As Colorado’s climate continues to warm, bringing with it more frequent drought these past 20 years, water is an increasingly valuable commodity — and one that’s absolutely necessary to fuel the development boom along the Front Range.
With this in mind, two growing cities — Aurora and Colorado Springs — are taking their first steps toward building a $500 million dam and reservoir near the Holy Cross Wilderness, between Leadville and Minturn, to claim water they’ve long had rights to and pump it back to their urban centers.
The project, which first would move forward with geo-technical testing and could take decades to complete, is opposed by environmental groups for numerous reasons, including concerns about the destruction of wetlands, with their underground fens, which are spongy structures that form over thousands of years and store water.
Bruce Finley, the Post’s environment reporter, today takes a closer look at the controversy around this project, which presents trade-offs between mountain wilderness and the needs of growing urban centers along the Front Range.
— Matt Sebastian, The Denver Post
Booming Front Range cities take first steps to build $500 million dam, reservoir near Holy Cross Wilderness
Five don’t-miss stories from last week
Colorado’s historic Pine Gulch fire darkens immediate future for Western Slope ranchers
The Pine Gulch fire north of Grand Junction, now the largest wildfire in Colorado’s recorded history, hasn’t destroyed scores of homes and other structures like some of the mammoth fires of the past. But, as Judith Kohler reports, the tens of thousands of acres it has scorched on the Western Slope include ranch land and wildlife habitat tied to many people’s livelihoods. Read More…
Woman assaults 12-year-old boy in Boulder over Trump yard sign, police say
Boulder police are investigating a report that a 12-year-old boy was assaulted over a President Donald Trump yard sign.
According to Boulder police, the assault occurred at 3 p.m. Monday at Folsom Street and Glenwood Drive.
Police said the boy was riding his bicycle with the Trump sign when a woman on a moped saw the sign and turned around to confront the boy. Read More…
Low staffing at HealthOne hospitals in metro Denver contributed to patient death, preventable harm
A patient at North Suburban Medical Center died this spring after no one was available to change the battery on a machine measuring blood oxygen levels, in what employees and inspection records reveal is only the most extreme example of dangerous understaffing of HealthOne hospitals in metro Denver.
Five nurses and a doctor who’ve worked at North Suburban and two other Denver-area hospitals owned by HealthOne told The Denver Post they were understaffed, leading in some cases to an increase in preventable pressure sores and infections, and a failure to regularly provide basic hygiene care. In interviews over four months, they all spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their current jobs or job prospects. Read More…
2 more Colorado schools report COVID-19 outbreaks; cluster linked to Cameron Peak fire response
Two more K-12 schools in Colorado have reported outbreaks of the new coronavirus, with a handful of cases in staff and students.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment also reported the first cluster linked to fighting the state’s wildfires on Wednesday. Four people involved in responding to the Cameron Peak fire tested positive for COVID-19. The state hasn’t released information about what kind of work the four did. Read More…
In Colorado’s peach country, the season that wasn’t
From market stands to restaurant menus, anyone looking around Denver at the end of summer can see proof of Colorado’s peach harvest. But some 200 miles west, in swaths of the state’s peach-growing capital, the tractor-trailers have all but stopped running and the farm workers have largely gone home.
“Usually I would see 15 or 20 trucks a day leaving the peach-packing facilities, and I haven’t seen one in several days,” Palisade farmer Scott High told The Denver Post last week. “We would sell in excess of a million pounds of peaches (normally), and we’re not selling any this year. So there’s a million pounds less just from our company alone.” Read More…
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