Happy Colorado Sunday, friends.

I was in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago to help judge a business writing contest. It’s fun to hang out with national colleagues for a day. But the real gift is in the required reading, a kind of crash course in the ways crucial issues are being reported in communities across the country. A theme or two always emerges, and this year it was the hard task of transitioning to cleaner electricity. No matter where the reporting came from, the issues were the same: Communities understand wind and solar power is where we are headed, but they’re not ready to give up what these large installations demand.

This is precisely what’s going on in the Wright’s Mesa community near Norwood. In this week’s cover story, Mark Jaffe explains the fierce blowback against plans to convert 640 acres of State Land Board ranch land into a massive solar farm.

A graphic showing how much the ingredients in a burger have increased
A rural road separates natural sagebrush landscape from agricultural fields near Norwood. The solar farm proposed by OneEnergy would be on land to the left of this road. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)

Across Colorado there has been a clash between the need for renewable energy and the value of community and place. I found it on the Eastern Plains as some farmers lamented the loss of their wide-open spaces and night skies to forests of wind turbines — even as they signed leases for those wind farms.

And now the Western Slope — which has some of the best solar radiance in the state — is facing a potential wave of large-scale solar developments, and the questions of what is lost and what is gained are being raised once more.

Perhaps nowhere are they being raised more eloquently than on Wright’s Mesa, a ranching and farming tableland about 30 miles from Telluride, where a developer proposed a 640-acre solar field.

The mesa residents — from old-time ranchers to new wave organic farmers and everybody in between — were united in opposition to the proposed solar project. At first glance the battle on Wright’s Mesa might seem like just another NIMBY tale, but the way the community went about crafting its opposition bears a closer look.

In challenging the solar proposal, the mesa residents raised questions about the balance between clean energy, agriculture, small town values, and preserving wildlife and the vistas that make Colorado, Colorado — questions that may be valid for other rural solar projects.

For a Front Range lowlander, it takes a bit of time for the mesa — with its wide-open spaces that at first may seem like a whole lot of nothing under star-studded skies — to work its magic and for one to begin to understand why folks were so hot under the collar.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

^markjaffe^1

School’s out and PTO requests abound as people fill the foothills and mountains in Colorado to kick off the summer. Here are the recent images captured by the Sun team.

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Horses graze in a meadow as the sun sets through the aspens around their pasture at the Bar-K Ranch neighborhood June 16 in Ward. (Andy Colwell, Special to The Colorado Sun)
A graphic showing how much the ingredients in a burger have increased
Sparkler 50 Yarder Strider bike race participants, ages 1 through 5, wait at the start line on Main Street Thursday in Breckenridge. Later in the morning, the annual mountain bike race, Firecracker 50, kicked off the town’s Fourth of July parade with hundreds of mountain bikers flowing on trails through the White River National Forest for 50 miles. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
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Thomas, last name not shared, of Nederland, circles the new Vortex Pump Track on June 26 in Nederland. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)
A graphic showing how much the ingredients in a burger have increased
Frisco resident Lynn Moulton casts a fly while fishing in the Dillon Reservoir at the mouth of the Snake River on Tuesday in Dillon. Denver Water’s reservoir is 101% full as of July 2. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
A graphic showing how much the ingredients in a burger have increased
Adults pedal railbikes across a field near Erie. Colorado Railbike Adventures travels on stranded stretches of rail that previously served coal mines near Erie. (John Leyba, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Evidence that northern Colorado communities once were served by a robust network of rail lines is visible in many of the places that have not yet been covered with houses. You can sometimes see them in the grades where tracks and ties have been removed to create biking and hiking trails.

In fast-growing Erie, Colorado Railbike Adventures has taken over a few miles of idled track (owned by RTD and held in reserve for future urban transit) near the historic Boulder Valley Mine to create a pedal-powered journey through an important chapter in Colorado’s economic and labor history.

The route starts high on a hill above Old Town Erie, and drops down into town, crossing Coal Creek on a 130-foot long timber trestle, and riding across a few key intersections in town.

Participants move as fast as four people can pedal the modern version of a cart designed for track maintenance crews. Set aside at least two hours for the 4-mile out-and-back route because the trip includes a long stop when staff turn the railbikes around to begin the journey back to the depot.

Evening time slots are available to make the most of the stunning Front Range views from the depot. An 8-mile route running through Erie’s historic Wise Open Space and on west toward U.S. 287 is expected to open this fall.

MORE: Colorado Railbike Adventures, 4121 County Road 3, Erie

EXCERPT: The 2022 murder of Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German, allegedly at the hands of a government official whose political career was damaged by German’s stories, brought a violent end to four decades of the reporter’s fearless accountability journalism. Author Arthur Kane, a former Denver print and TV reporter, recounts the career of his late colleague, including this excerpt detailing attempts at intimidation.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Kane explains the difficulty in researching his book in a case that hasn’t yet gone to trial, but he also notes that his reporting on German’s past helped him understand the rampant corruption that plagued Las Vegas. Here’s a portion of his Q&A:

SunLit: What’s the most important thing — a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers should take from this book?

Kane: The theme is the danger faced by journalists to get key information about government corruption, graft and waste out to the public. Despite the public’s concern about bias and fake news, journalists play a key function in the U.S. democracy and that role is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution. While some reporting is opinion-based and biased, it is important to understand that most journalists are hard-working and take their role of watchdog over government seriously.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH ARTHUR KANE

A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.

Jim Morrissey: Searching everywhere for leadership in Colorado. (Jim Morrissey, Special to The Colorado Sun)

🌞 Reports on the huge sums spent to influence elections continue to flow in. The most recent tally from Sandra Fish has about $6 million spent by national groups on 10 legislative primaries. The outcome? Moderate candidates (read: more electable in the general election) in eight of those races won.

🌞 Remember when the governor got on the stump to argue against Colorado drivers having to fuel their vehicles with a special blend of gasoline during the ozone season? His main argument was that the cost of fuel would skyrocket. Well, that didn’t actually happen, Michael Booth reports.

🌞 Vaccines and social distancing probably spared around 800,000 American lives from COVID, but new University of Colorado-led research shows there were serious related costs, John Ingold explains.

🌞 A trip up above Ward to see some fancy new headgates that control the flow of water into South St. Vrain River using cellular technology gave Tracy Ross the chance to explain how Colorado’s “first in time, first in right” water doctrine came to be.

🌞 Good nutrition and safe housing are crucial to health and well-being. That’s why Colorado is joining other states and proposing that Medicaid be extended to include food and shelter. Jennifer Brown explains how that might work.

🌞 Wildflower season is on in the high country, which begs the question of whether it’s OK to bring home a bouquet of blue columbine. Justin George has the answer.

Thanks for popping in! We’ll see you back here again next Colorado Sunday!

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

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