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Every drop counts in Colorado

By Allen Best SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. – Just how scarce water rights are becoming in the headwaters of Colorado is told in seemingly water-rich Summit County.

By Allen Best

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. – Just how scarce water rights are becoming in the headwaters of Colorado is told in seemingly water-rich Summit County. There, state water officials are cracking down on unauthorized use of water from wells located in unincorporated areas.

“Every stinking drop counts,” says Scott Hummer, the state water commissioner. “There are eyeballs looking at every drop.”

Certain types of wells can be used for domestic purposes, but not for outdoor purposes such as watering lawns or washing cars. Those who want additional rights are required to buy so-called augmentation water rights. The thinking, Hummer tells the Summit Daily News, is that if a homeowner uses water on a lawn, that’s water that isn’t allowed to collect in the fissures in the rock and thus make it down into a stream, where a rancher or municipality may have senior water rights.

“We have an obligation to ensure there are no injuries to senior water rights,” Hummer explained.

The Summit Daily notes that the amount in question this year is small, about 125 acre-feet, which compares to the 60,000 to 80,000 acre-feet drawn by the City of Denver annually from the basin via its Dillon Reservoir.

The same issue has cropped up elsewhere in Colorado, most prominently in the South Platte River Valley, where the state’s largest cities and most productive farms are located. Some farm wells have been shut down because they take out-of-priority water.

 

No room for Indigo

BANFF, Alberta – Responding to public sentiment, Banff town officials are planning to deny a business-license to Indigo Books, the largest book retailer in Canada.

For years, notes the Rocky Mountain Outlook, residents and owners of small businesses have raised concerns about the demise of mom-and-pop shops and the arrival of multi-national franchise operations such as those operated by Gap and Starbucks.

“There is no place on earth like Banff. It is our responsibility to keep the Banff experience unique,” said Gabin Wedin, whose family has owned the Banff Book & Art Den for 42 years. Another long-term resident, Kate Tooke, concurred. “I don’t want (Banff) to become some sort of experience you can have in Calgary,” she said.

The legal basis for denying the business license is in doubt, however. A former mayor, Ted Hart, said the municipality may be vulnerable to a lawsuit.

 

TP rolls getting second look

BANFF, Alberta – Some people using bathrooms in Banff have been startled to find a grayish brown paper coming from toilet paper dispensers. It’s the latest effort in a recycling program that is saving the municipality $13,000 a year.

The toilet paper and hand towels are grayish brown because the paper is not bleached, which means less use of water. Moreover, the paper comes from recycled newspapers and cardboard – including some from Banff. Normally, recycled paper and cardboard is shipped to East Asia for processing, but in this case is recycled in Canada.

 

Jackson Hole sets energy targets  

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Teton County and the town of Jackson are embarking on a most ambitious effort. When 2010 ends, they aim to use 10 per cent less energy on a per capita basis than last year, and also generate 10 per cent less garbage. The project is called 10 x 10.

This is, notes Jonathan Schechter, a columnist in the Jackson Hole News & Guide, more than checkbook environmentalism. “It requires residents to do things differently,” he says. It’s a voluntary effort, with no economic incentives, although consuming less energy and generating less trash do in fact save money.

This effort builds on a resolution adopted by both town and county governments, which commits both governments to reduce their energy and fuel use by 10 per cent. The two governments recently formed an Energy Efficiency Advisory Board, which includes two ski resorts, two large lodges, and the electrical utility serving Jackson Hole.

As in Aspen, one of the arguments for such an effort is that because of its influence on visitors, the effort can be exaggerated, causing passers-through to similarly cut back on energy use.

 

New airport for Sun Valley

SUN VALLEY, Idaho – Work has begun on an environmental impact statement necessary to build a new airport for Sun Valley, Ketchum, and the other communities in the big Wood River Valley.

The communities currently rely upon the airport at Hailey, located 14 miles south of Ketchum and Sun Valley. It is, says the Idaho Mountain Express, “living on borrowed time.” The airport accommodates larger aircraft such as the Bombardier Q400, the regional jet used between California cities and Sun Valley, only by clearing taxiways of other aircraft. The airport could be expanded, but only by clearing at least 87 houses from near the airport. The airport’s owners, Hailey and Blaine County, want to shutter the facility.

For these and other reasons, a new airport is proposed, probably about 40 miles from Ketchum, or about halfway to Twin Falls. One new twist to the ongoing story of recent years is that Wally Huffman, general manager of the Sun Valley Co., the ski area operator, is now arguing that the airport needs to jointly serve Sun Valley and Twin Falls, to keep costs lower. Previously, he had stressed that the airport must be located within 40 miles of the ski area. The preferred site among 16 sites is, but barely.

 

Piercings banned by county

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Teton County has adopted new regulations governing businesses that offer tattoos and piercing. The new regulations ban tongue and genital piercings, and also scarification and lacing.

Driving the tongue-piercing ban is a fear that people with tongue rings will end up with chipped teeth.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports umbrage from a local piercing business called Sub-Urban Tattoo. “They’re trying to regulate an industry they don’t understand,” said shop-owner Susan Woodward. She says that the prohibitions will not stop the piercings, but likely cause customers to drive to Idaho Falls, about 80 miles away. She also suggested the regulations are driven by aesthetics. “What’s next, will they ban purple hair?” she said.

 

Telluride few million short

TELLURIDE, Colo. – It’s getting close to the stroke of midnight, and fund-raisers in Telluride still don’t know where they’ll get the final $2.4 million to complete the purchase of 585 acres of land for open space.

The town is condemning the land, located at the town’s entrance, to prevent any development, and a jury has found the parcel to be worth $50 million. The deadline for contributions is May 11. In addition to interest that is now in excess of $700,000, the town must pay the landowner’s legal bills, which he claims are $3.5 million. The town says $2.2 million would be fair.

The Telluride Watch reports that there is no “white knight” waiting in the weeds to provide last-minute help, should the fund-raising fall short, nor does the town council have any reserve funds. Indeed, there seems to be some worry on the part of town officials that they are now vulnerable should the economy sour.

 

Size of ‘family’ limited

CARBONDALE, Colo. – Carbondale town trustees have adopted a law that will give police and building officials authority to crack down on the so-called “man camps.”

The law specifies that no more than four unrelated people can live together, and that there should be at least 200 square feet of habitable space for the first person, and 150 square feet for each additional person. Closets, garages, attics and so forth are not considered habitable.

The town board for several years has struggled with the issue, which was brought to national attention at Christmas with a Tom Brokaw television special about immigration. In that show, cameras were taken into a house that contained 18 people.

Still, the issue is a tricky one, says the Valley Journal, because the family unit is protected by federal law. In the case of Latino immigrants, large extended families often live together. This new law recognizes such extended families. Authorities have considerable latitude in what constitutes a violation of the new law.

The most common impacts of the tight living conditions are excessive trash, parking constraints, and noise.

 

Neighbours in flight path

PARK CITY, Utah – For people of wealth, ski-in and ski-out access isn’t necessarily the highest perk. Fly-in, fly-out access may be.

Promontory, a gated community in Utah’s Summit County, is planning a private airstrip. A large number of objections have been filed by neighbours who predict noise and air pollution, reports The Park Record.

A private runway could cost more than $50 million, said Nadim AbuHaidar, the chief operator of an airport in nearby Heber. “You’re not going to land a $4 million airplane in the dirt, grass or sagebrush.” He notes that the gated community is within a 30-minute drive of two public airports.

The possibility of a similar fly-in, fly-out subdivision has also been discussed at Steamboat Springs, which has been trying to figure out what to do with a smallish airport on the outskirts of the town.

 

Mass transit for I-70?

I-70 CORRIDOR, Colo. – Could the door be cracking open for the monorails talked about for the last decade on Interstate 70? Don’t hold your breath, but something slightly more tangible is now afoot than in the past.

Metropolitan Denver’s Regional Transportation District has agreed to review competing proposals from three companies to build trains between Denver International Airport and the city’s downtown. All three propose to use mag-lev technology, which uses electrically charged magnets to power rail-based vehicles.

In an editorial, The Denver Post cautiously suggests that such mag-lev technology, if it works in Denver, might be the answer for the I-70 corridor. The newspaper notes that a mag-lev train in Shanghai, China covers the 19 miles to the city’s airport in 7 minutes. The project cost $1.7 billion.

While Colorado pleads empty trouser pockets for big-ticket transportation items, the Post speculates that the three companies might help finance the line with a long-term design-build-operate-maintain contract. This, says the newspaper, would give them a foothold in what could eventually be a huge U.S. market — and might even get assistance from the federal government.

And if mag-lev trains work in metropolitan Denver, says The Post, there will be obvious interest for the I-70 corridor, “whose steep grades resist traditional steel-wheels on steel-rails service.”

Proponents of a rail-based technology employed in Switzerland by a company called Stadler beg to differ with the Post’s rejection of steel wheels on steel rails.

 

Beetles running rampant

GRANBY, Colo. – Foresters are now saying that the bark beetle epidemic in Middle Park is unprecedented. By summer’s end, the beetles are expected to have killed three-fourths of the 800,000 forested acres in Grand County.

The hardest hit area is Grand Lake, at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. Hope that the Winter Park-Fraser area might escape the worst of the epidemic has dissipated.

Patrick Brower, editor of the Sky-Hi News, says the severity of the epidemic is illustrated in two ways. It is now obvious that thinning forests is not sufficient to make the remaining trees healthy enough to withstand beetles. Even healthy, prime-of-life trees are getting attacked.

Also, the early-on advice was that trees sprayed with poison would be protected. While that is still accurate, the slightest mistake in mixing of chemicals, timing of application, or missed coverage could mean the beetles will still kill the tree.

The battle is over, says Brower, and it’s only a matter of time before the bark beetles have killed all the lodgepole pine trees, which is the dominant species in Middle Park.

The greater worry now is the threat of catastrophic forest fires, a situation that U.S. Senator Ken Salazar in December described as a potential “Katrina of the West.”

A bill advancing rapidly through the Colorado Legislature would provide up to 60 per cent of the cost of local projects to remove trees and plant new ones. The state is allocating $1 million. A second measure, which has already become law, lets communities set up forest improvement districts that could levy sales taxes with voter approval.

In Grand County, county regulations are being drawn up to more tightly control fires. Exempted will be fires in 55-gallon barrels. Mike Long, fire chief of a fire district at Grand Lake, asked that the county commissioners be quick about it.

 

Tree-cutting OKed

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. – The Forest Service has approved a so-called forest health project in Summit County that will result in cutting of bark beetle-infested trees on 3,300 acres in the Dillon-Frisco-Silverthorne area during the next 11 years, nearly half of it in the first phase. Cary Green, a forester, said it’s unlikely any trees will be cut this year. “By the time we do our field work, we’re probably looking at ’08,” he told the Summit Daily News.

 

Tree thinning to cost $10 million

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – The U.S. Forest Service plans to spend $10 million a year while thinning or burning 3,800 acres of forest per year in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

A local government, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, estimates that 76 per cent of forest fires started in the basin could balloon into unpredictable and dangerous crown fires.

“The areas around communities we are trying to treat 100 per cent,” said Dan Young, an assistant fire fuels and vegetation specialist.

Altogether, the Forest Service plans to thin 38,000 of its 165,000 acres in the basin during the next decade, reports the Tahoe Daily News.

 

Solar panels juice school

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – Solar collectors erected at an alternative high school near Glenwood Springs are expected to provide 6 to 8 per cent of the school’s electricity. Yampah Mountain High School teacher Suzy Ellison won a $60,000 grant for energy education, installation of the panels, and an energy audit. She told the Glenwood Springs Post Independent that she has taught about energy, including the greenhouse gases created in burning coal to make electricity, and climate change. Students are also being taught about conservation, turning off lights and computers when not in use.

 

Real-world experiences at school

HAILEY, Idaho – A new private school affiliated with Waldorf will open late this summer, offering a curriculum to pre-schoolers that “educates the whole child — the heart and the hands, as well as the head,” reports the Idaho Mountain Express. After-school programs will also be offered for youngsters aged to 12 in the Ketchum-Hailey area.

On campus will be chickens, a milk cow, and goats, as well as a greenhouse. The schoolhouse will be fitted with solar-heated, circulating water floors and wood-chip and concrete composite block walls.

Katherine Woods, the school superintendent, said the school offers hands-on learning experiences. “Everything they’re learning about they see in real life, whether it’s on the farm, in the garden, or wilderness, or in the kitchen.”

 

Permit rejected for ski film

ASPEN, Colo. – A filmmaker has been refused permission to make movies of Chris Davenport skiing down 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado.

Ben Galland had sought a permit to film Davenport skiing on the peaks. Filming had already occurred on Castle Peak and possibly others in the Elk Range. All are located within federally designated wilderness areas.

The Forest Service refused a permit because low-flying helicopters are banned above wilderness areas. Also, federal regulations frown on commercial activities that encourage uses contrary to the spirit of wilderness.

“While the Forest Service does not want to diminish Davenport’s accomplishment of skiing all of Colorado’s peaks over 14,000 feet, whether the film is beneficial for wilderness is what is at issue,” said a Forest Service press release. The press release said the film focused on the concept of the “ski challenge” instead of concepts such as solitude, untrammeled nature, and the absence of urbanism.

Rich Doak, acting recreation staff officer on the White River National Forest, said private, as opposed to commercial, ski filmmaking is permitted on the 14,000-foot peaks in wilderness areas. Still photography, even if for commercial purposes, such as is done for coffee-table books, is also allowed.

Doak said the filmmaker was invited to seek a filming permit for 14ers located outside wilderness areas.

 

Upscaling continues downvalley

BASALT, Colo. – With rent rising in Aspen, two long-time architects are decamping down-valley 18 miles to Basalt, which is increasingly becoming upscale itself.

All but one of the 14 employees in the two firms, Harry Teague Architects and Ernemann Group Architects, live in the mid-valley area around Basalt. Plus, technological advances make the Aspen location less necessary. Also, the firms are doing more out-of-town work.

Michael Ernemann told The Aspen Times that he looks forward to commuting to work by bicycle, instead of dealing with the tedious rush-hour congestion. He will, however, miss being next to the lifts.

But if no ski lifts are planned, Basalt itself is getting steadily more like Aspen in other ways. Construction has begun of a 54-unit condo-hotel, the town’s first luxury tourist accommodation.

 

Utes reject flags atop cranes

IGNACIO, Colo. – The Southern Ute Indian Tribal Council has prohibited either a U.S. flag or, for that matter, a tribal flag, on top of construction cranes on the reservation, located in the Four Corners.

Clement C. Frost, the tribal chairman, told the Durango Herald that he rejects using flags atop cranes as wind indicators — the use purported by the contractor — as inappropriate. The tribal leaders, he said, believed that flags should only be flown in places of honour.

Frost said the flag flown atop a crane being used to construct a casino on the reservation was not being treated with respect. “It blew off the crane two times and hit the ground,” he said. “I, as a veteran, believe that you never let your flag touch the ground. Even when you take it off the pole, you do not let it hit the ground. Even when you carry it during wartime, you don’t let it hit the ground.”

He said the flag prohibition caused some people to say that the tribe is anti-American. In reality, he said, the tribe has a deep respect for the U.S. flag as well as its own flag.

“We have given our lives for that, whether it’s Vietnam, whether it’s Iraq, whether it’s Desert Storm, Korea, all those places.”