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More affordable housing needed

By Allen Best JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Nearly everywhere in the West, ski towns are being urged to build more affordable housing.

By Allen Best

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Nearly everywhere in the West, ski towns are being urged to build more affordable housing.

In Jackson Hole, developers of residential real estate are currently required to make 15 per cent of their housing available for deed-restricted lower- and middle-income housing. A consultant recommends upping the ante to 40 per cent.

Jack Stout, the president of the Housing Authority’s board of directors, said he expects opposition, but an ambitious action is needed to stem the loss of Jackson Hole’s worker base. Fourteen per cent of employees commuted into the valley in 1990, say consultants, but 33 per cent by 2005.

The goal is to keep the percentage of the commuting workforce to below 40 per cent. Christine Walker, Housing Authority executive director, said that the “tipping point” at which a town loses its sense of community is when 40 per cent commute. At that point, many of the local service providers relocate to outlying areas.

Jackson Hole began its affordable housing program in 1996, and so far this century has been delivering 125 housing units per year, but the expanding job market has seen the need for 270 to 340 new units per year.

The Vail Town Council has also been looking at stepping up affordable housing requirements. A proposal introduced by the town earlier this winter to require that 30 per cent of residential construction is at lower price points has been reduced to 10 per cent, and only to certain areas of the town. A companion proposal, to require that developers of commercial projects be required to provide housing for workers in those projects, has similarly been watered down, this time to 20 per cent. However, the town council has given no indication it will completely back down from proposed requirements.

Aspen is the model that Vail and Jackson Hole, and a good many other towns, have been looking to. There, developers have faced stiff requirements for affordable housing. Some of those developers, when queried by the Vail Daily, grumbled that they almost can’t make ends meet. But Tom McCabe, director of the Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Office, said the stiff requirement has not deterred development. And, in fact, he added, “they still make a ton of money.”

 

Canmore building green

CANMORE, Alberta – City officials in Canmore plan to mandate increased energy efficiency and other standards, what is sometimes called “green building.” They have been looking to Green Built standards as well as the LEEDS certification program.

Some builders had been building to higher standards in recent years, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook, and developers of the high-end Three Sisters project have been required to do so. The newspaper found no particular opposition to the stiffer standards, as long as they’re applied equally, according to one development representative.

Canmore, meanwhile, continues to become steadily more engaged in a concept called the Natural Step. The process intends to cause communities to look at their environmental footprint. The footprint in this case is not just the amount of land occupied by a town, but also the resources and infrastructure needed to support that town and its residents.

 

A Hummer of a contradiction

TAOS, N.M. – Can you own a Hummer and be truly distressed about the various implications of our fossil-fuel based economy?

Bobby F. Duran, the mayor of Taos, says he can. The Taos News reports that Duran took some jabs for owning a Hummer recently when he introduced a showing of a movie, Crude Impact , at a community meeting. Duran defended the Hummer, but said Crude Impact and An Inconvenient Truth are scary, and wants the movies shown to school children to get out the message about the effect of carbon emissions on global warming.

Taos recently joined the U.S. Mayors Agreement on Climate Protection. The Taos News made no mention of how Taos intends to meet the commitment of reducing emissions by 67 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2012, as the agreement requires.

 

Now comes the hard part

ASPEN, Colo. – About two years after launching its Canary Initiative, an effort to lead in the area of global warming, Aspen is getting down to the hard task of figuring out how to walk all of its talk. Dan Richardson, the global warming project manager, describes his recommendations as “some pretty drastic actions.”

On supply side, Richardson is calling on a greater portfolio of electricity from renewable sources. The city is also a leader in this realm, with a city-owned hydroelectric plant and wind-powered electricity. But like most of America, Aspen remains heavily dependent upon cheap and reliable coal-fired power plants in faraway places. Aspen, says Richardson, should aim for at least 40 per cent of its electricity coming from renewable sources.

On the demand side, Richardson is calling for major reductions. He proposes a new energy code that is 50 per cent more efficient in homes, offices, and stores than the national standard. He proposes energy ratings be checked whenever homes are sold.

To reduce car-based emissions of greenhouse gases, Richardson is also calling for a key change that will allow buses with preferential lanes to move faster during the “rush hour,” which at Aspen’s entrance becomes crawl hour, sometimes literally. But to do that would involve sacrificing dedicated open space, reports The Aspen Times.

As a symbol, Richardson proposes to turn off the gas-powered open-air hearth in one of Aspen’s downtown malls until the city’s emissions drop 30 per cent below 2004 levels. Only then, he believes, will Aspen be walking its talk about global warming.

 

Snow extremely thin

TRUCKEE, Calif. – The snow was thin through January at the Truckee-Tahoe resorts, about 40 per cent of normal. The result: cutbacks and layoffs. One ski area, Sugar Bowl, reduced hours of food workers, lift operators and housekeepers 50 to 80 per cent, according to the Sierra Sun. About half of the seasonal employees in the Truckee-Tahoe area come from other countries, with a good many from South America.

January was also extremely dry in central Idaho, leaving Sun Valley at 71 per cent of average.

In Jackson Hole, meanwhile, January was the third-coldest month in history, or at least in about 40 years, which is as far back as reliable records go. The average high temperature was 19 degrees, and the average low was 4 below. But although it was consistently cold, there were no extraordinary cold temperatures. The record was set in 1979, when the temperature plunged to 63 below.

 

Snow science pioneer dies

SALIDA, Colo. – Ed LaChapelle, a seminal figure in snow science and a partial inventor of avalanche beacons, has died at the age of 80. He was skiing powder at Monarch when he suffered a heart attack.

LaChapelle’s former wife, Dolores LaChapelle, had died less than two weeks before of a stroke. She had lived for the last several decades at Silverton.

The Summit Daily News explains that LaChappelle studied at the Swiss Avalanche Institute, and then was a snow ranger for the Forest Service at Alta, in Utah, from 1952 to 1972, with breaks to do glacier research in Alaska and Greenland, and at Washington state’s Mt. Olympus. He was also a faculty member at the University of Washington from 1967 to 1982.

His work led to several books well known to students of avalanches, including “The ABCs of Avalanche Safety” and “Field Guide to Snow Crystals.” Work at Alta with an electrical engineer in 1968 also led to the Skadi avalanche beacons.

One of LaChapelle’s former students, Don Bachman, recalled LaChapelle’s distinctive, sonorous voice, “always speaking with purpose, always with a twinkle and a wry sense of humor.”

 

Call for Bush’s impeachment

TAOS, N.M. – A legislator who represents Taos in the New Mexico Legislature is co-sponsoring a resolution in the legislature that would call on the U.S. Congress to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

“This is symbolic,” said State Sen. Carlos Cisneros. “Realistically, we’re not going to do anything by our resolution, even if it passed (in New Mexico), and that’s not likely to happen. But it’s important that the message be conveyed.”

Cisneros told The Taos News that the United States is not winning the war, not can it win it. “It’s civil in nature,” he said.

 

Wildfire plan in works

WINTER PARK, Colo. – A wildfire protection plan is to be drawn up for the Fraser Valley, in the Winter Park and Fraser area. In Winter Park, town officials last year spent $380,000 in aggressive programs of cutting and spraying lodgepole pine trees infested with bark beetles, but the communities feel vulnerable to a catastrophic fire. The plan is expected to take a year to draw up, reported the Winter Park Manifest.

 

Electric utilities debate coal plants

GUNNISON, Colo. – Can the West continue to grow in population, with ever-more electricity-consuming gadgets plugged in, without building more coal-fired power plants?

That has been the fundamental question being asked in recent months in a half-dozen mountain valleys, including the Telluride, Gunnison, and Durango areas.

These areas are among the 44 rural electrical co-ops across the Rocky Mountains and High Plains being asked by Denver-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission to extend their contracts. Current contracts are at 40 years, but Tri-State wants 50-year agreements — and also a commitment to buy 95 per cent of their power from Tri-State during that time.

But is the added power really needed? And is coal the only or even the best option?

Tri-State insists it can already see the cliff’s edge. It is already running its existing coal-fired power plants at full capacity and has recently been buying additional power from the spot market. In southwest Kansas, Tri-State proposes to build two new coal-fired power plants, using conventional technology, which is to say with high emissions of greenhouse gases. Each plant would have a capacity to produce 700 megawatts of electricity.

A possible third power plant, this one in southeastern Colorado, could possibly use the cleaner-burning coal-gasification technology. Costs are estimated at $5 billion.

Opposition is being led by Western Resource Advocates. The Boulder-based group argues that Tri-State has sufficient resources to meet realistic growth in demand. It says more aggressive energy conservation could cut Tri-State’s demand by 500 megawatts. Also, Western Resource Advocates argues that the utility wholesaler could develop wind, biomass projects and solar energy.

“We’re watching a great opportunity for local benefits slip away,” says Rick Gilliam, an analyst with Western Resource Advocates.

Gilliam also contends that coal, if now generally cheaper than alternatives, will become more expensive if the nation decides to control the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are increasing temperatures.

Western Resource Advocates also disputes the demand projected by Tri-State needed by the fledgling oil shale industry of Northwest Colorado. Tri-State projects 375 per cent more electricity will be needed than what the industry itself says it will use. Moreover, another utility, Colorado-Ute Electric Association, made a similar miscalculation in the 1970s, building a power plant at Craig for an oil-shale industry that didn’t materialize, forcing Colorado-Ute in 1990 to go bankrupt.

Several years ago, Holy Cross Electric — which services the Aspen-Vail-Glenwood Springs area — opted out of a contract with Tri-State.

A majority of Tri-State’s members have approved contract extensions. But Delta Montrose Electric refused. Commissioners in San Miguel County are asking San Miguel Power to demand more renewable energy projects from Tri-State.

In Durango, directors of La Plata Electric approved the contract extension. One board member, Jeff Berman, said that he voted for the extension despite concerns. He said he believes La Plata can more effectively advocate for energy efficiency and alternative energy sources by a continued dialogue with Tri-State. The association’s director, Greg Moore, said contract discussions every five years allow potential revisions.

Tri-State has taken some relatively small steps, reducing its cost to consumers for renewable energy and also, in the case of Gunnison County Electrical Association, distributing 1,000 compact-fluorescent bulbs, as a way of stimulating interest in improving efficiency. It is also offering a $1 rebate on additional bulbs.

In Gunnison County, the electric association used the county commissioners as a sounding board on a contract extension. The commissioners recommended that the contract be refused.

“Tri-State can be changed, but it’s an inch at a time,” said Jim Somrak, general manager of Gunnison County Electric Association.

The Gunnison County commissioners asked the electric association to refuse the contract extension. The commissioners, according to the Crested Butte News, also encouraged the local electrical association to pursue local efforts toward energy efficiency and local renewable sources. In late February, directors of the electric association are to vote whether to extend the contract with Tri-State.

In an interview with the Crested Butte News, Lou Costello, a board member for Gunnison County Electric, spelled out the quandary he sees: “We have a responsibility to make sure your lights stay on,” he said. “I believe global warming is real. I’m sure many of the board members do, too. But you also have to be practical and realize there aren’t many options right now.” Wind, despite its promise, is not a good foundation for meeting base demand for electricity.