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Mountain News: McCain confers with Dalai Lama

ASPEN, Colo. – Even by standards of Aspen, where Nobel laureates, billionaires, and the nation’s highest officials are commonplace during high summer, it was an unusual afternoon.

ASPEN, Colo. – Even by standards of Aspen, where Nobel laureates, billionaires, and the nation’s highest officials are commonplace during high summer, it was an unusual afternoon. The Dalai Lama had long been scheduled for a public appearance, and presidential candidate John McCain decided to stop by for an hour-long, personal audience.

The Dalai Lama got a warmer public embrace than did McCain, whose plane was greeted by a small contingent of people protesting the war in Iraq and other national issues. After their private meeting, reports The Aspen Times, McCain told reporters that he was disappointed that the Dalai Lama was blamed by Chinese officials for the recent protests in Tibet. The charges, he said, are untrue.

“Such rhetoric doesn’t serve the cause of peaceful change and reconciliation,” he said. Tibetans, he added, “do have just grievances.”

Earlier in the week, the king of Jordan, Abdullah II, had caused a small stir when he decided to take his family, friends and security guards for a showing of the movie The Dark Knight. While they watched the movie in a roped-off section of the Isis Theater, a fleet of limousines was kept outside, double-parked, the engines idling. Mayor Mick Ireland was reportedly upset by the pollution and the gridlock created by the idling limos.

 

McKibben to speak in Banff

BANFF, Alberta – The author and crusading journalist Bill McKibben is scheduled to visit Banff in early August to talk about — what else — climate change. McKibben told the Rocky Mountain Outlook he gets about 10 invitations a day to speak, and he chose Banff because “every now and then I choose one based on my need to run up a mountain.”

But in going to Banff, McKibben will also be in Alberta, one of the world’s hot-spots for carbon extraction. Alberta is site of the tar sands, located north of Edmonton, some of which is piped to Colorado for refining.

McKibben’s current crusade is for a reduction in the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. They were 250 parts per million when the industrial revolution began, have now reached 386, but are accelerating rapidly.

Climate scientists have previously said C02 must be capped at 450 parts per million, possibly even 550 parts per million, before dangerous changes would begin.

Now, however, leading climate scientist James Hansen says global warming is happening sooner than expected, and so the conversion from carbon-based energy needs to happen much more rapidly. That is also the point of McKibben’s, who is calling for a return to 350 parts per million — a difficult task, given that C02 lingers in the atmosphere for up to a century.

 

Real estate continues to skid

ASPEN, Colo. – The real estate skid continues in mountain towns. New reports from June document continued sluggishness in the Aspen and Jackson Hole markets, at least when compared to the previous three years. Sales volume in total dollars was about half what it was going into the Fourth of July weekend last year.

Prices are dropping in some market segments, but not all. The highest end has survived rather well.

In Aspen and Pitkin County, the dollar volume this year has dropped 50 per cent through June as compared with last year, reports the Land Title Guarantee Co. This sends the Aspen market back only to 2004 levels.

Some sellers are still asking higher prices, real estate agents tell The Aspen Times, but the appreciation has slowed. “We don’t have 20 per cent appreciation right now,” said Robert Ritchie, a broker with the firm of Coates, Reid and Waldron. “We still have (appreciation), but it’s in the single digits.”

In Jackson Hole, total sales volume was down 46 per cent through June. Overall, the median home price of sales grew less than 2 per cent, to $1.2 million.

But the report from real estate analyst David Veihman cited in the Jackson Hole News & Guide painted a picture of a strongly bifurcated market. The higher-end market, which accounts for 60 per cent of Jackson Hole’s activity, continues to do reasonably well. One set of “golf cabins” are getting $4 million.

In what Veihman calls the “locals segment,” of $1 million and less, sales are down 60 per cent. Some lower-end properties were overpriced by as much as 30 per cent, he said.

As has been reported in Aspen, some in Jackson Hole expect the ranks of real-estate agents to thin. “You can’t support 800 Realtors on 131 residential sales,” observed broker Greg Prugh.

Still, Prugh sees this as a good thing. “I just think sellers are coming back to earth a bit, and that keeps the market healthy,” he told the newspaper.

How soon will the good old days return? Some faint hope for recovering sales this summer seems to exist, but Bob Starodoj, an agent who has worked in Aspen for more than 40 years, believes the record real estate volume of $2.4 billion established in 2006 is safe for now — and into the future. “It’s probably never going to be repeated,” he told the Times somewhat ominously.

 

Avon measures C02 emissions

AVON, Colo. – In this town at the foot of Beaver Creek, about six miles from Vail, efforts are underway to shrink energy use.

With prices of both natural gas and electricity escalating briskly, there is good reason to do so. But what is remarkable is that reporting of current efforts were recently described in terms of reduced emissions of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas. No mention was made in a Vail Daily report of cost savings.

The source of heat is a wastewater treatment plant located within the town. That heat, which is currently dissipated, can be claimed by using a heat-pump system, says a consulting engineer, Scott Vandenburgh, with CDM Inc.

In what amounts to a game of mathematics, town officials are considering using the new-found heat in two potential ways. The most gluttonous user of energy in the town is a recreation centre. Built in the mid-1990s, it uses 50 per cent more energy than a newer but comparably sized recreation centre at nearby Glenwood Springs. Using the wastewater heat to warm the rec centre swimming pool, hot tubs and showers will eliminate 568 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, Vandenburgh reported.

Another option is a streetmelt system for a new pedestrian area being planned. The town has been criticized for heating sidewalks, a use seen by some as unnecessary. But Avon officials are insistent that they wanted melted sidewalks, to encourage pedestrian use. The alternative, gas-fired boilers, would result in 288 tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to the study.

But simply tapping the wastewater heat will have consequences, as the heat-pumping system will result in putting 153 tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

 

Was Kit Carson a hero or criminal?

CRESTONE, Colo. – Nearly 150 years after the scorched-earth relocation of Navajos from the Four Corners region, bitterness remains. The latest flashpoint is Kit Carson, a 14,165 peak in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

The mountain’s namesake in 1863 led forces for the U.S. Army that rousted the Navajo from their hideouts in Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly and sent them on a long, difficult and deadly march to a reservation in New Mexico.

A proposal arising from the town of Crestone, at the base of Kit Carson, calls for the peak to be renamed “Mount Crestone,” reports Colorado Central Magazine.

The proponent, Keno Menechino, says that replacing the name Kit Carson would please local residents as they feel “he was a war criminal, not a war hero. The native Americans, Buddhists, and Hindus in the area seem very united on this, and they represent a large group of the population.”

This argument about Carson has been waged before. Some years ago, protestors vandalized a statue of Carson located in Taos, N.M., where Carson spent many years. He has been the subject of dozens of books, many flattering but others disparaging.

A mountain man who traveled the Rocky Mountains broadly from Jackson Hole to New Mexico, Carson was small in stature but large in his legacy. From a chance meeting with the explorer John Charles Frémont, he was plucked from the ranks of obscurity for special adulation by the masses, eager for dime-novel-fabricated accounts of frontier derring-do.

Simplistic accounts, however, did not do his life justice. He was brave, smart in his rough-hewn way, and like most mountain men, well integrated into the cultures of the native inhabitants of the region. He had a wife in one of the native tribes he encountered, and later he was married to a woman from a prominent Hispanic family in Taos.

By the 1860s, the days of fur-trapping era long since passed, Carson had been recruited to work for the U.S. Army. The Navajos had been terrorizing settlers, and he was charged with ending the attacks — and told by a superior to round up the Navajos and escort them to Bosque Redondo, in Southeast New Mexico. This he did, and it was not a nice affair. Many Navajo, who call themselves the Dine, died en route and on the reservation.

Colorado Central publisher Ed Quillen, who has studied Kit Carson’s story in depth, has found evidence that Navajos were brutalized by the U.S. Army under Carson’s watch, but sees no need for changing the mountain’s name.

“We tend to prefer a ‘warts and all’ view of our area’s history, of which Kit Carson is certainly a part,” he writes.

Furthermore, he notes that the names of warriors are on many mountains, including a 14,000-foot peak called Shavano that overlooks Salida. Shavano, he notes, was the war chief of the Tabeguache band of Utes.

There’s also the issue of geographical clutter and confusion. Proposed as a replacement in the application to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names is Mount Crestone. Farther down the same ridge are two other 14,000-foot peaks of the same inspiration: Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle.

 

Aspen plans to raise bar

ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen city officials plan to stiffen energy efficiency standards for commercial buildings. The new code aims to move Aspen along toward meeting the “2030 Challenge,” a national program that aims to reduce energy consumption by 50 percent in the next 22 years.

Stephen Kanipe, the city’s chief building official, said the green building and renewable energy components are the future of the construction industry, reports the Aspen Daily News. “We’re just a few years ahead of the curve,” he told elected officials at a recent meeting.

While building groups estimate that green-building measures such as those proposed by Aspen increase costs 2 to 5 per cent, Kanipe argues that long-term savings warrant the up-front costs. Bottom-dollar value engineering “does not make sense anymore,” Kanipe said. “You can’t afford to heat the building.”

In other words, building better is more economical, because of increasing energy costs.

Similar to an existing program for homes, the new regulations will allow energy-consuming outdoor features such as heated snowmelt sidewalks and heated pools. However, if they do so, the commercial projects must install on-site renewable energy features, such as photo-voltaic collectors, or pay an in-lieu fee for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects elsewhere.

In addition, the city — which also delivers electricity to about one-third of Aspen — is also preparing to offer attractive credits for those owners who install solar panels.

Officials of Pitkin County are planning to adopt similar regulations for unincorporated areas. The final draft of the regulations is expected to be completed by late September, reports the Daily News.

 

Eagle still has small town feel

EAGLE, Colo. – Can a community with 5,000 people still call itself a “small town?” Despite its rapid growth during the last decade, Eagle — located halfway between Vail and Glenwood Springs — still feels like a small town.

But when you have that many people, you need money for street repairs and other improvements. In Colorado, where homeowners pay very little property tax, that means revenues from taxes on sales.

So far, Eagle has heard from several developers proposing to build giant commercial complexes along nearby Interstate 70. It sent the first suitor packing, and the town’s planning commission proposes to similarly offer the door to the latest developer, who wants to build 550,000 square feet of commercial space and 581 housing units.

If the project does get built, the planning commissioners say, then buildings should be maxed at 45 feet. The recommendations now go to the town board. The Eagle Valley Enterprise says one way or another, the issue is likely to be decided directly by voters.

 

Denver Water backs off

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. – The Denver Water Department has partially backed off from its closure of the road across Dillon Dam. The road parallels Interstate 70, connecting the towns of Frisco and Silverthorne.

Denver abruptly closed the road in early July after getting new information about the vulnerability of the dam to a potential terrorist threat, presumably a bombing of some sort that would cause the dam to fail.

The closure was announced with virtually no advance discussion with local authorities — an omission that ruffled local feathers and rekindled old animosities.

“Denver Water Board” used to be a four-letter word in Summit County and other parts of Western Colorado, and to an extent it still is. The closure added new invective to this damnation.

Five agencies in Summit County sued Denver Water, which in turn agreed to form a task force to examine dam security. For now, the road is open to cars and pickup trucks. Still banned are larger trucks and U-Hauls and other such vehicles that carry the quantities of fertilizer that Timothy McVeigh used to blast the federal building in Oklahoma City.

The plan, said Maj. Gen. Mason Whitney, head of Colorado’s office of Homeland Security, is to “strike a balance between public access and dam security by mitigating vulnerabilities based on most probable threats and possible consequences.”

 

Vail remembers

VAIL, Colo. – People say that Vail isn’t a real town, and perhaps it isn’t. It certainly doesn’t have an old-fashioned Main Street you can drive a Winnebago down, gawking at the storefronts.

But it does have births and weddings and also funerals, which was the occasion last week upon the death of Harry Gray at age 52. He had arrived in 1981, moving first to the town of Red Cliff, 10 miles and two valleys removed from Vail proper, although he made his living by building houses in Vail and elsewhere along the I-70 corridor.

In later years, his prosperity rising proportionate to the real estate economy, he moved to Vail, then bought a ranch at McCoy, and finally operated a small restaurant in Minturn that he called Harry’s Bump and Grind. His last project, he said, was going to be a house for his wife, Colleen, and their three children in the Lake Creek Valley south of Edwards. By then, he was already suffering from heart troubles.

Between 400 and 500 people crowded into a community hall for a covered-dish memorial service, a few in ties, but many of them wearing Hawaiian shirts, one of Gray’s trademarks. Afterward, some lingered to volunteer future aid to his widow with matters both large and small.

While the population is dispersed, many agreed that Vail remains the place to be married and buried, although only after a fashion. Vail has no cemetery.

 

New plans for Rico

RICO, Colo. – There is new talk of imminent changes at Rico, an old mining town in the San Juan Mountains whose remoteness is rivaled only by the beauty of its surroundings. Both mining and resort development figure into this new vision of the town, located about a half-hour south of Telluride.

Mega Moly Inc., an investment firm, is at the heart of the new plans presented to the community in two meetings recently by a consortium of inter-related companies.

“I have no doubt that ultimately this resource will be accessed in the future,” said Mark Levin, a representative of Mining and Environmental Services, a firm that conducts remediation of existing mining sites. He said to expect a 10- to 20-year development process.

But Mega Moly still has to cut a deal with the owner of the mining property. Also, there seem to be some doubts about the size and quality of the ore deposit. For example, while Levin describes the deposit as “truly world-class potential in terms of size and grade,” he also said additional drilling that will cost tens of millions of dollars is needed to document the economic value of the deposit.

Mining was also the talk of the town last year, after mining interests announced plans to begin mining of what may be a major molybdenum deposit. The deal fell through.

But with China now a net importer of molybdenum, the market remains strong for the mineral, which strengthens steel and improves resistance to corrosion.

More immediate than mining, says The Telluride Watch, is potential of a Pagosa Springs-like commercial development that includes warm water bathing and a spa. The Kiernan Companies is at the centre of this project.

The hot water near the centre of Rico was discovered in the 1970s when a mining company created artesian wells, meaning the water naturally flows to the surface without being pumped. The water is still flowing at about 100 degrees.

Kyoto Planet Group, a geothermal resources firm, is involved in this aspect of the vision, with some talk also of potential for extracting the heat for electrical generation.

Rico residents for years have wondered about potential for development. A town of 250 during winter, its population doubles during summer, when owners of the old cabins flood in form Arizona and elsewhere.

But there is no central sewer, and the town has enough water rights for only a few dozen additional water taps, says Rebecca Levy, a town trustee and also publisher of the Rico Bugle.

As well, while the town averted designation as a Superfund site of mining wastes, tailings ponds near the town suggest the need to gussy-up the surroundings.

The town is split on whether it wants changes, says Levy. While many are content with Rico as it is, the town is almost exclusively a bedroom community for Telluride and Mountain Village, with no local economy and tax base.

Dissatisfied with local schools, families are leaving when they begin to have children. Telluride is no longer accepting out-of-district students.

 

Canada lynx killed

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. – Another Canada lynx has died after being hit on a road, this one in Summit County between Frisco and Breckenridge. The Summit Daily News says at least 20 people tried to save the hurt animal. The lynx otherwise appeared to be in good health. This is the 13 th lynx to have been killed by traffic in Colorado and adjacent states since reintroductions began in 1999. Another 13 have been illegally shot. The most recent fatality occurred on a stretch of road where a wildlife underpass is tentatively planned.