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Low-hanging fruit plucked

By Allen Best TELLURIDE, Colo. – Telluride is learning just how hard reducing emissions of greenhouse gases can be.

By Allen Best

TELLURIDE, Colo. – Telluride is learning just how hard reducing emissions of greenhouse gases can be.

The town in 2003 conducted an audit of energy used by the town government for offices, bike paths, and bus shops, and is now annually measuring its energy use, including the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Telluride has also changed out furnace filters, installed compact florescent lights, and sealed doors and windows. All that brought down the municipal government’s use of electricity by 8 per cent. However, all of these good deeds were offset by addition of a new Olympic-sized ice rink, reports the Telluride Daily Planet.

Karen Guglielmone, special projects manager, says the low-hanging fruit in energy conservation has been plucked, and it’s now time to begin making fundamental changes in decisions about building, construction, and policy.

The town has signed on to two initiatives: the U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Initiative organized by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and Canary Initiative launched by the City of Aspen.

 

Retailers cranky about sales tax

KETCHUM, Idaho – Imposition of an additional 1 per cent sales tax in Idaho, bringing the total to 7 per cent in Ketchum, has local retailers cranky.

Rob Santa, owner of a sporting goods store, said it puts retailers on an un-even playing field. Catalog companies and Internet sellers “take enormous dollars out of this community… and put nothing back in terms of infrastructure,” he told the Idaho Mountain Express.

Another retailer, Bob Rosso, said Idaho should allow real estate transfer taxes, as some Colorado resort communities have. Colorado’s Constitution as of 1992 outlawed future adoption of real-estate transfer taxes.

 

Climate change dominates agenda

DURANGO, Colo. – If global warming isn’t being tackled now, it’s not for lack of talking. Crested Butte has already held a conference devoted to climate change, and additional conferences were scheduled this week in Aspen and Durango.

The Durango conference is focused on effects of climate change on water, forests, and air quality in the San Juan Mountains. The mean average temperature in Silverton has increased 2 degrees Celsius during the last 30 years, said Ellen Stein, executive director of Silverton’s Mountain Studies Institute, one of the sponsoring groups.

“In the absence of a federally coordinated response, states and even localities are responding to the reality of climate change,” she said.

Aspen’s conference was more broadly focused. The chief executive officers for Aspen Skiing, Pat O’Donnell, and for Vail Resorts, Rob Katz, were scheduled to speak. Katz was scheduled to make the case that publicly traded companies can be successful and be environmental stewards at the same time. Also speaking was Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson.

Other speakers at the Aspen conference, part of the city’s Canary Initiative, were scheduled to talk about renewable energy, transportation, and green building, among a dozen other topics.

Earlier, at a workshop in Crested Butte, Bruce Driver, former director of Western Resource Advocates, pointed out that 90 per cent of electricity in the United States is produced by coal. He urged that people write to their local rural electrical co-op, in that case the Gunnison County Electric Association, to urge more use of alternative energy.

Also at the conference, Brad Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado, outlined the connection between water and energy. Energy is used to pump, pressurize, treat, and heat water. Hence, if a person is more efficient with their water, they are also more efficient with energy, and that means fewer greenhouse gases. “It’s paramount to understand your energy usage,” he said.

 

Marijuana initiative can proceed

SUN VALLEY, Idaho – Ryan Davidson has prevailed in his effort to get legalization of marijuana on the ballot in Sun Valley.

Davidson, chairman of a group called Liberty Lobby, had wanted to get an initiative on the ballot in Sun Valley and two other nearby towns, Ketchum and Hailey, to allow voters to decide whether marijuana can be grown, sold, and used within their respective city limits.

When he presented initiative petitions to the three towns in 2004, all three rejected the petitions, and Sun Valley said that the provision was unconstitutional. Davidson sued, and lost, but in the case of Sun Valley, the Idaho Supreme Court has overturned the lower court’s decision. The city, the court ruled, does not have the right to decide the constitutionality of a proposed initiative.

This still does not mean the proposal will go before voters, only that Davidson won a key legal victory. Ironically, he tells the Idaho Mountain Express that he does not inhale.

“Someday I would like to see marijuana legalized — not that I smoke it. In fact, I think people shouldn't smoke it because it's not good for you," he said. "But I think people should have the right to smoke it."

 

Sun Valley considering new town

KETCHUM, Idaho – Instead of global warming, the Sun Valley Sustainability Conference this fall talked about how to remain competitive with other resort areas of the West. The problem in Ketchum and the Wood River Valley is a familiar one.

There, the first destination ski resort in the West, tourism is now playing second fiddle. Ketchum has increasingly become a place for people to live for whom skiing is an amenity, but not a livelihood. Also part of the mix are second homes. Crowded out (and sometimes cashed out) are the local workers who keep a tourism economy going.

Aspen is the middle of the pond for such economic and cultural forces, and there’s a sense in Ketchum that Aspen has done many things right: It has corralled the Winter X Games, the clarion call to on-mountain thrills, and it has counteracted the graying trend with a huge component of affordable housing. Vail, predictably, is close behind, with its Teva Mountain Games and an affordable housing program now about as big as that of Aspen’s.

“We’re way behind the dime,” said Jed Gray, a real estate agent in Ketchum. “You cannot stay static in this kind of environment. It’s very competitive. Ketchum and the Wood River Valley need to make changes or become a second-home community.”

One idea now being pursued calls for a new town, located about 20 miles downvalley from the ski slopes at Ketchum and Sun Valley that would be specifically designed as a place for locals. Current plans call for 2,000 housing units, explains the Idaho Mountain Express.

A team from the Urban Land Institute earlier this year endorsed the project, but also saw this as a vehicle for launching more integrated, regional planning, both for land use and a more diversified economy. Certainly, growth is expected, in whatever form. The population of the valley is projected to increase by 10,000 people in the next 20 years.

 

Beetle invasion costly

VAIL, Colo. – The dying forests caused by bark beetles and the consequent potential for catastrophic fires continue to worry people from Grand Lake to Vail.

Helicopters were used to retrieve 2,300 dead or dying lodgepole pine trees in Vail last week. The Forest Service and Town of Vail shared the removal cost, $260 per tree, as the trees are on property belonging to both agencies. The contractor, K & K Logging, is hauling the trees to Silt, about 80 miles west. The company estimates that 80 per cent will go into housing construction, with the rest being used for fence posts and perhaps fire wood.

On top of this, some 8,500 trees were removed this summer from the ski area on Vail Mountain, next to the 34 lifts and other more sensitive areas. More is planned next year.

The logging, however, only dented the beetle fire potential. Three-quarters of many hillsides above Vail are rust colored, indicative of dead or drying pine trees. The deadening look is expected to intensify next year, revealing the activities of the beetles this year.

Tree-removal is also occurring in the Winter Park-Granby-Grand Lake area, but at greater expense than some property owners had counted on. Some are paying anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000 an acre for tree removal, reports the Sky-Hi News. This is more than the cost of the land at these rural getaways in some cases.

One of the problems is what to do with the wood. When large swathes of land are cleared, such as was the case at Vail, the wood can be sold to the remaining sawmills, if for only little or no money. But timber sales a few acres at a time are another matter.

“Smaller landowners have a hard time because two or three trucks of logs from one isolated location costs a lot more than many hundred truck loads in one large area,” explains the News. Only 2 per cent of the logs overall are considered marketable — ironic, given that only 40 years ago three or more sawmills were operating in Middle Park.

 

Aspen tax revenue surges

ASPEN, Colo. – Sales tax collections in Aspen continue to surge. City officials tell The Aspen Times that tax collections in August were up 3.2 per cent. The year through August has been up 7.2 per cent, or slightly more than had been projected. Given strong bookings for Thanksgiving and December, Aspen expects the trend to continue. The city also continues to make money from the surging real estate market. While the national real estate market has cooled, that hasn’t happened in Aspen. The 1 per cent real estate transfer tax through September was up 11 per cent, and had produced $8.2 million for affordable housing programs.

 

Vail helps one of its own

VAIL, Colo. – If Vail is a fake town, as is sometimes charged, then what do you make of the gathering last week at a restaurant in Vail Village?

At least 300 people, and some said 400 or 500 people, crammed into the restaurant, Los Amigos, for a fund-raiser for a long-time local, Tom Provo, who has terminal cancer at the age of 58.

He had arrived in Colorado when young, and worked as a ski patroller at Keystone before working at Aspen and Snowmass, finally settling in at Vail. There he worked as a cook and at a gas station, using his free time to ski and hike and all the other things people in ski towns do.

The fund-raiser generated $40,000 to help pay his medical bills.

 

Non-retail ban suspended

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – This past summer Crested Butte’s town council passed a law that aimed to stem the invasion of real estate offices and other non-retail stores into the town’s primary tourist-friendly business district, Elk Avenue.

Vail, and more recently Aspen, have also adopted such restrictions, called horizontal zoning. Those office-type uses are allowed, but not at the ground-floor level.

But the measure in Crested Butte has triggered a significant kickback. The town council agreed to consider a modification that would allow continued use of spaces now used for non-retail for non-retail purposes, even if sold or re-leased.

Still, that wasn’t enough, and a referendum has been submitted, which suspends the horizontal zoning, reports the Crested Butte News. The referendum signers want the measure taken to a public vote.

 

New jets more efficient

ASPEN, Colo. – The new generation of regional jets are 40 per cent more fuel-efficient than earlier planes. That figure comes from Aspen, which is debating whether it is truly a “green” resort when so many of its guests and residents travel by airplane so frequently.

A report released by city officials last year as part of their global warming program, called the Canary Initiative, showed that 41 per cent of Aspen’s greenhouse gas emissions result from airplane flights, split almost evenly between commercial and private planes. Aspen, in turn, has double the per capita emissions of the United States, which itself is among the world leaders in polluting the atmosphere.

But planes are becoming more fuel-efficient, points out Bill Tomcich, a flight expert and also president of the central reservations agency, Stay Aspen Snowmass.

The old mainstay for commuter shuttles between Aspen and Denver was the British Aerospace 146. It burns about 817 gallons of fuel per hour. Assuming a full flight of 88 passengers, that works out to be 4.75 gallons per passenger on the half-hour flight to Denver.

A new jet, the CRJ-700, burns only 2.8 gallons per passenger, again assuming a full flight of 66 people. Both calculations are for cruise time, not for climbing or descending.

Randy Udall, an energy expert, points out that either plane is still more fuel-efficient than a person driving solo in a car between Aspen and Denver. More efficient yet is a van, again fully loaded, which would cost about 2.2 gallons per person.

“Jet travel is (on reasonably loaded planes) surprisingly fuel efficient,” he says. “The problem is that jet journeys tend to cover enormous distances, causing, ‘jet setters’ to consume a lot of fuel,” he says.

An even more fuel-efficient plane is expected in the Rocky Mountains soon. Frontier Airlines is buying a fleet of regional jets called the Q-400, which is alleged to be even more fuel efficient than the CRJs. Frontier is expected to connect Denver with resort airports in Colorado, Wyoming, and possibly even Idaho and Montana.

 

Parties spoil election

EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. – Affiliations with political parties will cease to be the basis for county elections if a home-rule charter for Eagle County is approved by voters this fall. The proposal also would expand the board of county commissioners to five members. It currently is three.

Supporters tell the Vail Daily that party affiliations are irrelevant in county races and that the practice of party affiliations has the effect of excluding independents, as there are more independents than either Democrats or Republicans. But Democratic Party leaders, who have been gaining in recent years, say party affiliation is a useful guide to sorting out where candidates stand on issues.

 

Wolverine wins in court

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Wildlife activists have won a court victory in their effort to get additional protections for wolverines. Wolverines once were found in the Rockies down to New Mexico as well as in the Cascades down into California. Today, they may remain in only Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, plus the northern end of Washington.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had rejected a petition by conservation groups, which have been trying since 2000 to get the wolverine listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. District court for Montana ordered the agency to conduct a full status review of the animal, reports the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

This story echoes that of the Canada lynx in nearly every respect. That animal was finally given federal protection in 2000 after six years of effort by conservation groups. In addition, Colorado state authorities reintroduced lynx. Lynx, if any existed, had been too few in number to propagate. Despite some limited evidence of wolverines in Colorado, they are similarly thought to be too rare to sustain a population.

Tim Preso, a staff attorney for Earthjustice, blamed motorized recreation, particularly snowmobiles and helicopter skiing. However, Jeff Copeland, wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, said much of wolverine biology remains a mystery.

 

Nuggets get high

DURANGO, Colo. – The Denver Nuggets this year opened training camp with two-a-day practices on the campus of Fort Lewis College, in Durango. The elevation there is 6,855 feet, and for those keeping track of superlatives, that may possibly have been highest training camp ever for a major-league professional basketball team, although not for a hockey team.

Of course, Denver is pretty thin-aired itself. The city has four major-league sports franchises, all of them doing business at an elevation of about 5,280 feet. The next highest location for a major-league sports franchise is in Salt Lake City, where the Utah Jazz play, across from the Mormon temple, at an elevation of 4,330 feet. The next highest major-league franchises are at little more than 1,000 feet in elevation, in Pittsburgh, Phoenix, and Atlanta.

The thinness of Denver’s air is discernible to even well-conditioned athletes, and a lingering image of years past is that of Hakeem Olajuwon, the all-star center for the Houston Rockets during the 1990s, sucking supplemental oxygen during time outs while playing in Denver.

Down the street, at Coors Field, a venue for Major League Baseball, hitting records have caused the stadium to be called Coors Canaveral. Those records carry an unofficial asterisk, because the thin air is believed to allow the ball to travel farther than it would at a lower and usually more humid elevation.

Team officials this year even installed a humidor, for storage of baseballs, with the theory that increased moisture would give pitchers the same grip on baseballs that they enjoyed at playing fields at lower elevations. And that, it was predicted, would counteract the effects of the thin air that allowed hitters to belt homers. It has, and it hasn’t.

For their part, coaches at the Denver Nuggets have often tried to use the thin air to their advantage by instituting faster-paced running games, in the theory that opposing teams will not be able to keep up. Again, the results have been so-so.

But to instill that top-notch conditioning, the Nuggets in years past have trained at Colorado Springs, which is a hair above 6,000 feet, or about 800 feet higher than Denver.

This year, however, the team opted for variety. A team spokesman said various locations were considered, including Vail. But Vail’s only gymnasium, although used for town leagues, is in an elementary school, and besides, said the spokesman, Vail is too high. It’s an elevation of 8,150 feet.

However, in years past, a National Hockey League team, the Dallas Stars, trained at Vail. Whether this means that hockey players are tougher than basketball players, you can draw you own conclusions.

 

Frisco signs up for wind power

I-70 CORRIDOR, Colo. – The number of mountain towns buying wind-power electricity is growing weekly, and sometimes daily.

Frisco is the latest to sign on the dotted line for 100 per cent of its electricity use during the next three years. It is the first town in Summit County to go that route. Frisco’s purchase is equivalent to taking 170 cars off the road annually.

Vail Resorts in July grabbed the big-ink headlines by with its massive commitment for its five ski areas, plus stores, hotels, and other operations. The purchase included wind power for its lodge in Jackson Hole.

Later, the Town of Vail committed to wind-powered electricity. Last week, the Vail Recreation District, a parallel agency, followed suit. The Aspen Skiing Co. launched the 100 per cent crowd with its purchase in March for wind power for lifts. The City of Steamboat has had wind power for about a year, but only for one building.

 

Aspen School District bans peanuts

ASPEN, Colo. – Peanuts have become a no-no at Aspen Elementary School. The school district superintendent, Diane Sirko, said schools across the country are banning peanuts because allergic reactions are on the rise — and they can be deadly. She told The Aspen Times that some parents have complained about the new ban, but a child allergic to peanuts can get sick merely being near a sandwich.