Some time in the afternoon of May 27, Phoenix hit 100 degrees, on its way to 102.
It’s been at least 100 degrees in Phoenix every day since. Every. Single. Day.
The “100 Days of 100,” which would make a much worse movie than “500 Days of Summer,” will continue today, with the Arizona forecast pointing toward a toasty 109. In September, mind you.
The last 100-streak record was only 76 days in a row, an eon ago in 1993, according to the AP.
Keep that unpleasant trend in mind if you watch our premier tonight of “Peak Ozone,” a Colorado Sun YouTube conversation with top Colorado air pollution officials. One of the things we talked about was a summer 2024 chart showing ozone readings at Denver metro air monitors spiking waaaayyyyy above the EPA’s hard cap of 70 parts per billion.
Michael Ogletree of the Air Pollution Control Division and Mike Silverstein of the Regional Air Quality Council acknowledged it’s been a terrible year. They also express hope that ozone-reduction policies will start kicking in and bring those spikes under some control.
But then there’s the heat. Ozone levels rise with the summer temperature, and Colorado’s Front Range trend is like Phoenix: going up, not down. Even the best-intentioned mandates, like giving up gas-powered leaf blowers for electric, don’t stand much of a chance against 100 days of 100.
Do state and regional leaders have bigger ideas to reach EPA limits by 2027? Tune in tonight for free, put your remaining questions in the live chat, and give us some reactions to what you hear.
On to the news …
Reporter
TEMP CHECK
CLIMATE
Help ArapCo design a new park
656,000
Arapahoe County population looking for open space
Hey Centennial and Bennett, what do you want your backyard to look like?
Arapahoe County wants residents to jump in to help design the future of 2,800 acres of rolling, creek-bedazzled farmland in the eastern half of the sprawling jurisdiction, Bijou Basin Open Space. The farm the county bought in 2010 is still leased to farmers for crops and grazing, and closed to the public, but that will change within a few years.
The community can pitch in to design the space’s master plan, which aims to bring in “low impact” public recreation to the existing agricultural mix. Arapahoe County leaders don’t want to put their thumbs on the scale yet, but suggest the public might consider biking trails, walking trails, bird banding or watching areas, educational uses and more.
“It is a pretty nice piece of property as far as the habitat quality and the wildlife use out there,” said Josh Garcia, an open space planner for the county. “We’re really excited.” Even before a series of public meetings kicks in, Garcia said, “We’ve had really good response to our online survey.”
Like Boulder County, Arapahoe County has placed an emphasis on using its publicly acquired open space to support ongoing local farming and honor agricultural heritage. Arapahoe leases land for crops and for grazing forage, but also considers mixing in public recreation where it can work.
The open eastern part of the county is exciting to birders and other wildlife fans because it sits next to other important easements. About 5 miles south of Byers, Bijou Basin is next to Mule Gulch Open Space and West Bijou Ranch. The property now being planned includes a 1,470-acre conservation easement controlled by the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust. Easements allow open space activities such as agriculture or recreation to continue on a property, while barring extensive residential or commercial development.
Arapahoe County residents can continue to fill out online surveys about Bijou Basin through Sept. 30. They can also weigh in at a booth at Bennett Days on Sept. 7, and an open house at Kelver Library in Byers on Sept. 11.
Click on over to ColoradoSun.com later in the week for a bit more about Bijou Basin.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
MORE CLIMATE NEWS
CHILD CARE
When private equity takes over the local day care
Eva Pietri’s 6-month-old son had been enrolled at Pathways Learning Academy day care for little more than a week when she got a surprise notification. The academy announced it was shutting down for the next two weeks.
“We were like, ‘Oh my gosh, what are we going to do?’” said Pietri, who had spent months looking for child care and was now scrambling to find help, booking babysitters from online ads and waiting to hear from the school about when it would reopen. “It’s so stressful.”
The day care and preschool operates just a few miles from their home in East Boulder. As soon as the message hit their parent portal, Pietri and her husband scrambled to fill the gap and waited to hear from the school about reopening.
Pathways extended the closure for about a month. Administrators never contacted Pietri to re-enroll her son or explain next steps. After using sitters and home care, the Pietris enrolled their now 13-month-old son at a new day care.
That was September 2022. Other surprises were in store for Pathways parents. Though the Boulder day care operated in a building of Grace Commons Church, the Pathways parent company is owned by one of the largest private equity child care groups in the nation.
Moreover, Pathways in Colorado by July had five complaints filed against them since that time, to the Colorado Department of Early Childhood. It has been placed on probation by the state twice since January 2023, according to Colorado Shines, the state’s quality rating and improvement system. Complaints include inadequate staff training, failure to background check employees and having too few workers for the number of children in their care.
Understaffing, lower quality of care and general disinvestment are common complaints about private equity ownership in all kinds of service industries. Now private equity has moved deep into child care, and industry watchdogs and early childhood education advocates are sounding the alarm.
Earlier this summer, The National Women’s Law Center and Open Markets Institute, a nonprofit that lobbies against corporate monopolies, published a report on the risks of private equity investment in the child care sector and held a conference discussing the issue. Among their concerns are potential impacts on child safety and the stability of care.
“The question is whether an investor-backed business model — and in the case of private equity, a heavily financialized model focused on short-term profit — is the appropriate model for something that is a public good,” said Melissa Boteach, co-author of the report and vice president of child care and early learning at the National Women’s Law Center.
The Bell Policy Center puts Colorado’s total licensed capacity for child care at 156,691 kids. There are 231,993 children under 6 whose parents are in the workforce, according to Bell Policy’s research. As Pietri’s experience and the prevalence of facility waitlists demonstrate, that gap in availability leaves access to reliable care tough to find.
Freelancer Andrea Steffes-Tuttle, in a joint production with Boulder Weekly, takes a deep dive into complaints and concerns about privately owned day care in Colorado. Stay tuned for the story at ColoradoSun.com.
MORE HEALTH NEWS
CHART OF THE WEEK
Where Coloradans most often can’t breathe
We’ve written a lot here at the Temp about how Colorado’s summertime air — often beset by ozone alerts and wildfire smoke — can be bad for your health. (Especially so in this summer of endless ozone.) But it’s equally important to remember that the impacts of bad air don’t hit equally across the state.
The map above shows where people are going to the emergency room most often for asthma attacks. We looked at the most recent data over the course of a decade — spanning the years 2013 through 2022 — and mapped which counties most often have emergency room visit rates above the statewide average, shown in red, and which counties have rates most often below the statewide average, shown in blue.
Adams, Arapahoe, Denver and Pueblo counties were 10 for 10 during that decade for having above-average rates. Meanwhile, a number of counties — including Boulder, Douglas and Elbert on the Front Range and Park, Eagle, Garfield, Routt, Pitkin, Gunnison and La Plata in the mountains — had 10 consecutive years with below-average rates.
Asthma rates are often associated with issues of environmental justice. Asthma is most common in communities that are poor or historically marginalized, which means they often live in areas with higher levels of air pollution, which is bad for the kids who grow up there and the adults who live there.
So this map is an example of how a public health issue can be a bread crumb that leads you to even bigger problems needing to be addressed.
You can see more asthma data on the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s website.
Section by John Ingold | Reporter
Thanks for joining us on a heat and ozone theme day. Catch phrase for Wednesday: “We’re not Phoenix.” Colorado should be much more comfortable today. If you still need a mental break from Arizona’s problems, put this three-hour loop of polar bears on your TV for some background.
— Michael & John
The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.
Corrections & Clarifications
Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.