GLENWOOD SPRINGS — Colorado is growing at a rapid clip, yet only two new state parks have opened in the past dozen years. The newest, Staunton State Park, opened southwest of Denver in 2013 — 27 years after about half of the park’s rugged, mountainous acreage was donated to the state. Colorado Parks and Wildlife […]
Growth
Posted inEnvironment, Growth, News, Outdoors, Water
Amid drought, a changing climate and population growth, can Colorado’s unique water law system survive?
Colorado’s system governing water use predates the state itself — the oldest water rights in Colorado date to the 1850s. And it is so closely linked to the state that, even when it is used elsewhere, it is often called the “Colorado Doctrine.” But can it survive perhaps the greatest challenge in its history — […]
Posted inBusiness, Growth, News, Politics and Government
Amazon positions itself to shape policy and public perception as its Colorado presence grows
Amazon has hired Hilltop Public Solutions, a political consulting firm, to publicize what the Seattle company is doing in Colorado. From opening three warehouses in the state since 2016 to naming Denver a finalist for its proposed second headquarters, Amazon’s interest in Colorado has grown beyond selling goods to residents. The company, which employs about […]
Posted inGrowth, Health, News, Politics and Government
Colorado spends $4.7 million a year helping homeless people rehab from drug and alcohol abuse at Fort Lyon. Is it worth the cost?
LAS ANIMAS — The farther the white van got from Denver, away from the sirens and honking horns and closer to desolate stretches of two-lane highway through corn fields and melon farms, the more panicked Linda Fitzgerald became. When the van pulled into Fort Lyon, a former Army fort and then tuberculosis sanitarium, she had […]
Posted inBusiness, Energy, Environment, Growth, Health, News, Politics and Government
“It is going to be very messy”: Opposing oil and gas ballot measures respond to Colorado’s contentious drilling climate
Call it “Clash of the Ballot Initiatives.” Two measures — either of which would be, if passed, disastrous, critics say — seek to set new land-use standards in Colorado. One would require oil and gas drill rigs be set back 2,500 feet from homes and natural features such as streams. The other would give landowners […]
Posted inEnvironment, Growth, Health, News, Outdoors, Politics and Government
Three years after the Gold King Mine spill there’s no fix to leaky abandoned mines. What’s the holdup?
CLEAR CREEK COUNTY — When the Gold King Mine spill sent a plume of yellow sludge cascading down the Animas River in southwest Colorado three years ago, environmentalists and conservationists saw an opportunity to educate the public about a problem that’s been around for decades. They also saw it as a way to draw new […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Environment, Growth, News, Water
Colorado’s hot summer of dry ditches and empty reservoirs has left distressed farmers sweating: Will it get worse?
OLATHE — John Harold charges his Chevy through chest-high stalks of sweet corn. He’s talking on his phone, scribbling notes. He’s got corn-harvesting crews spread across the Uncompahgre Valley, picking more than 100,000 ears a day of his trademarked Olathe Sweet. The fields of onions need weeding. His beans, too. More than 100 fields of […]
Posted inNews
High-country Colorado towns wrangle big-city problems with homelessness
DURANGO — From his vantage point in a homeless camp on a scrubby mesa above Durango, Corey Davis could look down this summer on what resembled a Western-themed diorama. Tiny figures darted up and down Main Avenue as a coal-fired steam train chugged out of a historic depot trailing a black cloud of coal smoke. […]