Michael Booth, Author at The Colorado Sun

Antarctica’s melting ice is also lifting the land, CSU researcher says

Michael Booth — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 10:08:00 +0000

Rick Aster has spent a career checking up on his favorite patient, the Antarctic ice sheet. Lately, the Colorado State University seismologist is worried about the patient’s weight loss.

A little slimming amid the constant pressure of global warming could be OK — West Antarctica has an unusual rock underlay that could moderate ice melt. Even at the current rate of 150 billion tons of ice per year.

But what Aster and his colleagues have confirmed recently is that Antarctic melting could accelerate in a so-called feedback loop, overflowing the continental rock “bowl” holding in a massive glacier and letting in seawater that will make the ice sheet melt even faster.

The Antarctic seismology researchers have also learned more about the gravitational pull of all that fragile ice, and how up to now it’s saved much of Earth’s coastline from further disaster. The mass has acted like a magnet, pulling liquid water up and around the Antarctic in a thicker layer than natural sea level would dictate. That kept water levels down at coastal cities to the north, from Miami to San Diego to Honolulu.

If West Antarctica keeps melting at current rates, this pull is gone, said Aster, co-author of a sea level study published this month in Science Advances. That means even more coastal inundation on the other continents.

The Antarctic glaciers alone could raise sea levels in North America by 10 feet by 2150, Aster said. Add in the melting glaciers of Greenland, the world’s second largest ice store, and there’s a world of trouble unless humans slow down climate change, Aster said. If we do, the Antarctic’s contribution to rising seas could be limited to just a fraction of that, the new study shows.

Scientists have sometimes comforted themselves with the knowledge that Earth has been through everything before. The West Antarctic ice sheet was nearly gone in the warm period before the last ice age, Aster noted. Continents survived.

“What’s really different in terms of today’s global warming, and different than anything that the Earth has seen as far as we know,” Aster added, “is the rapidity of human-caused climate change. We’re spiking the carbon dioxide and otherwise changing the climate so rapidly that we’re in territory where it’s hard or impossible to find natural analogs that we can study in Earth’s past history.”

Geologic time goes by in ticks of thousands or millions of years; climate change time appears to be passing in mere double digits.

“It’s happening so rapidly that we can see these large effects even in a human lifetime,” Aster said. “And that is something that the Earth has not seen before, as far as we know. So that’s the most stunning thing to me.”

The study directs a spotlight toward global warming in real time. The Earth actually is melting, at an accelerated pace that has geologists accustomed to thinking in 100,000-year blocks now measuring change at the 100-year level.

Aster and team’s contributions to the study are not directly aimed at ice melt itself, but what happens to the geology underneath underneath when that snowcap disappears. Simplified answer: The rock pushes up under the reduced pressure and slows the loss of ice to the sea. The team found that parts of the bedrock in West Antarctica, the area below South America, are rising at about 2 inches a year as it sheds ice, among the fastest rates on earth.

Wait, that could be good, right? A self-correcting problem? As the seas rise and threaten coastlines, the coastline itself rising up could solve that? Correct, Aster says, but only if the melt is held to a low or moderate level. At the current glacier-gushing rates, the “float” of continental rock can’t keep up with the fast rise of sea water.

At the higher rates of melt, North America will see its ankles — Miami and New Orleans — inundated within our lifetime unless temperatures are stabilized.

If humans slow global warming, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet can substantially stay in place and help reduce the worst-case sea level rise attributed to the Antarctic by 40%, the study says.

“Earth uplift can be our friend and the Earth’s friend, if we don’t ask too much of it,” Aster said.

Antarctic is svelte from melt, but that’s not good

Michael Booth — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 16:50:58 +0000

When reality has overtaken the cliche, print the cliche.

The Earth actually is melting, at an accelerated pace that has geologists accustomed to thinking in 100,000-year blocks now measuring change at the 100-year level. Our talk with Colorado State University seismologist Rick Aster, previewed below and running at more length later this week at ColoradoSun.com, brought our focus back to global warming in real time.

Rick’s measurements are actually aimed not at ice melt itself, but what happens to the rock shelves called continents lying underneath when that snowcap disappears. Simplified answer: The rock floats, riding around and up and down on the molten interior at the Earth’s core. West Antarctica, the area below South America, is rising at 1.5 inches a year as it sheds ice.

Wait, that could be good, right? A self-correcting problem? As the seas rise and threaten coastlines, the coastline itself rising up could solve that? Correct, Aster says, but only if the melt is held to a moderate level. At the current glacier-gushing rates, the “float” of continental rock can’t keep up with the fast rise of sea water.

And that only helps for the two areas with permanent ice caps, Antarctica and Greenland. Other continents are “stiffer,” without the ability to float. North America, for example, is stuck largely where it is, and will see its ankles — Miami and New Orleans — inundated within our lifetime unless temperatures are stabilized.

Sobering, yes. Aster does not sugarcoat his observations about his beloved Antarctica. But, as we always argue here at The Temperature, knowledge is power. These are the studies that renewable energy activists, for example, are reading when they push for faster change. It’s good to know that Colorado researchers are buried deep in the data that can drive good decisions.

Cheers, and on to the rest of the news …

Colorado State University geophysicist Rick Aster installs seismology equipment to measure ice and continental rock in Antarctica. (Courtesy Rick Aster)

10 feet

Amount of sea rise in North America by 2150 if Antarctica melts at current pace

Rick Aster has spent a career checking up on his favorite patient, the Antarctic ice shelf. Lately, the Colorado State University seismologist is worried about the patient’s weight loss. A little slimming amid the constant pressure of global warming could be OK — the Western Antarctic has an unusual rock underlay that could handle a moderate amount of ice melt.

But what Aster and his colleagues have learned recently is that melting could accelerate in a so-called negative feedback loop, overflowing the rock “bowl” holding in a massive glacier and letting in sea water that will make freshwater ice melt even faster.

They’ve also learned more about the gravitational pull of all that fragile ice, and how up to now it’s saved much of Earth’s coastline from further disaster. The mass has acted like a magnet, pulling liquid water up and around the Antarctic in a thicker layer than natural sea level would dictate. That kept water levels down at coastal cities to the north, from Miami to San Diego to Honolulu.

If West Antarctic keeps melting at current rates, the magnet is gone, said Aster, co-author of an ice study published this month in Science Advances. That means even more coastal inundation on the other continents.

The Antarctic glaciers alone could raise sea levels in North America by 10 feet by 2150, Aster said. Add in the melting glaciers of Greenland, the world’s other ice store, and there’s a world of trouble unless humans slow down climate change, Aster said. If we do, the Antarctic’s contribution to rising seas could be limited to just over a foot.

Scientists have sometimes comforted themselves with the knowledge that Earth has been through everything before. The ice sheets were gone in the warming before the last ice age, Aster noted. Continents survived.

“What’s really different in terms of global warming, and different than anything that the Earth has seen as far as we know,” Aster added, “is the rapidity. We’re spiking the carbon dioxide and otherwise changing the climate so rapidly that we’re in territory where it’s hard or impossible to find natural analogs that we can study in Earth’s past history.”

Geologic time goes by in ticks of a million years; climate change time appears to be passing in mere double digits.

Read more about how Aster and their team go about their work in the deep snow and ice of Antarctica, and what they’ve learned about the weight of ice and water, this week at ColoradoSun.com.

A treatment room at Wellpower, the community mental health center in Denver, used during esketamine treatments in 2022. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

46th

Colorado’s ranking in a recent survey of state mental health systems

No one keeping up with the mental health landscape in Colorado will be all that surprised to find out where our state landed in the annual rankings from Mental Health America. Colorado is still near the bottom, at 46th out of 51.

The national advocacy organization judges states based on how many people are struggling with mental health and substance abuse issues, and how easy it is to get access to treatment.

Colorado is 50th in prevalence of mental illness and substance abuse, with the highest combined incidence of adults, teens and children who said they have thoughts of suicide, depressive episodes or addiction.

The state did mediocre in terms of access to care. Colorado is 16th best in the percentage of adults who have private insurance that covers mental health and 17th best in that category for kids, for example.

Nationally, 10% of adults who had a mental illness in the past year had private health insurance that did not cover their treatment. The 2008 federal parity law says insurance companies can’t have more restrictive rules for mental health than physical health, but that doesn’t mean it’s available. People are far more likely to have to go out-of-network to get an appointment with a behavioral health provider than they are for other medical care.

The top states overall were Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine, while the worst were Arizona, Nevada and Montana.

Mental Health Colorado CEO Vincent Atchity said the report underscores once again that Colorado “remains in an urgent crisis that demands immediate and ongoing attention.”

“Despite the strengths and beauties of our state, Coloradans of all ages are experiencing serious mental illnesses, suicidality, and substance use conditions at a higher rate than most of the nation,” he said in a news release.

In this file photo, a Lab-mix puppy named Chevy is carried by a staffer at the La Plata County Humane Society. Like the puppy that tested positive for rabies, Chevy came from Texas. Unlike the rabid puppy, though, Chevy does not have rabies. The photo options for rabid dogs are a big bummer, so we thought you’d like this one better. (Jerry McBribe, The Durango Herald)

>80

The number of people who have been screened for rabies exposure following a puppy adoption event at a rescue shelter in Sheridan

More than 20 people have been referred for rabies post-exposure treatment following last week’s announcement about a rabid puppy at a rescue adoption event. But Colorado has so far identified no human cases as a result of the event, as state health officials continue to plead with those who were at the event to come forward for screening.

Rabies is almost universally fatal but can be prevented after exposure (but before symptoms emerge) if those exposed are treated.

A spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said Monday that the state has assessed more than 80 people to determine if they had contact with the puppy that could have spread the rabies virus to them. The 20 people referred for what is known as post-exposure prophylaxis came from that group.

“I don’t want people to either minimize the risk or say ‘I didn’t have that much contact’ or ‘I probably wasn’t exposed,’” said Dr. Michelle Barron, the senior medical director of infection prevention and control for UCHealth and an expert in infectious diseases. “We want the public to get a formal assessment so (public health officials) can ask those questions.”

The puppy, a shepherd mix, was part of a litter brought from Texas to Colorado and made available for adoption at an event July 20 at Moms and Mutts Colorado Rescue for Pregnant and Nursing Dogs in Sheridan.

The CDPHE spokeswoman, Gabi Johnston, said the puppy arrived in Colorado on July 16. It began showing symptoms of rabies July 29, became seriously ill and was euthanized. A veterinarian submitted a sample for rabies testing, which came back positive Aug. 7. CDPHE notified the public Aug. 9.

That delay between when people were potentially exposed at the adoption event and when they were notified is not ideal because the post-exposure treatment should be started as soon as possible. But it is crucial people receive the prophylaxis treatment any time before they begin showing symptoms of infection. Once people begin exhibiting symptoms, especially ones related to the virus’ attack on the brain, then rabies almost always kills — save for a handful of cases worldwide.

Barron said it’s possible the puppy had a lower level of infectiousness at the adoption event, since it wasn’t showing symptoms there. But she said that’s not certain, which is why public health officials are being extra-cautious and urging people to be screened and, if appropriate, start treatment.

“If this was not a uniformly fatal disease, we would play by different rules,” Barron said. “But it’s so high-risk that if we’re wrong about what information you’re giving us, you could die.”

Johnston said the puppy — and likely the rest of its litter — is believed to have had contact with a rabid skunk in Texas. CDPHE said last week that the owners of the puppy and the veterinarian who examined the dog were both bitten. They are among those referred for treatment.

Meanwhile, all of the other puppies from the litter have been surrendered to animal control, where they will likely be euthanized.

“The people who adopted the other puppies were understandably devastated when they learned their puppies were exposed to rabies for a prolonged period of time,” Johnston wrote in an email.

Source: CoreLogic

You knew Colorado was in danger. But did you know it was this bad?

Colorado has more than 320,000 homes sitting in moderate-to-severe wildfire danger, according to the mortgage and insurance company CoreLogic. The analytics firm published a new report with eye-opening charts and maps of just how many homes nationally are in danger zones, and how much it would cost to replace them.

We’re second only to California, with its far larger population of 39 million. The communities up against forested, mountain terrain in the northern Sierra Nevada have seen the most destructive fires in recent years. But CoreLogic’s maps show the scary wildfire band north of Los Angeles in the San Gabriels as an angry red swath awaiting disaster.

Altogether, the CoreLogic report spotlights 2.6 million homes in 14 wildfire-vulnerable states. The total reconstruction cost of those homes? $1.3 trillion.

Thanks for hanging with us — we’d like to think this glacier of a newsletter was packed all the way to the bottom with gemstones and instructive cultural artifacts! If your brain is hungry for more, take a minute to sign up for SunFest’s all-day extravaganza of learning and entertainment, we’ll look forward to seeing you there.

— Michael & John

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

After years of dings, coal-fired powerhouse Tri-State now noted for switch to solar, wind

Michael Booth — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 10:02:00 +0000

After years of harsh critiques from environmental groups and departing co-op members over its slow pace of change, Tri-State Generation is now winning praise for plugging in and planning a host of solar and wind farms to replace dirty coal.

The Westminster-based utility serving a million consumers through co-ops in four Western states will link to hundreds of megawatts of new solar power by the end of 2025. Its newest five-year building plan was unopposed when filed with state regulators, and wins praise from environmentalists for a wide array of new wind farms and innovative battery storage solutions.

The big utility, meanwhile, is making it easier for disgruntled member co-ops to accelerate renewable projects they build for themselves outside the Tri-State grid, in one effort to head off more defections like those that turned United Power and Delta-Montrose Electric Association into independents.

Tri-State is even throwing a technically advanced green wild card into its future studies, saying it will consider an innovative geothermal electricity project in Colorado while seeking “dispatchable” or always-on backup power sources. Before now, most such “dispatch” power fill-ins by other utilities included new natural gas turbines, which emit less greenhouse gas than coal but are still controversial among renewable energy advocates.

The utility has its eye on hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, and if it succeeds, will be well on its way to achieving an 89% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, ahead of state targets. The utility is also getting credit for recent agreements to spend big in supporting economic development in Western Slope communities where it is closing coal plants, which are large employers and vital money engines in small towns.

“Tri-State should be commended for aggressively pursuing federal funding to support its plan to retire existing coal units and acquire new renewable generation and storage resources,” Clare Valentine, senior policy advisor at the renewable resources nonprofit Western Resource Advocates, said, “all in a way that maintains reliability and delivers climate and economic benefits to member cooperatives and communities.”

Tri-State’s resource plan for how it will generate power from 2026 to 2031 was filed as an unopposed “settlement” with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, giving it every chance at approval. Now Tri-State will start seeking bids on the projects in its resource plan, and see which ones make economic sense after lucrative federal subsidies are factored in.

As a nonprofit co-op utility, Tri-State did not qualify for federal tax credits that can amount to hundreds of millions of dollars until a recent rule change. With the change, and the continuing drop in long-term costs to build solar and wind generation, Tri-State can build renewable replacements without blowing up prices for its co-op members, vice president of communications Lee Boughey said.

Tri-State’s five-year resource plan filed with the PUC starts with construction of a large lithium-ion battery array in New Mexico in 2026, along with a smaller iron-air battery test in eastern Colorado. The advantage of iron-air batteries is they can hold up to 100 hours of backup power, while current battery arrays hold about four hours. Powdered iron rust is charged with generated electricity, turning it back into metallic iron. Exposed to oxygen, the iron rusts again, releasing a steady electrical current that can be sent out on the grid, all employing cheap, environmentally friendly materials.

The five-year plan also includes a new 140 megawatt solar farm in western Colorado in 2026, and another in New Mexico in 2029. Much of the rest is wind, with five new wind farms proposed to go online between 2026 and 2031 in Wyoming and western Nebraska, eastern Colorado and New Mexico.

Those are in addition to large solar hookups that are part of Tri-State’s current five-year plan, including 595MW of solar already online in 2024 and finishing up by late 2025. Symbolic of Tri-State’s rapid transition, Boughey said, is the new solar farm that surrounds a closed Tri-State coal-fired plant in New Mexico.

The schedule for bringing renewable energy online will allow Tri-State to stick to its current schedule of closing coal-fired Craig Unit 1 by the end of 2025, which it co-owns with other utilities; Unit 2 in late 2028; and solely owned Unit 3 on Jan. 1, 2028. Tri-State also plans to close the large 458MW Springerville, Arizona, Unit 3 in 2031.

The change in the mix would mean that by 2030, 70% of the co-op members’ energy mix will be from clean sources, Tri-State said. In that same year, Tri-State would have reduced greenhouse gas emissions from electrical generation by 89% from the state’s 2005 baseline, the association said.

Suncor demandada en un tribunal federal por grupos ambientalistas que buscan cientos de millones en multas

Michael Booth — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 20:05:19 +0000

La planta de Commerce City de Suncor Energy se ve el 17 de febrero de 2023. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun vía Report for America)

Traducido por Rossana Longo Better, Colorado Community Media

Read this story in English

Grupos ambientalistas de Colorado demandaron el martes a los propietarios de la refinería Suncor en un tribunal federal buscando detener miles de supuestas violaciones de contaminación y pidiendo potencialmente cientos de millones de dólares en multas.

La demanda de Earthjustice para Sierra Club de Colorado, 350 Colorado y GreenLatinos es la última de una larga serie de acciones estatales, federales y privadas contra la refinería de Commerce City, que tiene permisos para limitar sus emisiones pero que repetidamente paga millones de dólares en multas por exceder continuamente esas límites.

Los grupos dicen que han registrado 9.209 días de posibles violaciones de la Ley de Aire Limpio en los últimos cinco años (los excesos de múltiples sustancias en un día cuentan para varios días). “Solo en 2020, la refinería de Suncor emitió aproximadamente 20 toneladas de contaminantes atmosféricos peligrosos, 500 toneladas de monóxido de carbono, 50 toneladas de óxidos de nitrógeno, 125 toneladas de partículas, 450 toneladas de compuestos orgánicos volátiles y 230 toneladas de dióxido de azufre,” según la demanda y un comunicado de prensa.

“Los contaminantes de Suncor representan una amenaza constante para la salud de los vecinos de la refinería, predominantemente comunidades de color que tienen más probabilidades de estar en desventaja económica”, dijo Earthjustice al anunciar la demanda. “Los residentes de los códigos postales vecinos sufren desproporcionadamente altas tasas de asma, enfermedades cardiovasculares y diabetes”.

El portavoz de Suncor, Leithan Slade, en una respuesta por correo electrónico, dijo que la compañía está al tanto de la queja y la está revisando.

“Commerce City ha sido la zona de sacrificio para corporaciones como Suncor durante tanto tiempo que el abuso a mi comunidad se ha normalizado e incluso se espera que ocurra en la economía de Colorado”, dijo Renée M. Chacón, miembro de GreenLatinos y residente de Commerce City. “No se debe normalizar más este nivel de contaminación acumulativa para ninguna comunidad”.

La demanda dice que la Ley de Aire Limpio otorga a los ciudadanos, a través de organizaciones ambientales y legales sin fines de lucro si es necesario, el derecho a imponer acciones más enérgicas contra los contaminadores persistentes.

A principios de julio, la EPA y los reguladores estatales golpearon a Suncor con otra ronda de avisos de infracción de contaminación durante los últimos dos años. Esa acción se produjo a pesar de un acuerdo de 10,5 millones de dólares por transgresiones similares en 2021 que los funcionarios estatales prometieron encaminaría a la refinería hacia operaciones más limpias.

Un resumen de 140 páginas de presuntas nuevas violaciones compilado por la oficina regional de la EPA acusó a Suncor de continuas emisiones de benceno y otras toxinas al aire y al agua alrededor de la planta de Commerce City. Las quejas más recientes, incluidas algunas áreas que la EPA no había identificado en inspecciones anteriores, reavivaron las críticas de vecinos y grupos ambientalistas de que las pequeñas multas no han alterado el curso del negocio multimillonario de Suncor.

Suncor refina combustible para vehículos y aviones en la planta de Colorado, la única refinería del estado y una de las pocas en Occidente.

“La refinería de Commerce City ha estado sujeta a acciones estatales de control de la contaminación del aire por parte de la (División de Control de la Contaminación del Aire del estado) anualmente durante al menos los últimos 10 años”, enfatiza el nuevo aviso de violaciones de la EPA.

El aviso conjunto de julio de la oficina regional de la EPA y los reguladores estatales fue el primer paso en lo que podría terminar como la próxima ronda de multas y otras sanciones para Suncor, que ha sido objeto de avisos similares y negociaciones posteriores en los últimos años. El aviso pidió a Suncor que comenzara a reunirse con funcionarios federales y estatales para desafiar las acusaciones o comenzar planes de mitigación.

Este artículo fue traducido por Rossana Longo Mejor con el boletín semanal La Ciudad. Suscríbete aquí.

Colorado’s health system is stressing patients out

John Ingold and Michael Booth — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 17:25:38 +0000

Happy Wednesday, Colorado, and welcome to another edition of The Temperature, where today we are serving up an absolute feast of health and climate news.

But, first, we need to talk about heart health — specifically the kind of heart health you might have during, say, the closing moments of an extra-time win by the U.S. women’s soccer team over Germany in the semifinals of the Olympics.

You know, just minutes after Colorado’s own Mallory Swanson threaded a pass through the tiniest of needles to Colorado’s own Sophia Smith for what was apparently the game-winning goal, only for Germany to come back with a free header that almost certainly was going to tie the score, except that U.S. goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher (connections to Colorado unclear) somehow miraculously got her left heel on the ball while leaping in the air to keep it out and preserve the U.S.’s unlikely quest for gold and send my blood pressure to roughly 1,000,000/80. That kind of heart health.

Alyssa NaeHER 🧤🧤 pic.twitter.com/PDh36As0oq
— Jodee Storm Sullivan (@jstorm482) August 6, 2024

(We joke, of course, but there is some evidence of cardiac events tied to watching sports.)

There’s really only one cure for stress like that, and it’s rest. So, go ahead and show this newsletter to your boss as proof that you need to take today off to give your heart a break ahead of Saturday’s gold medal match. The Temp says so.

Now, let’s make like we’re in the last 100 meters of a 1,500 and kick it into gear.

A sign outside Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver, photographed on Oct. 22, 2019. (John Ingold, The Colorado Sun)

If you are freaked out about the cost of health care and worried about whether you’ll be able to afford it when you need it, then you have good company. According to a new study, nearly everyone else in Colorado feels the same.

In a survey of more than 1,400 Coloradans, 83% said they worry about affording health care in the future. The survey also found that 68% of people said they delayed needed health care or went without in the prior year due to cost concerns.

The survey was conducted by the Altarum Healthcare Value Hub, a national nonprofit that studies health care policy around costs and affordability. Among its other findings: Large, bipartisan majorities support the idea that the health care system needs to change to improve affordability and also support the government doing more to help control costs.

“Health care may be one of the very few things we can all agree on that needs to be worked on,” said Beth Beaudin-Seiler, the director of the Healthcare Value Hub.

The organization worked on the Colorado survey with the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, a group that advocates for consumers and works on policies at the state Capitol that are often aligned with approaches favored by Democrats. But the survey is part of Altarum’s broader Consumer Healthcare Experience State Survey, which runs in numerous other states.

Beaudin-Seiler said Colorado’s results are similar to those seen across the country, highlighting how health care affordability is a nationwide problem that people are eager to see addressed. But Colorado has also been a leader in doing some of the things the survey suggests have broad public support — such as capping the out-of-pocket price of insulin.

Adam Fox, the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative’s deputy director, said that shows how one-off policy changes aren’t enough to fix the bigger problem.

“Colorado has made some important steps in the right direction, but the reality is health care costs continue to rise,” Fox said. “… It means that folks are continually challenged by health care affordability.”

Fox said CCHI has not yet decided on its policy priorities for next year’s legislative session — much, he said, hinges on the outcome of the presidential election and what that might mean for, say, the policies in the Affordable Care Act. But Priya Telang, CCHI’s communications manager, said the organization will use the information from the survey in helping to guide its policy proposals.

You can read the full Altarum brief on the study, as well as companion briefs on hospital prices and prescription drug costs, on CCHI’s website.

Could a dairy cow like this one give you bird flu without you even knowing it? The state is trying to find out.

The number of human cases of bird flu reported in Colorado in 2024

Colorado hasn’t reported any new human cases of bird flu for a couple of weeks now, but that doesn’t mean the state isn’t looking.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has launched a new study to analyze blood samples from dairy workers who were exposed to sick cattle. The research, known as a seroprevalence study, is looking for antibodies against bird flu in the blood of workers who had not been known to have been infected.

If researchers find the antibodies, it would suggest that some workers had been infected without developing symptoms. And that would mean that bird flu could be silently spreading from animals to people.

According to an update from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Colorado study launched last week. It is unclear when initial results from the study will be available, and CDPHE did not respond with answers as of newsletter emailing time.

Just to provide some reassurance here: The existence of this study doesn’t mean health leaders think there is silent spread. A previous study looking at the blood of dairy workers in Michigan found no bird flu antibodies in workers who hadn’t been known to be infected. And, even if the Colorado study does find evidence of silent spread, there is still no evidence that the virus is spreading person-to-person.

Meanwhile, Colorado’s efforts to better track bird flu on commercial dairies is delivering results. The state has reported nine new cases of bird flu on dairies after discovering them through “bulk tank surveillance.” This is part of the state’s new order for mandatory testing of milk at commercial dairies to identify bird flu cases that weren’t being picked up by just watching for sick cows.

Colorado is now up to 63 dairies affected by bird flu, more than double that of any other state (though, of course, no other state has issued an order for testing at all dairies).

United Power’s battery array, in white cabinets on right, at the Bromley substation at Brighton. (Courtesy of United Power)

The Brighton-based United Power electric cooperative accelerated its innovative push into renewable and “hyper-local” energy supplies late last month, announcing the hookup of backup battery arrays across three counties.

The batteries at eight substations in Weld, Adams and Broomfield counties will store excess power from solar farms and other United Power transmission sources, then disperse the stored energy at peak times like summer’s late-afternoon air conditioning surge when families get home from work and school.

The batteries, which are aimed at providing about four hours of electricity at peak demand or during emergencies, are a key to United Power’s exit from the umbrella Tri-State Generation Association. The goal for United Power, which serves about 300,000 people from 112,000 meters on the northern Front Range, is to add more renewable generation to its grid and control smaller, local sources of power rather than rely on distant coal-fired plants.

The Tri-State exit, the growth in solar and other renewable contracts, and the far-flung battery array follow other United Power moves, including teaming up with Fort Lupton to seek a federal grant for a floating solar array at a containment pond. Fort Lupton wants better backup power sources for a water treatment plant, and tests have shown floating solar farms can block summer sun that produces harmful algae blooms.

Five of the new battery arrays were turned on in July, and the remaining three will be linked by the end of the summer, United Power said. One battery site takes down power sent by Xcel Energy transmission lines from a Whetstone Power solar farm in the San Luis Valley.

“We’re excited to be moving ahead with one of the most aggressive plans for such systems,” said United Power CEO Mark Gabriel. The 78.3MW of batteries are owned by United Power’s partner in the storage project, for-profit renewable energy developer Ameresco.

The renewable energy revolution looks like … a hallway of high school lockers? (Courtesy of United Power)

United Power says it is one of the fastest-growing co-ops in the nation, drawing on the rapid home and business growth from Broomfield to Weld County. It serves communities from Coal Creek and Golden Gate Canyons to Brighton, Hudson and Keenesburg on the plains.

Tri-State and United Power battled over how much the smaller co-op needed to pay to exit long-term power contracts with the parent utility. United Power is still contesting Tri-State’s latest requirement of $627 million, but has set aside enough to cover a final agreement, the co-op has said.

Click the image to go to an interactive version of the chart. (Graphic by John Ingold, The Colorado Sun)

So, you may have heard that COVID infections are rising in Colorado due to new variants known as the FLiRTs.

The variants are descendants of the paterfamilias of most COVID viruses circling the world today, the omicron strain. They take their name from their pattern of mutations and for their ability to cozy up to you and then leave you devastated, heartbroken and lying in bed for several days. (Maybe, we don’t really know, we’re not virus-namers.)

Here’s the thing, though: No shade to the dirty FLiRTies, but we’ve seen this game before.

While a summer COVID wave is often seen as novel, the chart above shows that it’s not — at least not in Colorado. There were also small summer bumps in COVID hospitalizations in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

It’s also not uncommon in Colorado for infections to start their big annual surge in August before peaking consistently — at least so far — in late November, typically well before much of the rest of the nation sees a peak. It’s all part of the mysterious seasonal patterns for the virus that we still don’t really understand.

Anyway, just a reminder to be virus-aware out there and make sure that the FLiRTs’ love for you is unrequited.

Hey, here we are at the finish line. Only one thing to do now — dance like we’re Simone and Elmo.

You’re all gold medalists in our books, Temp family. Thanks for hanging with us.

— John & Michael

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Suncor sued in federal court by environmental groups seeking hundreds of millions in fines

Michael Booth — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 10:08:00 +0000

Colorado environmental groups sued owners of the Suncor refinery in federal court Tuesday seeking a halt to thousands of alleged pollution violations and asking for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.

The Earthjustice lawsuit for Colorado’s Sierra Club, 350 Colorado and GreenLatinos is the latest in a long series of state, federal and private actions against the Commerce City refinery, which has permits limiting its emissions but which repeatedly settles millions of dollars in fines for continually exceeding those caps.

The groups say they have logged 9,209 days of potential Clean Air Act violations over the past five years (exceedances of multiple substances in one day count for multiple days). “In 2020 alone, the Suncor refinery emitted approximately 20 tons of hazardous air pollutants, 500 tons of carbon monoxide, 50 tons of nitrogen oxides, 125 tons of particulate matter, 450 tons of volatile organic compounds, and 230 tons of sulfur dioxide,” according to the lawsuit and a press release.

“Suncor’s pollutants pose an ongoing health threat to the refinery’s neighbors, predominantly communities of color who are more likely to be economically disadvantaged,” Earthjustice said, in announcing the suit. “Residents of neighboring ZIP codes suffer disproportionately from high rates of asthma, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”

Suncor spokesperson Leithan Slade, in an email response, said the company is aware of the complaint and is reviewing it.

“Commerce City has been the sacrifice zone for corporations like Suncor for so long, the abuse to my community has been normalized and even expected to happen for Colorado’s economy,” said Renée M. Chacon, a member of GreenLatinos and a Commerce City resident. “No more normalizing this level of cumulative pollution for any community.”

The lawsuit says the Clean Air Act gives citizens, through environmental and law nonprofits if necessary, the right to force stronger action against persistent polluters.

In early July, the EPA and state regulators hit Suncor with another round of pollution violation notices for the past two years. That action came despite a $10.5 million settlement for similar 2021 transgressions that state officials vowed would set the refinery on a path to cleaner operations.

A 140-page summary of alleged new violations compiled by the EPA’s regional office accused Suncor of continued releases of benzene and other toxins into the air and water around the Commerce City plant. The newest complaints, including in some areas the EPA had not pinpointed in previous inspections, restarted criticism from neighbors and environmental groups that small fines have not altered the course of Suncor’s multi-billion dollar business.

Suncor refines vehicle fuel and airplane fuel at the Colorado plant, the only refinery in the state and one of the few in the West.

“The Commerce City refinery has been subject to state air enforcement actions by the (state Air Pollution Control Division) annually for at least the past 10 years,” the EPA’s new notice of violations emphasized.

The July joint notice from the EPA regional office and state regulators was the first step in what may end up as the next round of fines and other penalties for Suncor, which has been the target of similar notices and subsequent negotiations in recent years. The notice asked Suncor to begin meeting with federal and state officials to either challenge the allegations or begin mitigation plans.

Draft of Colorado oil and gas rules guts key protection for impacted communities, green groups say

Michael Booth and Mark Jaffe — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 10:08:00 +0000

The state Energy and Carbon Management Commission cut a key proposed protection for disadvantaged communities facing oil and gas drilling after a sustained pushback from the oil and gas industry, according to environmental groups participating in the rulemaking.

The commission staff Friday issued a new draft of the so-called cumulative impact rules removing a requirement that oil companies seeking to drill within 2,000 feet of homes in a disproportionately impacted community get the approval of those residents.

“The fact that so many in the industry lined up against this shows how big an issue this was and that the ECMC staff completely caved,” said Mike Freeman, an attorney with the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice.

Tearing out that vital protection, which was sought by environmental groups, just a month before hearings begin gives a big advantage to the oil companies, the activists say.

“It’s really disconcerting,” said Ean Tafoya, director of Colorado GreenLatinos. “The onus was on the companies to do the right thing. It seemed really disingenuous to the work that everybody collectively did to get to that.”

The commission said in a statement to the Sun that “given the vigorous debate on this issue in parties’ prehearing statements, staff decided to provide an alternative in this draft so that parties can provide their thoughts on one or both approaches in their responses.”

The commission said the Aug. 2 draft includes “robust protections” for residents of Disproportionately Impacted Communities or DICs.

These include a more rigorous analysis of proposed locations near homes, schools and childcare facilities and targeted data for each location and best management practices to limit impacts.

“By requiring this information, ECMC will have a better understanding of community concerns earlier on in the permitting process,” the commission said.

“The fact remains that they removed the 2,000-foot setback requirement from the August draft,” Freeman said.

The state does have a requirement that drilling pads be set back 2,000 feet from homes, schools, child care centers and high occupancy buildings.

But an oil and gas operator can drill inside that buffer if it can show it can provide “substantially equivalent protections” as being 2,000 feet away — such as enhanced recovery systems or zero-emissions equipment — or by getting approval of the homeowners or businesses inside the buffer.

In 2023, 19 of the 71 oil and gas development plans approved by the ECMC were inside the 2,000-foot setback, according to the agency’s 2023 cumulative impacts report. In 2022, 26 drilling plans were inside the buffer.

The proposed cumulative impact rules, set for a hearing in September, initially had a requirement that approval of residents inside the setback was essential — without it, drilling could not start.

The legislature in 2019 directed the commission to assess the cumulative impacts of oil and gas operations, with particular concern for disproportionately impacted communities — ones that are low income, of color, have vulnerable populations or have disproportionate environmental burdens.

In an annotated version of the revised draft, the commission staff said the setback provision was cut after “robust stakeholder discussions and feedback in the parties’ prehearing statements.”

In those prehearing statements, Colorado’s top oil and gas producers and the major industry trade groups objected to the provision.

The proposed rule, Chevron Corp. said in its prehearing statement, “would essentially prohibit new oil and gas development within DICs … and should be stricken entirely.”

Chevron went on to say that other parts of the proposed rule, such as requirements for enhanced systems and state-of-the-art technologies, provide “special and robust protections” for the impacted communities.

On the Western Slope many operating areas are designated disproportionately impacted communities not as a result of environmental issues but because they are low income communities, the West Slope Colorado Oil and Gas Association, a trade group, said.

“These lower income areas often are dependent on oil and gas revenue, particularly for schools and special districts,” the association said. “Allowing one DIC member veto power over new development harms the revenue potential for DICs as a whole and lets the voice of one negatively impact the finances of many.”

The industry arguments are “meritless,” Earthjustice’s Freeman said. “What is really going on here is the industry does not want to have a level playing field with communities so they are getting the commission to do their dirty work.”

The late overhaul of the rules in favor of oil and gas industry demands is a betrayal of a hard-fought compromise in the 2024 legislature, the environmental groups say. Activist groups threatening even more restrictive statewide ballot votes or legislative bills — such as outright bans on new fracking wells, or a mandatory summer “pause” for drilling operations during the worst of the ozone season — agreed to drop their efforts. In exchange, the legislature passed bills capping nitrogen oxide emissions and boosting closures of low-producing oil wells. Greeng groups also got a new per-barrel fee on oil and gas production to be used for transit projects and other pollution reduction. The oil and gas industry said at the time it was giving up its own ballot measures defending natural gas-fueled home appliances.

While navigating those compromises, both sides were participating in the yearslong rulemaking at the ECMC on cumulative impacts and protections for disproportionately impacted communities. Environmental groups wanted more community protections in part because they’d given up ground in the spring’s “grand compromise.”

“Environmental justice should require consent,” said Rebecca Curry, policy counsel in the Colorado office of Earthjustice. “They just totally took it out of the rules.”

The September rulemaking hearings will come at the end of a particularly brutal ozone season. There have been 42 state-issued ozone action alerts so far in 2024, with extremely high temperatures cooking oil and gas and transportation fumes into a stew toxic for human lungs. Distant and Front Range wildfires worsened the ozone and particulate pollution with steady plumes of smoke over the metro area.

Colorado’s Northern Front Range counties are under an EPA mandate to bring ozone under the 2015 70 parts per billion cap within the next few years, or face more sanctions. Metro area gas stations are already required to sell slightly more expensive reformulated gasoline that is less volatile and creates fewer ozone emissions. Regional Air Quality monitors show the Front Range has violated those EPA standards numerous times already in 2024.

Llama drama in San Juans: 2 pack animals on the lam after they were attacked by a sheep dog

Michael Booth — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 10:08:00 +0000

Missing: Two experienced backpackers

Clothing: None

Facial Hair: Yes

Nose: Prominent

Last seen: 12,000 feet, East Fork Cimarron Trail

Answer to: ‘Rones’ and ‘Vio.’

Hang on, we’re being told these are llamas. Llamas don’t really answer to anything. Should you spot them, try “Hey, llama!”

Lisa Balcomb realizes her runaway llamas are likely fat, happy and indifferent to human intervention, grazing somewhere in the high meadows and rock-strewn cliffs of the high San Juans. But she’d appreciate it anyway if you called in notice of her best friends upon sighting them while hiking.

“It’s sad,” Balcomb said Saturday afternoon, back home at her ranch in Silt, posting “Lost Llamas” messages on 14ers.com and any other site she could think of. They’ve left handwritten “missing” placards at trailheads, and tucked notices stuffed into plastic sandwich bags under the wipers of cars from Lake City to Ouray.

“My sister and her husband just spent six days up there looking for them, really hard, you know. And they never saw them. It’s just really sad.”

Balcomb, 69, and her sister Barbara are expert llama packers, having given up their own backpacks to save their knees years ago. They’ve llama-packed the entire Continental Divide Trail, and frequently take two-week hiking trips in the San Juans.

(Colorado Sun illustration)

On July 27, Lisa and Barbara were on the second day of return from a five-day pack-in through the valleys and over the saddles connecting majestic 14ers like Wetterhorn, Uncompahgre and Redcloud. They crested a high ridge with a sublime view into a valley, which included a distant herd of grazing sheep on National Forest meadows.

Not their first rodeo, the sisters armed themselves for encounters with aggressive sheep dogs and tried to prepare their own dog, Nick. Bear spray at the ready, llama leads held tight, leash on the dog.

Suddenly a shepherd’s dog lunged from a wash gully and attacked Nick. “We’ve dealt with sheep dogs before. This one was unbelievably ferocious. I thought, ‘He’s going to kill him.’ And I started pounding him on the head.”

Barbara aimed the bear spray but was reluctant to pull the trigger and spray all of them with the virulent cloud. One llama, Vio, saw greener, quieter pastures and took off, dragging Lisa across the rocks on her stomach. Lisa feels bad that in fearing for her dog, she lost track of Rones, who also had had enough.

The llama’s pack panniers, holding the sisters’ food and shelter, were gone as well. They spent hours looking for their mates, but also knew the snacks in their daypacks would only last so long. Lake City was the closest hike.

As they crossed the valley where they’d seen the sheep, a shepherd emerged from his tent and offered them binoculars. But they couldn’t trade information in English or Spanish — the shepherd spoke only the Basque of the remote portion of Spain that supplies high-country ranches with migrant sheep specialists.

Back in Lake City, the sisters alerted the sheriffs in Hinsdale and Ouray counties, whose dispatchers told them of other protective-sheepdog problems. But search parties for llamas — currently eating like kings, wherever they are — are not a thing.

The families will make the long trek from Silt and keep going back to the San Juans in coming days, taking binoculars on more hikes.

Sunday morning, Balcomb texted she was jumping back into her pickup again for the long drive south. “Got a good sighting and we’re headed down there. Keep your fingers crossed.”

If not found sooner, she hopes the llamas will eventually make their way down to a ranch or a town when snow starts covering up the high mountain grass. If anyone else spots them, she wants them to call the Hinsdale or Ouray County sheriffs’ non-emergency dispatch, or email newsroom@coloradosun.com and we’ll forward the news.

In the meantime, the sisters have other llamas safely at home, inside fences. They too largely ignore their names (Fox and Bud). They won’t go out packing, though.

“They’re retired,” Lisa said.

Big city water buy-ups in the Lower Arkansas Valley are raising alarms as age-old battles erupt again

Jerd Smith and Michael Booth — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 09:55:00 +0000

Story first appeared in:

OLNEY SPRINGS — From satellite view, the land north of the Arkansas River is a seemingly random checkerboard of vital green and desperate brown, quickly fading from a few thriving farm acres to the broad, water-drained desolation of northern Crowley County.

From the cab of Matt Heimerich’s pickup, each alternating square of emerald corn or desiccated knapweed is a decision by a distant big city — to either share Colorado resources responsibly or toss rural Arkansas River counties to the fate of the hot summer winds.

That square was reseeded with native grass after Aurora bought the water in the 1970s, Heimerich says. That plot, Colorado Springs dried up and it’s all weeds. That farm, Aurora wants to dry it up soon, but the water court referee wants a better reseeding plan.

Heimerich’s family is one of the few farmers remaining in the 790 square miles of Crowley County after city water buy-ups shrank the county’s irrigated acres from more than 50,000 in the 1970s to fewer just a few thousand this year. He jumps down from the pickup to clear invasive kochia weeds from a pipe opening gushing cool canal water down a 1,500-foot corn row.

This Fresh Water News story is a collaboration between The Colorado Sun and Water Education Colorado. It also appears at wateredco.org/fresh-water-news.

Matt Heimerich has been farming in Crowley County since 1987. His wife’s family started farming there in the 1950s. During that time, cultivated land has shrunk from 50,000 acres to a few thousand this year. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Crowley is just the worst example of what can happen when nobody cares, and nobody pays attention.

Two miles away is downtown Olney Springs, population 310. Crowley County as a whole has only 5,600 residents, and more than a third of those are inmates at two prisons. The only retail operation left in Olney Springs is a soda vending machine against the wall of town hall.

As Heimerich clears his irrigation pipe, he pauses to jab a thumb over his shoulder 150 miles to the north at Aurora, where the population increased by more than 100,000 over 20 years.

“When you build a new development, at the end of the day, you’re drying up a farm,” Heimerich said. “Where else is it going to come from?”

“Crowley is just the worst example of what can happen when nobody cares, and nobody pays attention,” he said.

The tiny community serves as an enduring reminder of the cultural and economic ruin that occurs when big cities in Colorado and elsewhere purchase farms, dry up the land and move the water to urban areas. It gave rise to the term “buy and dry,” a practice now widely condemned.

The practice was supposed to end in the Lower Arkansas Valley in 2003 with a hard-fought federal court battle and settlement. Since then, state lawmakers and top water and farm agencies have changed laws and spent millions of dollars testing new protective methods for sharing water temporarily between rural and urban areas. They have also spent heavily to improve water quality for thousands of people living near the river who still don’t have clean water to drink.

The big cities insist they have learned their lessons from the Crowley County disaster.

“The results of what happened in Crowley County are unacceptable and widely recognized as a travesty,” said Colorado Springs Utilities spokesperson Jennifer Jordan. “We’ve taken those lessons to heart.”

But outraged Lower Arkansas growers and water districts say new efforts to protect their farm water aren’t working. At the same time, the big cities say new laws making it easier to share farm water don’t provide enough reliable water to grow their communities.

The cities also say big changes in the future water picture, climate-driven reductions in stream flows and threats to their Colorado River supplies leave them little choice but to draw more farm water.

This year they did that, inking deals in the Lower Arkansas worth more than $100 million to buy and lease land and water, raising alarms among local growers and generating big questions about whether the state is doing enough to protect rural farm communities and the water that keeps them going.

Buy and dry light

The cities say a lot has changed in the past 20 years and that these new deals represent innovations in water sharing. But critics in the Lower Arkansas Valley say these same deals signal that no one is doing enough to prevent “buy and dry” or the the latest tool in the water acquisition quiver, “lease and dry,” in which water is pulled from farmland periodically.

Aurora, for instance, spent $80 million in April to buy nearly 5,000 acres of farms in Otero County and the more than 6,500 acre-feet of water associated with that land. An acre-foot equals nearly 326,000 gallons of water, enough to irrigate half an acre of corn, or supply at least two urban homes for one year.

Aurora plans to use the water itself in three out of 10 years, leaving it on the farms the rest of the time. Some 4,000 acres of land will be dried up intermittently when Aurora is using the water, according to Karl Nyquist, a developer and grower who negotiated the deal with Aurora and who is operating the farms for Aurora under the lease agreement.

Colorado Springs has a different arrangement just downriver in Bent County, where it will permanently purchase up to 15,000 acre-feet of water from local farmers. Colorado Springs will also help pay local farmers to install modern center pivot irrigation systems that use less water, allowing the city to keep the saved water for its use.

FIRST PHOTO: Rows of corn are flood-irrigated in Pueblo County on June 23. Water for most farming in Pueblo County is delivered from the Arkansas River via the Bessemer Ditch. SECOND PHOTO: The view looking north from Olney Springs on June 26 shows how “buy and dry” practices have cut cultivated land in Crowley County from 50,000 acres to just a few thousand acres. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

In this deal, Colorado Springs and the farmers will be responsible for revegetating any dried up land. It will use the water in five out of 10 years, and it has agreed to make a one-time, upfront payment of $2.5 million to Bent County plus payments each year based on how much water is taken off the fields. The money is in addition to payments to farmers.

“We wanted to make sure Bent County was kept whole,” said Scott Lorenz, a senior water projects manager with Colorado Springs Utilities.

And in Pueblo County, perhaps the least controversial of the three deals, Pueblo Water agreed to purchase nearly one-third of the shares in the local historic Bessemer Ditch system for $56.2 million. Pueblo continues to lease the water back to the farmers for now. At the same time, the Palmer Land Conservancy has developed a sophisticated new framework that measures farm productivity on land watered by the Bessemer Ditch and will eventually help direct water to the most productive farms as Pueblo takes its water. The hope is that the new system will increase overall farm productivity on the ditch system and help make up for anything lost when the less productive lands are dried up, according to Dillon O’Hare, Palmer’s senior conservation manager.

Palmer is also working to analyze the impact of the deals on water quality downstream and how to prevent further damage, O’Hare said.

Irrigated farm land is evaporating

The three projects come as new data shows Colorado’s irrigated farmlands are shrinking. Since 1997, the state has lost 32% of these lands, with areas in the Lower Arkansas Valley seeing losses higher than that, according to an analysis of federal agricultural data by Fresh Water News and The Colorado Sun.

Crowley County has lost 90% of its irrigated lands in that period. Pueblo has lost 60.2%, and Bent and Otero have lost 37.6% and 35.2%, respectively.

State agriculture and water officials are worried about the decline, but say they have few tools to prevent it because farmers are free to sell their water rights to whomever they want.

“Am I concerned? Definitely,” said Robert Sakata, a long-time vegetable grower near Brighton, and former member of the Colorado Water Conservation Board who now serves as the director of water policy for the Colorado Department of Agriculture. “We all talk about water being a limited resource, but prime farmland is also limited and it’s important to take that into consideration.”

Not all these losses are due to big city water prospecting. Climate change, market challenges and legal obligations to deliver water to downstream states are also fallowing Colorado farmlands.

Everyone is sympathetic. No one is in charge.

Still, more than 20 years after the intergovernmental peace accords, it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

The Lower Arkansas Valley region is part of the sprawling Arkansas River Basin. The river has its headwaters near Leadville and flows through Buena Vista, Salida, Cañon City, into Pueblo Reservoir and on over the state line east of Lamar.

Its counties were once a sweet spot in the basin’s agriculture economy. The river fed a bountiful chain of tomato, sugar beet and onion fields, as well as acres of luscious Rocky Ford melons, and chiles, corn and alfalfa.

Cities say these latest deals, which they call “water sharing” agreements, will bolster the agricultural economies and keep remaining water on farm fields forever. But the term “sharing” doesn’t sit well with some local farmers and water officials who have a deep distrust of the cities they blame for the region’s decline.

“I call it a charade,” said Mike Bartolo, a retired Colorado State University extension research scientist who farms in Otero County near Rocky Ford. “You dry up an acre, you’re drying up land that was formerly irrigated. That’s buy and dry.”

While the state’s highly touted Water Plan cheers for the concept of cities helping rural areas thrive after water losses, there is no mechanism or state law or bureaucracy to watchdog new sales.

After the 2003 agreement in the Lower Arkansas Valley, state and local water leaders began testing new ways for cities and farmers to temporarily share water, something that had been almost impossible under older water law.

Mike Bartolo lives and farms in Rocky Ford. A recently retired researcher for Colorado State University, Bartolo is well-versed in the politics of Colorado water. He’s unconvinced the cities of Colorado Springs and Aurora have the valley’s best interests at heart. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

I call it a charade. You dry up an acre, you’re drying up land that was formerly irrigated. That’s buy and dry.

But Aurora and Colorado Springs say the early experimental programs didn’t provide enough water at reasonable prices to fulfill their fast-growing community needs permanently.

Lorenz, the Colorado Springs Utilities manager, said the city does lease some water in the valley, but it hasn’t been enough to ensure the stability of its long-term water supply.

“The major concern is that we would lease from a particular farmer, and then a different city would come out and buy those water rights and the farmer wouldn’t lease to us anymore,” he said.

And in fact that is what just happened in April, when Aurora purchased the Otero County farms, which had formerly leased water to Colorado Springs.

Colorado Springs Utilities formally opposes the latest Aurora water deal, as do the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District based in Pueblo, and the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District in Rocky Ford.

But their anger has so far been expressed by passing resolutions, not filing lawsuits.

How Aurora Water and other cities have treated Arkansas River counties like Crowley after past buy-ups leaves nothing but suspicion about newly announced deals, local leaders say.

Though Aurora says it is not attempting any more permanent dry-ups of local land, “I don’t think any of us believe them,” said Heimerich, Crowley County’s representative on the Southeastern Conservancy board. Heimerich also is a member of the board of Water Education Colorado, which is a sponsor of Fresh Water News. “They’ll do whatever they need to do and apologize later.”

Thornton and Larimer and Weld counties conducted a similar debate publicly — from the 1990s to this year — as Thornton bought up 17,000 acres of northern Colorado farms and their water rights and began drying up the land. County commissioners and other local officials brought their legal weight and bully pulpits to bear in demanding extensive concessions from Thornton. The Adams County city has been reseeding dried up land with native grass and backfilling lost property taxes, but gets mixed reviews from locals.

First photo: Seasonal workers harvest cabbage near Vineland on July 6. Pueblo County farmers operate on some of most fertile land in the state and irrigate their crops from water taken from the Arkansas River. But water-rights sales have changed the way they manage their land. Second photo: Water flows in the Bessemer Ditch near Vineland on June 23. Pueblo Water acquired rights to one-third of the ditch, but has been working with local farmers to help ensure their farmland remains productive. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

The latest Lower Arkansas water deals are also pitting Colorado’s big cities directly against each other in conflicts not seen for decades. When the board of Colorado Springs Utilities passed a resolution earlier this year condemning Aurora’s Otero County deal, it was a direct shot from leadership of a city of nearly 500,000 — the Colorado Springs City Council is the utility board.

“The idea is that there’s Denver, there’s a Denver metro complex and they’re going to just do whatever they want to do and the rest of the state has to go along with it,” City Councilman Brian Risley said.

But Alex Davis, a top Aurora Water official, said Colorado Springs’ ire is unwarranted.

“Aurora has worked in close partnership with Colorado Springs for decades and that will continue,” she said. “This is a case where we disagree.”

Peter Nichols, general counsel for the Lower Arkansas Water Conservancy District in La Junta, said he is deeply concerned by what cities are proposing now. “We thought we were through with all of this. We thought we had it under control,” he said of the Aurora and Colorado Springs purchases.

Nichols is among those who have spent much of the past 20 years creating a system, now known as the super ditch, that allows seven local irrigation companies to negotiate leases with cities.

Importantly, it also won the legal right to move leased water stored in Pueblo Reservoir out of the valley, via the federal Fryingpan-Arkansas Project and the Otero Pipeline, removing what had been a key barrier to leasing.

Nichols said local growers and water districts have worked hard to find ways to share water so that it doesn’t permanently leave the valley. That the cities are now jumping the line with these new deals isn’t OK with him.

A farmer’s — and a county’s — greatest asset

Colorado Springs and the other thirsty Front Range cities want farmers like the young Caleb Wertz to be the new face of urban water agreements.

On a recent 95-degree summer afternoon, Wertz high-tailed it across Bent County driving an ambulance to take an injured neighbor to the hospital. He had planned to be on his farm, but that’s life in the Lower Arkansas Valley.

Caleb Wertz, 23, comes from a long line of Arkansas Valley farmers, and he’s sold a portion of his agricultural water to Colorado Springs Utilities. It’s a deal that will pay him to install modern irrigation systems, drying up portions of the fields and allowing Colorado Springs access to the surplus water in five out of 10 years. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Colorado Springs is reimbursing the farmers to turn those corners into pasture land or to revegetate. … Even if it is not producing corn, it’s not just becoming wasteland.

The population is shrinking, and everyone has too many jobs to count. The local farmer is also a first responder. Your primary care provider is a farmer’s wife.

Arriving back at the farm just after 5 p.m., Wertz talks about what is perhaps the most controversial decision he has ever made: Selling a portion of his agricultural water to fuel housing growth in Colorado Springs.

The deal will pay him enough so that he can install modern irrigation systems, drying up portions of the fields, known as corners, that won’t be reached by the new, center pivot sprinklers, and allow Colorado Springs to buy the saved water.

He is also planting cotton alongside his traditional corn, and he believes he is the first in the state to do so. A new modern variety is supposed to use half the water, just one acre-foot per acre, rather than the two acre-feet of water that older types, such as those grown in Arizona, use.

For Wertz, the agreement will give him enough money to keep farming and enough new technology to make his remaining agricultural water go farther. He will become a rarity in the area: A young farmer with enough land and water to continue the business his family started in 1919 and to expand it.

“The water purchase makes it a lot more doable because we can farm those acres so much more with pivots,” Wertz said. “That’s the case even though we’re drying up the corners. … That has a bad connotation to it. But Colorado Springs is reimbursing the farmers to turn those corners into pasture land or to revegetate. … Even if it is not producing corn, it’s not just becoming wasteland.”

But to some of his neighbors in the valley, Wertz has entered a hostile no-man’s land, facilitating yet another dry-up of farm land in a region that has already lost too much water and land to urban thirst.

“I know people don’t like it and people are entitled to their opinions, but a lot of those are the older generation who don’t like seeing it because of what happened years before I was even born,” said Wertz, who is 23. “I was glad to see the Springs come in and ask questions about working with us.

“We were quite leery at first. But they have proved it to us. It is extending the water use for them and us, and allowing my brother and I to start taking over some of these acres that haven’t been farmed for awhile because there isn’t enough manpower.”

But can the land come back after fallowing?

Another worry for Lower Arkansas growers is whether new methods that allow cities to take the water off the fields for one or more years and then return it at a later time, do more harm than good. They’re not sure farmland in the region is resilient enough to bounce back from cycles of city-caused drought.

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Perry Cabot, a research scientist and specialist in farming practices and farm economies, has spent years studying the issue. He says that there is hope for fallowing, after years of experiments and tests, but only with crops such as alfalfa and other grasses and sometimes corn.

“The programs we have done saw alfalfa return almost with a vengeance,” Cabot said. “Grass hay is the second-best candidate.”

Nyquist, the developer and grower who is leasing back and farming the land he recently sold to Aurora, agreed, saying fallowing programs do work, but they are not good for small growers who don’t have the cash to buy the necessary new equipment and nutrients that are needed to help fully restore the crops once water returns.

Still, Jack Goble, general manager of the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District in Rocky Ford is wary of plans that take water from parts of farm fields over long periods of time.

“And I haven’t found a farmer yet that believes that that’s a viable farming situation, ” he said. “It’s tough to bring that land back.”

For years, valley water hasn’t been drinkable

Anger aimed west and north from Lower Arkansas Valley towns extends to water quality issues, not just water volume.

For many decades, groundwater wells and the river have been contaminated by farm runoff, mining operations and some naturally occurring pollutants.

The same federal Fryingpan-Arkansas Project that in 1962 created Pueblo Reservoir was also supposed to solve the drinking water problem for 40 communities downriver by building the 130-mile Arkansas Valley Conduit to move clean water from Pueblo Reservoir. But it wasn’t until 2023 that final funding for the $610 million pipeline arrived.

Some downstream leaders are galled that Aurora can start taking more fresh water out of the Arkansas before serious pipeline construction has begun to serve the 50,000 people in long-suffering downstream towns.

“My whole life has been under drinking water restrictions, not being able to attain safe drinking water except to go buy it or to go through extraordinary measures to treat it,” said Dallas May, whose family ranches 15,000 acres north of Lamar. May also is on the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District board.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Water Quality Division, which tests Lower Arkansas water a few times a year, classifies most of the river below Pueblo Reservoir as not supporting drinking water or “aquatic life use.” The classification calls the Lower Arkansas suitable for “warm-water aquatic life” and recreation. The state did not respond to requests for more detailed assessments of Lower Arkansas water health.

Asked if state efforts were improving water quality on the Arkansas, a spokesperson said in an email, “Trend studies require extensive data over a significant period of time. The water quality in watersheds is influenced by a wide variety of factors, including precipitation and weather trends that can highly influence the water quality from year to year.”

Some Lower Arkansas farmers and officials are tired of waiting. They see the problem getting worse as, for instance, Aurora takes more water out of Otero County, “What happens is all of the bad things are concentrated into what is left,” May said, “and that is a huge problem.”

First photo: The Catlin Canal winds its way through southern Otero County near Rocky Ford on June 8. Aurora Water earlier this year paid $80 million for rights in the canal. Second photo: A screen bubbler helps filter water for pivot irrigation operations like this one near Rocky Ford. Farmers in the Arkansas Valley draw water from the Arkansas River via a system of canals and ditches to irrigate their crops. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Silence at the state level?

The Colorado Water Conservation Board spent years writing the statewide Water Plan, convening forums and task forces, and conducting listening sessions on the tensions between city water needs and the survival of agricultural communities. They say they are concerned about new city water buys, but add they have no authority to influence any deals because water rights are private property rights and can be bought and sold at will.

The board declined an interview request about Aurora’s water purchase or the broader water use questions.

“The Colorado Water Plan sets a vision for meeting the state’s future water needs and was broadly supported by local communities,” Russ Sands, the board’s water supply planning chief, said in email responses to questions. “But the decisions that happen in local communities regarding their water purchases and planning are largely outside of the state’s control. Accountability for staying true to the vision of the Water Plan is a collective responsibility.”

The loss of irrigated farmland isn’t expected to slow anytime soon as climate change dries up streams and population growth drives cities to buy more. The Colorado Water Plan’s forecast shows the population of the Arkansas River Basin, which includes Colorado Springs and Pueblo, surging more than 60% by 2050, increasing the pressure to tap farm water.

Sakata, the state water policy advisor, who farms near Brighton, said protecting the state’s irrigated farmland will take more work. “We can’t just say lease the water for three out of 10 years. We need to have agreements so that water sharing will be really available.”

As an onion grower, Sakata can’t do interruptible water supply agreements because he has long-standing yearly agreements with suppliers that require him to deliver vegetables. If he fallows his land for a year, the money he would likely be paid wouldn’t be enough to compensate him for the loss of onion sales and the need to support his employees during the break.

Farm research scientist Cabot would like to see the state begin buying irrigated farms, using conservation easements to protect them from development or purchase, and then leasing that land and its water to young growers.

What else state leaders can do to preserve what’s left of Colorado’s irrigated land isn’t clear yet, but Alan Ward, a Pueblo native who is also director of water resources for the Pueblo Water, said the state needs to reexamine its policies and goals.

“There is only so much water available, and I don’t think it’s realistic for the state to continue to think that we can control our urban areas and grow them fast without impacting agriculture.”

Clarifying that he was speaking as a private individual, rather than a water official, he said, “I’d rather have the farms continue and not have the urban growth, but I am probably in the minority on that.”

The Arkansas River meanders through eastern Pueblo County on June 23. The river is the lifeblood for agriculture in southern Colorado but deals for its water rights from cities like Aurora and Colorado Springs threaten farmers’ livelihoods. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Where does the battle flow next?

Water veterans such as Cabot said the state is likely doing everything it can right now to protect irrigated ag lands. But like Sakata, he says more work needs to be done to shore up farm markets and to create easier, more lucrative water sharing arrangements.

“I don’t want to oversimplify this,” Cabot said, “but the simplest way for cities to get this water is to go to farmers and say ‘How much did you make last year?’ and then offer them 10% more. … These are not just fields. They are farm enterprises.”

Kate Greenberg, Colorado’s agriculture commissioner, is overseeing multimillion-dollar efforts to protect farm lands by improving soil health, solving market challenges and making farm water use more efficient. She says the people of Colorado are on board with her agency’s efforts.

“We did a study last year that showed over 98% of Coloradans believe agriculture is an integral part of our state. If we’re taking water out of agriculture, where are we putting it to beneficial use?

“Are we conserving it to grow urban developments and do we want to see that over preserving agriculture and biodiversity. We need to answer that question as a state.”

Bartolo, the retired CSU researcher, hopes the answer comes soon, before any more of the valley water is siphoned off for urban use.

As news of the deals spreads, Bartolo’s sense of deja vu is growing and his fears for the future of the valley’s irrigated ag lands is growing too. No one knows yet what will happen when Aurora’s contract to use the Fryingpan-Ark to deliver water expires in 2047.

“Having lived through it in my lifetime, I have seen the drastic changes,” Bartolo said.

What worries him, and other growers too, is “what happens if they come back after 2047? What happens then?”

AI’s new eyes in the sky helping Colorado get a jump as wildfires spark every few hours

Michael Booth — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 10:08:00 +0000

With Colorado wildfires now cropping up daily between lunch and dinner, a new satellite-based fire spotting system driven by artificial intelligence is already hard at work looking for fresh trouble spots and helping weather forecasters point out likely breakouts of existing fires.

The Boulder office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration watches satellites in geostationary orbit 22,000 miles above North America. Those satellites take detailed ground photos every 30 seconds. No human reviewer could possibly keep up.

An AI software layer, however, can instantly alert NOAA and weather officials to a change in infrared wavelength sensors on an area as small as an acre. An alert goes out to local National Weather Service offices, who in turn take advantage of recently updated NOAA communication protocols to loop in state and local firefighting leaders.

“It’s the force multiplier,” said Michael Pavolonis, wildland fire program manager for NOAA in Boulder. “Humans are very good at picking out new heat signatures in these satellite images associated with emerging fires. But humans can’t digest all of that imagery coming in at that rate. It’s just a … fire hose of data.”

Flames rise amid the billowing smoke from a wildland fire burning along the ridges near the Ken Caryl Ranch development Wednesday, July 31, southwest of Littleton. (David Zalubowski, AP Photo)

A human reviewer confirms the heat signatures before alerts go out, Pavolonis added. “AI tools in this space are used by human expert decision-makers. They’re not replacements for humans. They give humans the ability to make more efficient and informed decisions.”

The new AI-driven tool, Next Generation Fire System, was not necessary in early spotting of this week’s biggest fire so far, the Alexander Mountain fire. Nor did it take artificial intelligence to spot the dangerous Quarry or Stone Canyon fires up and down the heavily populated Front Range, where commuters, hikers, law enforcement, open space rangers and TV traffic helicopters can be early detectors.

Though the AI scans are still in experimental mode, they are being used in real time to look for more remote hot spots throughout the West, Pavolonis said. And on existing fires like Alexander Mountain or Stone Canyon or Quarry, AI could identify new hot spots that blow ahead of the main fire, or other conditions that firefighters and evacuation planners need to look out for.

The AI scans and communication tools perfected at NOAA’s Boulder test bed in June turn meteorologists into “scientific first responders,” said Todd Lindley, the National Weather Service science and operations officer in Norman, Oklahoma. “These tools will help us provide timely and life-saving warnings of particularly dangerous wildfires.”

NOAA’s satellites have extremely sophisticated cameras recording on multiple wavelengths, Pavolonis said — not just what is visible to the human eye in a photograph, but also various levels of infrared and other wavelengths that show a contrast in temperature between one spot and another. It’s the contrast that catches the “eye” of the AI review and flags it for humans to take another look.

The new tools were developed in cooperation with researchers from Colorado State University and University of Wisconsin, Pavolonis said.

NOAA is decidedly not selling the AI tool as an endgame, all-powerful firefighter.

“AI does spot some fires earlier than other sources. Not every time,” Pavolonis said. “It’s a piece of the puzzle. All of these technologies have to come together and be interoperable, and that gives you the best intelligence. So what we’re trying to do is maximize the value of this particular information source so that it’s complementary with other technologies.”

Michael Booth, Author at The Colorado Sun

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