connectedness that walkable areas possess.

“We’ve built the roads for you know, for the car, not for the person. So there’s no median. And if you’re driving up and down that thing, like I do, for campaigning, or just in general with your life, you notice there’s tons of accidents, “Ayala elaborated on the danger of certain local roads. 

Additionally, car travel does not promote interaction and community the way walking or biking does. People are much more likely to stop in a local shop, recognize a neighbor, or have a conversation with a stranger when they are walking rather than driving around town. Unfortunately, oftentimes a store trip without a car involves traversing a quarter mile of a half-empty parking lots to get from one big-box store to another. There is little in this experience that fosters any sense of community or belonging.

One way to increase a sense of place and “home” while also taking cars off the road is mixed-use zoning in a thoughtful way that allows each neighborhood walking and biking access to small shops, local markets, and food options other than drive-thrus. Mixing businesses, restaurants, and offices with residential areas provides options other than driving to a supermarket or big box store. Although many new developments do consider this, revisiting the zoning of older suburbs and lower-income areas could help reinvigorate neighborhoods and provide more equity in access to food, jobs, and entertainment that do not require a car.

Nodes not roads

Public transit expansions are likely coming, here and nationwide. RTD is planning expansions and the Biden administration has made infrastructure projects a priority with nearly $5 billion allocated to transportation infrastructure.

As Governor Polis pushed to secure federal funding for the Front Range Light Rail, it is important to examine how to ensure the rail line’s success, the shortfalls of the current public transit system, and how to encourage car users to take more train or bus trips instead. One factor that causes public transit to see fewer riders than expected is that new public transportation can be poorly designed in a way that is competing against existing public transportation, not car transit. A passenger rail line that is faster than the bus but does not deliver riders directly to their chosen locations, or that has an unpleasant user experience, will likely only pull riders from the bus, not encourage drivers to buy a train ticket instead of a tank of gas.

One problem is the over-building of parking. It may seem counterintuitive, but just like adding more lanes to a highway does not reduce traffic, adding more parking spots does not help the situation. It only encourages more drivers to use the space rather than take an alternate method. Colorado Public Radio reported that 40% of parking spaces go unused at peak hours near transit stations. Converting this space to something more useful would help immensely.

Providing all bus stops with shade and seating access is one step. It should not be physically uncomfortable to access public transit. “Unfortunately now for those who are transit dependent, the user experience isn’t very good. We don’t have enough park benches, we don’t have solar panels with shelters that will tell you when your bus is coming, or access to the restroom,” Tafoya shared his first-hand experience.

Public transit needs to provide reasons why someone who owns a car would choose not to use it. One way is to make the major stations themselves into attractions. This can be done by building transit stops with shops, restaurants, and convenience stores and reducing the amount of parking spaces. This creates a human-centric experience. Coupled with interesting architecture, public art, and free spaces that invite riders in rather than push people away, stations can be buzzing hubs of activity rather than just a parking lot. More riders, plus shoppers and employees, mean the areas would be busier, discouraging crime that plagues many isolated transit stops.

al-Sabouni explained what an inviting, free, and open public space can look like: “We feel safe when the city offers its abundance not in the form of price-tagged experiences, but in an accumulation of details that are perhaps redundant, but at the same time thoughtful and delightful: a balustrade fixed on a wall next to a steep step, a bench under a willow tree, drinking water flowing from a street fountain, a shaded corner, a fruit tree, an aromatic rose, a running canal, a molding with birds on it, a decorated window frame or niche for a potted plant.” 

This may seem a bit esoteric for a train station, but the idea that cities should have inviting spaces of interaction rather than soulless hubs stands true. Humans need spaces to exist, interact with one another, and connect to their community without driving to a location or paying for an experience.

Denver, Colorado, USA. Amtrack train ready for departure at the Denver Union Station.

Additionally, Amtrack is studying a nationwide expansion in the near future by connecting Denver to places like Dallas, Seattle, and Las Vegas via rail. This could create a new transportation, business, and tourism hub in a way that Denver International Airport does, but for train travel. Although it is likely a long way away, cities that are not Denver can take advantage of this by also offering a reason for business and leisure travelers alike to stay there instead.

Finally, there needs to be reliable public transportation to and from major transit hubs and future train stations. The Park-and-Ride model of expecting riders to drive to transit stations and then switch to public transit still puts cars on the road without increasing access to those without an automobile, who would typically be the prime demographic for train ridership.

This will not work for every station, and not every city, but those that do develop stations that have reasons for people to stop and stay for a while can see increased tourism, economic growth, and create a place for humans to interact and exist. Access to transportation increases equity. Tafoya explained how public transit allows access to opportunities like jobs and healthy food that may not otherwise be realistic for residents who cannot afford a personal automobile. He also noted that many employees and workers who serve areas like Aspen simply cannot afford to live in town. Even the wealthiest areas of Colorado rely on public transportation to function, even if many do not realize it.

Like many things, the hardships of the way the systems were designed — in this case as car-centric cities — fall mostly on the shoulders of Black and Brown people and those in lower-income neighborhoods. Increasing the usability of public transit helps reduce inequality in opportunity among those who live here.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

With countless studies showing that highway expansions do not help traffic flow, why do governments continue to invest so heavily in new auto lanes rather than trains, trolleys, or buses? Tafoya stated one reason is that contracts for expansion projects are lucrative and construction lobbies are powerful.

“I mean, billions of dollars for a couple of miles. Think of what we could do for the housing crisis, to further the education system. There’s a lot of other ways we can spend those resources, and we can extend the life of our roads,” Tafoya shared his frustrations with adding more lanes to congested highways, which only add more cars.

There is very little incentive for massive corporations to take cars off the road. Reduction in car travel would hurt the bottom line for the oil giants and car companies. The aim to replace public transit with car use is not a conspiracy, both Denver and sprawling Los Angeles used to have popular trolley lines but they were removed in favor of the automobile.

The cities of Fort Collins, Longmont, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo may all soon be connected via light rail. With a rail line breaking ground between Los Angeles and Las Vegas earlier this year, the United States will finally have its first high-speed train option after years of lagging behind many parts of the developed world. High-speed rail has the possibility to transform travel, with a trip from L.A. to Vegas projected to only take about two hours. Although the Front Range rail line will be a single track shared with freight trains, there is good reason to plan for the future of increased rail options by making Colorado’s stations user-friendly, inviting, and well-connected to the towns they serve.

The post Build Colorado for Humans, not Cars appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Fighting the machine

Nick Saia lives in Colorado now, but he grew up on the salt marshes and estuaries of the Mississippi. He recalled swamp fishing, rabbit hunting, and boating out by the shack he and his father frequented. His memories of the outdoors, sharing time with his dad, and interacting with the mercurial tides where the river meets the ocean painted a vivid picture as he recalled his childhood. Then his tone changed. “My father told me one day this would all be gone.”

Even then, as a child, he saw the encroaching oil and gas operations that would forever change the face of the Gulf of Mississippi, dotting her face with pimples of oozing black pus. Saia saw the receipts, literally. He stayed busy as a busboy and later as the manager of his father’s restaurant. There he recalled seating and serving both oil and gas company men and local politicians where the sticky black substance lubricated the wheels of business and politics.

These twin memories of growing up — of seeing the marshland drained and tamed and witnessing the way politics and energy companies worked behind the scenes — inspired Saia to pursue a career as an attorney defending the average person. Many of his cases involved death, serious injury, and maiming of oil and gas workers.

Saia’s story began in Louisiana, but his career brought him to Colorado. Since the ‘90s he has represented Coloradoans who have been injured or received property damage from oil and gas sites. Saia’s observations about the dual harms of oil and gas in Louisiana are all too evident in Colorado. Vast environmental damage and overly friendly connections to politicians abound here as well.

Environmental damage and health impacts

Saia moved to Colorado for the environment. Most people do. Coloradoans, those born here and those who’ve made their home here, know the importance of open space, preservation, and balance in nature. Unfortunately, tales just like Saia’s have played out all across the nation but especially in Weld County, Colorado.

For years, both extraction operations and residential growth have been occurring side by side, meaning people are living closer than ever to fracking sites. Weld County experienced a population boom just as oil and gas operations were expanding alongside it. The County proudly proclaims directly on its website that they are “the number one producer of oil and gas in the State 83% of all crude oil production and 55% of all natural gas production in Colorado comes from Weld County!” Maps of extraction operations clearly show the impact of political decisions on where permits are granted. Weld County is covered in sites.

The number of sites, the number of wells, and the density of their locations add to a high health risk with groundwater pollution, noise pollution, and chemical byproducts from extraction, all playing harmful roles. Recent research from the CU Boulder Environmental Engineering Program found that “The chemical composition of the leaks in the Greater Wattenberg Area show that most are coming from failures of well pipes or cement, not natural stray gas migration. While the study only looked at oil and gas wells, the ability to conclusively show failure in an inner pipe or cement has major implications.” This means leaks and contamination are most likely from failures in extraction sites, a risk that even capped and closed wells still possess.

Politics, business, health, and the environment all coincide in one sticky problem: oil and gas operations are profitable but cause damage to those around them. Where new wells were located, where old wells are re-opened, and how fast leaks and contamination are cleaned are all influenced by money in the political system.

A tale of two counties

In 2019, Senate Bill 19-181 was passed which allowed local municipalities to adopt regulations for extraction operations, including things like setbacks — how far away operations must be from sensitive sites like homes and schools. Most counties have chosen to increase setback distances, and while the overall impact of the bill has been greatly beneficial to public health, not all counties have followed suit. “Weld County hasn’t met an oil well operation it doesn’t like,” said state Sen. Mike Foote, a sponsor of SB-181.

Recent reporting has also shown that even when residents thought extraction sites were finished, operations can resume with little to no warning. Additionally, if a well has already been sunk, current setback requirements from SB-181 do not apply. This grandfathers in a significant amount of sites and will continue to present a severe health hazard for any who live nearby.

“Local governments are not uniform, but they [setbacks] range from like 2,000 to 3,000 feet. Arapahoe County passed a 3,000 foot setback recently, but it also has exceptions,” Foote explained.

It’s not just the extraction operations — clean-up and decommissioning of sites can spread contaminants. About half of “orphaned” wells remaining to be plugged across the state are located in Weld County. So-called orphaned wells are defined as “…a well for which no owner or operator can be found, or where such owner or operator is unwilling or unable to plug and abandon such well.” This may be due to the company going out of business or being unable to afford the cost of plugging operations.

Storage tanks for crude oil in central Colorado, USA

In March 2024, Adams County filed a lawsuit that claimed oil and gas companies used a massive fraud scheme to avoid cleaning up abandoned wells that the lawsuit stated is, “to this day, endangering Coloradans.”

“The lawsuit raises serious questions about industry-wide practices in general that deserve an answer,” Denver7 quoted an attorney from the case. Companies allegedly knew the cost of cleanup but did not set aside nearly enough profits to cover the mandated cleanup expenses and then filed for bankruptcy, leaving no one financially responsible for the sites while executives and investors walked away wealthier than before.

Not every county is pushing back. In 2019, Weld County commissioners directly responded to SB-181 by declaring parts of the county an “area of state interest” for oil and gas operations. Based on a 1974 House bill, this move allowed Weld County commissioners to continue approving permits that would be blocked in other counties.

Oil and gas companies often promote the idea that new regulations will kill jobs in a state like Colorado, and a county like Weld, that produces lots of energy. “Every time there’s a regulation proposal, they talk about how it’s a job killer and how if the regulation passes, they will move out of the state … it’s too bad that some people continue to buy into it … they still produce a heck of a lot in this state regardless of the regulations,” Foote noted.

As proof, despite Adams County’s increased regulations, the industry is thriving, propelling Adams to the second-highest producer in the state behind Weld.

Influence on local politics

Yellow Scene Magazine conducts a yearly election guide where our reporters speak to candidates for all elections across the areas of the state we cover. We have interviewed hundreds of politicians, activists, incumbents, and folks who decided to run for office for the first time. One of the main topics that constantly arises in local elections is oil and gas regulation, expansion, and mitigation. Many have expressed their concerns that oil and gas companies tip the scales in favor of pro-extraction candidates, creating an undemocratic environment that is driven by money over citizen interest. This is a political reason why some areas have more health hazards than others despite similar oil and gas resources underground.

“The oil companies have made millions of dollars in Thornton … millions they would not have made otherwise. And that’s why they invest in [REDACTED]. That’s why thousands of dollars come from oil representatives, from people who work in oil companies, and not to mention the dark money that gets flooded in by the same companies because [REDACTED] is their investment that pays off for them,” a local activist told YS.

Anadarko Drilling in Dacono. Photo: Denver Post

“While the other side has boatloads of cash coming from special interests, specifically, land developers and oil and gas, and everybody knows it … I shouldn’t say everybody. A lot of people don’t even realize it. But the people who are interested in trying to serve all notice,” one local candidate expressed their frustration.

“We’re really heavily influenced by oil and gas and developers. For a while, it was mostly oil and gas. Now it’s developers too. We have to figure out some ways to balance that out,” a sitting city council member shared.

“I think the biggest thing is that residents deserve a campaign finance system that’s transparent and fair. We want a democracy where everyone’s voice is heard and everyone is playing by the same rules. Our current system, it’s not,” a representative said. “We don’t have the financial limits. The disclosure requirements and practices aren’t strong enough or user-friendly to be meaningful, and we need to ensure that our political leaders are representing the interests of residents and not just the wealthy and powerful,” they continued.

Even without undue influence, the political scales are tipped in favor of those who have resources, money, and workforce. It is much easier for a corporation to raise funds, sponsor ads, and donate money to local politicians than it is for the activists and regular folks who wish to stop them. There is a monetary reward for extraction companies succeeding that vastly overshadows the cost of paying politicians to play ball.

“They’re able to play in many different areas. They’re able to pay contributions. They’re able to hire a lot of attorneys. They’re able to hire folks that will show up in meetings. They’re able to come up with astroturf organizations. They’re able to run measures. They’re able to do all of these things which affect policy that community groups and environmental groups just can’t match. So when you combine things, you get a much bigger megaphone that they can use,” Foote elaborated.

Still from “Fracking the System.” Provided by Brian Hedden

Past wins and future fights

One notable success story is that of Brian Hedden. Hedden is an activist who filmed a protest of extraction operations at an oil and gas site near a school in Greeley. Details of the incident and subsequent lawsuit are posted on Hedden’s website. One protestor chained themselves to a piece of machinery, physically blocking operations from resuming. Hedden himself filmed the actions but did not block any machinery. However, he was still treated as a protestor by law enforcement.

Hedden was arrested by the police on behalf of the oil and gas company, with an eventual offer to drop all charges if he agreed to never release the footage he filmed. Saia represented Hedden in the lawsuit brought on by Extraction Oil & Gas in 2018.

Extraction argued that Hedden had also violated the airspace above the site by flying a drone to capture aerial footage. The judge was not amused by that idea and responded by asking Extraction if they were also an airport. The typically quiet and somber mood of the court was rocked by laughter from a crowd of activists there to support Hedden. With Hedden’s case, Saia finally had his “Atticus Finch” moment of fighting for a just cause with crowds of public support. The civil lawsuit was dropped.

Despite interference, influence, and wealth that extraction lobbies bring, wins like SB-181, and Hedden’s dropped lawsuit show there is hope. However, with the dangers of powerful lobbies, nearly unlimited money, and an intricate understanding of how to navigate the system, the odds are still very much stacked against the activists. This election season may be an important one in particular, with both activists and extraction companies looking at an air quality proposal in the Colorado legislature. 

There is a potentially even larger picture looming following a curious move by oil and gas companies who filed a ballot measure to ban all oil and gas drilling in the state. Although no one is yet sure why, the move may be an effort to have ballot initiatives themselves ruled unconstitutional rather than representing a change of heart on environmental issues from extraction interests.

Foote shared the difficulty of working against a powerful lobby: “It’s really tough as an all-volunteer community to go up against highly paid, highly trained [oil and gas companies]. Difficult doesn’t mean it can’t be done. But the deck is definitely stacked against you.”. It’s not all bad news, there have been huge improvements in statewide and local regulations.

“Where we found success has been a combination of volunteers, grassroots groups plus organizations that have some resources to draw from, so it’s not [fighting] with both hands behind our back but maybe with one hand tied behind our back,” Foote said.

The post Examining Oil & Gas’ Political Influence on the Front Range appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Boulder and North Metro need to build for their future while addressing environmental concerns, confronting racism, and alleviating homelessness.

The suburban dream paints a rosy picture of America, but underneath that green lawn is a whole host of environmental problems and a dark story of discrimination. The low density development that a sea of single family homes creates also reinforces structural racism, environmental issues, and even mental health aspects of daily life.

That white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a Golden Retriever have been the aspirations for so many families since the end of World War II. Yet that simple — and not so achievable anymore — dream has only been realized by excluding non-whites and focusing on car-centric models of development.

Suburban living is so ingrained in the American experience that few of us ever take time to question and examine its origins and impacts. It is in some way a continuation of Manifest Destiny, the racist idea that white Americans are meant to occupy the so-called “empty” continent, right through Jim Crow era policies meant to prevent African Americans from attaining equality, into our modern reality. Equal segregation, an oxymoron, was the law of the land as suburbs first were constructed in the 1950s. 

Urban sprawl in the United States has its origins in the end of World War II when millions of military members serving overseas in Europe and Asia returned back home. However, the entire concept of “home” was altered by this. Congress recognized that soldiers needed support for their transition back to civilian life. The Bonus March of WWI veterans who were never paid their full monetary compensation from the Great War loomed on the minds of policymakers and politicians alike when crafting a solution.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

The G.I. Bill was Congress’ answer to compensating returning service members this time around. It provided cheap loans for returning service members and, on paper, was a policy to help reintegrate military members into civilian life. Military considerations also spawned the creation of the interstate freeway system as a way to quickly transport heavy equipment, like tanks, in case of an invasion by an adversary, namely the U.S.S.R. 

This model of development also explains why European cities tend to have more vibrant downtown areas, more walkability, and less visible poverty. Massive freeways do not typically cut through major European urban centers the way they do in the U.S. These multi-lane freeways create a physical divide through established cities, and the long stretches of road throughout the nation also allow towns and suburbs to spring up in areas that would previously not be suitable for development.

Moving forward, low density development needs to be planned with the acknowledgement that so many have been systematically excluded from these areas and also address the environmental impacts that suburban sprawl presents, while touching on the healthy aspects of more walkable and interconnected cities.

During the 1950s, several University of Colorado professors formed PLAN Boulder, an organization that advocates for planned city growth. Even today PLAN Boulder receives criticism from affordable housing and homeless advocates for not considering the needs of our most vulnerable members of society. Concerned Boulder citizens also created the blue line boundary in 1959, which meant that city water lines could not be extended to elevations above 5,750 feet. Property owners in these areas could still develop their lands, but they would have to use their own sewage systems rather than the city’s, which purposely limited their growth. These founding organizations and principles have shaped the way BOCO has developed over the years.

City of Boulder housing, NoBo

Those in favor of the Open Space program argued that the proposed green areas near the Rockies would benefit everyone because it would provide all the city dwellers with space to breathe. The end result was that the citizens of BOCO eventually became responsible for over 60,000 acres of land. These properties are currently managed by the Boulder Valley Open Spaces program, an organization that has every intention of expanding their horizons in the future. 

However, the Greenbelt Amendment was not the last ruling that was passed to protect Boulder Valley residents from the harmful effects of urban sprawl. By the 1970s Boulder residents had already become worried about the pace of growth in their community. Plans to limit development and population increases were passed, including one known today as the “Danish Plan.” 

A 2% cap was ultimately placed on housing expansion. However, this limit on growth steadily increased the cost of living. A service boundary was likewise implemented in 1970. This line clearly delineates portions of the county that are to be considered rural or urban for planning purposes and public services residents of these areas can expect. The boundary protects rural land by reducing the population and preventing urban sprawl.

The Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan (BVCP) was eventually created in 1977. This lengthy document governs the basic infrastructures and land use in Boulder Valley and is still referenced frequently today when planning new development. The ongoing fight that has historically pitted growth advocates against environmental concerns continues.

Growth

Kristan Pritz, the director of Open Space and Trails for the city of Broomfield said it best: “The entire Front Range area has become a very popular place to live and work. It’s a beautiful area. There are some exciting jobs for people and so on. That means growth, not just for the Boulder area, but for other parts of Colorado.”

Peter Mayer, the co-chair of PLAN Boulder, suggests that urban sprawl has not been an issue in the area, mostly due to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan and similar programs, all of which concentrate growth in urban areas and help preserve the rural outskirts. The growth in the North Metro area is undeniable, with populations and development spreading quite rapidly over the past few decades. 

Overflow from Boulder itself has ended up increasing the size of other nearby towns like Longmont, Broomfield, and Erie. Erie for example has grown from just over 6,000 residents in 2000 to over 60,000 residents in the last two decades. Even if specific plans limit growth within the city of Boulder, the desire for more people to live here has created a sprawl of suburbs in the surrounding areas that were once small towns housing miners and farmers. 

When asked if the current policies were helping or hurting development in the area, Mayer said, “It’s all about what you value.”

But the question remains: How can the citizens preserve the beauty of BOCO and North Metro without pricing potential residents out of the area? Affordable housing is a growing issue, particularly since housing prices continue to skyrocket around the country and the zoning in Boulder County Greenbelt policies restrict development in certain areas.

Loop Net235, E.South Boulder Rd, Lafayette, CO

Many Boulder residents are against higher density neighborhoods that could reduce sprawl. The argument is that creating more places to live could cause housing costs to go down. Lower cost housing allows a more diverse group of residents to have the option of owning a home here. The average Black family has accumulated 1/6th the wealth of the average white family. This disparity traces its insidious roots back to the lack of reparations after slavery, continued to grow into the Jim Crow era, and has borne fruit today in the inability for many non-whites to afford the high-cost suburban lifestyle that urban sprawl encourages. 

Locating affordable residences near transportation hubs would have a positive environmental effect as well. Car-centric models of development have been the standard in the U.S. with developers of suburban areas expecting everyone who lives there to have access to individual vehicular transportation. Low density discourages bus routes and other mass transit options from being implemented. It creates a dependency on cars that increases air pollution and environmental degradation. Currently about 60,000 people commute to Boulder from outlying areas.

“The only solution to affordable housing is government intervention,” Mayer said. He points out that this may require the creation of programs to help middle income buyers make down payments on homes. “The market is not the solution though. The only hope is to require homes to be constructed to be affordable.” He continued, “More important is preserving the affordable housing we have and not allowing it to be replaced.”

To that end, a series of land use codes passed in 2022, creating more mixed use areas in East Boulder. One-fourth of the housing units built there must now be considered affordable. The plan also creates parking maximums to encourage alternative transportation. There are nonetheless some significant safety concerns for residents who end up living near old industrial sites like the planned affordable housing in East Boulder. Less wealthy residents can end up living on formerly polluted land and near industrial operations that can lead to a whole host of health problems like cancer clusters. Even affordable development can lead to reinforced power structures where the wealthy are healthier than those with fewer resources.

“The only solution to affordable housing is government intervention.”

Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) are another option to consider that will create more living spaces without creating separate zones for affordable housing, but that option was not enthusiastically welcomed in Boulder. The city government has placed limits on these buildings. Boulder County citizens have also fought against the current occupancy rules. 

Another idea is to convert unused retail spaces, like old shopping malls, into housing, in what is called “mixed-use development.” This type of zoning is popular in Europe, with apartments often located above ground-level shops that line the boulevards, but it has yet to take off nation-wide in the U.S. This would also increase walkability, decrease traffic, and create a stronger sense of community where people can work and live in the same neighborhood.

Affordable housing and easy access to job opportunities would also directly help address the homelessness crisis. We as a society cannot continue to allow individuals to live on the streets in such high numbers. There are numerous causes for homelessness, from unaddressed mental health issues to addiction causing financial hardship to the simple fact that the cost of living has increased so much that it now takes four minimum wage workers to afford a two-bedroom apartment, with homeownership absolutely out of the question. 

The American Dream with the white picket fence that has driven development for the last 70 years or so needs to be re-envisioned. What is becoming a waking nightmare for so many can be alleviated by just increasing the amount of affordable housing. There are several avenues that developers, residents, and city officials can take, from ADUs to rezoning to mandating more affordable housing. Something needs to be done. 

Instead of wading through a sea of homes, the vision for a more environmentally sustainable future could be focused on creating spaces that are walkable, affordable, and diverse. Mixed-use developments would give more reason for city officials to plan public transit routes. Re-zoned empty retail spaces could be converted into desperately needed housing. The border between “downtown” and “suburb” may need to be blurred to accommodate growth and potentially reduce the feeling of alienation and loneliness that many people feel. 

Urban sprawl and the associated high housing costs in Boulder and surrounding areas affect so many of the most pressing issues society faces today. From environmental concerns of car-focused development to the systemic racism built into the creation of suburbs and home ownership to the obesity epidemic that can be partially helped by creating more walkable areas to homelessness that springs from a lack of affordable spaces to live to the mental health of individuals who feel alienated, alone, and lacking community, envisioning a new American Dream could help solve the nightmares we face today.

SOURCES

• https://www.colorado.edu/center/west/sites/default/files/attached-files/firstunderacademicnonfictbelfordopenspace.pdf
• https://boulderreportinglab.org/2022/10/07/boulder-city-council-approves-plan-to-bring-5000-new-homes-and-apartments-to-east-boulder/
• https://www.city-journal.org/boulder-colorado-affordable-living?wallit_nosession=1
• https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/controlling-sprawl-boulder
• https://bouldercolorado.gov/projects/boulder-valley-comprehensive-plan
• https://bouldercounty.gov/departments/parks-and-open-space/
• https://planboulder.org/
• https://www.yahoo.com/news/a-holy-war-on-sprawl-states-seek-to-shape-new-housing-development-by-limiting-local-control-090100263.html
• https://bouldercounty.gov/open-space/management/acres/
• https://www.dailycamera.com/2019/12/21/upcoming-fee-hikes-on-boulder-commercial-construction-latest-headwind-facing-developers/

The post Drowning in a Sea of Homes appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Car-centric models of development create urban sprawl and make planning bus routes to low density areas more difficult.

Riding the JUMP

Cities across the United States are dealing with pressure to offer more public transit services. The Denver metro area is no exception to this. The Front Range has grown at an unprecedented rate over the last 20 years causing traffic to become much worse. Freeways like Interstate 25 are parking lots during rush hour.

Climate change is another reason to provide alternative modes of transportation. According to the Colorado GHG Pollution Reduction Roadmap Final Report, transportation is the largest producer of greenhouse gas pollution across the state. The report states, “Nearly 60% of these emissions come from light-duty vehicles — the majority of cars and trucks that Coloradans drive every day.” The state of Colorado sees our need to convert from combustion engines to electric alternatives, creating goals in the fight against climate change. With such a climate-focused population, Coloradoans need to demand more solutions to our car-centric model of transportation.

Despite Colorado’s attempt to race further and further ahead to meet these goals, consistent public transportation for Boulder County and North Metro is severely lacking. For instance, the town of Erie, located about 15 miles southeast of Boulder, contains a single bus route — the JUMP.

The JUMP starts out at the Downtown Boulder Station on Walnut Street and takes a trip down Arapahoe Avenue traveling east toward Erie. After arriving, the bus heads to the main stop at the Erie Community Center before turning around and heading southwest to Lafayette, and then back to the Downtown Boulder Station. There are limited options to get to neighboring communities like Lafayette and Longmont, and there are no connections to go east to communities like Thornton or Brighton.

To travel east of Erie you would need to take the JUMP to Boulder. In Boulder you’d hop onto one of the Flatiron Flyers to head down Highway 36 and then finally take a bus east to Thornton. This makes a car the much faster option to travel anywhere east of the city despite the rapid population growth and traffic congestion we’ve seen in these communities.

Despite Colorado’s attempt to race further and further ahead to meet these goals, consistent public transportation for Boulder County and North Metro is severely lacking.

Unfortunately, there are no signs to indicate a push for an increase in ridership from these already limited stops. When I visited the bus stop at the Erie Community Center, it was barren. Surrounded by a beautiful library, recreation center, and park with fields, the bus stop showed little indication of its potential use.

There was no structure to protect riders from the elements. The facility’s map didn’t have any indication of a bus stop. There wasn’t even a schedule to see when the next bus was going to arrive. Not to mention, there was no indication where the JUMP goes. Without any of these, each step of taking the bus would require extensive research beforehand to make any trip as smooth as possible.

The average rider would need to have the time to explore the different options before coming to the bus stop. This would need to account for all the time researching, getting to, and riding the bus. The economic component of taking public transit bleeds into this as well, meaning, “What type of ticket is best for me? Is there a stop close enough to ride my bike or walk? If I have a car, is there a spot for me to park near the station? Do I have enough money to travel where I need to today?” There is the assumption that with most of these questions, the user has access to the internet reliably. It also assumes, this person is able to walk, ride, or use a car.

RTD’s role in Boulder

The Regional Transportation District has been providing public transportation services to the Denver metro area for 54 years through a series of bus and rail routes. The district serves the communities of eight Colorado counties including Boulder County.

Boulder is the most populous city in the county with over 100,000 residents, and the city contains Colorado’s flagship university campus with an undergraduate population of 30,000 students — causing a massive influx of residents for nine months out of the year.

The city’s public transportation system is more robust than many metro areas with buses to connect you to every major part of the city. Popular destinations like Pearl Street, surrounding downtown areas, and the university’s campus are easily accessible from multiple routes. CU Boulder even has their own transportation system offering an Uber-like option around campus as well as their own buses.

Flatiron Flyer regional buses connect Boulder to the rest of Denver Metro including Denver’s Union Station, the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, and Denver International Airport. Yet, the county’s remaining municipalities — Erie, Lafayette, Superior and Longmont — do not have robust transportation systems in place.

Manager of corridor operations, Doug Monroe, assured there were programs in place to incentivize more ridership with two main ways to go about it — financial incentives and services provided.

RTD’s EcoPass program, employer passes, and college passes offer rides at a huge discount. Other financial incentives Monroe pointed to include RTD’s monthly pass options.

However, the real incentives lie in RTD’s service. Monroe notes, “I think that’s more difficult to quantify and, I guess, tell how that’s actually impacting things because we serve a huge area. We serve 2,340 square miles, and we’re collecting sales taxes on that whole area, and we’re trying to provide as much service to as many people within that area as possible.”

He explained that based on the feedback given to RTD, people overlook the financial aspects of the process, focusing instead on an increase in the number of services offered.

Expanding service

Unfortunately, simply providing an all-encompassing service is not an option due to the organization’s own financial constraints for projects, workforce, and land use.

RTD was able to provide details of the district’s choices on planning the routes for these areas. Nataly Handlos is senior service planner and scheduler for RTD on the North Team. Handlos works closely with service planner Greg Filkin. Together these two outlined some of the barriers RTD faces when planning service routes. The sheer sprawl of the communities in the northern corridor makes public transportation planning more difficult.

Unfortunately, simply providing an all-encompassing service is not an option due to the organization’s own financial constraints for projects, workforce, and land use.

Public transit is mostly designed for high-density areas. Consequently, the low-density suburban housing of the northern service area makes it difficult for RTD to create routes. Additionally, there are no attractions within Erie’s town limits that would constitute the creation of a robust public transit system.

Handlos states, “They are a suburban community, right? They don’t have a downtown. They don’t have a destination per se. You have to have an origin and destination in order to establish a strong transit corridor, and they do not have that. To build out a full transit network — such as in Boulder — would not make sense for Erie, or even Louisville and Lafayette.”

Cities in the northern corridor build out without little regard for the transit system and expect RTD to provide services without building the infrastructure that can accommodate routes.

The premise of this logic makes sense and has recently been echoed by state officials like Governor Polis. Building high-density housing is just one way to build stronger transit systems, but the main resource making these systems successful are the people who need them regardless of the type of housing in a given area.

As a service for people, the main priority should not be on how these systems can make money. Instead they need to focus on the real world wants and needs of people. Greater access to bus routes provide more opportunity for people in need. More employment opportunities would present themselves to people without their own cars; you could live in one area and reliably work in another with expanded bus access.

Planning new routes can be lengthy, and decisions are based on the resources RTD has at hand. Municipalities will typically come to RTD asking the organization to look at its proposals. Once the proposals are modified, there is a public process where a service change is put forth.

The service change process at RTD takes shape three times a year — January, May, and August. These proposals are brought to the public for feedback which is then used by RTD to look into financial impacts on the area, resources, and equity of service.

Planning new routes can be lengthy, and decisions are based on the resources RTD has at hand.

Handlos asserts, “What is equitably compared to the rest of the street? So, we can’t just add service in one area and not add service in the other areas. So if something were to be added in the Boulder area, I’d have to look to my partners in the East and West Team[s], ‘Hey, do you have anything that you can add?’”

The approach allows for the deep, meaningful work attributed to providing services to people disenfranchised through systemic factors of racism and ableism, but the method takes years of planning — delaying needed services. New routes cannot be adopted at this rate to fix any issues caused by our car-centric society. Once the proposal has made it past this stage of scrutiny, it makes its way to a board who votes for or against the service change. Although, this is all determined in the end by RTD’s available resources.

Bus drivers wanted

RTD has been dealing with an operator shortage since 2015. The shortage was only made worse by COVID-19. Even if a service change has all other resources, there is a lack of sufficient staffing to make new routes or provide route extensions.

Currently, RTD is using a guide known as the System Optimization Plan to strategize its service implementation through 2027 and projects it will have 85% of pre-COVID resources by 2027. Using this projection, the district is making preemptive moves to allocate and implement new services throughout the remaining period. This plan does rely on a bit of optimism. These are merely projections and would expect patrons to wait out the rest of the decade for the possibility of new services.

One of the more notable efforts is the CO 119 BRT project to add faster and safer services for commuters between Longmont and Boulder. The project looks to include proposals for new transit stops between the two cities as well as a new Park-n-Ride station and a commuter bikeway.

Additionally, Monroe points to the Northwest Rail Peak Service Study being undertaken by RTD to provide rail extensions to the north Denver metro area including Boulder and Longmont. Proposed service would extend the existing commuter rail service B Line from Union Station using existing BNSF rail lines. The project works as a commitment to the voter-approved FasTracks plan of 2004, which has been struggling with financial funding for the last 19 years. Projects like the Northwest Rail Peak Service Study, however,’ will not put trains on tracks. The study has three main goals: providing updated engineering cost estimates, designing infrastructure for the system to include future sprawl, and aligning RTD with the goals of stakeholders in the project but with no set date to start service.

There have already been success stories. Route 228 had a successful reconfiguration to serve the city of Lafayette in a more effective and equitable manner. Handlos added, “With Lafayette, the 228 extension was one of those, ‘How can we try and serve that area better?’ to route connection that was needed between the low-income housing and Kestrel and you know, Walmart and Sister Carmen for instance. We were able to get it into the SOP to get route extensions for the DASH and the 225 to the new low-income housing that’s being built at 120th and Emma.”

It is important to include the extension of these routes so people in lower income areas can access transportation and continue to advocate for themselves. Previous to the 228 extension, existing routes did not extend to Lafayette’s low income communities. This created a lack of accessibility. Time is another finite resource needed to get from A to B, to attend a meeting, or develop a sense of community  — time that could be used as a means to pay for food or bills.

Projects will be carried out when the resources to make, operate, and support new transit are available: There needs to be operators. The land being used must be zoned properly. The money to build and sustain this infrastructure must be at RTD’s disposal. There must be a push from members of the public.

Conversely, potential passengers may be deterred from taking the bus because of its price. Even with financial incentives provided by the RTD, commuting can be a pricey affair. A local day pass gives you access to travel within one or two fare zones and costs $6 or $42 per week. A regional day pass is $10.50 or $73.50 a week.

Though the monthly passes are considerably cheaper, it could still be difficult to purchase one living paycheck to paycheck. A local monthly pass comes in at $114, and the monthly regional pass is $200 at full price.

Other perks, like the college pass, leave students who are full-time during the academic year  without a pass if they remain during the summer months. Even business passes can be distributed based on your hourly status at work. Part-time employees often receive fewer  benefits and may not meet their organization’s eligibility requirements for passes.

After its recent launch of an extensive fare study, RTD appears to be aware of these barriers to increasing ridership, marking community involvement as a priority when dealing with issues. While recommendations that came out of the study are slated to become a reality in 2024, Handlos, Filkin, and Monroe stated multiple times that getting opinions from the public is a priority in the implementation of any services.

Getting involved might be one of the best ways to advocate for better service in your area. Riders have the ability to carry weight in a conversation that involves stakeholders and local governments. Time and resources can make it difficult to get involved in this capacity, but RTD has embraced transparency in this process.

Riders have the ability to carry weight in a conversation that involves stakeholders and local governments.

Each of the projects mentioned above can be accessed on their website with goals and outcomes or expected outcomes. These pages include the status of a project, the background information to understand the intent of a project, and potential timelines for service implementation.

Finding projects and routes within your area could prove to be a difficult task. The district covers a vast network spanning over 2,000 square miles, but the Community Involvement page could make this task easier.

There are multiple options to engage with RTD on the page. A calendar provides dates, times, and locations when the organization plans to interact with the public. Many modes of communication exist on the page from an online Customer Comment Form to contacting your representative on the RTD Board of Directors. Resources to stay informed and information on RTD making an appearance or presentation at an event also exist on this page.

Commuters on the Front Range deserve better transit services across the expanding metro area. RTD strives to provide these services for the people, but in an area that’s years behind in dealing with pressing issues, are its efforts, even after creating an SOP extending into 2027, enough?

The post Why Is It so Hard to Take the Bus Anywhere but to Boulder? appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Has “sustainability” become an eye-rolling buzzword that’s tossed around boardrooms and shoehorned into public policy as an afterthought?

Communities in Boulder County and their leaders are banking against that cynicism — but what do we mean by the term “sustainability”? At its core, when it comes to ecological sustainability, we’re talking about survival. Too dramatic? We mean the ability of communities, organizations, and individuals to behave in a manner that protects and maintains our ecosystems for current and future generations of human beings. No ecosystem means no humans.

Small towns and cities across the country are looking for ways to strengthen and diversify their economies, attract residents, build lasting infrastructure, and ensure resiliency against future climate events. Especially in areas highly dependent on tourism — like Boulder County — they also want to maintain their distinct identities and not lose what makes each place unique to visitors and residents alike.

Colorado is experiencing an alarming increase in climate change-related events — severe and devastating droughts, wildfires, and flooding are becoming more frequent and costly. The oil and gas industry, especially fracking operations, are major contributors to methane pollution. Cutting methane emissions from oil and gas, according to the David Suzuki Foundation, is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to address climate change.

At its core, when it comes to ecological sustainability, we’re talking about survival.

In response to these challenges, the state has set ambitious sustainability goals. In 2019, Governor Polis signed an executive order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030 and 90% by 2050. The state has also set targets to increase renewable energy production, improve energy efficiency, and reduce waste.

While these goals are commendable, achieving them will require a concerted effort from all communities in the state, including smaller towns and cities. With smaller revenues and tax bases than larger centers, is there any way to balance urgent economic needs with ecological preservation at a municipal scale?

Erie’s challenge

Many communities have developed detailed sustainability strategies to address these increasingly complex challenges. Erie has established a Sustainability Advisory Board to advise the town’s board of trustees on “matters that relate to the planning, development, maintenance, and management of sustainability activities throughout Erie.”

According to Alissa Kuzmich, a member of the Erie Sustainability Advisory Board, the town is experiencing a period of growth yet still has a very strong community feel. “We recently had a Hope & Gratitude Project,” she told Yellow Scene. “It was in the old town called Briggs, the main street that the old town is on. School children filled the streets with luminaries talking about what they were hopeful for.”

Many communities have developed detailed sustainability strategies to address these increasingly complex challenges.

The Sustainability Division partnered with the Erie’s Tree Advisory Board and the Parks and Recreation Department to hold an Arbor Day/Earth Day Celebration event. It brought in exhibitors related to horticulture, tree management, the solar industry, and electric vehicles — the latter hosted by Drive Electric Colorado. “There’s no pressure for purchase,” said Kuzmich. Instead, at this event people have the opportunity to ask questions without a sales pitch. This year the event is planned for April 29th.

“One of the things that’s happening right now that’s pretty cool is called Elevate Erie — it’s a comprehensive plan. It sets the vision for the next five years,” Kuzmich told YS. “With all the growth we’ve had, sustainability was invited to be part of that conversation.” The board gives input on Erie’s development, along with members of many other organizations, to ensure equitable representation across the community.

The town also has a noble goal to become a zero waste community. The concept of zero waste aims to minimize environmental impacts throughout the entire lifecycle of a product — beyond recycling and composting — to include design, use, and material management. Erie plans to increase access to recycling and composting while reducing waste that ends up in its landfill. The town claims that recycling and composting are some of the most effective ways to reduce “consumption emissions.’.

Nederland: Small but mighty

Nederland, aka “Ned,” is just west of Boulder with a population less than 1,500. The town attracts tourists with its picturesque scenery, fishing, skiing, cycling, camping, shops, boutiques, and even a vibrant music scene. YS spoke with Sustainability Coordinator Leah Haney who is relatively new to the role. Haney executes the Sustainability Advisory Board’s goals for renewable energy and zero waste by 2025. The board acts as a partner with Boulder County, the state of Colorado, and the local business community to determine resource availability and align these with the needs and wants of residents. The partners “make collective decisions,” said Haney, “coming from and guided by Boulder County’s requirements and what we’ve set for ourselves locally.”

The town attracts tourists with its picturesque scenery, fishing, skiing, cycling, camping, shops, boutiques, and even a vibrant music scene.

One of the initiatives Haney is particularly proud of is Nederland’s Construction & Demolition Debris Recycling Deposit Program “where a credit goes to renovators or builders or demolition companies if they can divert and save some of those materials to reuse. They get a credit back. This was a big program implemented by the town, but it hasn’t been used a whole lot yet, we’re working on the outreach part,” explained Haney.

The town is also working on a community solar garden that Haney hopes will lead to more businesses installing solar panels. Nederland is also transitioning to electric vehicles and is on a waitlist to get an all-electric Ford Lightning truck, which Haney doesn’t believe many mountain towns have. The town will also be adding more EV chargers to accommodate tourists from neighboring Denver as well as locals who wish to make the switch.

Haney was pleasantly surprised that sustainability initiatives were not a hard sell. Local food production is a high priority for many, and building up a community greenhouse and farmers market are a common goal.

What’s challenging in a town of this size, according to Haney, is making sustainability a priority in a community with limited human resources, all while maintaining a small town feel — which is the reason people come to visit. “This was a different town 20 years ago,” said Haney. “It will continue to change over time, and we get to help decide what that looks like. One of the benefits of being a small town is that we get to instigate change — probably pretty well — with just having a small community, maybe quicker than a larger municipality.”

Lafayette: Greening community engagement

Lafayette is a small but eclectic and engaged city full of character, and according to its Sustainability Manager Elizabeth Szorad, this willingness of residents to get involved with sustainability is one of its greatest assets. The downtown is culturally vibrant and art focused. Many popular community events are centered around artists and their creativity. Szorad capitalized on this and held a call for artists to create digital art to place on waste containers throughout downtown.

The downtown Lafayette is culturally vibrant and art focused. Many popular community events are centered around artists and their creativity. ? City of Lafayette

“Overall, we have a very great community, very involved,” Szorad said. “They care about our downtown, our neighborhood aspects, and building that community. We’re in a really nice spot in terms of growth.”

Lafayette is subject to a heat island effect, especially in the downtown corridor. A “cool roof” solution of shade provided by trees to mitigate this effect is one effort that will be proposed at a Lafayette City Council soon. Szorad said they’re at the beginning stages of analysis to determine how to make the city more resilient against the effects of extreme heat. “Can we find trees to provide shade in our downtown?” Szorad asked. “That comes into the conversation about water conservation — how much water would that need? Do we have enough water to grow the trees necessary to produce shade?”

The heat island effect

Szorad has been encouraged by the level of engagement of residents in Lafayette and their willingness to learn how to live more sustainably. She believes the key to implementing sustainability within a community is not a “zero to one hundred” approach but, rather, incremental behavior changes where everyone does their part.

One of Lafayette’s key priorities in “greening” the city has been focused on water conservation. In 2013, Lafayette instituted a permanent water conservation ordinance to protect its resources. The city partnered with local nonprofit Resource Central, offering three programs for residents to conserve water: Lawn Removal Service, Garden in a Box, and Slow the Flow programs are designed to reduce the amount of lawn residents have, replace them with waterwise yards which may include permeable green landscaping or other water-efficient plant material, and evaluate existing outdoor sprinkler systems.

Water conservation projects are top of mind to Szorad: “Due to climate change and earlier snowmelt in general, there’s a greater emphasis on what we’re going to do with our water conservation initiatives. Not only on the policy side — we are looking at different building codes.” The community has xeriscaped facilities that do not require water, such as roadways and medians, and will also be converting a facility in 2023 to be one of the largest demonstration xeriscape gardens in Colorado.

The gardens will be a community gathering space where residents and students can come learn about conservation and wildfire prevention. Lafayette also holds an annual Gas-Powered Mower and Leaf Blower Take Back Event, where residents receive an electric lawn equipment voucher in exchange for the return of their existing gas-powered equipment. This year’s event is taking place on April 22.

“Due to climate change and earlier snowmelt in general, there’s a greater emphasis on what we’re going to do with our water conservation initiatives. Not only on the policy side — we are looking at different building codes.”

“Part of our philosophy is to practice what we preach in sustainability as an organization,” Szorad told YS. “So if we do get calls like, ‘What are you doing about water conservation or recycling?’ We can tell our story to residents, so they understand that this is a priority — and they can look into what resources are available to make those incremental changes,” she explained.

The town is enhancing its sustainability plan by turning it towards a climate action plan. Lafayette will also be introducing a multi-modal transportation plan to include an e-bike rebate program which Szorad says has already been successful in Boulder and Denver. The goal is to change commuters’ transportation mode. In a city of nine square miles with an average trip of three miles, Szorad said that commuting translates very well to e-bike use, even with the addition of cargo. For this initiative, Lafayette is partnering with nearby Louisville. Creating regional partnerships increases the size of sustainability teams, which are usually limited in smaller localities.

Boulder County: A multi-pronged approach

The county refers to itself as a “global leader in climate action,” and the county’s Office of Sustainability, Climate Action & Resilience believes that radical transformation is required to meet the challenges faced by residents impacted by the climate crisis.

YS spoke with Christian Herrmann, the office’s Climate Communications Director. Herrmann said they’re “lucky in terms of being a local government that has a really passionate population that wants governmental action on the climate crisis and sustainability.”

Zach Hedstrom of Boulder Mushroom – ? Boulder County. Office of Sustainability, Climate Action & Resilience

Boulder was one of the first counties in the United States to establish a designated climate action fund to kickstart innovative projects and technologies that fight the climate crisis through carbon dioxide removal. “Instead of just reducing emissions by cutting fossil fuels and reducing pollution, we also believe that’s not enough,” said Herrmann. “We need to start innovating and actively sucking the legacy emissions and carbon dioxide that’s in the atmosphere out of the atmosphere.”

Herrmann points to the Marshall Fire — which was Colorado’s most expensive to date — as an example of the extreme wildfires the Boulder County area is experiencing. The Boulder Watershed Collective, Grama Grass & Livestock, and Boulder Mushroom — a local mycology center — have partnered with assistance from the county’s Climate Innovation Fund to decompose wood chips and inoculate them with mycelium in an effort to help the soil retain moisture and carbon dioxide, thereby making land more resilient and less prone to wildfire.

Herrmann sees the need for communities to partner. Local governments in the western U.S. are pooling resources to remove CO? out of the atmosphere. Four Corners Carbon Coalition, a partnership between Boulder County, Salt Lake City, Santa Fe, and Flagstaff just launched a first round of grants for projects that use removed CO? to produce concrete. Concrete production represents over 7% of all global emissions.

“We need to start innovating and actively sucking the legacy emissions and carbon dioxide that’s in the atmosphere out of the atmosphere.”

“We’ve focused a lot as an organization on agricultural climate solutions,” said Herrmann. “That’s a huge puzzle piece — that local soils and local populations have access to food that’s produced nearby. In addition, farmland, when managed well, can function as carbon sinks.” Carbon sinks are anything natural, such as vegetation, the ocean, or otherwise, that accumulate and store carbon compounds.

BOCO also partnered with Mad Agriculture and the James Beard Award-winning Zero Foodprint to launch Restore Colorado. Restaurants and food businesses can sign up and use 1% of customers’ bills to fund local farms and ranches to support local regenerative and carbon farming practices such as composting and tree planting. Over thirty-two Colorado restaurants and businesses, like Annette, Dry Storage, River and Woods, Somebody People, and all Boulder Subway sandwich locations, are taking part in the program.

The county is also tackling climate change in a more systematic way in the courtroom. The county, along with San Miguel County, filed a lawsuit in 2018 against oil companies Suncor and ExxonMobil demanding that they contribute to the costs associated with climate change, estimated to top $150 million dollars by 2050. The communities are supported by EarthRights International, Hannon Law Firm, and Niskanen Center. The case has been remanded to Colorado state court as of 2020.

The end — and a collectively renewable beginning

Climate activists and organizations have long been sounding the alarm. The Colorado Sierra Club has been advocating for climate change solutions with recommendations from air and water quality to public health, wildlife preservation, and fuel consumption. The social justice and equity component of environmentalism can’t be overstated. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences indicates climate change and extreme weather events have a disproportionate burden on vulnerable populations.

“I think that’s what we need to tackle the climate crisis — we need local action.”

“In general, children and pregnant women, older adults, certain occupational groups, persons with disabilities, and persons with chronic medical conditions are more vulnerable to health stressors, such as extreme heat, floods, poor air quality, and other climate-related events,” the report states. The unfortunate reality is that those with less access to resources have less of a way to impact governmental policies despite being the most affected by a changing climate.

Despite this, there’s an appetite in BOCO and North Metro to fight back. Initiatives are often fueled by passion and a willingness to turn the tide and protect the fragile local ecosystems.

“I think that’s what we need to tackle the climate crisis — we need local action,” Herrmann told YS. “We need people to be thinking about their gardens, improving the health of their gardens, and growing their own food … and you also need to be tackling more systemic action to help shift the system where possible.”

We need to be realistic. Oil and gas companies as well as the military — the world’s single largest consumer of oil according to studies by Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs — are the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. It’s clear that community initiatives, while laudable, practical, and helpful, will never be enough to stop dangerous emissions from leaking into the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a special report on the impacts of global warming in 2018 with clear conclusions: “Limiting global warming to 1.5ºC would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” The IPCC’s report indicated that we have 12 years to act decisively. That was five years ago already. Proponents of fracking would like us to believe the economic effects of halting fossil fuel extraction would be dire. This ignores the extreme costs of disaster event-related losses — $2.97 trillion over the past two decades according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction: “While better recording and reporting may partly explain some of the increase in events, much of it is due to a significant rise in the number of climate-related disasters. Between 2000 and 2019, there were 510,837 deaths and 3.9 billion people affected by 6,681 climate-related disasters. This compares with 3,656 climate-related events which accounted for 995,330 deaths (47% due to drought/ famine) and 3.2 billion affected in the period 1980-1999.”

“We need people to be thinking about their gardens, improving the health of their gardens, and growing their own food … and you also need to be tackling more systemic action to help shift the system where possible.”

Focusing on economic impacts of slowing oil and gas also ignores the growth in the clean technology and energy sectors. Clean energy boosts employment levels. Jobs are expected to expand to 43 million worldwide by 2050. It also reduces consumer costs, is commercially viable, and allows universal access to energy. The industry’s “math” simply does not compute.

Coloradoans want to see change, and as a region disproportionately and disastrously affected by the climate crisis, they’re taking initiative and holding their representatives to task. No one is naive here. Residents know that systemic global change is needed to truly halt the effects of the climate crisis.

Even faced with these sobering facts, small changes do make an impact, and local communities are bringing awareness to the severe and devastating effects of climate change to our environment. Our ecosystem depends on it, and thereby so do we.

The post The Power of Local Action: How Municipalities Are Making a Difference in Sustainability Efforts appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Insurance companies have resisted changes to the industry that would benefit survivors of natural disasters, making it more difficult for homeowners facing this dire situation.

The second moment of trauma

There is another looming moment not often talked about that comes in the wake of disaster — that sinking feeling when hope fades and reality of an uphill battle sets in. There is no going back. Unfortunately many families had to experience this feeling of helplessness and loss yet another time following the Marshall Fire when insurance didn’t adequately cover the damages wrought by Mother Nature. Surviving a natural disaster is traumatic enough. Discovering your insurance won’t fully cover the costs of the damage is a whole new hurdle, but it can evoke the same feelings of loss, helplessness, and insurmountable odds.

The danger of living in a place with such stunning natural beauty is understanding that nature cannot be tamed, controlled, or even predicted at times. We value our open spaces, our mountain views, and the forests of trees that can bring such tranquility to everyday life in Colorado, but existing this close to nature has its occasional drawback when fires or storms have other plans.

951 total loss of homes reported

Buying insurance is almost no one’s idea of a fun time. Going over specifics and details to be worked into a contract with your agent can be time consuming and tedious. It is so much easier to simply enter some basic information about your home and let a computer program run the numbers. It is so much more tempting to go with the easiest or cheapest insurance option, forgoing coverage that may never be needed for the sake of efficiency. Getting into the weeds of every item in the home that has value, double checking calculations, and obtaining multiple quotes from adjusters take time and resources not readily available to everyone.

Unfortunately so many residents found out — in the hardest way possible — their insurance did not cover the total loss of property in the Marshall Fire. Even homeowners who had the extra time to spend on their insurance when first moving into their house may have at one point rejected a coverage increase. Some of our rural residents have added to their homes or built additional structures to better suit their needs. Additionally, building codes may have changed since the home insurance was first purchased which may affect payout if new codes were not addressed. Not everyone is aware of the exact coverage needed for their specific situations. Any of these events would have resulted in insufficient coverage.

The non-profit organization United Policyholders’ website explains, “If you refused to follow recommendations from your agent or insurer to increase your limits, or if you have made major improvements to your home without notifying your agent or insurer, it is unlikely your insurer will agree to pay above the amounts stated in your policy contract.”

United Policyholders goes on to define what underinsurance means: “When you’re underinsured there is a gap between the actual cost of replacing your destroyed home or business and the available insurance benefits in the policy that was in force at the time of loss.”

That’s when despair can strike again. It is daunting beyond belief to have lost your home and possessions. It becomes dehumanizing to also be informed that your insurance will not cover the total loss. Homeowners facing this situation are looking for empathy, support, and assistance but are instead faced with the cold hard facts that money rules the day. Insurance agencies exist, like so many of our institutions, to make a profit. It is not profitable to cover the complete loss of numerous homes, and the agencies bank on this unlikely event never happening when they issue insurance. That all means when disaster does strike, homeowners need to be prepared to fight another battle once the initial dust clears. It also means that as the climate shifts to become more unpredictable and more devastating, total loss events are more likely to occur.

The good news is that underinsurance can be rectified — under the right circumstances. Even though your insurance policy is a legally binding document, some things can still be amended or adjusted after the fact for those who are persistent enough and have some support from advocate groups, lawyers, and the time to spend fighting.

Contracts and contractors

Insurance agencies present themselves as experts when a home or business owner works with them to establish a policy. The cruel irony is that in the event of loss, the property owner must now become the expert in finding ways to advocate for themselves and understanding the full nuances of their coverage. Knowing what avenues to pursue and who to turn to can be half the battle.

Reading insurance policies often brings about that glazed-over look, pages on pages of minutiae and details nearly incomprehensible to the average person. “Legalese” is a term colloquially used to describe the detailed and specific language that contracts use. Simply interpreting what a policy fully entails can require someone with specialized skills.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Attorneys often get a bad rap, but this is a time when you will need someone in your corner fighting for you. Finding the right lawyer for your needs can help immeasurably. In some ways, it can be like dealing with the police. Do not have your insurance company take a statement or interview you without consulting with a lawyer. You can accidentally limit your coverage by saying the wrong thing to the right person. Insurance companies know how to protect themselves and as a homeowner or business owner facing a total loss, you do not want to limit your coverage by misunderstanding or simply misstating a basic fact. It is difficult to comprehend and communicate in legalese, so having an expert on your side when attempting to negotiate with a corporation can be immensely helpful.

You wouldn’t fight the fire on your own, you don’t need to fight insurance companies on your own either. Lawyers don’t have nearly the reputation that firefighters do, but in this case they are crucial to navigating the complex system. It may seem like an uphill battle — because it is — but insurance companies often count on homeowners becoming frustrated and giving up hope instead of pursuing a fight for fair coverage. This can seem cruel, forcing disaster survivors to fend for themselves, but it is the nature of the business in many cases.

Another separate but related stress to deal with is contractors who inflate quotes post-disaster in order to take advantage of those in desperate need. Unfortunately, there is no statewide database for licensed and bonded contractors in Colorado. Each municipality must independently verify a contractor’s information is up to date. Fortunately, this has not been as widespread of a problem as it could be according to our conversation with Garry Sanafaçon, recovery manager for Boulder County.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Always make sure your contractor is licensed and registered in Boulder County. It may be cheaper to go another route, but you as a homeowner would be left with huge costs and liability you had no idea existed. Licensed contractors have liability insurance that covers any injuries or post-construction failures that could possibly occur. Certain contractors may advise homeowners into signing as owner-builder so as to remove this liability, claiming that it will save money. In the short term, they are correct. It can save you money, but in the long run it can leave you with liability and debt if work is performed incorrectly.

Your recourse for poorly completed work, unfinished jobs, or disappearing contractors vastly increases when you hire a licensed contractor. You can report them to the municipality where they operate, which may cause them to lose their license if their violations are egregious enough. This is a much more effective way of holding them liable than simply leaving a bad Yelp or Facebook review.

Taking the human out of the equation

The way insurance works, it is in the best interest of agents to get you to sign up. These tactics can make them offer you less insurance coverage for a lower cost if that’s what it means to get you to use their services over competitors. Reducing your entire life’s possessions to numbers can seem dehumanizing — because it literally is. Computer software is most likely responsible for what insurance policy you have for your home.

Insurance companies use software programs to issue insurance claims. They input data provided by the homeowner, and the computer tells both parties what insurance is needed. Homeowners need to be as detailed as possible in order to get the right coverage. This is the time to be meticulous, dive into details, and possibly save yourself a huge hassle on the backend if, God forbid, anything should ever happen.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Sanafaçon told us that “the insurance companies use software to estimate, and just like anything, it’s only as good as the data you put in.” The more detailed and specific you can be when signing up or renewing your policy, the better the outcome will be when disaster strikes.

Many agencies do not want the general public to know that it is possible to fix underinsurance after the fact in certain circumstances. If underinsurance was no fault of your own, for example you believed you were fully insured when in fact you were not, there is still a path forward.

Insurance agencies often have homeowners sign agreements not to discuss the amounts above their policy that were successfully negotiated, which stifles word of this process getting out. Instead, stories of homeowners not being able to fight their insurance companies dominate the news and can create a feeling of helplessness for others in the same situation.

Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, told YS that unfortunately, “disclosures don’t solve the problem.” Bach stated that your best bet is to “find a good agent, spend time with them explaining the features of your home, and when they generate a quote — which they will do using a replacement cost estimating software provided to them by an insurer — get a second opinion, the software chronically skews low.”

“Don’t trust your insurance company is going to take care of you when you get a renewal,” Sanafaçon warned. He also advised to “ask your insurer to put in writing that you are adequately covered, which they’ll never do, and the other is to actually do your own calculations.” To begin, he shared, “talk to construction experts or general contractors in your area who know what kind of house you have and what it costs to rebuild.”

“Don’t trust your insurance company is going to take care of you when you get a renewal.”

Rectifying underinsurance

One suggestion when facing underinsurance is to band together with other home and business owners who have policies from the same company. Strength in numbers allows victims in similar circumstances to find what strategies work best, consistently move up the chain of command, and offer comfort and support knowing that you are not alone after facing such a loss.

United Policyholders provides a comprehensive step-by-step plan on how to start dealing with underinsurance after disaster strikes. The first and most obvious is to identify any errors in the policy itself. This does not happen often, but finding a mistake like incorrect square footage can get your foot in the door and open up more avenues for collecting the money you will need, as long as the error is not on your end.

Another crucial step can be to have an “independent scope of loss from a qualified professional on the total cost of replacing your home with one of like kind and quality, to current building codes,” UP’s website states. There is a cost associated with hiring a professional to do this, usually a few thousand dollars, but the benefits can be immeasurable, not just for covering your monetary losses but for the peace of mind that you have adequate coverage.

Strength in numbers allows victims in similar circumstances to find what strategies work best, consistently move up the chain of command, and offer comfort and support knowing that you are not alone after facing such a loss.

Finally, another route that should be considered after a major natural disaster is to name and shame insurance companies that are not living up to your expectations and making things more difficult for you and other survivors. The media or your local government representatives can be avenues to publicly express your frustration and disappointment of the company’s customer disservice. Bad press and media coverage of difficult insurance companies can cause higher-ups at said company to reconsider their approach if it may affect their bottom line. Unfortunately our society runs on dollar signs. There is also the option of applying for the FEMA Individual Assistance Program, which can help cover the gap between what you need and what insurance will provide.

There are remedies for overcoming the second-time trauma hits, but they are not quick or easy. On a state level one remedy could be “legally requiring insurers to calculate RCV (replacement cost value) accurately before they issue a policy and holding them responsible for retroactively increasing the policy limits if they turn out to have projected low is the key, but insurers resist having the law state that,” Bach explained.

Reaching out for resources, connecting with other survivors, and pursuing all available options for help can be exhausting. Ultimately, similar to working on personal trauma, success may depend on resources available to each individual and the persistence to put forth the effort. Sadly, we are unlikely to see any state-wide initiatives that deal with the underlying problem. “I’ve presented before state regulators on underinsurance many times over the years, but I don’t know of a current initiative on point, other than the constant attempt to mandate disclosures,” Bach revealed. It might be time to put pressure on lawmakers to better regulate insurance agencies so that the unexpected — and unthinkable — do not have to occur twice for disaster survivors.

The post Dehumanizing and Traumatic: Underinsurance Following a Major Disaster Can Be a Daunting Hill to Climb Alone appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Examining Puebloan peoples’ responses to environmental change and growing agriculture can inform modern conservation efforts, but it still may not be enough.

Watering the desert

The Colorado River has brought life to an arid land for millennia. It’s not the largest river in the United States but its continuous and persistent flow has irrigated the desert, carved canyons, and provided life to countless millions of humans across the ages.

Native Americans used its life-giving properties to survive for thousands of years, construct vast cities, and grow crops in the Southwest desert long before the arrival of any Europeans. Numerous Native American nations have called the river home and used the geographical features the river has created as markers on the land, showing them sacred spaces, guiding migrations, and observing seasonal transitions. For many of them, the land and their people are inseparable. The story of the Colorado and its surrounding tributaries, vast landscapes, and otherworldly canyons is directly tied to their history, memories, and identity.

We must be careful not to fall into the racist trope of the pristine wilderness and “noble savage” that has plagued European thought well before Jean-Jacques Rousseau ever coined the term. Native Americans used resources to their advantage, building empires and vast networks spanning the continent. The Pueblo were one of the most successful groups to do so.

For countless generations the Colorado River has been used as a mercurial yet constant source of water for the mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that lived here. There is some truth to the fact that the original inhabitants of this continent do have a deeper connection to the land and the water that runs through it. Unfortunately, when white settlement reached this region they did not respect it as it deserved. Failing to understand the long history of ebbs and flows, times of abundance and times of scarcity, and the sustainable ways to survive off water in the desert has led to some of the modern issues surrounding the use of the Colorado’s water today.

The story of the overuse of the Colorado River has its origins in farming. Around 9,000 years ago a small wild plant called teosinte, commonly found in Mexico and Central America, was ingeniously domesticated. Mexico is one of the few places on Earth that archaeologists and botanists have determined agriculture independently arose. Mesoamericans relied on this plant to supplement the gathered crops and hunted animals for food. Over time and with direct human involvement, teosinte transformed into maize, or corn.

Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona, USA. The Colorado river behind the dam, surrounding by red rocks, desert, and mountain. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

The power of agriculture did not reveal itself immediately. Most hunter-gatherers did not make an immediate or dramatic transition to farming. From China to Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica, people likely used crops to supplement other wild food sources, becoming increasingly reliant on growing their own food as opposed to gathering it. This transition reduced the mobility of early farming groups. They could no longer pack up and leave land easily after investing time, energy, and hope into farming.

Settled life led to an increased population. Hunter gatherers have lower fertility rates than agriculturalists, possibly because multiple young children can be cared for at once in a farming community whereas carrying multiple small children across vast terrain is much more difficult.

Crop surpluses from farmed plants necessitated storage, ownership, and distribution of food to ensure the community’s survival through the seasons. It eventually meant that not every member of society had to hunt or gather. This allowed the formation of power hierarchies and classes not seen in mobile societies, which are inherently more egalitarian. We see the rise of monumental architecture, permanent cities, and population increases in regions where farming developed.

Maize in the Four Corners

Maize, or corn, agriculture spread slowly from southern Mexico up through the Southwest into the Four Corners region of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. The Pueblo people living in the northeast corner of this area, including southern Colorado, became expert desert farmers. “Histories of Maize” by John Staller, Robert Tykot, and Bruce Benz compiles evidence of this transition via pottery, architecture, and oral traditions. Puebloans constructed “great houses”, likely to store excess food and seeds in case of crop failures. The unknowable nature of rainfall may have propagated the rise of new classes of priests and belief systems. By 900 A.D. the Pueblo peoples had built incredible cities, established vast trade routes, and brought agriculture to the desert.

Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

“Pueblo” means home in Spanish. Today many people have an idea of what a pueblo looks like, but in fact the wattle and daub adobe buildings that the word conjures up would not appear until much later on. The first structures to be identified were called pit houses — half underground, half above ground. These homes used the natural cooling properties of being partly underground to create comfortable living spaces. “Kivas,” large circular ceremonial buildings, soon appeared in the archaeological record. The size of settlements gradually increased over time, with “great kivas” reaching up to 65 feet in diameter.

One of the first human developments to place a strain on the natural resources in this region was Chaco Canyon. Chaco Canyon, in what is now New Mexico, features twelve massive complexes, the largest of which was over five stories tall with hundreds of rooms. An archaeologist once quipped that Pueblo Bonito, the largest building in Chaco Canyon, was only surpassed in size once New York City constructed its massive tenement housing in the late 1800s.

Evidence of intricate pipe networks, massive storage units, and countless cobs of corn points towards an agricultural and architectural explosion. We do not know how many people lived here full time. It was likely a ceremonial center full of symbolism. Road networks emanated from the canyon, spanning hundreds of miles across the terrain. Some roads paralleled each other and some ended not long after they beain. These roads may be symbolic entryways of different groups of Pueblo peoples into what is known as the Chaco system. As corn production grew, so did the influence, size, and power of this central storage city. Entire mountains may have been deforested to construct the great buildings in Chaco Canyon.

In the epic book “One Vast Winter Count,” Colin G. Calloway states, “Between about 900 and 1150 the people of Chaco built a dozen towns, or ‘great houses,’ and scores of small settlements. They used at least two hundred thousand timbers in these construction projects.” Calloway adds, “Tree-ring-dating techniques applied to the beams allow archaeologists to establish detailed chronologies of construction.”

More and more innovative and complex ways to sustain this settlement are seen in the archaeological record. Controlling water became important. Calloway informs us that “Chacoans also built dams, ditches, canals, and reservoirs to collect water and transport it to their fields.” Strategies we use on the Colorado River today were pioneered over a thousand years ago. However, it did not last forever.

Colorado River, Lake Powell and Trachyte Canyon looking down aerial view from above – Bird’s eye view Colorado River, Utah, USA. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Geography or history?

By the time European settlers arrived, Chaco had been abandoned for centuries. The numerous trees used to construct the canyon also tell a grave tale. Using tree rings as biological evidence, scholars are able to estimate when these buildings were constructed but also reveal that persistent drought struck this region in the mid 1100s. Calloway explains, “Prayers for rain went unanswered, and drought gripped the region for several years. Tree rings show that drought struck the San Juan Basin in 1130 and persisted until about 1180.” Maize-based agriculture continued to flourish in areas further south like Mexico, but Calloway adds, “Farmers who had extended their communities and fields to areas where soil and growing conditions were marginal for corn cultivation were hard hit.”

What our modern minds conceive of as catastrophe may not have been perceived as such by the Puebloans who built Chaco Canyon. We actually see populations rise after Chaco fell. It seems the Pueblo peoples adapted to the overuse of resources in one area by fanning out, building numerous smaller settlements and not over-straining the canyon that had once been the center of their world. Instead, the inhabitants likely realized that incorporating elements of hunting and gathering, living in less dense settlements, and allowing the land to recover from deforestation and overuse of water was the solution to environmental degradation.

“There is little evidence of people fleeing their homes in blind panic and clear evidence of planned movements. People made choices based on the alternatives available; they knew where they were going and why,” Calloway writes.

“There is little evidence of people fleeing their homes in blind panic and clear evidence of planned movements. People made choices based on the alternatives available; they knew where they were going and why.”

Drought, crop failures, and other environmental factors have played an incredibly important role in shaping human history, yet we would rarely say something like the Roman Empire fell solely because of drought. Historians also point to forced movements of populations and political instability as reasons empires fall. This narrative helps reinforce human agency but reduces the role of geography and climate.

Farming is shown to have spread at a much faster rate in the Old World compared to the Americas likely because of the orientation of the landmasses. It is easier for crops and animals to be transported laterally, across a wide continent, because the climate does not vary as much along latitude as it does longitude. The shift in climate from the heart of Mexico to the mountains in Colorado is much greater than the shift from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the western side. Similar climate and geography facilitate the spread of farming and animals, but it does not determine the course of history.

Taking things too far the other way, stating that geography is the reason why humans developed the way they did, is also a known fallacy experts call “geographical determinism.” The popular book “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” by Jared Diamond has been accused of this. Somewhere between the constraints of geography and human agency lies our history.

Adapting to the reality of prolonged drought, the Pueblo peoples created new survival strategies. Although evidence of warfare and destruction does not exist in Chaco, across the Four Corners we start to see a dramatic shift in architecture. Pit houses and great houses gave way to cliff dwellings located at staggering heights on mountain faces. Defensive settlements, like Mesa Verde, developed as the main architectural features. Stone watchtowers and rock art demonstrate an increase in violence. New peoples, also affected by widespread environmental change, appeared in the region.

Although drought occurs regularly in the Colorado River’s past, today’s challenges are vastly more complicated in that humans are causing global climate change. The Puebloans reacted to overuse of water in a drought by changing their ways. Today’s challenge is deeper than a local, regional, or even continent-wide drought.

“A monument to man’s arrogance”

The first white settlers to lay eyes on Chaco Canyon were themselves less than one hundred years away from their own water crisis. Abandoned cities in the desert could have served as a warning sign that water availability and precious resources can and will change course.

American settlers and farmers also recognized the importance of the Colorado River to their development plans. By the 1880s this new wave of settlement was becoming more and more reliant on the river’s water to sustain their farms. Increased water use led to disputes over who has rights to access the river’s flow. In 1922 negotiations began among the several states that depend on the river. In a shortsighted and cruel twist of fate, the water allocations agreed to during the Colorado River Compact were unsustainable from the start.

“It’s now known that the years on which the original estimates were based on, in the early twentieth century, were the wettest since the 1400s,” writes David Owen in his book about the Colorado River, “Where the Water Goes.”

“It’s now known that the years on which the original estimates were based on, in the early twentieth century, were the wettest since the 1400s.”

Regulators, land-owners, and politicians were basing their decisions off of incredibly recent history, with little to no understanding of lessons from the deep past. The fact that the Colorado River had not been that full in over 600 years — and that the river has a history of fluctuating quite a bit — never played a role in that early decision-making process.

The term “paper water” is used to refer to water allocations that exceed the actual flow of the Colorado River. Today more water is legally granted for use than actually exists. Arid megapolises like Las Vegas and Los Angeles can only thrive because of the Colorado River’s series of dams, canals, and reservoirs.

“It supplies water to more than 36 million people, including residents not just of Boulder, Denver, and Colorado Springs, but also of Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego, and Los Angeles … it irrigates close to six million acres of farmland,” Owen states, yet the water use is unsustainable, and our modern society is highly unlikely to be able to adapt to changes the way the Pueblo peoples did. We also face a globe that has been altered, almost irreparably, by industrialization and population growth on a scale nearly unimaginable just a hundred years ago.

Recent news of shrinking reservoirs outside of Las Vegas exposing old mob hits and sunken boats serve as a dire warning that water is running out. Despite recent “atmospheric rivers” hitting California, a series of storms will not solve what is inherently an unsustainable allocation of water resources. It remains to be seen if mega-cities and suburban sprawl can weather the changes that our dramatic climate will throw at them in the not too distant future.

Record low water level of shrinking Lake Mead. The lake is key reservoir along Colorado River. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The past is the future

The Pueblo peoples are still here. Often Native Americans are talked about only in the past tense, as a relic of older times. This could not be further from the truth. Lessons from those who still live on the land of their ancestors cannot be ignored.

Efforts to return the management of land back to Native American groups have grown in popularity in recent years. These programs are an attempt to return stewardship of land, animals, and precious resources like water to people with a long history of adapting to them. It won’t be enough to solve the Colorado River water crisis on its own, however. Overpopulation and global climate change have driven water usage in the West to epidemic proportions that ancestral Pueblo would have never imagined.

The history of the Pueblo farming the Southwest desert is ultimately one of success, adaptation, and realizing the carrying capacity of nature when living in harsh, arid environments. To look towards our future we must consider the deep past. Architecture that takes advantage of natural heating and cooling properties can reduce energy consumption. Basing new development in the West on actual flowing water, not paper water, will have dramatic effects but may ultimately be necessary. Today we also have to contend with forces like political corruption via oil and gas companies, unrestricted pollution by the military which has a massive presence in this part of the nation, and the sheer scale of damage already wrought by globalization and industrialization. There are lessons to learn from the Puebloans of the past and the Puebloans of today, but we as a society must be willing to make herculean efforts and rethink what success means in order to cope with a changing landscape.

The history of the Pueblo farming the Southwest desert is ultimately one of success, adaptation, and realizing the carrying capacity of nature when living in harsh, arid environments.

Where has all the water gone?

1. Drought has always played a role in who can live in the West, we have entered uncharted new heights with population growth and urban development 
2. The Colorado River was at its highest point in centuries when an agreement to divide up the waters was signed in the 1920s
3. The series of dams, reservoirs, and canals built in the 20th Century allowed more development West of the Rockies
4. Major cities in arid regions, like Los Angeles and Las Vegas, are users of the Colorado River’s waters
5. There is now more water allocated to use than actually exists in the River itself 
6. The River no longer flows into the ocean, it depletes itself somewhere near the Mexico border

When Systems Fail

1. The Pueblo adapted to drought by dispersing into smaller settlements and shifting reliance away from agriculture
2. The entire modern West runs on Colorado River water, from drinking, to irrigation, to use as an energy source
3. If the River dips low enough, intake in crucial dams will drop below functioning level and the dams won’t generate power
4. Massive cutbacks on water usage will be needed, some restrictions are already in place

The post Drought, Famine, Overpopulation, and a Lack of Water: What the Puebloans and the Colorado River Can Teach Us appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published by H2O Radio and was shared via AP StoryShare. By Jamie Sudler, Executive Producer, KGNU

We gladly recycle our aluminum and paper with the expectation it gets repurposed into something new. But the idea that our human waste that we flush down the toilet would get reused somehow might make us wrinkle our noses. Not so for the city of Boulder’s wastewater treatment folks who see sewage as a valuable resource. 

BOULDER, Colo.—Flushing the toilet. It’s something we all do several times a day. We take showers, wash our hands, do the dishes, and the laundry. We probably don’t think much about where the water and the stuff in it goes after we’re done. It’s out of sight and out of mind.

But not to Dr. Sherri Cook, who teaches environmental engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Thinking about what goes down the drain is her job and her passion. Dr. Cook calls herself a “wastewater person” and for people in her field, when we flush, “that’s where the fun starts.”

Cook sees what we’re putting in the wastewater system as valuable treasure that shouldn’t go to waste. She says a recent research study asked adults in the U.S. to draw the water treatment cycle, and a lot of people just stopped at the toilet. “We flush it and it’s done, and then they have no idea where it goes from there.”

After the water and its content leave our homes and businesses, it used to go through a process we called “treatment.” But Dr. Cook says it’s important for people to realize we’re not really treating our wastewater, instead we are managing the resources in it to our benefit.

She says the three resources recovered are nutrients, energy, and of course, water. There’s carbon in our waste that we can turn into methane or renewable natural gas for energy. We take nitrogen and phosphorus and turn them into fertilizer. The water itself can be cleaned and returned to the river from which it came to support aquatic habitats and for us to drink and irrigate crops.

Recovering Resources from Wastewater

How is sewage magically turned from something with an “ick factor” into valuable commodities? For that answer, I make a trip to what used to be called the City of Boulder’s wastewater treatment plant. However, to reflect the industry’s paradigm shift, its director Cole Sigmon says it’s now the Water Resource Recovery Facility.

The plant is placed at a lower elevation in the northeast part of town, which allows gravity to send waste downhill without needing energy to pump it. Sigmon explains that when someone in Boulder flushes a toilet, it takes about two hours for their contribution to get to the facility and begin its resource recovery journey. Upon arrival, sewage travels up what looks like small escalators that remove toilet paper and other debris. It’s a loud and pretty smelly place and a bit unnerving to look at. Once an operator found a couple of hundred-dollar bills in the raw sewage, and even a caiman—a small alligator—that was quickly turned over to wildlife officials. Trash-like toilet paper is taken to landfill after being washed.

Then the liquid part goes to clarifiers—concrete circular ponds with long rotating arms that skim grease and other materials floating on the surface. After that, the water is pumped to aeration basins, where biology takes over the treatment process and removes not only organic material but also some compounds like nitrogen and phosphorus. The basins are large rectangular ponds that also break up hormones excreted by humans that can feminize male fish in rivers.

After the aeration basins, more solids, now called sludge, get removed in another set of circular clarifiers. Then the sludge takes a different path from the effluent and is conveyed to anaerobic digesters a few hundred feet away. The sludge has valuable nutrients, more phosphorus, and nitrogen.

The effluent, without that sludge, is run through UV disinfection and returned to Boulder Creek, from which it originally came, which flows just to the north of the facility.

The sludge, which at this point has the consistency of tomato soup, is run through centrifuges to remove more water. The result is something that Sigmon describes as looking like chocolate brownie mix and is called biosolids. Those biosolids are picked up from the Boulder plant by about seven trucks per week and taken to eastern Colorado, where they are used by farmers as fertilizer.

Producing Energy for Trash Collection

The anaerobic digesters that produce the biosolids also produce methane and, after a process that the City of Boulder implemented about a year and a half ago, the natural gas is put into a pipeline owned by Xcel Energy.

Credit: Jamie Sudler / H2O Media, Ltd.

Western Disposal Services is able to power about 65 percent of their trucks with gas produced by Boulder’s wastewater facility. 

Not far away is Western Disposal Services, which uses all the renewable natural gas produced at the Water Resource Recovery Facility to power its trash collection trucks. Of course, it’s impossible to track the exact molecules of methane that the water facility produces after they enter the pipeline. Nevertheless, the city gets paid by Western Disposal for the renewable energy produced by residents’ wastewater.

Kathy Carroll, communications director of Western Disposal said the company uses 60 trucks to collect trash, recycling, and compost materials all the way from Nederland in west Boulder County, east into Broomfield, and now even in parts of Jefferson County. On a tour of the facility, Carroll points out a long row of about a dozen hook-up stations where, what we used to call garbage trucks, fill their tanks with natural gas under the shelter of solar panels. About 38 of their trucks are running on the renewable natural gas that is produced by the city’s Wastewater Resource Recovery facility.

Western Disposal began to transition its fleet from diesel to compressed natural gas in 2010 and is now complete. Carroll says that Western is a locally owned company, and the 160 people who work there also live in the community, raising their families and benefiting from cleaner air associated with less diesel pollution. The reduction of carbon emissions that came from the transition to compressed natural gas is important to Western Disposal, and the company has entered a long-term contract with the city to purchase all the gas the wastewater plant produces.

More Possibilities for Resource Recovery

Could there be other resources recovered from wastewater? Water Resource Recovery Plant director Sigmon says there are several ideas. For one, the water moving though pipes is often warm and its heat could be harnessed to run the plant. Also, Sigmon says that some of the algae that grows in their clarifiers could be harvested for fertilizer and one day be used to make, surprisingly, shoes.

Back at the University of Colorado, Dr. Cook says likes ideas that look at the big picture. For example, she says, “We can get more methane from the feces that’s coming out of humans and decrease some of the fracking that’s happening. There’s a huge benefit, right?”

Although challenges lie ahead for the wastewater treatment industry from emerging contaminants like PFAS chemicals and microplastics, Dr. Cook sees them as opportunities to find solutions that might yield unique resources to make a truly circular economy where waste is put to work instead of just circling the drain.

Cook says, “It’s maybe a little embarrassing to be this passionate about waste, but I do, I do really like it.”

This story was produced as a part of a series by KGNU Community Radio on zero waste. 

The post Taking the Waste Out of Wastewater—How What We Flush Can Be Repurposed, Recycled, and Reused appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Barney Thinnes walks through what remains of his home on West Mulberry St. in Louisville, CO to collect pieces of a birdbath from his backyard. He’s tall with the slender frame of a hiker, one that bends under the weight of what he’s carrying up to the street. Several of his neighbors have made similar piles of dinner plates, broken kettle grills, and pieces of furniture that are meant to live elsewhere. This isn’t the first time Thinnes has come back to reclaim what’s his after the Marshall Fire, and it won’t be the last.

As the calendar turns to spring, signs of life are beginning to appear all around the idyllic Centennial Heights subdivision. Advertisements for spring baseball camps are taped to light posts, and a steady stream of people are walking their dogs along the Powerline Trail past Fireside Elementary.

But the smell of charcoal is inescapable when the wind comes through just right. Many of the homes that withstood the Marshall Fire have significant smoke damage and dumpsters full of drywall and insulation in their driveways. The upper middle-class neighborhood that once stood tall against the horizon now provides a perfect view of Centennial Highway and the outdoor hockey rink at the Louisville Recreation Center nearly a half mile away.

“You know, all this rebuilding stuff is going to take a while,” Thinnes told Yellow Scene Magazine in an interview, “but I think we’re going to make it out okay.”

Boulder County Wildfire Risk Map

The charred remains of homes aren’t the only part of the rebuilding process many Boulder County residents say they are concerned about. Not only did it raze more than 1,000 homes, several local businesses, and claim the lives of two community members over New Year’s weekend, but it also exposed fissures in Colorado’s emergency notification system. City officials say the fire caused more than $500 million in damages, though many families say they lost much more.

Thinnes takes off his work gloves and wipes his brow with the inside lip of his baseball cap. The hat is a loose fit, like it hasn’t been worn in a while. It’s unseasonably warm for a Sunday in March, and sweat is starting to stain his green t-shirt. He unplugs a set of charred Christmas lights that were still wrapped around the tree in his front yard. Out back, all 11 trees he planted within the last few years are damaged beyond recognition. He gets down on a knee and wipes away a few shards of ceramic pottery from a planter by his feet.

“Looks like the perennials we planted are coming back this year,” Thinnes says. “I’ll have to come back and dig them up another time.”

Mulberry Strong. Photo: Irina Ratsek

“We thought we were safe living here.”

For Bonnie Gosler and her family, safety and security are their two top priorities as they readjust to life after the fire in a changing neighborhood.

There are burn scars littered throughout the neighborhood. Some of her neighbors have resorted to wearing face masks wherever they go; others say they just don’t like how the neighborhood smells like stale barbecue. Meanwhile, there’s a constant chatter about the health impacts from the hydro-mulch and other chemicals that were laid to contain the ash.

Gosler told Yellow Scene in an interview that her house sustained significant smoke damage like other homes in the area. It took several weeks of professional cleaning and remediation before the family felt comfortable moving in again. The family lost a few personal items and several clothing items in the fire, but Gosler says the most important thing they lost is their sense of security.

She’s also noticed the fire has taken away some parts of their six-year-old daughter’s personality. A once bubbly and vivacious child is now quieter on their walks to school because of the blackened holes that are filled with rubble. At home, Gosler says the two often talk about her friends that no longer go to Fireside Elementary because the fire forced them to move away.

“We thought we were safe living here,” Gosler adds, “but this was a real wake-up call.”

Mulberry Strong. Photo: Robert Davis

The family is also still dealing with emotional trauma from evacuating. The Goslers left just after 11 a.m. on December 30. The sky was glowing bright red, and the air was thick with soot and ash. Gosler hurriedly packed a bag of spare clothes, toiletries, and some necessities before getting her six- and nine-year-old children into the car, their eyes wide with fear.

By the time they got on the road, the air was stifling. Gosler, a technical writer by trade, checked her phone several times to see if Boulder County authorities had sent out any evacuation instructions. If they did, they didn’t send one to her, she says.

According to a report by 9News, only one out of five emergency alerts received about fire were confirmed, meaning the recipient followed the instructions to Press 1 to confirm. More than 24,000 alerts were sent to landlines, email addresses, and cell phones, but just over 4,600 were confirmed.

Colorado’s Office of Emergency Management offered to help Boulder County officials send out evacuation alerts using the state’s Wireless Emergency Alerts system, which grants officials access to cellphones like an Amber Alert. However, Boulder County declined the offer because they were already using another system to send alerts, according to the report.

Like many other families, the Goslers hit several roadblocks on their way out of town. The fire forced the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) to shut down Foothills Highway, also known as US 36, and divert traffic eastward along Baseline Rd. and S. Boulder Rd. through Louisville and Superior. This decision ultimately combined the evacuees from three towns onto a handful of roads leading out of the area.

Several people posted videos on social media of themselves sitting still in traffic for multiple hours as the fires moved toward their cars. Others posted pictures of a hellfire haze surrounding the towns that seemed endlessly thick. The Goslers spent a couple of hours on S. Boulder Rd. before reaching Hwy 287 and heading south toward Arvada.

The family spent three weeks shuffling between hotels and Airbnb properties. Gosler adds that the experience was challenging for their nine-year-old son who is on the autism spectrum.

Now that the family is back in the home, Gosler says the lingering smell of smoke is a constant reminder of how close the fire came.

“It was a very traumatic experience for all of us,” Gosler said.

Powerline Trail. Photo: Robert Davis

Caught Off Guard

David Beebe, Fire Chief for the Mountain View Fire Protection District (MVFPD), recognized the danger the Marshall Fire posed almost immediately after arriving on-scene.

As a 17-year veteran of one of Colorado’s most experienced wildfire fighting brigades, Beebe thought he’d seen it all. He was a part of the crews that fought back the Overland Fire and the Fourmile Canyon Fire, which claimed a total of 10,000 acres of dense woodlands.

He also regularly helps train new recruits at Eldorado Springs Station 9, which was the first station to respond to the Marshall Fire. The station is tucked into a hillside and runs up against an open field of grassland, shrubs, and a few trees, making it an ideal place for firefighters to learn how to fight wildfires.

Following the Marshall Fire, Beebe says he’s seen all the data, read all the reports, and has listened to every critic tell him about what went wrong that day. Still, he comes to the same solemn conclusion each time and says it with a steadiness one should expect from a veteran firefighter: “There isn’t much else we could have done that day, from an internal perspective,” Beebe told YS.

Beebe says the decentralized emergency response system that Colorado firefighters use to allocate resources was one of his team’s biggest hindrances that day. The on-scene incident commander is responsible for telling dispatchers what resources to send and where they can be found. Beebe says this task was almost impossible to perform during the Marshall Fire because of its quick acceleration.

According to audio files obtained by the Colorado Sun, several other calls came in shortly after the Marshall Fire was first reported that also diverted resources out of the area. One firefighter can be heard calling for residents to be evacuated. Another put in a call for additional units as the fire, “moved through the property… and into some homes.”

Meanwhile, the environmental conditions proved to be overwhelming. Not only was the surrounding grassland especially dry after receiving less rain than usual that December, but the 90 mph winds that were measured that day helped accelerate the blaze much faster than firefighters anticipated. The fire even burned up the backup generator for the Town of Superior’s water pump, which caused fire hydrants in several neighborhoods to stop working.

Beebe says, with a hardened glare, that the location of the fire was also, “a little surprising.” MVFPD’s territory includes thick woods stretching from Flagstaff to Gross Reservoir, which are the places that Beebe says are typically more prone to wildfires.

Meanwhile, town officials had to work double duty to coordinate the evacuation with federal agencies. For example, the BNSF railroad, which crosses the two major evacuation routes, kept running during the evacuation until officials called Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Boulder, and told him to stop the train.

Beebe has been pleading with local leaders to address the myriad gaps in Colorado’s emergency notification system that were exposed during the fire. This includes providing additional funding and support for resource mobilization and improving communication between local, state, and federal agencies.

Beebe says that wildfire should become a higher priority topic in the General Assembly following the fire. He’s concerned that support might only last until the next emergency, and by that time, it could be too late.

Photo: Kayla Gaines

Fertile Ground for Wildfire

Deborah McNamara is a naturally energetic person. She loves the outdoors, exploring her spirituality, and writing stories about the journeys of motherhood. For the last few years she has been pushing local lawmakers to take a stronger stand against climate change and says the Marshall Fire set her into overdrive.

As a resident of north Boulder, McNamara has a personal connection to wildfires after surviving the Cal Wood fire back in 2018. She told YS in an interview that she could see the smoke from Cal Wood climbing over her neighbors’ homes and felt an eerily similar fear when the Marshall Fire broke out.

McNamara lives in a more rural enclave of Boulder, one that isn’t often recalled when one thinks of Colorado as a home for Twitter and Google. Her house is less than a mile from open spaces like Wonderland Park and its numerous hiking trails. McNamara says these are the areas that she most commonly associated with wildfires. After the Marshall Fire, however, she realized just how susceptible Colorado is to the natural disaster.

“This was the second time in as many years that my family could see a wildfire from our bedroom windows,” McNamara said. “I’m just not sure that wildfires have really been a top priority for lawmakers.”

Most people would be busy enough working full time as a campaign director for the climate action group 350 Colorado, but McNamara is also raising three young sons and wants them to grow up in a world where wildfires are much less of a threat. However, she realizes those days may be far into the future.  

According to the most recent seasonal outlook from the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center (RMACC), an interagency environmental organization, Colorado’s wildfire risk is elevated because of extreme drought conditions across the state which “promote the availability of receptive fuels as well as rapid fire spread potential during springtime wind events.” Colorado’s eastern plains and southeastern corner have the highest risk for wildfire because of these conditions, the outlook said.

Colorado’s wildfires are becoming increasingly destructive. The state has spent more than $78 million on fire suppression activities since 2018, according to data from the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control. More than 1.4 million acres have gone up in smoke over the same period. 

The lingering effects that wildfires have on individuals and families can be just as economically damaging to communities as the wildfire itself. 

Wildfires often increase air pollution which, in turn, decreases economic productivity because people stay home from school and work, McNamara said. They are also damaging Colorado’s outdoor recreation industry, which contributed more than $9.6 billion in value-added gross domestic product and supports more than 120,000 jobs across Colorado in 2020, according to the Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

Colorado’s residential areas, like the one McNamara lives in, stand on the losing end of Colorado’s increasing frequency of wildfires. According to a Colorado State Forest Service report, only 42 percent of Boulder County residents live in areas with little or no risk of wildfire. Many of the areas with the lowest risk are in the unincorporated parts of the county whereas the areas of highest risk are in the neighborhoods surrounding the University of Colorado Boulder and Foothills Highway.

350 Colorado is calling on Polis’ administration to sign an executive order declaring a climate emergency. The group is also pushing lawmakers to phase out fossil fuel use by 2030 and shut down all coal-fired power plants by 2025. McNamara described these goals as aggressive but necessary to meet the scale of devastation wrought by recent wildfires.

The group also wants to see Colorado expand the Office of Just Transition within the Department of Labor and Employment. This office is responsible for helping workers in the fossil fuel industry move into clean energy jobs with additional job training or placement services.

“What we’re seeing in terms of wildfire and drought is getting worse,” McNamara said. “We need our leaders to understand that and respond accordingly.”

Photo: Irina Ratsek

Legislative Response

One place that’s still emotionally draining for Louisville Mayor Ashley Stolzmann to visit after the Marshall Fire is the grocery store. What one symbolized as a place of community can now be a reminder of the grief and suffering caused by the fire.

“It just increases the proportion of the impact to see so many people who lost their homes or some of their favorite belongings,” Stolzmann told YS.

It wasn’t long after the fire started that soot and ash began billowing through Louisville’s historic Main Street. As Stolzmann watched the smoke fold over landmarks like Empire Restaurant with its 1950s-style marquee and The Huckleberry Diner just down the street from the municipal center, she knew the fire wasn’t like the others Colorado has seen recently.

She describes her community’s response to the fire as resilient, one that nearly matched the devastation of the fire itself. Local businesses and nonprofit organizations have hosted several charity events, and she says there is an “all-around sense of gratefulness” that more lives weren’t lost.

Like many in her community, Stolzmann worries that Colorado’s legislative response to its recent wildfires has been lackluster at best.

Gov. Jared Polis has signed several bills into law since 2018 that seek to bolster Colorado’s wildfire response system. In all, lawmakers have appropriated more than $113 million toward wildfire mitigation efforts over the last three sessions. They also passed bills that modified the state Wildfire Risk Mitigation Grant Program to provide rural areas with more firefighting resources and improved health care benefits for firefighters.

Lawmakers kicked their wildfire fighting efforts into high gear following Colorado’s destructive wildfire season in 2020. That year, state lawmakers appropriated nearly $60 million for wildfire fighting agencies to purchase new equipment and increase forest health and wildfire mitigation programs.

Colorado lawmakers have also delayed some important climate rules despite calls from environmental groups to do more to address climate change. For example, lawmakers delayed the implementation of Colorado’s Clean Truck Strategy until 2023, which requires medium- and heavy-duty trucks to cut their vehicle emissions by 45% by 2050.

Federal lawmakers have also introduced the Western Wildfire Support Act, a bill that seeks to increase emergency funding for wildfires, establish a federal wildfire management plan, and support additional firefighting training efforts. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Neguse in the House of Representatives and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-New Mexico) in the Senate. However, the House has not held a hearing on the bill since January, and the Senate has not debated the bill’s counterpart since last year.

Stolzmann told YS that she has already had initial conversations with her peer mayors in Boulder County and other state partners about improving communication for the next time there is an evacuation.

She points to Houston, Texas as a model for how city evacuation plans should operate. The city added additional Bluetooth communication devices that communicate travel times with the Texas Department of Transportation after Hurricane Rita in 2006. This system allows them to adjust evacuation routes and ease traffic.

Stolzmann is also planning to take these ambitions on the campaign trail for a seat on the Boulder County Board of Commissioners when her term ends in 2023. For now, Stolzmann says she is heartened by her community’s continued support for one another. “This level of devastation was pretty unimaginable before it happened,” Stolzmann says, “but, I think it’s changed a lot about how we talk about a lot of things, especially emergency preparedness.”

Mulberry Street. Photo: Robert Davis

“I feel like we’re just now getting back into the swing of things.”

While officials continue to sort out the cause of the fire, the Goslers and several other families continue to slowly rebuild their lives. “I feel like we’re just now getting back into the swing of things, but we still have so far to go,” Gosler said.

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, several groups quickly set up “hubs of warmth,” as Gosler says, to help survivors reconnect with the community and forget about the trauma they endured. These hubs ranged from clothing and food drives that were hosted at local schools to the Red Cross shelters that popped up nearby. 

Gosler says she felt like a part of the community again after receiving a donation of food and clothes from Fireside Elementary. At the time, her daughter had just two outfits to wear because smoke had damaged the rest. Gosler said watching her eyes light up as she got a new, clean shirt to wear made her forget about everything else that was happening because of the fire, if only for a little while.

Organizations like the Boulder-Longmont Association of Realtors (BOLO REALTORS(R)) also pitched in to help connect fire victims with housing. The group also raised more than $2 million on their own to fund grants that can help families put their lives back together.

Boulder County is trying to help residents move on in other ways as well. The county is offering mental health services to fire victims, and it has already adopted a new emergency notification system that sends alerts to cellphones without users having to opt in. The messages will also be broadcast in both English and Spanish.

When asked how she feels about the future, Gosler said she is very afraid Her family wants to buy a home nearby and settle down, but those hopes are growing dimmer given Colorado’s historically low supply of real estate inventory. Meanwhile, some of the charred plots that remain after the Marshall Fire are selling for $500,000 or more, which makes it increasingly difficult for Gosler to imagine staying in the area.

There are still several things trapping Gosler in the past. Many neighborhoods still have rubble and debris from the fire, leaving a lingering scent of charcoal in the air. The snow is also a reminder since a snowstorm came and dropped an eerie stillness over the neighborhood the day the fire stopped during. 

Gosler says she still thinks about the fire at odd times of the day. Sometimes she thinks about it when she’s cooking, other times when she’s alone with her thoughts. 

“The snow came a day too late for us,” Gosler says, “It was very, very cruel.” 

The post The Fire Next Time appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

by Garrett Looker

Two years ago, as the world began to change and the COVID-19 pandemic circled the globe, Heidi Leathwood began to change her personal world. With the ideas of sustainability, environmental protection, and a greener future, Leathwood found herself altering what many consider to be a vital part of life. She stopped driving—completely. 

In those two years, Leathwood has continued to put down miles behind her, whether by foot or by bike. For further stretches, such as visiting her mother, Leathwood has been unshaken, relying on public transportation for longer distances. 

Leathwood, a climate policy analyst with 350 Colorado, and others know the concept of transportation is inherently intertwined with renewable energy and sustainability, and it is one that is specifically outlined in the Colorado Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap, a plan created following HB19-1261, the climate action plan to reduce pollution. As dictated in that bill, the Colorado General Assembly put into motion plans to reduce 2025 greenhouse gas pollution by at least 26% compared to 2005 levels. The bill also states that levels must be lowered 50% by 2030 and 90% by 2050. 

Political action such as this suggests Colorado presents itself as a forward-thinking state that values supporting and safeguarding vital ecosystems. However, the latest 2020 Eco-Cycle and Colorado Public Interest Research Group report found Colorado is not meeting its recycling and composting goals and “remains one of the 20 most wasteful states.” Moreover, Colorado has continuously endorsed and funded environmentally integrated bicycle and pedestrian greenways but continues to allocate major portions of transportation funding to highway renewal and expansion. Colorado is adept at cultivating ecological literacy and promoting eco-friendly lifestyles overall, but the Centennial State merely models the skills to be environmentally conscious. Contributing to the comprehensive reduction of climate change is an area in which the state of Colorado falls short.

In a 2021 study, Colorado ranked No. 9 in eco-friendly behaviors but No. 25 as a climate-change contributor (Wallet Hub).

This begs the question, how can Colorado effect measurable change and significantly decrease its overall contribution to climate change? While Boulder and Denver are examples in creating greenways and bike paths, both cities lack a number of walkable neighborhoods—Boulder maintains a median Walk Score of 56, and Denver has an average Walk Score of 61. Walk Score is an online website that rates and scores neighborhoods and cities across America on walkability. These two cities are ranked in the middle tier of scoring at “somewhat walkable.” Compared to a car-dependent community, a walkable neighborhood diminishes greenhouse gas emissions by four tons yearly. Colorado’s environmental goals could be met by generating walkable neighborhoods throughout its more sizable cities, yet it has largely failed to do so. Solutions to create more pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods may be on the horizon.

The issue of climate change is rooted in the very idea of who American citizens are and specifically, what they drive, Molly McKinley, policy director of Denver Streets Partnership claims. 

“It’s something I think about all the time,” McKinley said. “We can’t have our cake and eat it too. We can’t make the critical change that we need to. We really need to make a fundamental shift in how we move around our communities if we’re going to meet these goals.”

The fight against climate change and achieving the goals set out in Colorado’s roadmap can only be won by drastically altering the standard way of living and traveling, according to Rachel Hultin of Bicycle Colorado. 

“To me, when you get people out of cars and walking and biking in their communities, you’re making communities better today,” Hultin said. “But what you’re really doing is making the investment for future generations.”

To Hultin, community is tied to how individuals feel about their place—and specifically, how dedicated they feel to making it better.

For her, once people step out from behind the wheel of their car, they become closer to the lives around them. 

“Community—it’s a group of people who feel connected by place,” Hultin continued. “And they may or may not know who’s in their community, but the connection to place connects them. And transportation is inherently connected to place. When you get out of your car and you don’t have a windshield, and whether you’re walking or riding a bike, you have a more sensory experience, and your brain actually processes your experience in a more humanized way.”

Acknowledging that fossil fuels are an antiquated energy source, America has seen a significant shift in the development of electric vehicles across the country. On the national front, Ford Motors recently announced plans to reorganize its manufacturing divisions with Ford Blue, which creates the traditional internal combustion engine, and Ford Model E, which develops battery electric vehicles. John Deere has obtained a majority interest in Kreisel Electric, Inc., an Austrian company specializing in renewable battery energy. Colorado’s own Governor Jared Polis has continued to assert his commitment to a goal of 940,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2030.

According to the Colorado Department of Transportation, there are approximately 49,271 electric vehicles registered in the state currently. 

The state’s pollution reduction roadmap will focus on encouraging Coloradans to turn to electric vehicles as well as electrifying city and state vehicle fleets. Efforts such as this are to continue past the 2025 goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26%. So much so, by 2050, the roadmap plans to have approximately 100% of all vehicles on Colorado streets be electric. In March 2022, Colorado released plans to introduce all-electric, 18-wheeler trucks to the streets of Denver. This effort pairs with Governor Polis’ encouragement for his constituents to purchase electric vehicles.

According to the Colorado Department of Transportation, the state’s “Clean Truck Strategy would reduce greenhouse gas emissions from medium- and heavy-duty vehicles by at least 45% in Colorado by 2050.”

However, “They just now kicked the Clean Trucks rule-making into 2023 when it was originally for 2022,” Leathwood said. 

More action and comprehensive planning is to come, according to Timothy Hoover, Colorado Department of Transportation communications integration lead, but he cautioned that this is still in the early stages. 

As of Jan. 2022, the United States has almost 113,600 charging outlets for plug-in electric vehicles.

There are three levels of electric charging stations. Level 1, chiefly for home use; Level 2, private and public usage at no charge to the public; and Level 3, direct current fast charge, which can replenish an electric vehicle battery in an hour or less at a cost to the car owner. The Colorado Energy Office fast-charging electric vehicle corridors project comprises 34 fast-charging stations across the state. Remarkably, 20 Level 2 electric vehicle chargers will be installed at state parks by the end of summer 2022, allowing visitors to the state of Colorado easier access to charging stations. While the addition of these charging stations is a step forward in promoting eco-friendly tourism, the move primarily aids affluent tourists to the state. The social disparity of ease of access to charging stations remains a hurdle for most Coloradans.  

“The National EV Charging Infrastructure program is a new formula funding source from the federal government to support the construction of a national network of 500,000 EV chargers along major interstates and highways,” Hoover said. “It’s one portion of part of the broader Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act signed by the President back in November. The goal is to allow for seamless EV travel across the entire country, leading to greater adoption beyond urban areas.” Hoover also stated that Colorado would receive an estimated $57 million in NEVI funds over the next five years.

The inconvenient truth that Hultin and others may subscribe to is that Coloradans, and most Americans, for that matter, can no longer rely on the most dominant mode of transportation of the last century if they are to reverse the trajectory of climate change.

Simply put, local activists believe the automobile—regardless if it is gasoline-powered or the more modern electric vehicle—is a form of transportation stuck in a bygone era. If Coloradans are to achieve a renewable and sustainable future, and if the state is to meet the goals of reducing emissions proposed by elected officials, these activists believe communities must embrace more modest modes of transportation, such as biking and public transportation.

“It’s not new age,” Hultin said. “If you look at transportation planning documents, for decades, what you hear from people when they do community input is ‘We want more access to more biking, walking, and transit.’”

“So communities have been asking for it for a long time. Bicycle Colorado is specifically working with elected officials across the Front Range to help people who are already elected and have a disproportionate influence over project selection and funding. We’re trying to activate those local leaders who actually know from their neighbors what their needs are and getting those local leaders to actually take action with their regional transportation.”

More than incremental numbers on a politician’s spreadsheet or the percentages that define Colorado’s waning dependency on coal, it is not only about meeting those goals, Hultin said. The uphill fight against climate change is an even more personal journey, one that Hultin believes is all about the speed at which we live our lives.  

McKinley believes the future of sustainability and renewable energy must come with a transition of mind and community. Without it, Colorado’s goals will not be met. 

“I think a lot about the concept of your car being freedom,” McKinley said. “If I’m driving, and I find myself on I-25 at rush hour, I just think about how people think that that’s freedom. It’s mind-blowing to me, and a lot of it comes down to, I think, imagination. We’re so caught up in our lives and moving so fast that we don’t take a second to say, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’ It’s slowing down that imagination to see that things can be different.”

There is a gaping disconnect between what constituents believe and what they do, McKinley said. In reality, she said, people don’t truly want to change. “That’s going to be our downfall. We’re talking the big talk, but we’re not doing the big do.”

Aside from transitioning to biking and public transit options, according to Leathwood and McKinley, electric vehicles may not even be as green as climate-minded drivers would hope.

Depending on where a Coloradan may be plugging in their electric vehicle, there is a potential they are still contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. 

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Colorado still pulls more than 70% of its energy from greenhouse gas-emitting sources such as coal and natural gas.

Conversely, energy from renewable sources have been growing over the last decade, specifically driven from solar and wind from the eastern half of the state. 

“I don’t know if I can put it into those terms, but we have far too many fossil fuel-fired plants,” Leathwood said. 

Data published by the EIA indicates that Colorado’s electricity is produced by four primary sources: coal, natural gas, hydroelectric, and non-hydroelectric renewable sources. Coal and natural gas account for 40.77% and 23.57% of Colorado’s electricity, respectively.

One innovative and measurable way that Colorado could potentially significantly reduce its carbon footprint is by continuing to build upon and encourage its relationship with Swisspod Technologies. The Switzerland-based transportation system currently uses its hyperloop model to transfer cargo or up to 30 passengers through a vacuum-sealed tube, reaching supersonic speeds in minutes with a carbon-neutral propulsion system. Swisspod has begun building a full-scale prototype for the hyperloop facility in Pueblo, Colorado. The company plans an hour-long test on the prototype in late summer 2022. The hyperloop prototype will measure energy consumption, carbon footprints, and speed.

There are already examples of the new age to be found across Colorado’s Front Range. Boulder, a city of more than 106,000, has led the charge on renewable, solar energy.

According to the City of Boulder Climate Initiatives spokesperson Emily Sandoval, there has been a concerted effort to equip city-owned buildings with solar panels. As reported by the city’s website, solar panels can be found on top of the visitor’s center, parking garages, city fire departments, and more.

The effort of electrifying Boulder via solar power is nearing capacity of city-owned land. The next step, according to Sandoval, is crucial in continuing the commitments to reducing greenhouse gases—encouraging private citizens to install solar panels on their properties. 

“We talk about resilience,” Sandoval said. “The thing I’m talking about here is combining all these technologies, leveraging them to their fullest extent possible, rethinking a bit of how we manage the grid. What you might have thought was out of reach a couple of years ago might be in reach now.” 

However, Sandoval suggested that the reality of climate protection may be different for individuals who live in Boulder, a place she jokingly estimated may have the most ecologists per capita in the world, compared to the rest of Colorado that is more dependent on coal and natural gas. 

Sandoval’s sentiment echoed a similar one of Hultin’s, who believes the fight against climate change is just that—not a fight against gridlocked politics, but a cohesive, persistent battle, with which citizens and government agencies are aligned.

“We’re not fighting anything right now,” Hultin said. “There’s a new status quo around the expectation for how transportation investments are actually addressing our current needs and preventing tomorrow’s problems. What we’ve really been a part of the last several decades is a very, very car-centric transportation planning process, in which projects that have been identified are from the get-go created around the idea that we need to increase efficiency for cars to move quickly through corridors.”

The complex issues that Coloradans face require complex and comprehensive solutions—solutions that address the intersectionality of communities, activists say.

30Pearl, a neighborhood project in the city of Boulder, is one example of a new approach that considers multiple levels of community that need to be addressed to lower greenhouse gas emissions. From considerations of walking and biking to where people live and work, 30Pearl promises to introduce diversified zoning in a pedestrian-centric neighborhood.

“Boulder has an extensive network of multimodal infrastructure that makes it easier to choose non-vehicular forms of travel and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Samantha Glavin of the Boulder Communication and Engagement Department. “We have more than 300 miles of bikeways, including 73 miles of multi-use paths separated from streets and nearly 90 bicycle and pedestrian underpasses that allow bicyclists and pedestrians to cross busy streets without having to travel alongside car traffic. But we recognize that there’s even more work to be done. For people to choose walking, biking, or taking the bus instead of driving, those options have to be just as convenient as driving. This means having safe and easily accessible bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure located near where people live and work and that connects them with their daily destinations.”

Hultin circled back:

All in all, a greener future must be a slower future.

For 10 years now, she has dedicated her life to educating others on the benefits of bicycling and attempting to improve her community. After all, she is the mayor pro tem of Wheat Ridge. The true meaning of a slower life came to her when she realized her son could easily be hurt, or even killed, in a moment’s notice from an automobile. 

Because of this, communities must slow themselves down, Hultin believes, and when people slow down they begin to develop a stewardship for their place.

“Human nature, it develops a sense of accountability,” Hultin said. “When you experience your built environment, or you experience your community or place, through the human experience of not being in a car, it develops a sense of accountability.”

According to Hultin, once that happens, maybe people will begin to see all the good they can do, and all the change they can make in their world. 

The post End of the Road: Solving Colorado’s Climate Threats by Leaving Cars Behind appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

by Morgan Alynn

I think that my true appreciation for spring, as a season, began in March 2020, amidst the COVID shutdown. I was jogging — my new favorite pastime and seemingly the only activity that allowed me some fresh air. I rounded into a clearing of a snow-kissed meadow and saw a blue robin’s egg glittering in the snow. I held it carefully in my hand with the intention of adding it to my altar. I should mention, I am a witch, and I take that title very seriously. 

As I arrived home to place my new treasure amidst my stack of candles, totems, and tarot cards, I pondered the pandemic and the shutdown, as my mind had done a hundred times before. This time, for once, it was a joyous thought that had entered my mind. Despite all that anguish, all the pain and fear and death that the human world was currently experiencing, despite the fact that life as we knew it was grinding to a frightening halt, the outside world seemed surprisingly unaffected. Spring came all the same, as it always has. The Wheel of the Year, as it is referred to in Pagan practices, keeps turning evermore.

This thought process is the basis of Paganism because Paganism, in its purest form, is the practice of honoring the cycles of this Earth: life, death, and rebirth. In doing so, we then learn, in turn, to honor those cycles within ourselves. We all have a springtime — fresh sprouts that begin to share our new leaves with the world. Then summer follows — we grow into our adult bodies and gain a knowledge of self. Then, into fall and eventually winter, where the luckiest of us are able to spend our golden years quietly gazing out at nature, watching the seasons go again around the wheel, turning all around us. So, if we were to bring this idea back into Paganism, springtime is symbolically a time of birth and renewal.

The Wheel of the Year is divided into eight parts. The axis falls on summer and winter solstice, named Litha and Yule respectively.

These are the longest and shortest days of the year in terms of sunlight. Next, you cut the equinoxes, which fall directly between the solstices. These are the fall and spring equinoxes, called Mabon and Ostara. Then, the tertiary sabbats fall directly between each of those, and these are: Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas, and Samhain, which flow into the Wheel, giving us eight distinct sabbats or festivals. Now, why are these important, and what do they have to do with the practice of Pagan witchcraft? To explain this, we must first understand how these sabbats came into being.

Each of the sabbats is the culmination of many different holidays and practices from around the world. What is so fascinating is the fact that many cultures celebrate similarly despite the vast geographical distances. One such example is Yuletide Balefires, a ritualistic fire built with the purpose of willing the sun to return during the darkest and coldest part of the year. Balefire practices took place in many early European countries and date back thousands of years. Similarly, worship of fertility symbols, such as rabbits and eggs, can be found across a wide span of human cultures.

Humanity has, for so many centuries, been agriculturally based. Agriculture is, arguably, the greatest reason that we have thrived as a species.

Our ability to manipulate and support the creatures and plants of this Earth around us is the reason that humanity has made it this far. However, I believe that somewhere along the way, in more recent history, we have become frightfully disconnected from this process. As the age of media takes over our minds and assaults our senses at every turn, the connection that we once had with nature, both the physical and spiritual connection, has begun to dwindle and has thus created a decline in Earth-worship practices. In a way, we almost have to distance ourselves from Mother Earth — We are aware of what our pollution is doing and how difficult it is for her and her ecosystem to cope with the damage. In some ways, to look too closely at her is to be in pain, as she is.

You see, religion has for many millennia been making a major shift. Old religions and Pagan traditions (Paganism is not one rigid religion but rather a melange of practices from around the world spanning thousands of years) were very ‘down-and-in’ religions, which focused on the Earth, her cycles, the dirt beneath our feet, and the animals we raise in exchange for their meat, milk, or eggs. Modern religions focus more on an ‘up-and-out’ mentality, meaning that the godhead or spiritual world is upward, in space or in the heavens, away from this almost ‘ball-and-chain’ of Earth.

As we shift from more hands-on, smaller agricultural practices into more industrialized ones, we see a shift in humans as well.

I once heard human beings described as the ‘shepherds of the Earth,’ a phrase which has stuck with me for most of my life. I believe that we were, as part of our evolution, entrusted with maintaining and even bettering our planet. Our dependence on plants and animals is undeniable, yet modern humans shy away from this truth. We have no idea where most of our food comes from. We no longer remember which wild berries are edible and which are poisonous. We deliberately kill some of the world’s most potent pain management plants, calling them weeds and spraying them with harsh chemicals to make room for grass, which has no purpose to our lives beyond aesthetics.

When you sum all of this up, it is no wonder that the human world is finding itself so painfully disconnected from the Earth. If we see ourselves as being atop the Earth and worshiping forces which exist above us, it releases us, in a way, from having to look down on the Earth. Paganism, in essence, is the practice of forcing ourselves back down, back to the dirt, back to basic agricultural practices. It is the practice of seeing the Earth as she is, frigid or blossoming, and celebrating each season as necessary and beautiful.

The modern Pagan struggles with many of the traditional practices, as almost every sabbat and style of worship is centered around the natural world. Specifically, which animals and plants would have come to fruition, which animals were up for slaughter, and where the sun was situated in the sky – showing us where on the wheel we ought to be at any given time. In paganism, there are three harvests: Lammas, Mabon, and Samhain. Each harvest represents a specific plant that comes to fruition at that time. The most classic and recognizable sabbat, Samhain, worships the harvest of pumpkins, falls on Oct. 31, and is synonymous with, you guessed it, Halloween. It is no secret or surprise that almost every Pagan sabbat has a correlating holiday that we already celebrate in Western culture. Almost every modern holiday has Pagan roots, and the most notorious of these ‘witchy’ festivals is Halloween, which has long been associated with symbols of Paganism and Wicca.

The iconography of ‘witch’ has been reduced to a single image of an elderly woman, a hag, with no purpose or identity beyond scaring small children.

So many things that we associate with Halloween, such as the cauldron and the broomstick, are Pagan iconographies, dating back to a time when Pagan women fought to continue their practices of witchcraft under the guise of religious and governmental overthrow of Pagan religion. Cauldrons and brooms became extremely popular tools among witches because these were common household items women used and therefore did not raise suspicions. The cauldron has long been a symbol for the ancient womb of creation, and several deities, such as the Celtic goddess Cerridwen, are often depicted stirring a cauldron, a symbolic grand womb for souls. The broom became a type of wand, a tool used to sweep energy around or wield.

Looking at springtime, we see symbols such as eggs, rabbits, and bulb flowers, which are associated with Ostara, the spring equinox. This is a time that represents the ‘rebirth’ cycle of the Earth. Rabbits, birds, and other animals are producing their young at this time, and the early flowers are beginning to blossom again. These ubiquitous symbols make spring one of the best and easiest times to start aligning ourselves with Earth worship. This is what spurned my excitement about adding more agricultural practices into my life and into my spirituality. In fact, I do not see much of a difference between my agricultural and spiritual practices. They are one and the same in Paganism. After all, Paganism is simply the worship of seasons, and seasons are at the root of all agricultural practices.

I live in suburbia and have difficulty feeling close to the Earth in such a human-designed place. I have, throughout the years, found ways to keep my connection to the Earth and to farming, even in small ways. Here are a few options to inspire you to become more connected to the world around you.

• The first, and in my mind, most important step, is to consider growing food rather than ornamental plants. The really special thing about planting and harvesting in conjunction with Pagan sabbats is that they really do line up almost perfectly with their respective sabbat. Lammas, the corn and grain harvest, occurs in August, when my first ears of corn are beginning to emerge. I cannot express to you the excitement of watching my garden blossom. Pulling pumpkins from my garden just before Samhain brings such immense joy. I have only one medium-sized garden bed for growing and still manage a surprising yield.

• Another great option for the backyard farmer is poultry, specifically chickens, where allowed. I have kept chickens my entire adult life, and besides being one of the most hilarious and cheerful reasons to get up in the morning, my girls keep me connected to the cyclical nature of the year. Eggs are plentiful in the spring months as are new chicks (if I am so lucky). Then, my girls will molt and stop egg production as the weather grows cold. Even this very small act of agricultural awareness brings me closer to my food and to my practices. The joy of eating a fresh egg smothered with homegrown herbs is beyond description. Some folks do not have the luxury of yard space, in which case, I would recommend keeping potted herbs or seasonal plants.

In the end, I find that even the simplest acts like growing food or herbs can help move us toward a more ‘down-and-in’ process of spirituality and a stronger connection to the Earth and soil. If you are interested in Paganism, then I highly recommend the beginner book “The Sabbats” by Edain McCoy. This is a wonderful piece of literature with historical backgrounds, practices, and even recipes for each Sabbat, and it can help you explore becoming a modern Pagan witch, if you so desire.

The post Modern Paganism and Earth Witches appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

If you are looking for an article about the highs and lows of marijuana, you may be in the wrong location. Though intricately intertwined with the marijuana industry, the hemp industry has its own regulatory system and laws regarding sale and consumption. The only individuals getting high in this article are possibly cows. 

Seeds are the main focus of hemp crops, with misconceptions from all sides clouding the industry. The modern variations of cannabis from hemp — delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD), and delta–8-tetrahydrocannabinol — all range in their properties and uses. Cannabis and its many forms are not fully understood by the general public, leading to discrimination and blurred legal lines when it comes to the cannabis industry. Many people mistakenly believe that all cannabis produces a psychoactive high.

Uses of hemp

The Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) Hemp Program Manager Brian Koontz has been working within the regulatory side of cannabis for 13 years, switching to head of the Industrial Hemp Program in 2019.

“For several years, I tested plants to make sure they didn’t have any harmful or dangerous pesticide residues on them, trying to educate marijuana cultivators on best practices for pest control… safe pesticide use. In 2019, I took over the program; now, I’m involved in rule-making, policymaking, and directing the whole hemp department which is the crux of what the department is for. The hemp program is to assure that legal hemp is being cultivated, not something else.”

Though the crop is not as heavily regulated as its cousin marijuana, this cannabinoid is dealing with its own agricultural problems and accomplishments with crop fads, dropping rates in industry participants and growth in the fiber industry. Many early hemp industry members focused only on the CBD element of the plant/crop, leaving a hole in the industry. 

“In 2018-2019, the majority, well over 70 percent of growers, were cultivating for CBD extraction, the market got flooded immediately. You don’t need 50,000 acres of hemp production or hemp harvest to support that much CBD.”

According to Koontz, Colorado has supported businesses and green projects to provide high-quality hemp fiber goods to a broader audience. They are attempting to close the current gaps in the cannabis industry. “Colorado has been involved in projects like the Patagonia Project, where Patagonia wants to cultivate domestic, organically grown hemp for clothing which began in 2019.”

Kim Kovaks, CEO of Element6 Dynamics, speaking to Governor Polis. Photo: Element6

With the acts of war unfolding in Ukraine, it was truly by chance that the Ukrainian hemp fiber equipment purchased by Element6 Dynamics made its way to Longmont, CO, just two weeks before the war broke out. Equipment from eastern Europe, has been helping to open more fiber mill operations throughout the state. As the machinery becomes more available companies such as Element6 Dynamics are able to use those fibers to create plastic from the plant.

“There are facilities like the one in Longmont and others opening in another part of the state in April. They’re looking for multi-use hemp fiber for packing materials, hemp board for construction and furniture. Hempcrete is another big commodity. They mix the fiber with lime and make formed walls for buildings or cinder blocks for construction, which are supposed to be long-lasting, weather-resistant, mold-resistant building materials.”

The Industrial Hemp Program has its very own lab for THC and a biochemistry lab, ensuring that all hemp is within the legal 0.3 percent limit of THC. The Industrial Hemp Program launching further research thanks to the United States Department of Agriculture. “One of our most significant achievements, which we started in January, is to fulfill our state plan. Last year, the USDA approved it to manage hemp and to utilize other authorized labs; the state has 15 other labs to do regulatory testing.”

Though Colorado’s industry is running relatively smoothly with approvals for research and testing as well as locations for fiber processing opening up throughout the state, the industries in other states are a bit more complicated. According to Koontz, the hemp seed industry is like any other crop, with certain larger companies always having an advantage over the individual producer.

“Some states are very strict; you can only plant hemp if you use this seed. That’s when well-known seed companies limit that market. These more prominent companies, like New West genetics and Charlotte’s Web, do their own research and seed trials. The little guy, the person collecting feral hemp and trying to cultivate it on a smaller level, will always be a challenge to the smaller producer.”

Equity and equality in the cannabis industry may still be lacking. The state, according to Koontz, is trying its best to provide opportunities to those who know how to grow the crop and open a door for individuals from all walks of life to join the industry. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a backlash from particular communities in Colorado.

“We don’t deny hemp registrations based on where it’s grown or who’s growing it. If they’re willing to meet the criteria we have for hemp registration, which includes straightforward things like agreeing to regulation, inspection, and paying their fees to do it in the first place. Many geographical regions have asked us not to supply or grant or issue registrations because they don’t want it in their areas. In Pueblo several years ago, they particularly didn’t like outdoor hemp and outdoor marijuana growing in the same place.”

Like any crop, you have to research how it grows, the best environments to cultivate it, and protect it and other crops from disease and cross-pollination. “House Bill 21-1301 mandated that the Department of Revenue and CDA work collaboratively. Holding heavy workgroup sessions discussing how to prevent feral hemp, how to prevent cross-pollination, how to do a feasibility study on how, how far hemp pollinates, and how it pollinates. Four different workgroups are involved. There’s a lot of work to ensure that hemp and marijuana crops aren’t compromised due to cross-pollination.”

Governor Polis (right) visiting a hemp farm

As the landscape of the industry changes, veterans of the industry can take more of a breath than they might have in the past. The state, at one point, made growers burn all crops that tested above the 0.03 percent levels of THC. “If your crop tested hot, you had to bury it, burn it, and incur a significant financial loss, and now they can take the crop and blend it all, the seeds and stems… everything which would dilute the flower material and retest it and have it still as a viable crop.”

As mentioned previously, the only individuals in this article possibly getting “high” are cows from the prospect of using trimmings and fibers that cannot be used for other purposes as sustainable food for livestock. More research is required regarding humans consuming the meat or milk from these animals whether they may then ingest levels of THC. Though getting toasted off of your steak or coffee creamer is enticing to some, it is not generally a good business practice to potentially drug your consumer. Koontz stated, “I would like to see it further expanded to feed and food — hemp proved as animal feed, for example. You know, there needs to be more research done. To ensure that you know that the beef we eat, we won’t get high off the meat. If you raise big agricultural animals, you’re going to eat their meat or drink their milk, and you have to get that approved by the FDA.”

Most people know about the benefits of hemp, CBD, and THC for cancer patients and children with epilepsy. Charlotte’s Web, a prominent strain, is almost a household name. Dr. Jeremy Widdmann, the co-founder, botanist, scientist, farmer, and grower at Boulder Hemp out of Longmont, began his interest in cannabis by helping sick people. “You’d have a hard time finding somebody that doesn’t know somebody with cancer. I’ve been cultivating cannabis and hemp and extracting. So I provided different formats, tinctures, etc., to family members suffering, which helped quite a bit. The hobby turned into the passion turned into the business.”

Though most people don’t see hemp-based food in the supermarket and ultimately think, “This will get me high,” or has marijuana in it, the difference between the two compounds isn’t that big. Dr. Widdmann helped us understand that the devil is really in the details of these two compounds. 

“The difference between marijuana and hemp is a number chosen based on research. What we’d consider hemp may be more of the fiber green variety decades ago. It’s hemp if it’s less than 0.3% THC, and it’s marijuana if it’s more, and depending on where you go, that number changes. So it’s kind of silly. I focused on the hemp side because there’s less regulation around it. We can grow acres and acres of it outdoors, reducing the cost to folks who need it.”

To have reliability among strains and seeds is a long process of growth and testing. The plants go through multiple growth cycles until the final seeds are produced. 

“You take a plant through the cycle of growing into flowering, and you have these beautiful buds you can’t tell by looking at it. You send it into the lab, and we identify the individual plants that produce very low THC and higher CBD, and we take those to the next generation of breeding. And then, at each cycle of breeding, we do the same thing. We grow plants, determine the ones that are high CBD; anything that goes above that 0.3 percent THC, we don’t take that to the next generation, and then after some time, we have a stable population of seeds that produce high CBD and low THC that we can reliably sell to the farmer.”

After the long seed selection process, growth, and harvest, it is time to use the crop to produce CBD and food goods. The process being a little bit sticky, Dr. Widdmann explained as the crop is processed:

“Once it’s harvested and dried and the stems and stalks are separated from the flower, we have it extracted; we use different extraction techniques. We use supercritical CO2, so that’s just high pressure, high-temperature CO2. That extracts the cannabinoids and the terpenes. You’re left with this thick oil, kind of molasses-looking oil, and it goes into the tinctures and topicals and whatnot. And most of it goes into our products and our partner brands products; we do sell some wholesale so other folks that have a brand that can do all their own formulations, but they don’t have a farm, so we can provide that good organic product to them.”

Like any other crop, certain portions of the plant are used for different purposes, with the thicker stock portion of the hemp plant being used mostly for making items as clothing. “Hemp that looks more like bamboo, where it is planted densely, it’s these tall 12-foot plants. The outside base is the fiber; it’s thick, and the density between nodes is your branches, so it produces these long fibers, and there are quite a few of them. So that’s the sort of hemp that is better for fibers and textiles.”

Laura Pottorff from the CSU Seed Lab tests hemp seeds from two groups. Though the lab does not test for compounds such as THC or cannabinoid levels due to the school’s federal funding, the university is dedicated to research that helps the state, industry, and environment. “The testing that our lab does is for germination and purity. We have these two buckets of seed; we have common seed and seed that has been selected and bred, chosen for specific traits.”

All of the tests add value to the crop, letting the farmers know the capability of their seeds and harvest, with most farmers opting for more expensive seeds in order to guarantee more consistent results.

“We require the seed lab to do the germination and purity test because it must meet minimum standards, separating it from a common seed. And so all of this, these layers, these steps add value in terms of decreased risk so that if I am the farmer, and I want a crop that is better for fiber, there is a fiber variety, if I want this variety, then I would probably spend more money to buy Byala Paretsky? Because it has been verified by a third party, the certification agency, unfortunately, on the side of the common seeds, there is no guarantee.”

Pottorff explained that the CSU Seed Lab tests for certain levels of germination and other traits determined by the grower to reach a satisfactory seed commercially; once the lab determines the seeds with the selected characteristics, a grower can choose the best strain or seed for their needs.

“It’s all going to be based on the person purchasing it with their values. What do they want? Do they want something, a seed that was produced without any commercial herbicides? Did the herbicides used and other types of pesticides meet the definition of certified organic? Is that what they want? Or does it mean that the crop was grown using soil health? Values and protocols?”

Bethany Niebauer, is the vice president of the Industrial Hemp Research Foundation and a cannabis compliance consultant with Axial Compliance Consulting. She has been involved in the industry since 2015, focusing on licensing for both kinds of Cannabis. Niebauer helps individuals and businesses gain licensing for hemp and marijuana throughout the country.

“It depends on if you’re doing hemp or marijuana. For example, I’m working with a client in New Jersey who wants a dispensary license; they are a little behind the eight ball because they don’t have real estate. And the license requires that you have a deed or a lease. So they are frantically trying to find real estate. But that’s it. The New Jersey rules are written in such a way that there are very few real estate spots. So that’s, that’s a big part of the challenge. You know, background checks and resumes for every team member involved, I have to … part of my job is writing the different SOPs and procedures for how they’re going to operate. A hemp license is comparatively so much easier. The trickiest part of the application is you have to give GPS coordinates, which sometimes is hard for older generations. You have to usually make a map with precise boundaries about where you’re going to grow. You check some boxes and provide a background check; you typically get your license within about 30 days.”

Hemp isn’t just a crop that supplies food and medicine but leaves a significantly lesser footprint than its counterpart, the tree, regarding certain products such as paper and slower-growing cyclical crops. “Hemp has a much, much faster-growing cycle than trees. Trees, depending on the kind, have a 5- to 10-year growing cycle, and hemp has a growing cycle of less than a year; it might be one full year, depending on the kind of habit. If we made paper from hemp, we would be in a very different place. Anything you can make from petroleum, you can make from hemp.”

Though hemp is more accepted in 2022 than previously, it doesn’t mean that working in the cannabis industry is easy, with prejudices and misconceptions playing a significant role in how the company conducts business.

“There is an element of scorn. For example, a payment was denied last week; it came from my client’s brokerage firm. And what they told her was they were not willing to send funds. They used the phrase, ‘We’re not sending funds to someone so heavily involved in the drug trade.'”

Niebauer spoke to the more significant problem of the cannabis industry being heavy regulations; though the state is addressing this in ways Koontz mentioned, many in the industry don’t see these actions to be enough.

“There’s an enormous separation between capital, specifically startup capital, and the people who have been harmed or have specific industry knowledge, to grow the plant, how to process it, how to market it, access to banking services, if you wanted to start a cannabis business. You could walk down to Wells Fargo or whoever and get a small business loan; that would change so much. The fundamental problem is that the people the drug war has harmed have been entangled in our legal system, which is incredibly expensive and robs people of opportunities.”

According to Niebauer The Industrial Hemp Research Foundation, is a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible organization, is dedicated to funding research for industrial hemp. You can donate to the foundation via their website today.

“We want to fund graduate research for students involved in hemp agriculture. Research is incredibly expensive; the students usually have to take out loans. We are trying to talk to universities about easing that burden. If we can, I think that would make a big difference in the industry if people didn’t have student loans, the sort of job opportunities and things you could explore if you weren’t dependent on a very high-end lucrative career to pay back those loans.”

Morris Beegle is a partner with the NoCo Hemp Expo, an entrepreneur, and a musician with songs featuring the importance and celebration of hemp. Beagle is the CEO and founder of We Are For Better Alternatives (WAFBA). The NoCo Expo is in its eighth consecutive year. The Expo, according to Beegle, is a way to make connections among those in the industry and exhibit new growth, collection, and testing methods.

“The Expo is open to a broad spectrum of businesses that can and do participate in some area of the hemp supply chain. These can include farmers, breeders, processors, equipment manufacturers, laboratories, CPG brands, white-label manufacturers, and ancillary service providers from banking, insurance, accounting, and legal.”

According to Beegle, the hemp industry has been taking a lot of hits from the pandemic to climate change and laws put in place that were built to help both business owners and personal and medical patients stay within regulatory standards. Yet, the industry of hemp has prevailed, with the FDA still being the only wall to the overall legalization of cannabinoids.

“The 2018 Farm Bill has now cost the hemp industry billions of dollars in lost revenue and investment to build proper infrastructure throughout the supply chain. The FDA, along with a few other government agencies, in conjunction with outside influence, is the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the hemp industry maturing and becoming the most valuable addition to the U.S. agriculture system in the last 60-70 years.”

For Beegle, the most significant gap for cannabinoids is with the general public not having much knowledge of the substances that many of them are so staunchly against. He envisions a world where this crop is enjoyed and understood by all. “There is still much-needed education, particularly in non-cannabis-leaning states and countries. My work is focused on building the industry and promoting benefits of the industry—the plant for health, the planet, and the future.”

Graphic by Mollie McCoy

The post Hemp in Colorado: A Seed and Fiber Frenzy appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Editor’s Note: Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

Feb. 21, 2022—Credentialed members of the media are invited to attend and cover this year’s Chancellor’s Annual Summit “Working to Forge a Just and Sustainable Future.” Featured speakers, including Gov. Jared Polis, will discuss various aspects of how climate change is impacting human rights here and around the world. Additional media availability upon request.

Speakers include: 

• Gov. Jared Polis, entrepreneur and businessman, serves as the 43rd governor of Colorado since January 2019. He served on the Colorado State Board of Education from 2001 to 2007, and as the United States representative from Colorado’s 2nd congressional district from 2009 to 2019.
• Matt Burgess, assistant professor of environmental studies, a faculty affiliate in the Department of Economics and a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). His research focuses on the impact of 21st century economic growth on climate change; the political polarization of climate change; and how mathematical models can help us understand trade-offs between different environmental and societal goals.
• Clint Carroll, associate professor of ethnic studies and citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Carroll who works closely with Cherokee people in Oklahoma on issues of land conservation and the perpetuation of land-based knowledge and ways of life.
• Heidi VanGenderen, CU Boulder’s chief sustainability officer and driver of the campus’s sustainability vision and plan. Prior to CU, she served as a senior energy advisor for the Worldwatch Institute and Colorado’s first gubernatorial climate advisor for Gov. Bill Ritter.
• James White, professor of geological sciences and environmental studies, acting dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and founding director of the Department of Environmental Studies at CU Boulder.

When: Wednesday, Feb. 23

• 5:30-6:15 p.m. Welcome reception
• 6:15-7 p.m. Presentations and Q&A

Where: History Colorado Center, 1200 Broadway, Denver
Media RSVP: Email cunews@colorado.edu by 5 p.m. Tuesday if you wish to attend to receive parking and other information.

The post ADVISORY: Gov. Polis, CU experts discuss how to forge a just, sustainable future at Feb. 23 summit appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Editor’s Note: Press Releases are provided to Yellow Scene. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.

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I would sooner see the Late Show cancelled after David Letterman’s retirement than see Stephen Colbert take his place.

Yes, I’m adding my name to the chorus of conservatives and GOP guard screaming about what a bad decision this is — albeit for an entirely different reason.
Actually, scratch that. It’s the same reason. It’s about Colbert’s steady, unflinching, unapologetic attacks on the gaping maw of ultra conservatism. The Rush O’Reillys of the world hate him for his surgically precise dismemberment of their outspoken, outlandish outrage. That he might take such a sideshow out of the Comedy Central pup tent into the center ring of the big tent on a major network at a coveted timeslot is too much for him. They hate that he’s coming.

I hate that he’s leaving.

It’s unlikely that Colbert will be playing Colbert in this venue. The brilliant satire that loudmouthbreathers like Michelle Malkin STILL don’t get — NINE years into this act — isn’t on the menu for the Late Show.

No, we’ll get to see Stephen Colbert, the man. Not Stephen Colbert, The Host Of The Colbert Report. And while that is likely a refreshing change for the man, it’s a far bigger win for the idiot GOP complainers than they’ve begun to realize.

Who’s going to fill his void?

In the last decade, two voices have risen above the steady, constant drone of poorly researched, partisan pabulum the major news networks have foisted upon us. Two voices have managed to find meaning in the swirling vortex of polarized pandering. Two voices have held the rest of the yammering talking heads, the blowhard, bullshit-slinging bureaucrats, Capitol Hill-bullies and corporate monsters accountable for their actions.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The father and his one, true son. The court jesters are the only people left we can trust.

If Stephen Colbert leaves his post, there’s no one left to man it. And the loss of his particular brand of watchguard is more than we as a free populace should have to bear.

There was a time when we trusted our journalists to keep us informed as a populace. It was the job of the Fourth Estate to be the check-and-balance to all of it. It was what We The People expected would keep us safe from King George and the rest of his court — filled with those whose only priority was to grow their individual powerbases. But then, something happened we didn’t see coming.
The stock market came along and bought the government. And, as it turns out, that included the Fourth Estate.

Now, truth itself is more fluid a concept than it ever has been. Where you lineup on a particular issue is so sacrosanct that discourse is hopeless. Twitter-sized sound bites are little more than landmines of distraction and disinformation at best. We can’t believe our own damned eyes anymore.

The court jesters are the only people left we can trust.

They’re the ones who’ve been willing to hold up the mirror to all of it. And without them, the crooks, the criminals, the white-collared, jack-booted thugs all get their way.

So, no, I don’t want Colbert to ever stop what he’s doing now. Write your letters. Maybe campaign for Tina Fey to take the Late Show, because she’d be great. But keep Colbert …Colbert.

The post The Jester’s New Stage appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Eco conscious citizens have often harped on the value of a hybrid car.

With laid back braggadocio, we are told of fuel savings, lowering carbon emissions, saving the whales and freeing Tibet, all because of a car that runs on both electricity and gas. Okay, okay, maybe the car won’t advocate the release of Shamu, but the Hybrid bumper is typically chock full of political pointers telling unfavorable presidents exactly where to shove it. Hybrid car owners are passionate people, and the car itself is a symbol of their dedication to a safer world with cleaner skies. But what if the hybrid car could perform even better? Paul Guzyk has a way to supercharge your Prius and transform it from responsible gas
sipper to electric Zen master of the road with Boulder Hybrid’s plug-in upgrade.

YS: What is a plug-in upgrade?

PG: A plug-in upgrade means that you can plug your existing hybrid into the wall and charge it from the wall as if it were an electric car, but the car still has the gas engine and a gas tank. So for city driving it’s an electric car, but on longer trips it’s a hybrid. It’s the best of both worlds.

YS: But what’s the difference between a hybrid vehicle and a plug-in car?

PG: A pure plug-in car like a Nissan leaf only has an electric battery—you can only charge it and fuel it by plugging it into the wall. So if the battery is depleted you will be stranded.

YS: So why convert an older hybrid into a plug-in electric?

PG: They use less gas, so the average customer gets close to a hundred miles per gallon on the fuel they burn with a plug-in car versus a regular hybrid Prius that gets closer to 45 miles per gallon.

YS: How does the conversion work for the car?

PG: It’s an add on system, that actually gives the car a bit better performance in that it doesn’t need to use the gas engine if you are taking a short trip around town.

YS: Does the state of Colorado offer any rebates or support for the conversion?

PG: There is a state tax rebate that Colorado residents get about six thousand dollars back from the state if they do the conversion. The conversion costs around twelve thousand dollars before the rebate.

YS: The conversion alters some operational components of the vehicle, does that void the warranty?

PG: There is a law in the United States called the Magnus-Moss warranty act, that unless the problem in the car is directly related to the after market equipment, your dealer cannot deny you warranty coverage.

The post Plug In Power appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

On February 19th the High Performance Transportation Enterprise convened in the Colorado Department of Transportation’s auditorium in Denver, opening its doors to the public to vent their concerns about the impending deal giving Plenary Roads control of much of U.S. highway 36.

Among those wishing to speak were Ken Beitel and Cliff Smedley of the Drive SunShine Institute (DSI), a Boulder-based company that offers employers a way to invest in clean energy. The most vocal opposition, DSI had recently threatened a lawsuit against CDOT claiming the environmental evaluation of the pending project had been carried out improperly.

As the HPTE panel announced it was shuffling the open speaking agenda, DSI’s lawyer Karen Hammer objected, to no avail. When Beitel and Smedley’s requests to donate
Hammer their time were similarly refused, angry protests ensued. State troopers forcibly removed all three from the room. As the Denver Post reported, as Smedley was pulled away he yelled, “I spent nine years in the National Guard to try and uphold the law, and today all that was smashed.”

In the days following the hearing, the deal was quietly finalized. By the 21st the Colorado Transportation Commission had unanimously signed off on the contract, and by the following Wednesday the concluding signatures were inked.

After a year of negotiations, the tumultuous race to the finish line both brought to light the unsavory way CDOT handled the deal and spawned myriad myths about what U.S. 36 would look like under private operation. Here are a few: All of 36 is now a toll road. It will cost $17 to drive from Boulder to Denver (as if gas isn’t enough of an expense). Wall Street overlords Goldman Sachs will be running the freeway.

Like any governmental debacle (let’s not get carried away with the word “scandal”) there are elements of truth here—and there is also a healthy dose of sensationalist misconceptions.

Let’s start at the beginning. The rationale for a private overhaul is to accelerate the construction of new express lanes, provide efficient maintenance of existing general lanes, create new commuter bike paths and—as proponents are fond of saying—“support continued economic growth of the U.S. 36 corridor.” (CDOT’s executive director Don Hunt, upon the deal’s closing.)

The deal deflects some financial responsibility for continued construction away from the state. “It really comes back to money,” CDOT spokesperson Amy Ford said. “CDOT has an annual budget shortfall of about $600-700 million to address the transportation needs around the state, and 80-90% of our current budget is
dedicated to maintenance.”

The post 36 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

ClearEcos started with a clear mission: improve the air quality of the Front Range of Colorado. Since their first day in 2008, the biofuel company has expanded its reach from recycling vegetable oil into usable fuel to powering its entire facility with wind energy.

Kurt Lange, the brains and CEO behind ClearEcos, took a minute to talk shop with YS about biodiesel, organic soap and working with local restaurants.

It began as a way to help the eco-conscious diesel driver: “Back in 2008, we were dealing with some local people—environmentalists—running their engines off of vegetable oil conversions. They were having a hard time accessing that oil because of the market conditions and larger companies squeezing them out of restaurant oil collection,” said Lange.

The chemical conversion from used vegetable oil to biodiesel is rather confusing. It involves a hefty slew of chemical engineering terms that I am just not equipped to mix into something useful, but here’s a working example. ClearEcos gives participating restaurants large blue oil drums where they dump their used vegetable oil. The company then sends its collection fleet—which all run on one hundred percent biodiesel, naturally—to pump the used restaurant oil from the drums.

Once at the plant in Boulder, the oil is refined and processed in two-story vats. After the oil has been processed and stripped of its unnecessary components, it is picked up by ClearEco’s partner refinery in Kansas, where it will be refined to its final, useable product: biodiesel.

They trade refined biodiesel for processed vegetable oil when their partner from Kansas arrives. The swap is yet another move with Mother Nature in mind. “We get the vegetable oil on a truck that runs on a hundred percent biofuel, convert into biodiesel at our plant and refuel our trucks to do it again,” said Lange. “It’s a
closed loop of oil to usable biodiesel.”

If used vegetable oil isn’t recycled into biofuel, it is ripe for other, less green applications. It is used as a pet food attractant and livestock feed. It gets into the water system when someone carelessly drains used grease.

As for biodiesel? “This is by far the highest improvement that you can do for society is to turn this into biofuel, because the reduction of pollution is so substantial,” said Lange. “There’s a lot of good conscious, sustainable minded restaurant owners that operate here that want to participate in cleaning the air of
Colorado.”

The subtraction of sulfur that occurs in the biodiesel conversion process also helps to eliminate an age-old demon: the black cloud.

We have reductions in particulate emissions–the black soot. If you’ve seen a diesel accelerate and you see that black cloud, it’s very hard to produce that cloud off of biodiesel. That particulate is concerned citizen use biofuel?

“Virtually every diesel vehicle can use biodiesel,” said Lange, “but it depends on the engine. Many of the manufacturers are standardizing on a twenty percent biodiesel blend, and twenty percent is what Boulder County runs, it’s what you’ll see as a general distribution model. Typically, its called B20, which is twenty
percent biodiesel blended with eighty percent petrol diesel.”

Great news for those with diesel engines, but a word of caution from the green advocate and CEO: “Full, one hundred percent rubber components exposed to one hundred percent biodiesel will deteriorate.” Basically, the rubber inner components of a vehicle can become spongy.

“If you have a vehicle that is older than 1993, you will want to change some of those hoses out along with the fuel line” said Lange. The repairs are easy and the full hose replacement necessary to prevent sponging costs around forty dollars.

As if recycling oil into biofuel wasn’t enough, Kurt Lange and his team at ClearEcos developed an organic, and strong line of cleaners and soaps from what is left after the fuel is processed. The company provides these cleaners to the kitchens who share their oil, and they offer it for sale in local storefronts. The organic soap took eighteen months to develop and it cleans better than some brand name competition.

While ClearEcos’ biofuel is not available for private consumption just yet, you can grab a B20 blend fuel at Bartkus on Pearl Street, and Lange says that entering the consumer marketplace is on the horizon for the company. ClearEcos estimates that they annually divert around three million pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Their warehouse is a Zero-Waste Facility and was constructed using 98% recycled material, and they sell a product that is recycled and cleaner to use. They practice what they preach.

The post Full Circle appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Colorado is consistently ranked in the top five states for bachelor’s degrees per capita, but it comes at a cost—according to the latest figures from the United States Department of Education, college graduates in Colorado are defaulting on their student loans at a rate of 11.4%. That’s higher than the national average, and a full percentage point greater than the last round of numbers. Despite the obvious inclination to berate these youngsters for their purposeful fiscal irresponsibility, let’s back up, take a deep breath and survey the dismal conditions that students these days must face.

For one, federal student loans (which account for 80% of the total) can’t be refinanced. If you had a recent midlife crisis and bought a $100,000 sailboat, you could refinance the payments on it if (when) financial (or marital) reality sets in and you need a lower interest rate. Not so if you want to get a measly education. Plus, up until last summer, the government was giving Stafford loans at 6.8% interest, a $184 billion every ten years, so forget about that system being overhauled any time soon. (It has since lowered the rate, but students who borrowed prior to July 2013, which would be, you know, almost all of them, are not grandfathered in.)

Community Colleges have long been the smart refuge for students wary of paying for four years at costly private schools. Boulder County is especially blessed with Front Range Community College, which consistently funnels students into CU Boulder or University of Denver, thanks to credit transfer guarantees. However, community colleges across the state have also consistently produced higher rates of loan default. Ironically, expensive CU has a default rate of only 3.5%, while Lamar Community College clocks in at a whopping 25.5%.

Finally, for much of the last ten years trade schools marketed themselves to students as a practical alternative to the four-year degree. Now, the boom of for-profit vocational schools is starting to fizzle. Along with producing high rates of loan default, many offer constrictive private loans that wed students to the schools unfairly. In the first lawsuit of its kind, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently went after ITT Technical schools for luring students in with zero interest loans, before hiking up the rates.

But what’s the alternative to crippling debt in a less-than-stable economy? Not going to college at all? Unless you’ve struck gold with a Silicon Valley mobile app concept straight out of high school, I wouldn’t recommend it.

The post Graduation 2014 appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Unless you’re a black market art dealer or have a penchant for luxury vintage automobiles, buying a house will be the largest purchase of your entire life. What’s more, home buying doesn’t conform to any of the marketing conventions of consumer transactions we’re used to: there’s no money back guarantee, no Blue Light Special and you sure as hell won’t find a coupon for a single family ranch.

On top of the exorbitant price, the transaction itself is so onerous that a professional needs to walk you through it. To this individual you entrust your most guarded financial information, pour out your life’s aspirations (“I can just picture little kiddos in that nook—honey, I want three!”) and give countless hours of your precious time. Given the sensitivity of the entire process, having the right real estate agent is unequivocally important.

But before diving into the Dos and Don’ts of hiring an agent, let’s run through Boulder County’s current housing market.

“We did better than the metro areas by a fair amount. We had a few foreclosures but overall we fared better than east of us,” Boulder County Assessor Jerry Roberts told me, referring to the 2008 housing crisis.

Michelle Boudin, the President of the Boulder Area Realtor Association saw a slight hit in pricing, but not like other areas in the Four Corners states.

“When the media talked about it, they covered Denver metro, and naturally we’re included in that,” Boudin said, noting that as a separate entity Boulder did miles better than what was reported on the news.

The county’s borrowing rates have been kept relatively low, economic growth continues in the area and there was never a true housing bubble along the Front Range (which always helps when trying to avoid the “pop”).

Right now, sellers are in an undeniably good place. Housing stock has grown at a snail’s pace since the 1976 Danish Plan, which purposefully stagnated population numbers by limiting residential building permits. In creating an exclusive enclave the Danish Plan has succeeded; but it has also succeeded in squeezing out middle-income housing from a large portion of the city, pushing it into East County (or out of the area completely).

As a result, once homeowners penetrate the city of Boulder, they often stay—figures from last fall showed that there were 16% fewer homes on the city’s market than just a year prior.

“Now is the time to move up,” Leslie Herz of Coldwell-Banker told me. For existing owners, low housing stock and high prices means a chance to climb the ladder. “The fantastic news for them is that it’s a seller’s market.”

But what about buyers? Unfortunately, home prices in Boulder County are rising faster than wages. By some numbers, between 2012 and 2013 average home prices rose by 9-10%. Interest rates are rising slightly, which will likely help avoid another scenario like 2008, but doesn’t bode well for first time buyers. Even if you’ve found your dream home, it’s the dream of six other pairs of eyes—auction-like conditions with multiple offers are not unusual in Boulder proper.

“It’s really important for a buyer that they don’t have contingencies,” Boudin told me. Sellers in a saturated market don’t want buyers whose offers are contingent on their house selling.

Thankfully, the eastern three-quarters of the county fill in the gaps. Whereas the average single family home in the city of Boulder is $642,000, the rest of the county comes in at $411,000.

“The building in the east is something we haven’t seen for last few years,” Roberts told me. “For those who work in Boulder we will have more affordable homes nearby.”
A buyer needs every advantage, regardless of whether you’re looking in East County or Boulder proper. Where do you start?

The post Home Sweet Home appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

1) Burn Baby Burn
Charred trees line both sides of Sugarloaf Road as Andrew Notbohm, Boulder County’s Wildfire
Mitigation Specialist, and I drive further into the foothills. The damage dates to the devastating 1989 Black Tiger fire, but it may as well have happened yesterday. Boulder can see up to 100 fires per year, mostly in its Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) areas along the Front Range, and reminders of the carnage—skeletal
ponderosa pines and blackened Douglas firs—are inescapable up here.

The pavement turns to potholed dirt, and we climb Primos Road to the house that Notbohm is inspecting for wildfire vulnerabilities. Opening a binder on the hood of the truck, he shows me a black and white aerial photo of the property. “Creating a 100 foot defensible space around the home—” he points to a circular demarcation on the grainy picture “—reduces the risk of radiant heat.” With that, Notbohm gets to work.

Sporting a hard-cased iPad with a Kevlar-looking hand strap, he goes methodically around the outside of the home to isolate chinks in its wildfire armor. Pine needles have gathered in the gutters, creating a fuel bed. Just above, an overhang of roof forms a heat trap, the perfect nook to gather flying embers, or “firebrands,” that can travel for miles ahead of a fire. The list goes on.

But here’s the scariest part: compared to most, this home is actually prepared for a wildfire. The owners are replacing the wood siding in favor of non-combustible concrete Hardie Board, and the yard is free of flammable detritus. Most importantly, they actively reached out to Notbohm’s team, wanting to make a model home for the neighborhood.

Homeowners with this level of awareness are key. Overhauling Boulder’s wildfire vulnerabilities on a larger scale can’t come soon enough, given the county’s demographic changes and an increased risk of fire. Lured by the simplicity (and luxury) of mountain living, the foothills have seen an upswing in housing stock, all while fires have increased in intensity.

In the 1960s, Colorado wildfires burned an average of 17.88 acres; by the 2000s it had more than doubled, to 39.12. Ironically, the spike is partly due to more effective fire suppression techniques: the low-severity fires that used to eliminate dry brush from forests are now avoided, meaning wooden fuel builds up, laying in wait for high-severity burns to come through. A good case in point is the Fern Lake fire in Rocky Mountain National Park, which burned 3,498 acres over the course of several months in 2012-2013 under a layer of snow. Fern Lake fed off of nearly inexhaustible biomass fuel (sometimes 20 feet deep). Trying to put it out was “like spitting on a campfire,” according to RMNP spokesperson Kyle Patterson.

Prevention, then, is paramount. But what does prevention entail? Here’s a not-so-shortlist: fire-wary home design, non-combustible building materials, community outreach, informed landscaping techniques and, most importantly, non-complacency.

“It’s not a government problem, or a fire department problem—it’s a community problem,” Notbohm told me. “It’s about collaborating and being innovative with all parties.”

The post Pulling Our Weight appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

We all know the jokes about Colorado’s abrupt weather shifts. Monday brings warm sunshine and tank tops, followed by Tuesday’s snowfall and road closings. This natural madness is reflected perfectly in our monthly energy bills. What else can you expect when you leave your windows open on Monday night, then fire up your furnace on Tuesday? Thankfully, the unpredictable—and sometimes costly—nature of our weather can be nearly circumvented by a passive house.

A passive house is one that requires very little energy to sustain a comfortable inner environment. With traditional houses, homeowners lose a lot of energy from small holes and leaks. But the super insulated walls of passive houses keep energy—and costs—low.

Brian Fuentes, a certified Passive House Architect and the name behind Fuentes Design, filled us in on the finer points of passive housing. “Passive houses are more insulated, about ten times more airtight than your typical home in Boulder,” said Fuentes. “It leaks less air, which means that it’s more comfortable for the occupants. There’s also less chance of moisture damage from leaking areas.”

And, what of those energy savings?

“The annual heat demand is usually about ten times less. Annually, what you’re spending on heating and cooling will be much less than you’re used to. It saves you money in the long run,” said Fuentes.

The house is a near perfect energy trap that brings in external heat from the sun via passive solar gains, and uses that sunlight to maintain comfort. Fuentes went on to describe the process: “You gain energy from the sun by bringing it in through the glass and direct radiation into the building—the building then stores that energy.”

Thick windows also play a large role in this conservation and are the only building materials that need to be imported from outside of the United States. Beyond the thickness, the secret to their green power prowess is a tight seal.

“They’re massive windows that are triple paned and the frames are four inches thick, versus north American windows that are typically two inches thick,” said Fuentes.
But a super-insulated building is rendered useless without strategic building placement to prevent massive heat swings. Too much exposure to the sun during the summer would make the house hot, while not enough exposure in the winter would drop the temperature to very uncomfortable levels. That’s why new passive houses are designed with the majority of the windows facing south. The sun can provide about fifty percent of the heat needed to warm a house to a comfortable temperature.

Passive houses then rely heavily on internal heat gains.

“Internal gains are energy waste made by lights and people using equipment,” Fuentes said. “As people, we make about 100 watts of waste heat just by standing around.”

A well designed passive house can absorb and utilize internal gains so that the wattage generated by humans and appliances totals around fifteen percent of the total energy needed to heat the home. But how is all of the solar heat and human warmth recycled from the house? How does it cool down in the summer time? The answer is the heat recovery ventilation system, a small metal box responsible for ridding the house of unwanted warmth and stale air.

The ventilator recycles energy by collecting the heat going out of the house and reusing it to heat the incoming fresh air. In the summer, the ventilator works in reverse and reroutes incoming hot air straight into the exhaust of the home. Such a design means you don’t ever rely on air conditioning or heating units.

The post Passion for Passive Housing appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

New plants are sprouting. Thousands have new jobs. People are inking TV deals. Why? Because millions of square feet of industrial warehouse are proving money grows on weeds.

The Growing Kitchen’s owner thinks they could go global. Karing Kind’s owner thinks they might be a billion dollar company. Talking to those in the biz, the word “billion” comes up a lot. Billionaires will be minted. Possibly a billion billionaires, with a billion dollars each. Again, why? Because Coloradans can now sell weed to almost any person on Earth.
“The customer base is now four billion.”

That’s Michael Elliott talking. He is a lobbyist, the director of the Marijuana Industry Group. He has a personal interest in being a booster for the weed game, so he’s hard to take completely seriously. Four billion is roughly the number of humans in the world over the age of 21. That number includes cockroach farmers in Bangladesh. It includes the Pope, Rick Santorum and your mom. And we all know, beyond a doubt, that pot smokers are only young, male and single. Right?
So be serious, Mr. Elliott. Four billion people are going to smoke Colorado weed?

“It could be,” he says. “How do we have any idea how big demand is?”

Dylan Donaldson, owner of Karing Kind dispensary, said he’s seeing an entirely new customer base since he started selling pot to the general public. Not just different individuals—most of his medical patients went elsewhere—but a different demographic altogether. More business people in suits and ties, more $40 haircuts, more Audis.

Forty percent of Karing Kind’s clients now come from out of state, from as far away as London and Qatar. Before retail, Donaldson sold a half-ounce of medical weed for $75. Now, he sells the same half-ounce for $240, and he can’t keep it in stock. The lines are often out the door. The owner of Karmaceuticals, similarly, said each month this year has been better than the last. The owner of Terrapin Station said he expects to pay $250,000 in taxes for March alone.
One of the biggest questions they all face: what do we do with all this cash?
And everyone wants to know: how big could it become?

Use increased with the introduction of medical marijuana in Colorado, after 2000. About 100,000 Coloradans told a doctor they needed a prescription to get high. They were among the only people in the world who could get high without worrying about the cops, though many had to remember to pretend to limp when they went to the doctor’s office.

But that’s changed. Now it’s as easy to buy weed as it is to buy a cup of coffee, and just as pleasant. At the retail marijuana shops in Boulder—there are more than six now—the buying experience is more reminiscent of a Zales jewelers than a liquor store.

The post The Changing, Prettier Face of Pot appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Editor’s Note: Read the for Yellow Scene Magazine’s official Second Congressional District endorsement.

Gut-busting Alabama-style ribs smothered in sweet southern barbecue sauce are the centerpiece of a buffet in the middle of a well-appointed living room typical of this Thornton subdivision. A dozen or so people hover around the spread, hoping to get a taste of the ribs that have been slowcooked through the night. They are also waiting patiently to get a word with the 30-something man dressed oh-so-casually in a logoed evergreen golf shirt and tan slacks, munching on ribs just a few feet away. He’s talking to someone; it sounds like skyrocketing gas prices are the subject. Someone waits patiently nearby, perhaps wanting to bend his ear on issues surrounding the Iraq War. Or the economy. Or the environment. The non-descript man is none other than Jared Polis, the über wealthy Boulder e-business phenom who has a net worth measured in 10 figures and would absolutely love to be your next congressman.

We’re in Thornton, an outpost of the 2nd U.S. Congressional District that is as liberal as Boulder is eccentric, at a backyard gathering of Polis supporters mixed in with those who haven’t yet committed to a candidate.
In Boulder, former state legislator Joan Fitz-Gerald is also out and about, hitting the backyard and coffee shop circuit, getting the word out about her run for the open seat. Will Shafroth is equally busy going door-to-door introducing himself as the candidate without a name who has still managed to garner enough support to claim more than $1 million in contributions from voters like you.

Welcome to the bizarre fight for the Democrat nomination for the congressional district serving Adams and Boulder counties and a few mountain communities to the west. When all is said and done, this will likely be the most expensive house seat in the country (it was No. 6 following first quarter reporting, but much has changed since). It may cost $10 million or more to settle the three-way race to replace Rep. Mark Udall, the popular Boulder Democrat who is leaving his seat to run for senate.

You can pretty much thank the man enjoying those ribs for that exorbitant price tag.

“Frankly, the money in this race is being driven by the money Jared can pump into this,” Fitz-Gerald says.

The Guy Behind the Money
Jared Polis is many things.
An extremely successful e-business developer. A dedicated philanthropist. A financier of charter schools. Former state board of education member. 33. Gay. Liberal. Tri-lingual. Big-time baseball fan.

But it is his money and seeming hell-bent desire to spend whatever it takes to win the Second Congressional District primary that is getting all the attention.

After a recent contribution of $2.1 million, Polis’ self-funded total is now $3.7 million, making him No. 1 this year when it comes to self-financed House candidates. He had triggered the millionaire’s amendment, which had allowed for opponents of self-financed candidates to ask for triple the limit of $2,300 from any single donor. But in June, the Supreme Court ruled Congress went too far in crafting the amendment, striking it down. To compound that, Fitz-Gerald and Shafroth both worry Polis is far from done spending.

That will mean as the days tick quickly away toward the Aug. 12 primary, there will be a blast of “I’m Jared Polis, and I approved this message” television spots.

“We knew from the beginning we were facing potentially unlimited funds,” Fitz-Gerald says. “You can’t stress about it.”

So Polis fits the bill of being a self-financed millionaire politician. He could pour several million more into TV ads, mailers, blimps floating over Coors Field during an afternoon game, live telecasts from Iraq—basically whatever he wants.

Yet he doesn’t seem to fall into the typical mold of rich guy running for office.

Photo credit: Ray Rushing

He doesn’t own the type of elaborate home that conservationists always try to curb in Boulder—he lives in a condo just off Pearl Street. Polis drives a hybrid Lexus—when he isn’t walking to work.

Flashy, he is not.

Over the last decade, Polis has successfully sold multiple Internet businesses such as American Information Systems, a web hosting site; Bluemountainarts.com (for $800 million-plus), a web-based greeting card company; and Proflowers.com. He also founded the Sonora Entertainment Group, which runs movie houses throughout the west featuring films in Spanish or subtitles (Cinema Latina in Aurora is the closest).

Since making his first million as a 23-year-old, he has poured much of his energy into the state’s education system, including serving on the state board of education for six years (he ran a million-dollar-campaign for that office) and building two charter schools in the metro area catering to students who don’t speak English.

“What they say about wealth is it exaggerates your characteristics,” Polis says. “For me, it propelled this public service thing. I’m still a workaholic.”

He also financed a trip to Baghdad this year to give himself a firsthand look at the issues in the Middle East. Some called it a publicity stunt; he called it an eye-opening experience.

“It was very interesting,” he says. “It was a little scary. There was a shelling 500 yards away. I was wearing a bullet proof vest.”

So yes, Jared Polis has enough money to fill Scrooge McDuck’s Duck Tales money bin. But he’s trying to run a race that doesn’t peg him as the rich guy who wants to buy his way into Congress.

Money Doesn’t Buy Elections

The self-financed candidate is hardly anything new. Each election cycle, a handful of the elite wealthy decide to pour oodles of money into a campaign against an incumbent.

It usually doesn’t work out, regardless of how much money is infused into the battle.

Just ask James Humprheys. He lost bids in 2000 and 2002 to be a West Virginia representative despite pumping in nearly $15 million in the two unsuccessful races.

There are numerous other examples, too.

Open seats are a much different story. Since popular Rep. Udall is leaving his comfy liberal Boulder congressional seat in an attempt to become a U.S. senator, it’s anyone’s guess who will win this race. And money likely will have little to do with the outcome.

“They actually do about the same,” says Scott Adler, a Ph.D. political science associate professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, in comparing wealthy to regular candidates running for an open seat. “The reality is, I’ll be perfectly honest, if I am running for an open seat, I would much rather be the guy with the money.

“But there is no guarantee he is going to get anything out of his money.”

So if cash doesn’t factor, why does everyone seem to be making such a big deal out of Polis’ pockets?
Perhaps it’s the pressure an influx of $3.7 million in personal checks creates.

“Certainly, he can put pressure on his opponents this way by buying a tremendous amount of TV time; it forces them to respond,” says Adler, a specialist in the U.S. House and Senate.

And while it’s often the media spewing stories about his latest donation to the campaign, Fitz-Gerald and Shafroth are just as much a part of making money an issue.

They see it as a way to paint Polis as someone who cannot relate to the common voter. The two recently publicized their previous seven years of tax returns to force the Boulder philanthropist to do the same.
Polis made nearly $100 million in 2006, about $24 million in 2000 and a hair more than $100,000 in 2001—the other years, he posted losses.

This is where the fireworks begin.

Fitz-Gerald’s camp loves to point out that Polis didn’t pay taxes in five of the last seven years (of course, omitting that he lost money and paid more than $18 million in taxes in the other years).

“Politics is silly,” responds Polis over a casual lunch, a few blocks from his Pearl Street campaign headquarters. “That’s what turns people off.”

Every media source loves to highlight Polis’ contributions (“$3.7 million—but who’s counting,” jokes Shafroth).

This has led to a massive drive to fund all three campaigns. Perhaps surprisingly, following first quarter reporting (through March 31), Polis led in personal contributions as well ($1.6 million; Fitz-Gerald raised $1.1 million and Shafroth $1 million). The numbers likely have changed dramatically (the second quarter had not been released by press time).

Yet each camp claims the most local support by crafting the numbers to fit best. “Joan’s taken the most PAC money,” Polis is fond of saying of campaign dollars brought in through policy-driven organizations.
Fitz-Gerald’s camp points to some of the wealthy out-of-state groups that can be found on the Polis contribution ledger (Swift Boat Veterans). Shafroth, a political newcomer, seems to avoid the politics fighting mostly, but he still claims the most local support since he petitioned his way onto the ballot by collecting nearly 5,000 signatures instead of going through the Democrat’s statewide delegate system like his opponents.

“I’ve actually been involved in the process,” Shafroth says of what he calls a calculated decision to skip the delegate process in favor of petitioning for a spot on the ballot. “Frankly, I got to speak to the voters.”

Inferring, of course, that Fitz-Gerald and Polis only rubbed elbows with political insiders at these county conventions.

Politics is silly.

Close to Home

And frankly, money has been drowning out the issues.

Sean Hempy is a whole lot more concerned with how each candidate will help him move his family out of their modest Thornton duplex than whether Polis throws another million into his campaign war chest.

Photo credit: Ray Rushing

Cleaning up a plate of barbecue and fixins at the Thornton cookout, Hempy watches as his 10-year-old son hams it up with Polis, the two discussing the merits of the Boston Red Sox and Colorado Rockies.

Hempy lives next door, and with a growing family, he’d like to move to a bigger spread. The housing market, which has taken a huge dent out of the home values of this neighborhood just off 104th and Washington, is prohibiting that move.

“I haven’t heard anything that’s real yet,” Hempy says, referring to the national debate about how to improve the real estate market. “Nobody knows.”

He wants to know what Polis (Fitz-Gerald and Shafroth, too) will do about easing this frustration.
Hempy listens to Polis’ presentation, which touches on education, nuclear technology, jobs, the housing market and his recent trip to Iraq.

Leaving the cookout, he’s impressed with what Polis has to say.

Hempy never mentions Polis’ money.

What impresses most at the backyard affair is the access to a congressional candidate who could become part of the solution to Iraq, the failing economy or global warming.

“Usually in order to get this close you have to go to some high-dollar fundraiser,” says Lori Langston, a Thornton resident.

This year’s race seems a whole lot more personal than previous national elections.

Photo credit: Ray Rushing

Personal Politics

The personal nature of the fight for this seat is fitting.

This race will likely come down to whose personality fits best with the district’s constituents since there really isn’t a huge disparity between the candidates’ platforms.

They all want to pull out of Iraq, ease the burden of the cost of gas, push environmentally-friendly legislation and universal health care, and receive a Udall endorsement. We’re talking about three Boulder-area Democrats, after all. They’re fighting for a nomination that is all but assured of walking into the seat come general election time since Dems have such a stronghold over the district. “The differences (on the issues) will be so marginal,” Adler says. “It’s about who is going to get things done.”

So perhaps this is a contest as to who you think has the mettle to push solid Democrat legislation across the aisle.

Luckily, this race is full of personality.

Photo credit: Ray Rushing

Polis is young, rich, gay, Princeton educated and a genuine philanthropist who cares greatly about
education.

Fitz-Gerald is the experienced candidate who has broken ground for women in Colorado politics. She was the first woman to be president of the senate majority, made a name for herself leading the liberal minority before that, and has a solid track record of serving the people dating back 15 years.

Then there’s Shafroth, who has no political experience to speak of. But he has an impeccable track record of conserving land in Colorado as the founder of the Colorado Conservation Trust and former executive director of Great Outdoors Colorado. He has been a part of major preservation battles serving on the California Coastal Commission.

“These are three very credible, very qualified candidates,” Adler says.

If you are looking for subtle differences, expect Shafroth to push for a stronger environmental agenda, Polis to pull from his years in education, and Fitz-Gerald to have the most experience pushing policy through. But don’t take our word for it, mail-in ballots will be sent out in days, meaning all three will frantically make the rounds throughout the district this month. There are few other certainties in this race: This will be the most expensive seat in the house this year, and about the only thing the money promises is record primary voting turnouts.

Politics is silly, indeed.

Mail-in ballots will be mailed out today and the final day to register as a Democrat or independent and be eligible to vote in the CD2 primary is Monday. The primary is Aug. 12.

The post The Most Expensive Seat in the Country appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.