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Mountain News: Jasper has jobs, jobs, jobs

JASPER, Alberta — The help-wanted signs have been posted in every second window in downtown Jasper. Housekeeping and serving positions are going begging, reports Jasper's Fitzhugh .
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JASPER, Alberta — The help-wanted signs have been posted in every second window in downtown Jasper. Housekeeping and serving positions are going begging, reports Jasper's Fitzhugh.

Jasper, Banff and Edmonton are the worst, but a new report form the University of Alberta finds labour shortages across the province, especially in health care, retail, hotel and food services.

"What we found generally is that lower skill and lower paying occupations end up having relatively larger shortages because when the economy improves, the people who are working in those sectors get attracted up to higher-paying jobs," said Darryl Howery, an economist who worked on the report.

The Canadian Tourism Human Resource Council forecasts a shortfall of 24,562 tourism-sector jobs by 2030.

Nobody gets voted off

BANFF, Alberta — Banff is a most unusual municipality, in that it is surrounded entirely by public land, that of Banff National Park. In fact, the private land of the town is something of a ward of Parks Canada, the federal agency.

And in 1998, Parks Canada issued a cap on the amount of space for businesses within the town and a similar population cap of 8,000 people. The idea is that a town is needed to help support the national park experience, but it can't overwhelm the natural surroundings.

Interesting idea — but the devil is always in the details. And one of the details is that businesses since the 1990s in Banff have become more intensive in their use of allotted commercial space. A restaurant requires more employees than a retail shop, for example. And there is no cap on hotels, which also require larger numbers of hotels.

That increased intensity means more jobs, means more population, unless workers are required to commute down-valley to Canmore or conceivably even an hour east to the suburbs of Calgary.

A new study commissioned by the municipality finds that the population could grow to more than 11,000 people in the next decade. And that means a housing shortage by 2022, according to a consultant, Housing Strategies Inc.

The study concludes that Banff will likely reach its population of 8,000 permanent residents between 2015 and 2016, prior to full commercial buildout, which is expected in 2020 and 2021.

Banff Mayor Karen Sorensen was skeptical. "It's hard to know whether those kinds of numbers will actually come to fruition," she said.

Whitefish gets old Whistler chair

WHITEFISH, Mont. – In the perpetual business of recycling, Whitefish is introducing a new chairlift that isn't particularly new. The fixed-grip triple-chair was originally used at Whistler-Blackcomb, then repurposed to use as a backup for Kimberley Alpine Resort, also in British Columbia.

Now being shipped by truck to south of the border, it will provide access to about 200 acres and 244 vertical metres of lift-served skiing on the north-facing slopes of Whitefish's Big Mountain.

Durango disposable bag fee

DURANGO, Colo. — Durango's city council has approved a 10-cent fee on disposal bags at the four big grocery stores in the city of 17,000 people located at the south end of Colorado's San Juan Mountains.

The revenue of the 10 cent fee on paper and plastic bags will be split between the collecting businesses and the municipality, but the money can only be used to pay for implementation of the program and provide education on why disposable bags are not good, reports the Durango Telegraph.

Voters in Fraser, also in Colorado, will vote on a fee for disposable bags in November, while Vail is kind of talking about it. Breckenridge's program starts in November. Telluride started it all, at least among ski towns, about three years ago.

vote coming on sugary drinks' tax

TELLURIDE, Colo. — By almost any measure, Telluride is über-liberal. But a proposal to levy a one-cent per ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages like pop, sports drinks and energy drinks is getting blow-back in the community.

Despite that push-back, the town council has decided to send the proposal to the voters in November, reports the Telluride Daily Planet. Proceeds from the tax would be used to fund programs intended to promote healthy, active lifestyles for kids.

Concerns are myriad: Will implementation and auditing burden businesses? Will it actually accomplish its intended effect of reducing obesity?

"The fact is, the sugary beverage tax will not stop consumers in Telluride from drinking soda," said the manager of a local grocery store. "It will only force them to purchase it outside of town, therefore creating a revenue loss for local businesses."

Is there proof that a tax will result in less consumption of sugary drinks? Even the measure's sponsor admitted that hard evidence linking cause and effect is scarce. However, the local programs funded by a federal grant that seeks to reduce childhood obesity have apparently shown success. Their continuation is dependent upon new funding sources.

The executive director of the Colorado Beverage Association drove from Denver to testify in opposition, reports the Telluride Daily Planet. "Food is the No. 1 source of added sugars, not sugar-sweetened beverages," said Chris Howes. "Taxing soft drinks or any other single food or food ingredient is simplistic and unjustified."

How changing climate may alter Crested Butte

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — Effects of human-caused climate change in mountainous areas are more difficult to predict than those in places like Kansas. The topography creates greater variances, even in close proximity.

Consider the testimony of Dr. Imtiaz Rangwala, a climatologist with the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration. Rangwala studied the climate of the Tibetan Plateau and the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Warming in the Tibetan Plateau was very rapid, but less so in the San Juans, although still warming an average of two degrees Fahrenheit between 1994 and 2005.

But within Colorado, there were great variations. At Crested Butte, he found almost no change in temperatures during that same time frame. Across the valley, at Cochetopa Pass, there was.

"So that's the mountain system for you. Understanding climate change in the Southwest is really a tricky business," said Rangwala, according to an account in the Crested Butte News. "You can't look at one place and expect things to be happening in a very wide area. This is not Kansas."

While models are clear about rising temperatures, they're unclear about the effect on precipitation. "The best-case scenario is to be wet and warm. The worst-case scenario would be hot and dry," he said.

Rangwala was one of several panelists at a recent forum in Crested Butte centered around the question about how the natural environment might look in 25 years.

Another panelist was Dr. Mary Price, who has been doing research on ecological processes in Crested Butte since 1976. She said the impacts of the changing climate are already evident on hillsides. Invasive plants that never gained a foothold are now taking over.

"Butter and eggs was probably planted by some biologist or miner and sat very well behaved for many years until the mid-'90s, when it just exploded and took over the entire moraine," she said. A moraine is a glacial deposit, and Gothic, site of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, about 10 kilometres from Crested Butte, was a mining town built on one. Butter and eggs is a species of toadflax sold by nurseries as "wild snapdragons."

Price went on to say that during the next 25 years, unless emissions of greenhouse gases can be cut, the existing balance that annually yields large meadows of wildflowers around Crested Butte would ebb.

Dr. Bobbi Peckarsky has been studying aquatic life near Crested Butte for 38 years, pointed to the outsized effects from an earlier spring thaw. This is evident in an algae called didymo. It has been recorded near Crested Butte since the 1950s, but was not common.

"I never saw it for the first 30 years here, and in the last seven or eight it has grown to be a significant problem," she said. "It changes the community of organisms to the extent that fish growth, brook trout growth, is reduced by 40 per cent because the bugs (don't develop)."

Incentives for expansion of flights

ASPEN, Colo. — Rare if not unique among mountain resorts, Aspen does not post revenue guarantees to airlines providing service into the local airport. Ah, but it does sometimes provide incentives.

Such was the case last year when American Airlines began service. The three primary local governments — Aspen, Snowmass Village and Pitkin County — along with the Aspen Skiing Co. and the local chamber ponied up $425,000, partly for marketing but a portion of direct cash support.

Now comes news that Delta Airlines will become the third airline providing service into the local airport this coming winter, joining American and long-standing provider United Airlines. But again, there is a price. The Aspen Daily News notes that the full amount hasn't been made public, although the city of Aspen's share is $75,000.

Delta will be providing daily service from Atlanta and Saturday-only flights from Minneapolis this coming winter.