Good morning, Colorado. Let’s update you on a couple of our upcoming events.
On Sept. 4 at 6 p.m., environmental reporter Michael Booth will speak with a panel of experts looking at Colorado’s horrendous ozone year. We’ll ask Colorado’s air pollution control director and a top regional air quality official to review the scary 2024 season and ask what might change.
RSVP for Peak Ozone, a free event you can watch live with us as we answer your questions.
Then join us in person on Sept. 27 for our second SunFest gathering, which you’ll be learning a lot more about soon, but can go ahead and register for it here.
Now let’s get to today’s news.
Product Team
THE NEWS
ECONOMY
Denver inflation slowed faster than the national rate to 1.9%. Does it feel like it?
In the past year, gasoline prices have dropped double digits, used car prices are down 9.7%, while housing and grocery prices have stagnated. It’s all part of data that suggests inflation is slowing, especially in Denver compared to the rest of the country, Tamara Chuang reports. Still, overall prices have increased 10% since 2021. Here’s more.
HOUSING
Nearly 10,000 people are homeless in the metro area, but fewer are sleeping on Denver’s streets
An annual count of Denver homelessness showed a 12% increase in the past year, though for only the second time in recent history, fewer people were living outside. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is claiming the drop in unsheltered homelessness is among the largest in the nation. Not included in the survey were the 4,300 new migrants sleeping in shelters when the count was conducted. Jennifer Brown has more details.
ENERGY
Colorado oil and gas operator with long record of environmental violations loses right to do business in state
Prospect Energy — a Highlands Ranch-based oil and gas operator facing millions of dollars in fines and an abundance of complaints from homeowners and local governments — lost its right to do business in Colorado on Wednesday. Among the details of the agreement, Prospect Energy’s 59 wells will end up in an orphan well program and will eventually be plugged and abandoned by the state. Mark Jaffe has the latest.
CLIMATE
Antarctica’s melting ice is also lifting the land, CSU researcher says
A Colorado State seismologist and his team have confirmed that Antarctic melting could accelerate to a point that overflows a continental rock underlay that holds in a massive glacier, letting in seawater that will make the ice sheet melt faster than its current rate of 150 billion tons of ice per year. Sounds bad. Michael Booth explains.
MORE NEWS
Section by Kevin Jeffers | Product Team
COLORADO REPORT
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Section by Danika Worthington | Presentation Editor
THE OPINION PAGE
COMMUNITY
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What’s Happening
Aug. 15-21
Palisade Peach Days. Peaches have been closely linked with the upper Grand Valley since the late 1800s, shortly after Ute Indians were forced off the land and, according to a Daily Sentinel article from 1900, settlers “impatiently” moved in to experiment with the soil along the two major waterways —the Grand (now the Colorado) and the Gunnison rivers.
By the early 1900s, peaches were so much a part of the valley’s identity that the local sports teams took names like the Grand Junction Smudgers, a reference to the small heaters designed to keep the groves warm through spring freezes, and the Palisade Peach Pickers. One game was even famously called off because the Peach Pickers were too busy picking peaches.
Though settlers down valley originally had less luck with the fruit, they still welcomed the agricultural and demographic changes with an 1887 celebration known as Peach Day, held in Grand Junction. Peach Day grew into Peach Days, and eventually bloomed into the music-, activity- and fruit-filled Palisade Peach Festival held tomorrow and Saturday in Riverbend Park.
If you can’t make it to the Western Slope this weekend, you can find Front Range alternatives in Fort Collins and Lafayette on Saturday, and a couple of peach-themed farmers markets in Centennial and Westminster.
Various prices; Aug. 16-17; Palisade
Section by Parker Yamasaki | Reporter
See you back here tomorrow.
— Kevin & the whole staff of The Sun
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