EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. – The steadily worsening housing crunch continues to get ink in the Vail Daily. The newspaper revisits a report produced last December by a team from the Urban Land Institute, a non-profit group. Eagle County — an area dominated by Vail but also including a portion of Aspen’s suburbs — will need 11,500 new homes in the next 20 years, most of them with lower price points, the report says.
The report maintains that the market alone will not deliver the housing, and called for a consortium of governments to address the issue. It also calls for policies requiring lower income housing in conjunction with the higher-end “market” housing.
Eagle County’s population, now edging northward from 50,000, is projected to surpass 80,000 within 18 years. In contrast, 18 years ago it was at less than 23,000.
Meanwhile, in Jackson Hole, Jonathan Schechter reports a marked pinch in the labour supply this year. Judging by the classified advertisements, he calculates the demand by early July was 25 per cent higher than it was a year ago.
Homeowners resisting solar
CARBONDALE, Colo. – Solar collectors are surging in popularity in the Roaring Fork Valley, despite discouraging words from homeowners associations, reports The Aspen Times.
Holy Cross Electric, the electrical co-op that serves the Aspen, Glenwood Springs and Vail areas, offers rebates to people who install photovoltaic and other alternative energy systems. The rebate fund, $150,000 last year, is being boosted to $380,000, although directors expect even that fund will be drained.
But neighbours are objecting when some solar proponents attempt to erect photovoltaic collectors, says the Times. The newspaper cites instances from Aspen Highlands downvalley 55 miles to New Castle, where one subdivision has an outright ban.
Rachael Connor, an instructor at Carbondale’s Solar Energy International, said society has determined that solar panels are “ugly.” That view is slowly changing as more people turn to the sun for energy, but Connor foresees an increase in solar showdowns before the public embraces solar fixtures.
However, at least in Colorado, solar proponents have the law on their side. A state statute prohibits covenants from banning solar energy devices, although the law does allow “reasonable aesthetic provisions” that do not significantly increase the cost of a device.
Students get biodiesel into buses
BANFF, Alberta – What began as something of a science experiment by high school students at Banff is resulting in the addition of biodiesel to be used in the 28-bus fleet in the local school district. The buses are expected to use a five per cent component of biodiesel in winter, when freezing temperatures limit full use of biodiesel, but a 20 to 50 per cent mixture is possible in summer months, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook. All of this is coming by 2010.
Revelstoke clears the air
REVELSTOKE, B.C. – Revelstoke city officials are taking additional steps to improve the air. Earlier this year, the council banned idling in the downtown area. Now, councilors are preparing to make idling unlawful across the community. Signs declaring that fact are to be erected at the municipality’s main entrances.
In another action, reports the Revelstoke Times Review, the council is planning to offer grants of $300 and $800 to those willing to replace their inefficient old wood-stoves in favor of the more efficient models.
A final change likely to yield clearer skies is the imminent shutdown of a sawmill burner, although one final burner will remain in the city. While a major ski resort is being built at Revelstoke, it remains for now a logging town as well.
Co-op urged to cut energy use
DURANGO, Colo. – Although Durango-based La Plata Electrical Association is already investing one to one point five per cent of its revenues in encouraging more efficient use of existing electricity, local activists want it to do more and reduce electrical use 10 per cent by the year 2020.
Mark Schwantes, the co-op’s director of corporate services and planning, tells the Durango Telegraph that a 10 per cent reduction would be “very challenging,” given the increasing number of consumers in the Durango-Pagosa Springs-Cortez area.
In addition, the San Juan Citizens Alliance wants more energy to come from local sources. Nearly one per cent of its electricity comes from renewable sources, but that wind power is generated elsewhere. A new Colorado law mandates that utilities hit 10 per cent by the year 2020.
Driving the push from activists is a concern mostly about global warming. Nearly all of La Plata Electric’s power comes from coal-fired power plants. In the United States, burning of coal is responsible for about one-third of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas.
There are additional concerns in the Durango area about adverse effects of two coal-fired power plants in the nearby Four Corners area.
Aspen may buy hydro plant
GLENWOOD CANYON, Colo. – The city of Aspen has inquired about the possibility of buying a hydroelectric plant in Glenwood Canyon. The current owner, Xcel, a Minneapolis-based utility that supplies electricity to about two-thirds of Coloradans, mostly along the Front Range, told The Aspen Times that there are no plans to sell the plant. The Shoshone plant, constructed in 1908, uses water from the Colorado River.
Aspen is unusual among municipalities in Colorado in providing electricity for more than half of its residents. Like most other places, it used to get much of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, but in the 1990s began looking to get more power from renewable sources. Accordingly, it operates a hydroelectric plant at Ruedi Reservoir and, within Aspen, is retrofitting a long abandoned hydro plant on Maroon Creek. The city also buys wind power.
Building demolition curbed
ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen’s city council plans to put the brakes on demolition of older buildings. The city has long had legislation to prevent the destruction of Victorian-influenced buildings constructed during the city’s mining era of the late 19 th century. But a new effort aims to protect buildings from Aspen’s second boom, during the post-World War II resort era.
“We see buildings demolished at a very fast rate, and we are very worried about that,” said Amy Guthrie, the city’s historic preservation officer. “There is no reason to believe that only Aspen’s Victorian residents produced places worth saving,” she said in a memo.
The city, reports The Aspen Times, plans to conduct a census of important buildings, their architecture, and their history.
Officials ask for lower speeds
EAGLE, Colo. – Interstate 70 through the Eagle Valley is a hurry-hurry thoroughfare. The speed limit is 75 mph from Glenwood Canyon to Avon, and then 65 and 60 mph to Vail.
But a group of Eagle County officials is asking for a lowered speed limit in the mid-valley section at least to Eagle, reports the Vail Daily. The officials cite the high death rate on the highway, with most fatal crashes occurring during summer months.
The speed limit was 65 until the mid-1990s.
Issues sorted out in Tahoe fire
LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Who’s to blame for the fire that destroyed 254 homes at Lake Tahoe in the late June fire called Angora?
In what looks to be a case of spin the bottle, fingers are being pointed everywhere. The likelihood of fire at Angora, near the town of South Lake Tahoe, was identified with some precision in a story in the San Francisco Chronicle in the mid-1990s.
But preventative work on public lands was slow in getting started. And on some private lands, it was not done at all.
The basin has 200 to 500 trees per acre, whereas a healthy forest has 50 to 70 trees per acre, said Tom Bonnicksen, a professor emeritus of forest science at Texas A&M University.
The Los Angeles Times reports that 21,000 acres of federal, state, and private land have been thinned in the last decade, but 67,000 more acres still need work.
Some point their fingers at environmentalists for slowing the thinning. Matte Mathes, a Forest Service spokesman, told the newspaper that not one environmental appeal or lawsuit was filed against Forest Service thinning projects in the last 10 years. The greater problem was the absence of money from the federal government, until a couple of years ago, to pay for thinning.
But while thinning slowed the flames, it could not halt them, said Dave Marlow, the vegetation, fire and fuels manager for the Forest Service.
Far more blame — including much anger — has been pointed at an agency called the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. Created in 1969, that agency is charged with reducing sedimentation in the lake, and accordingly it has strict rules about modifications to the landscape. Some are saying that the bureaucracy is too meddlesome, requiring permits for removal of any tree larger in diameter than six inches.
But that agency allowed creation of defensible space around houses, and in a good many cases — by some estimates about 80 per cent — the defensible space was not created or else improperly maintained. In particular, fingers are pointed at second-home owners.
In fact, about 2,000 homes were permitted on private land within the forests, and another 4,000 parcels remain that can be built upon. The Sacramento Bee reports that even environmentalists have not cited the fire hazard in pushing for a housing moratorium. “It would be kind of a weird campaign; there’s thousands of houses here already,” said Patricia Hickson, former chairman of the Tahoe-area branch of the Sierra Club.
Some homeowners tell reporters that they knew the risks, but that living amid trees is worth the risk.
Governors of California and Nevada — the basin is in both states — plan to appoint a blue-ribbon commission to sort out the issues, reports Associated Press.
Dead & dying trees in news
WINTER PARK, Colo. – The story during July 4 th in the Fraser Valley was of trees, dead and dying, in what is undoubtedly Colorado’s ground zero for the bark beetle infestation of the last decade.
Touchy about the fire potential, Grand County commissioners declared a ban on open fires. A community fire plan was being prepared that identifies potential safety zones and helicopter landing sites.
The Winter Park Manifest also reports that logging of 1,900 acres of forest has begun. The intent is to remove dead trees, but impacts are expected to several popular trails used for mountain biking. Appropriately, one of the trails is called Chainsaw.
Winter Park and Fraser, the valley’s two towns, haven’t been hit badly by bark beetle, but they’re very close — just over a ridge — from the Williams Fork Valley, where the future is evident in all its grayness. In places 90 per cent of trees are dead.
Ore mill bought, mining may resume
SILVERTON, Colo. – It appears that ore-processing could return to Silverton by Christmas, and mining itself within three years.
The Pride of the West ore-processing mill, which is located at Howardsville, about four miles from Silverton, has been sold to Colorado Goldfields at a cost of $900,000. Of that, $250,000 was paid in cash.
Todd Hennis, the company’s president and chief executive officer, told the Silverton Standard and the Miner, that the mill is the only functional ore mill within 100 miles. Gold and silver prices are high, and Hennis expects them to rise.
The short-term plan is to process ore provided by the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal and state agencies that have environmental materials in need of milling.
Hennis, who has 26 years experience in mining and metals, sees untapped potential in the Gold King, Mogul, and Echo mines, as well as others. “With professional experience, some luck, and good management,” Hennis told the Standard, the mill should operate for perhaps 20 years.
For the sale to go through, the buyer wanted an undisputed clear title to the land. The county had thought of using the old railroad grade through the property as a trail, but the county commissioners, in a 2-to-1 vote, disclaimed any interest in the railroad right of way.
The dissenting commissioner, Peter McKay, objected to the hasty nature of the decision. The commissioners were informed of the demand for a disclaimer only minutes beforehand, and were told that failing it, they might face a lawsuit — or the mill would be taken apart and moved to Mexico. It’s not good public policy to make decisions so hastily, said McKay.
Commissioner Ernie Kuhlman, a one-time miner, said he wouldn’t let a railroad right-of-way stand in the way of renewed mining.
Silverton’s last mine closed about a decade ago. Since then, it has moved to more of a tourism- and second-home based economy.
Former miner remembered
DURANGO, Colo. – Keith Blackburn, a miner at Telluride who later helped install many of the early lifts at the Purgatory ski area, has died at the age of 86.
An obituary in the Durango Herald explains that Blackburn grew up on ranches in the West during the Great Depression. The hardscrabble life steered him away from ranching. He worked in the mines at Telluride both before and after World War II, developing a fascination with mining trams. Leaving Telluride in 1957, he moved to Durango, where he was involved in the opening of Purgatory in 1965. Blackburn had also been a pilot during World War II, flying 31 missions over Germany and France.
He was a lifelong member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and a retired firefighter from the Telluride Fire Department.
Parents unhappy about turf
EDWARDS, Colo. – Last November voters in the Eagle Valley approved a $128 million bond election to build a new high school, among other facilities. The new 1,000-student high school will be located in Edwards, replacing the high school closer to Vail and Minturn.
But to the disgruntlement of some parents, the budget does not include money for artificial turf or for a full stadium. There are doubts that the grass field now being planned will stand up to soccer, lacrosse, and myriad other uses, and that instead many activities will be shunted to the old school about six miles away, reports the Vail Daily.
Hybrids cause emissions too
ASPEN, Colo. – Four new diesel hybrid-electric buses are being added to the fleet that takes visitors from Aspen to the popular and congested viewing area for the Maroon Bells Peaks. The buses, notes The Aspen Times, were purchased with the aid of a $1.68 million federal grant.
Back in Aspen, a letter-writer takes target at electric-powered mini-Hummers, which are being described as “emission free.”
“Electric vehicles are anything but emission-free,” pointed out James March, the letter-writer. “Electric vehicles simply displace their emissions elsewhere. The electricity has to come from somewhere, and in Aspen’s case that is likely to be from a coal-fired power plant in Craig or down in the Four Corners.”
