Colorado Sunday issue 152: "The rain thieves"

Hi, Colorado Sunday friends!

If you’ve been following even a little closely the past three years of this newsletter, you know the Eastern Plains are my jam. I attribute this to pioneer forbears on my mom’s side who hit the Black Hills of South Dakota and said, “This will do,” and on my dad’s side, who apparently made it to the point in the lower Arkansas River Valley where Pikes Peak was visible in the distance and just went ahead and settled.

While survival on the plains was probably (at least at the time) less daunting than posting up in the mountains of Colorado or Wyoming, it had to come with its own challenges, some of which have worsened in contemporary times as the climate has changed, making water more scarce and agriculture a dicier proposition.

This week’s cover story by Michael Booth is both an explanation of how the federal government helps prop up some of those ag operations and an extraordinary tale of how at least two ranchers gamed the system by messing with National Weather Service rain gauges in a swath of the plains from Ordway to Elkhart, Kansas.

A graphic showing how much the ingredients in a burger have increased
The precipitation gauge at the Little Washington weather station near Springfield is one of a number tampered with by people making false crop-insurance claims based on data collected by the devices. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Look, there is no harder job in America than farming, and we hope that we at The Sun get that as well as anyone does.

Two things can be true: Because of our reverence for farming, Americans have also created an elaborate and endlessly complicated system of support to help small and medium farms get through crises. Over the decades, that crisis support has become an annual necessity. It is also very expensive for U.S. taxpayers, a spending choice we consciously make.

But those available stores of money can be exploited, in ways as complex and inventive as the subsidies themselves. Sometimes they’re exploited by big corporations that get your taxpayer help for profitable activities like selling sugar or milk.

And sometimes they’re exploited by a single farmer carrying an upside down cake pan.

When we heard about a series of simple yet inventive agricultural crimes from southeastern Colorado, we wanted to learn more. Learn we did. Join us for the bumpy ride down the hayrows. Stick around for the one about the fake hailstorm sold to investigators through a hand-tossed bucket of ice cubes.

And through it all, somehow the miracle of making things grow seems no less miraculous. Cheers to this year’s looming harvest.

READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE

We curated our own visual feed to catch you up on Colorado’s diverse people and landscapes. Here are our recents.

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The sun was a welcome sight a couple miles beyond Barr Camp, which is the halfway point up Pikes Peak, on Aug. 25, as volunteers work to get Reed Small to the top in a wheelchair designed for trails. (Andy Schlitchting, The Lockwood Foundation)
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Intermittent rain passes over Palisade and Mount Garfield on Aug. 24 during the monsoon season in Mesa County. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
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Residents hold up placards during a rally staged by the East Colfax Community Collective to address chronic problems in apartment buildings occupied by people displaced from their home countries in central and South America on Tuesday in Aurora. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
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Arielle Pask, of Denver, scrambles up Wetterhorn Peak, 14,021 feet above sea level Aug. 31 in the San Juan Mountains near Lake City. The number of people on Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks fell to approximately 260,000 last year, a nine-year low according to the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
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Andrew Allport, Bike Durango policy director, stands Wednesday at the intersection of West Park and Main Street in Durango, where his son was hit by a car a few years ago. “I’m a parent. I try to work on pedestrian safety, particularly for kids,” Allport said. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
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Aspens lit up the hillsides near Gothic last fall. Due to lots of late-summer rain, the fall color display is predicted to be even more spectacular this year. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)

If you’ve been in the high country in the past week or so, perhaps a small cluster of yellow has caught your eye. It’s that time in Colorado when the shimmering leaves of the quaking aspen begin to turn to gold.

Each year, tens of thousands of people hit the high country in search of the perfect yellow grove. If you find the right spot, it might turn out to be the perfect backdrop for your holiday card or a family portrait that, every time you glance at it, brings you back to the memory of how you found it and the mighty effort it took to get everyone to look at the camera at the same time.

Over the next month or so, we will start to see a lot of change in the Populus tremuloides. The yellowing sweeps across Colorado from the north to the south. While elevation plays a role in when leaves will change, there are weather variables at play, including drought conditions, wind and late-summer temperatures.

Everyone has their favorite location, but I’ve often been drawn to the 30-mile Kebler Pass, which rolls northwest of Crested Butte on the way to Paonia. It’s annually one of the most intense displays in the state. Home to one of the largest aspen organisms in the world, the pass has miles and miles of shimmering trees growing right up to the road. And you’ll likely get just a nice breeze, enough to hear the aspens whisper.

When I lived in Pitkin County, one of the first fall stories I assigned myself was the story of aspens in Aspen. It was based on a mid-September hike on the East Maroon trail from Aspen to Crested Butte and it explains some of the science of the big color switch.

As a starting point for your drive, take a look at the foliage forecasts from the Denver TV station weather teams: CBS4, Denver7, 9News and Fox31.

Also, check out this awesome Fall Foliage prediction map from the folks at the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee. The citizen-informed interactive map highlights the changes by week for the Lower 48. In Colorado, Jackson and Grand counties are reportedly just getting going this weekend.

Whichever long and winding road you take, just remember to enjoy the drive and please pull completely off the road if you’re stopping for pictures (even from the passenger seat). And remember, everyone on their best behavior gets ice cream after the family photo is snapped.

EXCERPT: Perhaps Pam Houston’s most famous book is the short story collection “Cowboys Are My Weakness.” But this time, over the course of 60 “mini-chapters” — one for each year of her life at the time — Houston reflects on her personal history through a number of short pieces, rich with metaphor, related to abortion in the U.S. In the opening of “Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood, and Freedom” featured here, she offers an introduction for the discussion that follows.

READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT

THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: The backstory to Houston’s book is fascinating — a brief encounter with an editor that almost instantly solidified into a book proposal. And don’t miss Sun’s writer Tracy Ross’ podcast interview, linked below, in which the author discusses the stories behind the book at length. Meanwhile, here’s a portion of the Q&A:

SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?

Houston: Honestly, I enjoyed writing this book, once I found the form. I felt empowered to rage a little (often in good humor), which is always a happy thing for a woman my age. The most serious challenge in writing the book was how fast the news cycle moves, in general and on this subject in particular.

READ THE INTERVIEW WITH PAM HOUSTON

LISTEN TO A PODCAST WITH THE AUTHOR

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

Trooper Charles Sanchez, left, and sound man Neil Perron regroup for a moment after attempting to wrangle a young goat apparently dumped on the side of U.S. 285 south of Villa Grove on Aug. 28. (Brian Malone, Special to The Colorado Sun)

🌞 Tensions around three dilapidated apartment complexes in Aurora haven’t gotten better for the people who live there since the property management company announced it wasn’t fixing major problems with water, electricity and mold because “Venezuelan gangs” had taken over the buildings. Jennifer Brown talked with advocates and academics about how this xenophobic narrative isn’t unusual in our nation of immigrants.

🌞 One guy incorporated 15,500 fake companies listed to the home address of a stranger. Tamara Chuang reports on what about that was illegal and details other instances of fake companies creating more than a minor inconvenience in Colorado.

🌞 In political news this week, we got a tax deal out of the special legislative session and it led to two tax-limiting measures being pulled from the fall ballot, but Democratic lawmakers are tired of ballot initiatives being used as cudgels in policy negotiations. Eric Joss, the Libertarian candidate for the 8th Congressional District, dropped off the ballot and threw his support to Republican Gabe Evans, determined to not let his party be the spoiler in the race against incumbent Rep. Yadira Caraveo again. Gov. Jared Polis’ chief of staff has quit to take a VP gig at UCHealth. And the fight over who is really in charge of the state Republican Party isn’t even close to over.

🌞 High interest rates have caused serious problems for rooftop solar companies that counted on their clients’ willingness to finance their systems. Mark Jaffe caught up with local companies making the best of a maddening situation by helping the homeowners assemble tax credits and incentives to make renewable power affordable to cash buyers.

🌞 Someone shot and killed an endangered California condor in southwestern Colorado. Michael Booth found out there may be a reward for leading investigators to the poacher.

🌞 Sometimes the least convenient option ends in the most satisfying way. Brian Malone explained how that worked for him and his filmmaking crew when they made a U-turn to rescue a young goat standing alone along a lonely stretch of highway in the San Luis Valley.

Thanks for stopping by this morning, folks. The countdown to our annual SunFest on Sept. 27 at the University of Denver has begun. Remember, members like you get a huge discount on tickets to the daylong symposium where we come at the question of how to build a better Colorado from a dozen different directions: coloradosun.com/sunfest-2024.

— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun

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