Mystery solved. The hush-hush solar development in Olathe is sub rosa no more. The old Louisiana Pacific lumber mill along U.S. 50 is home to a cryptocurrency mine. Aspen Creek Digital Corporation announced late last week that its “high-performance” bitcoin mining center is now operating on the site and is linked to the 10-megawatt solar […]
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Posted inNews
How is Colorado’s new farmworkers’ rights bill being received by migrant farmworkers? With a shrug.
OLATHE — Erasmo Cano downs a bottled drink and dumps the dregs of packaged cookies into his mouth before he climbs out of the van where he and his coworkers have been taking a 15-minute shade break. It was a brief escape from pulling weeds in a 14-acre field where his crew has been toiling […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, Culture, Environment, News, Politics and Government
“A big year” for Olathe sweet corn as pickers pluck first ears of the season
OLATHE — The sun’s first rays are spilling over Jumbo Mountain when the team clambers aboard the sprawling corn harvester. John Harold joins the pickers as they twist his “Olathe Sweet” sweet corn from the stalks. It’s barely 6 a.m. and the first harvest of the season is underway for the nationally celebrated ears. It’s […]
Posted inColoradans, News, Politics and Government
Supreme Court ruling on DACA brings more time, but no less uncertainty for Coloradans
As of the end of last year, Colorado was home to 14,640 DACA recipients. They have always known their freedom runs on a clock. Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Trump administration cannot summarily shut down the program does not change the precariousness of their legal status in this country, but it buys more […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
Colorado health care workers felt called to help coronavirus patients in cities where thousands were dying
Ruby Choate sat in her tiny Manhattan hotel room and felt a pain in her chest, a shallowness in her breathing, and considered for the first time that the temporary job she had signed up for could actually kill her. Choate, 27, left her nursing job in Delta at the end of March, walking away […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, COVID, Health, News, Politics and Government
Colorado growers face “risk like we have never faced before” as coronavirus puts up labor walls
Like nearly all farmers, David Harold is well used to uncertainty. He grew up in his family’s Olathe-based business, Tuxedo Corn, steeped in the inevitable risks tied to weather, shifting markets and labor problems. But he is rattled to his roots by the risk posed by the novel coronavirus pandemic. “The amount of risk we […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Environment, News, Water
Sweet corn put Olathe on the map, but seeds of economic revival didn’t take
When giant, two-story machines called mule jacks lumbered into the corn fields around Olathe this week, it signaled that highly anticipated Western Slope sweet corn was about to hit grocery stores and grills — for the 33rd year running. But change is afoot beyond the million-plus ears of tender, high-sugar corn that will be picked, […]