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Something rotten in Aspen

ASPEN, Colo. — At least in its resort era, Aspen has something of a morbid history. There, Pop singer Claudine Longet killed her lover, ski racer Spider Sabich. There, mass-killer Ted Bundy escaped from jail.

ASPEN, Colo. — At least in its resort era, Aspen has something of a morbid history. There, Pop singer Claudine Longet killed her lover, ski racer Spider Sabich. There, mass-killer Ted Bundy escaped from jail.

Now, it will also be remembered as the place where Ken Lay, who was CEO of what may have been the largest smoke-and-mirrors corporate deception in U.S. history, died.

Lay had rented a home near Aspen, at Old Snowmass, after his conviction in May of fraud and conspiracy at Enron. When he died, it just so happened that two of the biggest names in television, Katie Couric and Wolf Blitzer, happened to be nearby.

But not everybody believed the Pitkin County coroner’s report of a heart attack. Under the headline "A Sense of Something Rotten in Aspen," New York Times business columnist Tom Zeller Jr. recounts the web postings of victims of Enron and others who felt no compassion for the man who, just 18 months before Enron toppled of its own deceitful folly, had issued an edict about "fairness and honesty."

"Word on the street is that he’s actually chillin’ in the Dominican Republic, fanning himself with his offshore money he squirreled away and sharing a pitcher of sangria with Tupac (Shakur, the slain hip-hop artist)," wrote one blogger.

Said another blogger, "I hate it when those jerks go off and die before they get their punishment. It’s so unfair."

American’s addiction

ASPEN, Colo. — America’s dangerous addiction to foreign oil seems to be on every thinking person’s mind this summer. In think-tank discussions from Aspen to Vail to Sun Valley, energy dependency and global warming figure prominently.

In Aspen, former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Democrats should make global warming a key issue in this year’s elections. The Republican strategy, he said, is weak.

"Let’s forget about global warming and talk about flag burning and gay marriage," Clinton said, speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival. "I don’t know how long you can milk that old cow."

Clinton said Democrats should stress the national security angle of clean energy. He also said climate change is a far more important issue than he thought when he was in office, reports The Aspen Times. (That might seem like a curious statement, given that his right-hand man, Vice President Al Gore, was even then the nation’s lead crusader on the issue).

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan stressed some of the same themes during his earlier speech at the Aspen Festival. He said the United States must develop alternative energy sources or risk dire economic consequences.

"If the world oil industry were to get into very serious difficulty, its impact on the world economic system would be very difficult to absorb," he said.

Worse than the price at the gas pump is the price the country has paid in its foreign policy to protect oil reserve, said Greenspan. He said he supported the Iraq war because he feared Saddam Hussein’s potential disruption of oil supplies. He also sounded alarms about dwindling natural-gas supplies and the dangers posed by global warming.

Greenspan believes the free market will provide the answers to this addiction to foreign oil. Not all listeners were persuaded. The Denver Post spoke with Randy Udall, an activist in energy matters. "I think in the energy arena, he is Pollyannna-ish and clueless," said Udall.

Clinton, however, doesn’t totally disagree with the Bush policy in Iraq. "Once you break the eggs, you have the responsibility to make an omelet," he said, in arguing against a set withdrawal date.

The Ideas Festival was star-studded, with former Defense Secretary Colin Powell, scientist E.O. Wilson, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett – all before lunch on one of the five days. The Aspen Times says the buzz phrase for the week was this: "There’s no silver bullet. It’s more like silver buckshot."

In Sun Valley, the noted Allen & Co. was scheduled to include media mogul Rupert Murdoch, money-man Warren Buffet, and slews of other newsmakers. Among the discussions: "Can We End our Oil Addiction." Oil dependency was also addressed by former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart in remarks made at the Vail Institute earlier in the summer.

Canmore trying to herd bears

CANMORE, Alberta — Bears and people are always a combustible mix in Canmore and other parts of the Bow River Valley. Sometimes bears lose, as occurred recently when several were hit by locomotives on the Canadian Pacific Railway. Other times, people lose. A local woman, jogging through the forest, last year was mauled and killed by a grizzly.

Now, Canmore and the province of Alberta are teaming for an extensive program designed to encourage bears to avoid contact with people. The new program is conducted by the Montana-based Winter River Bear Institute, which offers something that it calls "bear shepherding." The institute’s website says that it uses both positive reinforcement and negative conditioning tools, including red pepper spray, rubber bullets, and Karelian bear dogs.

The Rocky Mountain Outlook commends the program as long overdue, but grouses that the provincial government, which is awash in revenues from the tar sands and other fossil-fuels extractions, should be paying the full bill.

Meanwhile, Canmore is also launching a program designed to deal with a species that is far less threatening and certainly more populous than bears. It seems that rabbits are invading the gardens of Canmore.

In the program’s first phase, people will be encouraged to install rabbit-proof fencing and remove wood piles and other places where the bunnies might establish homes. A second phase might include a spay/neuter program, a rabbit sanctuary and what the Outlook calls "euthanasia."

Counter-productive zoning?

GUNNISON COUNTY, Colo. — Inclusionary zoning – the idea that a set percentage of homes within a subdivision need to be allocated to lower- to moderate-income buyers and residents – has been embraced in many resort towns and valleys hit by a great influx of high-income buyers.

Gunnison County, which is where Crested Butte is located, has been slower than many to be hit by this invasion of money, but is girding for that possibility – some would say probability. Specifically, before the county commissioners is a proposal to mandate 30 per cent of homes in subdivisions be affordable to those of low and moderate incomes.

The Gunnison County Contractors’ Association disagrees with the idea, and provided an economist, Dr. Eliot Eisenberg, to testify why he believes inclusionary zoning fails. The Crested Butte News reports that Eisenberg argues that the cost of subsidizing affordable housing then makes free-market housing more expensive.

The usual counter-argument is that in resort communities, prices are no obstacle for many buyers, leaving whole valleys akin to gated communities. In Aspen, the free market has spiraled so high that relatively few people can afford to live there unless they arrived decades ago or unless they live in deed-restricted housing. Roughly half of Aspen’s population lives in affordable housing.

Eisenberg also argues that the poorest are rarely helped by inclusionary zoning. He said units are usually distributed unfairly through lotteries. Also, he contends inclusionary zoning encourages sprawl.

He instead urges that standards be relaxed, impact fees be waived, and density be encouraged to produce more affordable housing. "Smaller yards, no garages, knockers instead of doorbells, etc.," he said. "These things truly reduce the cost of the house."

Winter Park gets higher

WINTER PARK, Colo. — With one bold stroke of the pen, Winter Park now lays claim to being the highest incorporated municipality in the United States. The town council has annexed the ski area, which reaches a height of 12,060 feet. Most of the town, however, is at about 9,100 or a little higher.

The previous distinction of highest incorporated town in the United States was held by Alma, Colo., located south of Breckenridge. It has a base elevation of 10,578 feet. By Colorado law, Alma is classified as a town, because of its smaller population. Leadville, located across the Mosquito Range from Alma, has a larger population, and is classified as the nation’s highest city. The elevation of the city’s main street, Harrison Avenue, is 10,152 feet.

Winter Park may now have bragging rights, but the annexation was provoked by practical purposes, reports the Winter Park Manifest. The ski area operator, Intrawest, can now deal with town officials when seeking authority to install new lifts instead of also facing review from the county government.

Marketing types do see some possibilities. "We are going to have to look at that in a future marketing deal," said Catherine Ross, executive director of the Winter Park/Fraser Chamber of Commerce.

Beaver Creek on the slide

BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — At Beaver Creek Resort, owner Vail Resorts wants to build an alpine slide. Homeowners in adjacent areas are against it, although at least some are confident a compromise can be reached, reports the Vail Daily.

John Garnsey, chief operating officer at the resort, said the company wants more summer activities at all its resorts. "Beaver Creek is a family resort, and those guests are looking for more well-rounded offerings," he said.

Cyclist finishes first

ASPEN, Colo. — Frets about traffic have consistently ranked as the most steady source of news in Aspen during the last several decades, ranking perhaps equally with real estate development and public angst dog doo-doo on pedestrian paths, notes The Aspen Times.

The traffic has mostly to do with the town’s entrance, where a four-lane highway narrows to two lanes. Twice a day, traffic crawls, sometimes taking a half-hour to get three miles through this bottleneck.

Trying to make light of an old, repetitive, and wearying story, The Aspen Times decided to stage its own great race, launching a variety of reporters and editors by car, bus, foot and so on from the newspaper office, which is located in the middle of Aspen, at 5 o’clock. The goal: the Airport Business Center, not quite four miles away.

The winner: a bicycle rider, who made it in 9 minutes.

Bark beetles continue tour

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. — The pine beetle story continues to shape up as a major, significant story in north-central Colorado.

There, bark beetles continue to chew their way through the aging forests of lodgepole pine in the Vail, Summit County, and Winter Park-Grand Lake areas. The epidemic in some areas has now waxed for about a decade, causing growing worries about the potential of major, so-called catastrophic fires. The concern is heightened by the fact that so many people live so close to forests.

In Summit County, U.S. Forest Service officials estimate that 50 to 90 per cent of the lodge pole pine will succumb to the bark beetles in the next few years, reports the Summit Daily News.

Don Carroll, deputy supervisor, said similarly high infestations could occur across the White River National Forest, which extends from the Eisenhower Tunnel to beyond Aspen and northward within 30 miles of Steamboat. One area, between Winter Park and Silverthorne, has 300,000 acres of affected trees.

All of this is causing revised local reactions. A decade ago, most ski towns scorned logging, partly because much of the timber was sold at below cost after administrative expenses were tallied. But earlier the ski towns along the I-70 corridor this year asked that all fees be waived, in order to encourage loggers to remove the dead and dying trees.

Two bills currently before Congress propose to make it easier to build biomass burners in these I-70 communities, notes the Vail Daily. The burners would need long-term assurances of wood. A delegation from the I-70 counties is lobbying in Washington D.C. for a rule change that would allow logging companies to sign contracts for harvest of trees from national forests for at least a decade, according to Summit County Commissioner Bill Wallace.

"Over the last 20 years, citizens here have done their best to tell the forest industry to go away," said Peter Runyon, an Eagle County commissioner. "I’ll admit that I’ve been among them. But we’re going to have to involve the forest industry in this."

"If I’ve learned anything in the past 10 or 11 months or so, it’s that we don’t know quite as much about our forests as we thought we did," said Howard Hallman, founder of Our Future Summit, which has a task force devoted to the beetle topic.

Tahoe girds for major fire

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Emergency workers seem to be girding for a major fire in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Smoke from fires to the east, in the lower-lying Carson City and Reno areas, has been visible in recent weeks as tens of thousands of acres have gone up in flames.

"Many who deal in the business of firefighting and forest fuels management say it’s not ‘if’ but ‘when’ regarding a catastrophic fire in the Lake Tahoe Basin," reports the Tahoe Daily Tribune. The newspaper notes that a fire of that proportion nearly occurred four years ago, at the Heavenly ski area.

Truckee’s Sierra Sun points out that should a large wildfire occur, residents of some areas along Lake Tahoe would have limited options if ordered to leave. Emergency officials are also telling people to think ahead to when fire could bring down electricity lines. In that case, people need battery-powered AM radios.

One homeowner has been raising a ruckus for the last year about the susceptibility of the lots owned by neighbors to wildfire. He points to fallen trees, thick forest duff, and wonders why they haven’t been removed. California state law sternly requires defensible space for 100 feet around a home, but that law lacks enforcement teeth, reports the Tahoe Daily Tribune.

Aesthetics vs. air quality

GUNNISON COUNTY, Colo. — An open-hearth fireplace produces pollution of particulates at seven times the rate of newer, EPA-approved wood-burning stoves. So who wouldn’t want less pollution?

Contractors in Gunnison County, for one, if they’re trying to sell homes. It seems that some buyers of homes want the romance of the crackling, spitting fire in an open hearth. And the contractors think they should be able to provide that amenity.

The Crested Butte News explains that county officials have gone back and forth on the issue since 2001. The latest proposal would most severely restrict fireplaces in areas near the towns of Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte. Both ski towns long ago limited fireplaces. Elsewhere, each home would be allowed two wood-burners, but not the open hearths the contractors want.

If those currently proposed rules stick, they will more jibe with those of more well-developed ski valleys in Colorado. There, people have mostly learned to like the less romantic, if less messy, glow of natural gas fires in simulated fireplaces.

Lighting strikes golfer

GRANBY, Colo. — It’s been a summer of horrifics in Granby. First, a 16-year-old boy died when he waded into a lake to retrieve his dog and was electrocuted. Next, a young man with a wife and three children fell into a saw in a sawmill and was mutilated.

By comparison, the lighting strike of a 47-year-old golfer on a local golf course seems benign. The strike shredded portions of his clothing and shoes, reports the Sky-Hi News, but he remained conscious and was able to talk as he was put on a helicopter and flown to a hospital in Denver.

Rainbow gathering reviewed

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — About the only clear conclusion in the aftermath of the Rainbow Family gathering 35 miles north of Steamboat Springs in Routt County was that people were interested.

The Forest Service never did issue the group a permit for a mass campout of what turned out to be 15,000 people. A sheep rancher who has a grazing permit in the area had heartburn about the indignities of the environmental impacts that would never be allowed of public-land grazing. The Forest Service to the end warned of the danger of potentially catastrophic fire.

The Rainbows had mixed environmental reviews.

"As far as we were concerned, they were good guests," said Michael Zopf, director of the Routt County Department of Environmental Health, "The environmental ethic that they live and that they practiced, at least in Routt County, was exemplary," he told the Rocky Mountain News.

The Denver Post saw the effect as less benign: "The event left the unavoidable mess that you’d expect 15,000 campers to create." Added the Post: "It’s hard to miss the irony of free spirits who profess the desire to live lightly on the land and to heal the earth leaving such a heavy impact on one 4-square-mile piece of the planet every July."

In Steamboat, editor Scott Stanford said the gathering had been the talk of the town. It came up in church prayers, for example. And it also came up in fears. He says lodging property managers told him customers were checking out because of what they read in his newspaper, The Steamboat Pilot & Today. (If so, there may have been people standing by, as Steamboat had an extremely busy Fourth of July).

He also reported that his newspaper’s website nearly crashed because of getting so many hits. He attributed the heavy trafficking to a link provided by The Drudge Report.

"I suspect that, in the final analysis, the Rainbow gathering will not have nearly the impact on Steamboat Springs that many, including (this) newspaper, led us to think it would."

That’s also the 20-20 hindsight in Granby, where the Rainbow Family held its first gathering, in 1972. Patrick Brower, editor of Granby’s Sky-Hi News had not arrived in Granby then, but he has heard many an earful through the years. The Rainbow gathering wasn’t as "bad as had been predicted, especially by the paranoid federal land officials and law enforcement," he says.

He didn’t say it, but the fact was that a number of local merchants made a killing, jacking up their prices artificially for the detested "hippies." Such are sometimes the tactics in remote mountain towns.

‘Icebox’ getting old

FRASER, Colo. — It’s been 33 years since Fraser had a weather station that supported the town’s claim as "icebox of the nation." Other locales – Big Piney, Wyo., International Falls, Minn., and Truckee, Calif. – sometimes had the dubious distinction of having the coldest reported temperature in the continental United States, but often as not it was Fraser.

Radio announcers and Today Show hosts described it as the nation’s icebox so often that even after the weather station was removed in 1973 (because local volunteers Edna and Ron Tucker were tired of getting up every two hours to look at the thermometer), the slogan stuck, a sort of local pride at strength in the face of adversity.

Then, in 1987, it also lost a court case with International Falls, which had registered the name "icebox of the nation." Fraser can still use that name, but only in Colorado. It does so on the town’s welcoming sign.

But there have always been those who would rather the town wear a different badge of pride. The Winter Park Manifest reports that the latest push to shelve the tagline is coming from developers, but also town officials. Jeff Durbin, the town manager, says the slogan could make employee recruitment more difficult. He had second thoughts about taking his job because of the reputation the town wears on its sleeves – and stationery.

Also, anecdotal evidence suggests that the icebox just ain’t what it used to be. While mid-winter plunges of 30 below were almost nightly occurrences several decades ago, lately they have become the exception. Still, Fraser has relatively few peers in the Southern Rocky Mountains for cold.

The Manifest reports that no decision has been made on the slogan, and at least some people are insistent that the slogan remain.

Urban Land team finds promise

BLAINE COUNTY, Idaho — A team from the Urban Land Institute that included representatives from Vail and Aspen has endorsed creation of a new town composed of affordable housing located 20 to 30 miles downstream from Ketchum and Sun Valley.

The town would be on what is now ranchland, located near where the Wood River Valley empties out of the foothills into the broad Snake River Valley. Conveniently, a new airport to serve the Ketchum area is also planned about five miles away. Altogether 1,000 units – both deed-restricted and free-market but lower-cost housing – is proposed, plus the usual accouterments: fire and police stations, schools, a theatre, hotel, library and stores, all of this tightly clustered in a valley not seen from nearby highways.

"We believe a new town could absolutely be appropriate," said James M. De Francia, the chair of the ULI panel. De Francia is principal of Lowe Enterprises, a national real estate development company based in Aspen. Also a member was Stan Zemler, town manager of Vail.

The would-be developers, Bob Cantore and George Kirk, doing business as The Kirk Group, paid for the travel expenses of the panelists, altogether $120,000.

The Idaho Mountain Express reports that at least two commissioners from Blaine County remain unconvinced that the town is a good idea. Commissioner Sara Michael said the new town needs to be viewed in context with the other five cities in the valley. Another criticism is that existing towns should absorb the new growth.

Magpies are ‘rats’ to some

PARK CITY, Utah — It seems everyone has an opinion about magpies in Park City. To some locals, they are "rats with wings," because of their proclivity for being at landfills and roadkill. But visitors from the East, where magpies are not found, are often struck by the beauty of the birds, which are a member of the corvid family, and hence related to crows and ravens, notes The Park Record.

Although people may not like to see the birds scavenging, they are relatively harmless and help clean up the environment.

Vail voters have final say

VAIL, Colo. — Voters in Vail were scheduled this week to give thumbs up – or down – on a proposed redevelopment of the Crossroads Mall, to be called Solaris. The town council rejected it last year by a 4-3 vote, but a new council this year approved it by a 4-3 vote. Townspeople would seem to be similarly divided going to the polls on Tuesday.

Among various objections opponents cite the building’s height. Depending upon how you look at the building, it would be anywhere from 87 to 111 feet tall, although the town government figures inches under 100 feet, reports the Vail Daily.

A few doors down, but in a different zoning district, the town has allowed a building, the Vail Plaza Hotel, which is almost identical in height. Across the street, the Four Seasons hotel is to be 89 feet tall. Farther west, in the LionsHead Mall, several new hotels and time-share projects are being constructed. The official height of the Ritz-Carlton Residences-Vail is to be 82.5 feet high, but with a clocktower "project" that reaches 112 feet.