Paying Up

Factor this shit in, and it gets real clear we're paying a lot more for gas than we think.

Colorado oil and gas wells can’t fund their own cleanup. Taxpayers may foot the bill

A Carbon Tracker report shows the cost to safely shut down low-producing wells is $3bn more than what they earn

Thousands of oil and gas wells across Colorado cannot generate enough revenue to cover their own cleanup costs, according to a new report. Unless state officials act “simply and quickly”, it says, Coloradans can expect to be on the hook for a $3bn shortfall.

In its report, the thinktank Carbon Tracker found that 27,000 low-producing oil and gas wells in Colorado – more than half the state’s total – will generate, at most, $1bn in revenue. The state’s oil and gas reserves peaked five years ago, with production volumes declining dramatically in all but one region. It will cost $4bn to $5bn to decommission those sites responsibly, the analysts found – meaning the state can expect a cash crunch of at least $3bn.

Unless properly decommissioned, unplugged wells can leak carcinogens and methane, a potent greenhouse gas. But according to Colorado’s energy and carbon management commission (ECMC), the state’s energy regulator, it can cost $110,000 or more to close a single site. Many companies have avoided paying those costs, either by delaying cleanup indefinitely, selling off ageing wells to smaller competitors or simply going out of business. Today, there are at least 120,000 “orphan” wells across the US that lack financially solvent operators, making them instead a problem for government entities to solve.

“The biggest problem here is just the nature of this activity: You make a lot of cash at the beginning, and then you have a big cost at the end,” said Rob Schuwerk, executive director of Carbon Tracker and a co-author of the report. “The way you cover a cost like that is you make people save along the way, and this is not done now.”

In 2022, Colorado rolled out a much-lauded approach to ensuring fossil fuel companies foot the cleanup bill. The regulations, which Colorado governor, Jared Polis, last year called “an example the nation can follow”, included major changes to the state’s bonding requirements – the system of financial assurance it uses to make it harder for operators to walk away from polluting wells.

Yet a review of public financial documents by DeSmog and the Guardian showed that Colorado’s modest reforms failed to keep pace with the fossil fuel industry’s ballooning liabilities.

“Even under the new rules, the gap between projected cleanup costs and secured bonding is measured in the billions of dollars,” said Margaret Kran-Annexstein, director of the Sierra Club’s Colorado chapter. “It’s frankly dangerous for Colorado to imply this is the best we can do.”

This dynamic is widespread across the US. In the 15 biggest oil- and gas-producing states, funds on hand for cleanup amount to less than 2% of estimated costs, a recent analysis by ProPublica and Capital & Main found. That Colorado, a state that’s been celebrated for an unusually proactive approach to bonding, still faces such a dramatic shortfall suggests that other state governments have much more to do before the trend can be reversed.

“The bonding isn’t enough. It’s never been enough,” said Kelly Mitchell, a senior analyst at Documented, a watchdog group. “And I think the states typically aren’t being very sober in considering the scale of the problem they’re facing.”

In emailed comments, Megan Castle, ECMC’s community relations supervisor, noted that plugged wells outnumber unplugged wells in Colorado.

Colorado’s financial assurance structure is designed to ensure operators – not the State – remain responsible for the entire lifecycle of the well and site,” she wrote, adding that Colorado’s bonding programs are meant to act as “a backstop” only when companies cannot fulfill that obligation themselves.

But the rules, by law, were designed to ensure that all operators have the ability to meet their plugging obligation fully – and that outcome is still very far away.

‘More loopholes than net’

In 2019, Colorado became one of the first states to try to take comprehensive action on the soaring costs of oil and gas cleanup. That year, lawmakers passed sweeping legislation that set the stage for a broad regulatory overhaul, while also giving ECMC a mandate to protect human health and the environment over industry profits. The commission imposed a fee on producers and set restrictions around transferring wells, an effort to stop bigger companies from selling off low-producing assets to smaller, poorer companies without adequate plugging resources. But the centerpiece was the revised financial assurance requirements, which ECMC officials called “by far the highest” in the nation and “truly a paradigm shift”.

ECMC required every operator to develop a unique, company-specific bonding plan based on well count, production levels and other factors. But the rules’ high degree of flexibility and customization allowed some companies to exclude certain poorly performing wells from their totals or to propose their own bespoke plans.

The result, said Dwayne Purvis, a petroleum engineer and consultant who co-authored the Carbon Tracker report, is that companies generally aren’t bonding enough. The rules are so flexible they end up being “more loopholes than net”, he said.

Rich reserves in a single region – the Denver-Julesburg basin – could generate more than enough to one day close down all of the state’s wells, something that will cost between $6.8bn and $8.5bn, according to Carbon Tracker. But most of those longer-term future profits will be concentrated in the hands of just three publicly traded companies: Chevron, Occidental and Civitas.

Schuwerk called it “a case of haves and have-nots” and said existing ECMC policy doesn’t do much to correct that fundamental imbalance: one group is sitting on billions in profits while the other can’t afford to resolve its billions in liabilities.

At least one operator, KP Kauffman, has already said it can’t pay. Reportedly Colorado’s largest owner of low-producing, so-called “marginal” oil wells, the company in 2021 said it could not afford to pay a $2m fine ECMC levied for environmental violations, and in January it sued regulators in protest of the amount ECMC had ordered it to bond.

The commission has struggled to enforce other bonds, according to an analysis of an ECMC database that tracks daily activity. As of 25 June, 66 companies representing 1,075 wells hadn’t even filed initial paperwork to develop bonding plans. And at least two dozen operators have still not filed financial assurance after their bonding plans were approved. Two of those companies are more than a year late, according to a review of public documents.

The non-compliant companies “have been sent some enforcement letters”, then-ECMC commissioner Karin McGowan said in a public webinar on 22 May. “We are trying to close that out and find out what’s going on with those operators.” She added that this group represented a small overall proportion of the total number of unplugged wells in the state, about 2%.

After initially telling the Colorado Sun it planned to have $820m in bonding in hand by 2044, ECMC now plans to have just $613m in financial assurance on hand in 20 years. Even if every dollar of that amount materializes, it’s still $2.4bn less than the state will need to safely shutter its lowest-producing wells.

A separate analysis by Carbon Tracker, shared exclusively with DeSmog and the Guardian, showed that the state’s wells that face near-term risk of being orphaned represent at least $520m in liabilities. In other words, the amount of assurance ECMC plans on for 20 years from now may barely cover what’s already needed today.

“Negotiation and compromise cost six years of delay with no tangible improvement” in covering budget shortfalls, the Carbon Tracker analysts conclude.

‘Socialize the cost of plugging these wells among operators’

Adam Peltz, a lawyer for the Environmental Defense Fund who praised the ECMC’s rules in 2022, said Colorado is still better off than other states like Pennsylvania and New Mexico, which both have more unplugged wells than Colorado and have struggled to pass more rigorous rules.

He said Colorado will need to look outside the bonding system to solve its massive shortfall.

“You can’t solve this problem with bonds alone, because for so many companies it’s too late,” he said. “They’ll never generate enough money to pay to close their own wells.”

He pointed to another aspect of the rules developed in 2022 as a potential revenue source: the fee on producers. Currently, that program only generates $10m a year, which Peltz conceded is not enough to overcome the billions Colorado faces in oil and gas liabilities, even factoring in the availability of matching federal funds. But, he said, raising that fee significantly could help to redistribute funds from resource-rich Denver-Julesburg to depleted areas in the state.

“Colorado’s innovation was saying, here’s this additional fee, you need to pay to socialize the cost of plugging these wells among all operators,” he said. “I wish every state would do that.”

Ultimately, the Carbon Tracker analysts conclude, policymakers must decide between developing new, rigorous alternatives, or sending the bill to taxpayers by default. That will likely involve compelling resource-rich firms to start setting aside savings from their profits now.

Mitchell, the Documented analyst, recalled advice she first heard from a former colleague at the Department of the Interior: “The best time to collect is on payday.”

“In this period of record profits for the oil and gas industry,” she said, “this is kind of it.”

BTW - Trump has already proposed a deal that trades our lands and our air and our water to the Dirty Fuels Cartel in exchange for their "donation" of $1 billion to his "campaign". Let Trump win, and we're guaranteed to lose big on this.

Choking

So when your kid's asthma gets worse - or your own COPD, or Grandma's emphysema - be sure to thank The Dirty Fuels Cartel and their stable of GOP whores.

What it means for the Supreme Court to block enforcement of the EPA's 'good neighbor' pollution rule

The Environmental Protection Agency will not be able to enforce a key rule limiting air pollution in nearly a dozen states while separate legal challenges proceed around the country, under a Supreme Court decision Thursday.

The EPA's "good neighbor" rule is intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution.

Three energy-producing states - Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia - challenged the rule, along with the steel industry and other groups, calling it costly and ineffective.

The Supreme Court put the rule on hold while legal challenges continue, the conservative-led court's latest blow to federal regulations.

The high court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has increasingly reined in the powers of federal agencies, including the EPA, in recent years. The justices have restricted EPA's authority to fight air and water pollution, including a landmark 2022 ruling that limited EPA's authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming. The court also shot down a vaccine mandate and blocked Democratic President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness program.

The court is also weighing whether to overturn its 40-year-old Chevron decision, which has been the basis for upholding a wide range of regulations on public health, workplace safety and consumer protections.

A look at the good neighbor rule and the implications of the court decision.

What is the 'good neighbor' rule?

The EPA adopted the rule as a way to protect downwind states that receive unwanted air pollution from other states. Besides the potential health impacts from out-of-state pollution, many states face their own federal deadlines to ensure clean air.

States such as Wisconsin, New York and Connecticut said they struggle to meet federal standards and reduce harmful levels of ozone because of pollution from out-of-state power plants, cement kilns and natural gas pipelines that drift across their borders. Ground-level ozone, which forms when industrial pollutants chemically react in the presence of sunlight, can cause respiratory problems, including asthma and chronic bronchitis. People with compromised immune systems, the elderly and children playing outdoors are particularly vulnerable.

Judith Vale, New York's deputy solicitor general, told the court that for some states, as much as 65% of smog pollution comes from outside its borders.

States that contribute to ground-level ozone, or smog, must submit plans ensuring that coal-fired power plants and other industrial sites do not add significantly to air pollution in other states. In cases where a state has not submitted a "good neighbor" plan - or where EPA disapproves a state plan - a federal plan is supposed to ensure downwind states are protected.

What's next for the rule?

The Supreme Court decision blocks EPA enforcement of the rule and sends the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is considering a lawsuit challenging the regulation that was brought by 11 mostly Republican-leaning states.

An EPA spokesman said the agency believes the plan is firmly rooted in its authority under the Clean Air Act and "looks forward to defending the merits of this vital public health protection" before that appeals court.

The spokesman, Timothy Carroll, said the Supreme Court's ruling will "postpone the benefits that the Good Neighbor Plan is already achieving in many states and communities.''

While the plan is on pause, "Americans will continue to be exposed to higher levels of ground-level ozone, resulting in costly public health impacts that can be especially harmful to children and older adults,'' Carroll said. Ozone disproportionately affects people of color, families with low incomes, and other vulnerable populations, he said.

Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, said he was pleased that the Supreme Court "recognized the immediate harm to industry and consumers posed by this reckless rule. No agency is permitted to operate outside of the clear bounds of the law and today, once again, the Supreme Court reminded the EPA of that fact.''

With a stay in place, Nolan said the mining industry looks forward to making its case in court that the EPA rule "is unlawful in its excessive overreach and must be struck down to protect American workers, energy independence, the electric grid and the consumers it serves,."

Few states participate

The EPA rule was intended to provide a national solution to the problem of ozone pollution, but challengers said it relied on the assumption that all 23 states targeted by the rule would participate. In fact, only about half that number of states were participating as of early this year.

A lawyer for industry groups that are challenging the rule said it imposes significant and immediate costs that could affect reliability of the electric grid. With fewer states participating, the rule may result in only a small reduction in air pollution, with no guarantee the final rule will be upheld, industry lawyer Catherine Stetson told the Supreme Court in oral arguments earlier this year.

The EPA has said power-plant emissions dropped by 18% in 2023 in the 10 states where it has been allowed to enforce its rule, which was finalized last year. Those states are Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. In California, limits on emissions from industrial sources other than power plants are supposed to take effect in 2026.

The rule is on hold in another dozen states because of separate legal challenges. The states are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

Administrative overstep or life-saving protection?

Critics, including Republicans and business groups, call the good neighbor rule an example of government overreach.

"Acting well beyond its delegated powers" under the Clean Air Act, the EPA rule "proposes to remake the energy sector in the affected states toward the agency's preferred ends,'' Republican lawmakers said in a friend-of-the-court brief.

The rule and other Biden administration regulations "are designed to hurriedly rid the U.S. power sector of fossil fuels by sharply increasing the operating costs for fossil fuel-fired power plant operators, forcing the plants' premature retirement," the brief by Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Roger Wicker of Mississippi asserted. Rodgers chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, while Capito and Wicker are senior members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Supporters disputed that and called the "good neighbor'' rule critical to address interstate air pollution and ensure that all Americans have access to clean air.

"Today's move by far-right Supreme Court justices to stay commonsense clean air rules shows just how radical this court has become,'' said Charles Harper of environmental group Evergreen Action.

"The court is meddling with a rule that would prevent 1,300 Americans from dying prematurely every year from pollution that crosses state borders. We know that low-income and disadvantaged communities with poor air quality will bear the brunt of this delay,'' Harper said.

The rule applies mostly to states in the South and Midwest that contribute to air pollution along the East Coast. Some states, such as Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Wisconsin, both contribute to downwind pollution and receive it from other states.

Dumbass

Yeah, it's unconfirmed, but is anybody not thinking this is the fault of some fuckup who couldn't figure out that he's not at home with mommy and daddy, so he oughta to be looking after his own shit for once?

Goddammit, I hate these fuckin' people.

The Forest Service said June 12, 2024, that this campfire ring

is likely where the Interlaken wildfire started.

Abandoned campfire suspected cause of 450-acre Interlaken wildfire burning near Leadville

Investigator believes the campfire was left days before being reported Tuesday when the fire started south of Twin Lakes

A circle of rocks surrounds a burnt out campfire in the forest with fallen trees and some lingering smoke in the background.

An abandoned campfire likely ignited the Interlaken fire burning hundreds of acres south of Twin Lakes in Lake County, according to a U.S. Forest Service investigator.

In an update Wednesday night, the Forest Service said an investigator located a campfire ring left 60 yards from the Interlaken trail and 1.5 miles from the trailhead where the fire likely started Tuesday.

“This campfire was not properly extinguished and continued to burn. It is believed that the campfire was abandoned several days prior to its report on June 11,” the Forest Service said in a social media post.

Officials do not have any leads on who might have started the fire. They are asking anyone who may have information about campers who built a fire near the Interlaken resort between Friday and Tuesday to call a tip line at 303-275-5266.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the fire 12 miles south of Leadville had burned about 443 acres in 24 hours with zero containment.

Pre-evacuations have extended into northern Chaffee County.

There are 135 fire personnel on scene along with four helicopters and a fixed-wing aircraft, according to the USFS.

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office issued an evacuation order to the Interlaken historic district, which is home to a once popular, now-abandoned mountain hotel, and all of County Road 25 on the south side of Twin Lakes.

A pre-evacuation order was issued “until further notice” for Lost Canyon, as well as Balltown, a small residential area on the east side of Twin Lakes and County Road 30.

On Wednesday, the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office issued a pre-evacuation warning for residents and those recreating between Clear Creek Reservoir to the Chaffee County-Lake County line.

Of Wolves And Men

I don't claim to know jack shit about wildlife management or how to go about keeping the big predators from taking down livestock.

What I do know (I think) - based solely on my casual observations of human behavior - is that it's likely to become quite a battle between the ranchers and the biologists who are trying to get wolves back into the circle-of-life mix here in Colorado.

It's been shown petty dramatically that wolves come in handy when you're trying to get a regional biome back into balance after humans have spent generations fucking it all up.

Anyway, Colorado Parks & Wildlife is re-introducing gray wolves in Northern Colorado.

CPW says it will not kill wolves after attacks on North Park rancher’s cattle

In the latest chapter of Don Gittleson’s fight to protect his livestock from wolves, Colorado Parks and Wildlife says he should continue using mitigation tools the rancher claims haven’t worked

After years of discussion and a formal letter asking for help, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has denied rancher Don Gittleson’s request for the agency to kill two wolves that have been preying on cattle on his Jackson County ranch.

Gittleson on Dec. 13 sent a letter to the agency requesting the lethal removal of the wolves, “so that they do not continue to affect the livelihood and mental well-being of the agriculture members of this state.”

Since December 2021, one of the wolves — No. 2101 — has killed or injured seven of Gittleson’s cows, including a calf last week, six of his neighbor’s cows and four working dogs. The other wolf — No. 2103 — killed three lambs at rancher Philip Anderson’s place. Both ranches are in North Park.

In his letter, Gittleson asserted the agency intentionally chose not to define what a “habitual depredating wolf/wolf pack is” and implored CPW “to stop talking and start managing.”

Under the Colorado Wolf Management Plan, a rancher can kill a wolf if they discover it “chronically depredating” their livestock, or if they are in an act of self defense or defense of human life. But the plan does not clearly define what makes a wolf “chronically depredating,” and says wildlife officials will make that determination on a case-by-case basis.

On Dec. 22, the agency determined it would not lethally remove the wolves chronically depredating on Gittleson’s cattle.

The reasoning in the letter, written by CPW director Jeff Davis, is that after considering the entire history of depredation events in Gittleson’s region, including the most recent ones in November and December, and considering “the change in pack dynamics over the preceding year when most of the pack left the area and did not return,” the “number and frequency of [depredations] has dropped.”

During an interview with The Colorado Sun, Kim Gittleson, who owns the Gittleson ranch with her husband, Don, expressed frustration.

“They tell us to reach out for help with mitigation, but in the year when we had the most problems (2022), we brought in donkeys, we brought horned cattle, we had fladry, we had cracker shells, we had so many things,” she said. “In addition, we spent every night from January through the end of May (physically present with their herd, protecting it). So I’m not sure what else they think we should be doing” to keep the wolves from depredating at their ranch.

In the letter from CPW, Davis said the agency “will continue to monitor the situation and collaborate with other ranchers in Jackson County and across the state to evaluate future actions.” He encouraged the Gittlesons to continue using the tools Kim mentioned and to collaborate with their local CPW staff.

But Kim said, “At every CPW meeting, we hear about how understaffed they are. But my husband runs 11,000 acres (on land leased from the Colorado State Land Board) and 200 cattle pretty much by himself. So I would challenge them to come spend a day in the life of the ranchers who they expect to step up to the plate and do more to protect their cattle from a predator that they’re forcing down our throats”

I'll try not to say anything like, "These people are chowing down - suckling at the government teat - and they have the gall to bitch about stuff the government is doing?"

“I understand it’s not CPW’s fault, it’s the voters,” she added. “But now it’s in their court. And the governor wants these things, so maybe he should step up with more funding.”

In an email to The Sun, CPW spokesperson Travis Duncan said the agency recently entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Colorado Department of Agriculture on expanding assistance to farmers and ranchers to avoid wolf predation, and that a budget request through the governor’s office to provide support to farmers and ranchers for nonlethal deterrence will be submitted Jan 2.

The memorandum directs the general assembly to appropriate or authorize money to CPW through the general fund, the species conservation fund, the nongame conservation and wildlife restoration fund along with the wildlife cash fund — except for money generated through the sales of hunting and fishing licenses or associated federal grants — to pay for this support.

It also says “it is the mutual desire of CDA and CPW to manage and recover gray wolf populations within Colorado while minimizing conflicts with livestock and agriculture producers.”

In a November news release, the Colorado agriculture department said it will work directly with producers to provide technical assistance for nonlethal prevention methods and develop appropriate, nonlethal livestock management strategies that minimize livestock-predator interactions.

It will also “advance the adoption of nonlethal management tools” among ranchers, collaborate and co-branded media responses and educational tools and conduct cross-training at least annually between CDA and CPW staff who work directly with impacted communities. The goal is to “improve communication, understanding of available programs at both agencies, and delivery of services and resources to impacted individuals and communities.”

But Kim said in years past, when USDA helped with fladry, they only used it on 40 acres. At the time, she said, “they told us that’s one of the biggest areas they’d ever done. They’re used to dealing with small farms and ranches, not like the ones we have in this valley. And, you know, we kept our cows in that 40-acre pasture until calving season. We ended up with one dead cow — from falling and not being able to get up — another, which my husband, with a torn bicep, was able to help, and quite a few cases of mastitis (a mammary gland infection), which we’ve never had but did because we kept them in such a small area.”

CPW completed its goal of releasing 10 wolves captured in Oregon onto the West Slope last Friday. A pair of those 10 were part of the large Five Points pack in Oregon that killed three livestock animals. In an email to The Sun, Duncan responded to claims that once a wolf preys on livestock they will continue to do so in the future, by saying any wolves that have been near livestock will have some history of depredation, including the pack in Oregon, but that it “does not mean they have a history of chronic depredation.”

“If a pack has infrequent depredation events, they should not be excluded as a source population, per the (Colorado Wolf Restoration and Management) plan,” he added.

As for what the Gittlesons are going to do if the wolves that have been attacking their cattle come back: “They keep telling us we can shoot them, but I guarantee you, the first person that shoots a wolf in Colorado is going to go through hell,” Kim said. “I think the governor is going to make (CPW) come after us as hard as they can.”

In an email to The Sun, CPW said it stands by regulations in the Colorado wolf management plan.

Fouling The Nest

For the smartest critters ever, "modern" humans are almost unbelievably stupid.

I don't quite get how we decided it's OK for people to just walk away from their responsibility to clean up after themselves when they've profited from fucking up the air and the water and the soil.

Why do we do that?

Five women in my family lived either at our house on Independence Way, or on Hackberry Hill in Arvada. All five had bouts with cancer, and four of them died of it - and this in a family of some very long-lived old gals. The ones who lived in Arvada got sick.

Northern Jefferson County has been a known Disease Cluster for 50 years - downhill and downwind of Rocky Flats (plutonium) - and I'm just now learning about this uranium shit seeping into the drinking water!?!

What the actual fuck, you guys.

Cleanup company walks away from Jeffco uranium mine, state takes $7.3 million bond

Colorado mining officials say they will take over water purifying that keeps radioactivity and other contamination out of Denver and Arvada water supply.

The company charged with keeping uranium-tainted water out of Denver and Arvada’s drinking supply is walking away from cleaning up Jefferson County’s shuttered Schwartzwalder mine, and state officials are taking over a $7.3 million surety bond they say will continue to fund treatment.

Without water treatment and other uranium reclamation, the Schwartzwalder mine above Ralston Creek and Ralston Reservoir has leaked tainted water into key city supplies, state reclamation officials said in their stipulated agreement with Colorado Legacy Land. The company’s water treatment plant at the mine has been running May to October in recent years, and the state said Friday the previously posted bond will allow work to continue in 2024.

Colorado officials won’t know until the end of next year’s treatment season how many years the surety bond will last in running the plant, said Michael Cunningham, acting division director for Reclamation, Mining and Safety. Colorado could invest the surety bond and use proceeds to continue treatment, but the state may also have recourse to seek more funding from Colorado Legacy Land, Cunningham said.

The state revoked Colorado Legacy Land’s permit to run mine or cleanup operations at Schwartzwalder as part of the stipulation agreement. The stipulation agreement says no civil fines will be issued as part of the revocation and transition to state control. The latest surety bond agreement was for $7.6 million, but the state is moving to take over about $7.3 million left in the fund.

Community activists who have tried to track the uranium cleanups in both Jefferson County and Canon City said they were not surprised about CLL’s surrender of the Golden efforts.

The promises were “never going to be enough for the best cleanup possible,” said Carol Dunn, co-chair of Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste. “I could not guess where CLL got the highly optimistic idea that there was ‘easy money’ to be made.”

Reporters in the past have not received responses to inquiries at Colorado Legacy Land. A message left with Colorado Legacy Land representative Jim Harrington on Friday was not returned.

The walkaway agreement signed last week is the latest in a series of failed cleanup sagas for two major Colorado uranium sites once controlled by Colorado Legacy Land, which in turn had taken over the two sites from Cotter Corp.

Schwartzwalder, about 7 miles northwest of Golden, has not produced uranium since 2000, state officials said, and is in the final stages of rock and dirt reclamation. Water treatment at the Jeffco site must go on for years, according to regulators at the reclamation division and the state health department.

Colorado Legacy Land had also taken over and later walked away from the Cotter Mill cleanup, an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site at Cañon City. Colorado Legacy Land surprised Cañon City residents in February with an insolvency and news it was giving up its share of cleanups at both Cotter Mill and Schwartzwalder.

State action at Schwartzwalder dates at least to 2010, when reclamation officials demanded action from then-owner Cotter Corp. over discharges into surface water. The state’s stipulation agreement last week says that without proper summer water treatment, tainted mine water builds up and then overflows into Ralston Creek, which feeds Ralston Reservoir.

Unless the treatment equipment is turned on again in spring of 2024, the pool of tainted water would begin overflowing in June, state officials said in the stipulation agreement approved by the mining reclamation board on Wednesday.

The land portion of the reclamation has a finite end and will be completed under the surety bond, the state’s Cunningham said. Rock waste is being moved above any water contact on the valley floor, and will be capped with soil to be covered in vegetation, he said.

“The division is going to have a much clearer idea of how long that water can be treated utilizing the financial warranty once we get to the end of the 2024 season,” he said

“The system that’s in place there will ensure that the water that is discharged into Ralston Creek meets water quality standards,” Cunningham said. “This is what Colorado Legacy Land has been doing themselves since taking over this permit. And they’ve been successful in meeting water quality standards up there.”

Arvada water officials said they have been monitoring the discussions about Schwartzwalder and have been advocating “for the protection of Ralston Creek.”

“At this time, we have no concerns about risk to water supply or water quality in Arvada,” said Arvada infrastructure communications manager Katie Patterson. “We are confident that the state and the Mined Land Reclamation Board are committed to continuing to run the water treatment plant in the year ahead and to determining a path for long term management of the site. The city will continue to monitor, support, and engage with the state in the future management of the site to ensure the protection of Ralston Creek.”

Denver Water officials have said in the past that their own water treatment systems for Ralston Reservoir water also keep uranium or other contaminants out of city supplies.

Friday, Denver Water officials said they are “monitoring the situation at the mine and appreciate the leadership of the Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety in its work to ensure water treatment continues at the site.”

Cunningham said the state has known since early this year that Colorado Legacy Land would be leaving the site. “CLL stated and confirmed it does not presently have the financial capacity to perform its obligations under the permit,” the stipulation says, in part.

“We feel well positioned to take the site over,” Cunningham said.

Rivets

More bad news about the mass extinction mess we've gotten ourselves into.



Insects are in dramatic decline in Colorado, 35-year-long study reveals

62% fewer insects were trapped in a pristine meadow near Gothic, a loss correlated with less winter snowfall, less summer rain and warmer temperatures

Nora Underwood, a Florida State University professor of ecology and evolution, sweeps her net for grasshoppers in a study plot at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab in Gothic, Colorado on July 28, 2023. Underwood, her husband, Brian Inouye and father-in-law David Inouye, research the affect of climate change on the insect and flower species populations in the mountains near Crested Butte. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Dramatic insect declines previously reported around the world are also occurring in Colorado. Researchers with the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, or RMBL, report that flying insects in the mountains outside of Crested Butte have declined more than 60% since 1986.

The current research, published in the scientific journal Ecosphere, is noteworthy for the length of time covered and the relatively undisturbed mountain environment where it was conducted. The declines correlated with drier and warmer weather, suggesting an impact of climate change.

“Increasingly we are seeing insect declines in places that are more pristine, which is much more alarming,” said Julian Resasco, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado.

While historically seen as agricultural pests and personal nuisances, insects and other invertebrates (no backbone) are increasingly recognized for the vital services they provide in nature: pollination, pest control, nutrient cycling and sustenance for birds and other animals higher on the food chain. The continued decline of insect populations could have profound consequences for the environment, humans and other animals.

“We rely on insects for ecosystem services. We need them to be abundant and diverse,” Resasco said.

Concern about declining insect populations surged in 2017 after researchers reported that flying insects in Germany had declined by more than 75% over 27 years. That was followed by several studies mostly, but not uniformly, reporting alarming declines in insect populations around the world. The reality and the causes of insect decline are ongoing debates among entomologists.

For their study, the RMBL researchers set up a tentlike trap in the middle of a 27-acre meadow at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, 9,500 feet above sea level near the abandoned mining town of Gothic. Surrounded by the peaks and meadows of the Elk Mountains, the setting is stunning — and far removed from intensive agriculture, urban growth, pesticide use and other human activities that have been blamed for insect declines.

“We thought that it was important for us to look at a site that is free from all those influences,” said David Inouye, co-author on the research paper, and a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland.

Two days a week, the researchers capture flying insects — mostly bees, wasps and flies. They count and dry the insects, weigh them and divide them into several broad groupings. Since 1984, researchers have captured and recorded data about the insects every week of every subalpine summer for 40 years.

“If you want to see a long-term trend, you need decades of data,” Inouye said. Insect populations can fluctuate several fold from year to year. Data collected over a longer period helps identify less dramatic long-term trends. The current study is the longest controlled study of insects in Colorado and one of the longest in the United States.

The project has lasted so long that it has relied on three generations of scientists. Authors on the paper include the now-deceased originator of the work, Michael Soulé; David Inouye, who is spending his 53rd season at the laboratory this summer; and David’s son, Brian Inouye, and daughter-in-law, Nora Underwood, both professors of ecology and evolution at Florida State University.

The paper analyzes 35 years of data, from 1986 through the summer of 2020. The researchers documented a 62% decline in the number of insects captured and a 49% decline in their total weight over the period. The insect decline was correlated with less winter snowfall, less summer rain and warmer temperatures.

Average annual snowfall at the laboratory fell sharply during the study period, to 344 inches per year from 463 inches. Abundant winter snow cover provides protective insulation to overwintering insects. Average summer rainfall did not change significantly during the study’s 35 years, but years of low summer rainfall had fewer insects. Summer rainfall promotes plant growth that feeds many insects. Average temperature rose about 2 degrees Fahrenheit during the study period and was correlated with the insect decline, although less so than precipitation.

“Changes in precipitation and warmer temperatures are expected to continue under climate change,” the researchers wrote in their report. “Thus, continued insect declines might be expected even in relatively undisturbed habitats.”

“We should be concerned,” Underwood said. “There are a lot of cascading effects of insects.”

Fewer insects can mean less food for other animals, fewer flowers pollinated and fewer nutrients recycled through the environment. Underwood does have faith in the resilience of nature and is not predicting an imminent insect apocalypse or deserts in the mountains. But she notes that the study documents big changes occurring to important players in the environment with likely, but unknown, impacts occurring as climate change continues.

Underwood invokes the rivet hypothesis by famed biologist Paul Ehrlich, for whom both she and Brian worked during summers when he came to RMBL. An airplane has thousands of rivets holding it together. You can remove one rivet without causing any trouble. But if you keep removing rivets — or insects — eventually the plane will fall apart and crash. No one knows which is the crucial rivet, and maybe it is best to keep as many as possible.

David Inouye believes the insect declines in Colorado and around the nation may have already rippled through the environment. In 2019, researchers reported an alarming 29% decline in North American birds, a net loss of 3 billion birds, since 1970. Birds that feed on insects were a prominent portion of those losses. Around the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, researchers have likewise documented a striking decline in white-crowned sparrows, an insect-eating bird whose distinctive call is heard less often than in past years.

Insects and white-crowned sparrows are just one of several changes that David Inouye has observed in his decades at the laboratory. Moose and fox now live there year-round, and a Wyoming ground squirrel has moved up from lower-elevation Almont, to Crested Butte and now the laboratory. Ticks and mosquitoes that can carry West Nile virus have also appeared around the laboratory in recent years. Wildflowers are blooming earlier.

“I think in the long term, most people are going to find those changes undesirable,” he said.

Hot Enough, Thanks

Heat is the #1 weather-related cause of death in the US, killing 600 Americans every year.

And that number is going nowhere but up.

When the ocean is cool, it cools the land. When it's warm, it warms the land.

The ocean is very warm now - on it's way to pretty fuckin' hot.

There are people in Phoenix being taken to the local ER because they've contacted the asphalt pavement with bare skin for a few minutes, and suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns.

In one Sicilian town, the extreme heat shut down the whole electrical grid when the underground cabling melted.

Key Points

• Between 1979 and 2018, the death rate as a direct result of exposure to heat (underlying cause of death) generally hovered between 0.5 and 2 deaths per million people, with spikes in certain years (see Figure 1). Overall, a total of more than 11,000 Americans have died from heat-related causes since 1979, according to death certificates.
• For years in which the two records overlap (1999–2018), accounting for those additional deaths in which heat was listed as a contributing factor results in a higher death rate—nearly double for some years—compared with the estimate that only includes deaths where heat was listed as the underlying cause (see Figure 1).
• The indicator shows a peak in heat-related deaths in 2006, a year that was associated with widespread heat waves and was one of the hottest years on record in the contiguous 48 states (see the U.S. and Global Temperature indicator).
• The death rate from heat-related cardiovascular disease ranged from 0.08 deaths per million people in 2004 to 1.08 deaths per million people in 1999 (see Figure 2). Overall, the interaction of heat and cardiovascular disease caused about one-fourth of the heat-related deaths recorded in the “underlying and contributing causes” analysis since 1999 (see Figures 1 and 2).
• Since 1999, people aged 65+ have been several times more likely to die from heat-related cardiovascular disease than the general population, while non-Hispanic Blacks generally have had higher-than-average rates (see Figure 2).
• Examination of extreme events has revealed challenges in capturing the full extent of “heat-related” deaths. For example, studies of the 1995 heat wave event in Chicago (see example figure) suggest that there may have been hundreds more deaths than were actually reported as “heat-related” on death certificates.
• While dramatic increases in heat-related deaths are closely associated with the occurrence of hot temperatures and heat waves, these deaths may not be reported as “heat-related” on death certificates. This limitation, as well as considerable year-to-year
•  variability in the data, make it difficult to determine whether the United States has experienced a meaningful increase or decrease in deaths classified as “heat-related” over time.

Background

When people are exposed to extreme heat, they can suffer from potentially deadly illnesses, such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Hot temperatures can also contribute to deaths from heart attacks, strokes, and other forms of cardiovascular disease. Heat is the leading weather-related killer in the United States, even though most heat-related deaths are preventable through outreach and intervention (see EPA’s Excessive Heat Events Guidebook at: www.epa.gov/heat-islands/excessive-heat-events-guidebook).

Unusually hot summer temperatures have become more common across the contiguous 48 states in recent decades (see the High and Low Temperatures indicator), extreme heat events (heat waves) have become more frequent and intense (see the Heat Waves indicator), and these trends are expected to continue. As a result, the risk of heat-related deaths and illness is also expected to increase. The “urban heat island” effect accentuates the problem by causing even higher temperatures in densely developed urban areas.4 Reductions in cold-related deaths are projected to be smaller than increases in heat-related deaths in most regions. Death rates can also change, however, as people acclimate to higher temperatures and as communities strengthen their heat response plans and take other steps to continue to adapt.

Certain population groups already face higher risks of heat-related death, and increases in summertime temperature variability will increase that risk. The population of adults aged 65 and older, which is expected to continue to grow, has a higher-than-average risk of heat-related death. Children are particularly vulnerable to heat-related illness and death, as their bodies are less able to adapt to heat than adults, and they must rely on others to help keep them safe.8 People with certain diseases, such as cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, are especially vulnerable to excessive heat exposure, as are the economically disadvantaged. Data also suggest a higher risk among non-Hispanic Blacks.

Today, President Biden is issuing a heat wave “hazard alert” to protect workers.

Meanwhile, here’s what 2024 GOP candidates have to say about the climate crisis. pic.twitter.com/7KFZY8u1lW

— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) July 27, 2023

Putting Things Together

I'm not sure any single idea can flourish all by its little ol' lonesome - at least it's extremely rare that anything stands alone. I can't think of anything anyway, and of course, if I can't think of it, then it must not exist, right?

So there's probably something, but my default position is that nothing in nature exists exclusive of everything else in nature. It's all evolutionary. Everything comes from (and so is part of) everything else.

Ooh. See what I did there? I got all zen and shit.

Anyway, same goes for anything people come up with. Everything goes with everything else.

So I get a little freaky when somebody takes one thing and marries it up with something else, either to create a new thing, or to prove that a technology thingie and a nature thingie can be put together in a way that benefits everything.

Hops for beer flourish under solar panels. They’re not the only crop thriving in the shade.

He grows hops, used to make beer, and in recent years has also been generating electricity, with solar panels sprawled across 1.3 hectares (32 acres) of his land in the small hop-making town of Au in der Hallertau, an hour north of Munich in southern Germany.

The pilot project — a collaboration between Wimmer and local solar technology company Hallertauer Handelshaus — was set up in the fall of last year. The electricity made at this farm can power around 250 households, and the hops get shade they’ll need more often as climate change turbocharges summer heat.

Solar panels atop crops has been gaining traction in recent years as incentives and demand for clean energy skyrocket. Researchers look into making the best use of agricultural land, and farmers seek ways to shield their crops from blistering heat, keep in moisture and potentially increase yields. The team in Germany says its effort is the first agrivoltaic project that’s solely focused on hops, but projects have sprouted around the world in several countries for a variety of grains, fruits and vegetables.

Beer-making hops can suffer if exposed to too much sun, said Bernhard Gruber, who’s managing the project’s solar component — and since there were already solar installations on the farm, it made sense to give them a second purpose by mounting them on poles above the crops.

In addition to shielding plants from solar stress, the shade could mean “water from precipitation lasts longer, leaving more in the soil” and that “the hops stay healthier and are less susceptible to diseases,” Gruber said. A scientific analysis of the benefits for the plants will be concluded in October.

The farm is working with researchers to understand how to get the balance right, so the hops get enough shade and sunlight for the best harvests each year.

In the U.K., where weather is also getting hotter and more variable, a team of researchers is looking at how to retrofit solar panels onto greenhouses or polytunnels — frames covered in plastic where crops grow underneath — with semi-transparent or transparent installations.

“You can get your renewables from the land that you do have covered and you don’t need to do these massive solar arrays on good agricultural land, which is what you’ve tended to see around to date,” said Elinor Thompson, a reader at Greenwich University who’s leading the research.

Thompson, a plant biologist, and her team are working with a fruit farm in Kent in southern England to make sure the plants also get the best out of solar structures.

“Nobody can afford to lose crop, especially in current conditions,” she said. “We are assuming that British summers are going to get hotter, we have a problem with water shortages, we need to be efficient in all parts of agriculture.”

Having shade where it’s useful and monitoring the effects of different arrangements of solar panels on a variety of crops will help the world prepare for a more climate-variable future, Thompson said.

In East Africa, which has suffered from a long and punishing drought that scientists said was worsened by human-caused climate change, solar panels can also help keep moisture in plants and soil and reduce the amount of water needed, said Richard Randle-Boggis, a research associate at the University of Sheffield who’s developing two agrivoltaic systems in Kenya and Tanzania.

Randle-Boggis said the systems can be used for “climate change resilience and a way of improving the growing environment for crops, while also providing low carbon electricity.” He said that some of the crops under the partial shade of solar panels are using around 16% less irrigation.

The solar-covered farms saw increased yields for maize, Swiss chard and beans, and while growers experienced lower yields for onions and sweet peppers, they still had the added benefit of clean electricity generation.

But crop yields can also “vary depending on the weather conditions because we’re seeing the climate changing,” said Randle-Boggis, although he added he was “really surprised and impressed with some of the results that we’re seeing” for solar-covered crops.

“Maize is grown by about 50% of farmers in Tanzania. Maize is also a sun loving plant. So the fact that we had an 11% yield increase in maize ... is a phenomenal result,” he said.

And Randle-Boggis said these projects can continue to be replicated around the world for many different crops, as long as systems are “designed with the local context in mind.”

A future with more crops under solar is Gruber’s hope for beer-making hops, too.

“At the end of the year we will set up another solar park over hops,” which will have about 10 times the electricity-generating potential as the current project, Gruber said.

But that’s still just the beginning.

“We’re getting lots of inquires from hop farmers,” he said, “even from abroad.”

Congratulations to all the

beer-drinkers

and Greenies -

we got us a big fat 'W'

The Planet

A coupla degrees warmer than 'normal' during the winter, and more pine beetles survive, which means more trees are killed by the beetles, which means a greater negative impact on businesses that depend on the health of the land - which, BTW, includes every fucking business you care to mention.

• Timber
• Tourism
• Shipping
• Real Estate
• Manufacturing
• Consumer Goods
• and and and - everything

If you're not concerned about environmental issues, then you're a shitty businessman.

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From two years ago

Monarch Pass could serve as a new model for wildfire mitigation in treacherous areas

About 90% of the tall spruce on Monarch Pass have been killed by beetles. If a fire were to spark there, the repercussions would be devastating.

MONARCH PASS — Sergio Bernal casually flicks his wrist and the towering spruce falls. The Oregon forester presses a button and buzzing saws de-limb the beetle-killed tree and slice it into 33-foot logs. A giant claw swings the tree to the side and the slash falls to the forest floor. The eight-wheeled Finnish machine — called a harvester — captained by Bernal crawls down the leafy slope and grabs another tree.

In a matter of minutes, Bernal has stacked hundreds of dead spruce trees on the steep slope. Behind him, another forester in yet another massive machine called a forwarder gathers the freshly felled trees for transport to nearby lumber mills or local firewood sellers.

“These machines, this approach, opens up a lot of opportunity for us to get into areas where we haven’t been able to get in and treat before,” says Andy Lerch, shouting above the growling diesel engine and churning saw.

In it, he covers the industry from the inside out, plus the fun side of being outdoors in our beautiful state.

Lerch is the lead forester for the Arkansas River Watershed Collaborative, a unique coalition of communities, water managers and agencies stretching from Leadville to Kansas that has partnered with the Forest Service in a first-of-its-kind project on the steep slopes flanking Monarch Pass.

About 90% of the tall spruce on Monarch Pass have been killed by beetles. If a fire were to spark there, the repercussions would be devastating. Power lines would fall. The Monarch ski area would be threatened. U.S. 50 would close. Recreation would slow and downstream economies would falter. And, perhaps most importantly, thousands of residents in the 23,000-square-mile Arkansas River Basin would for years see their watershed churning with sediment flowing from the burn scar.

The threat of a devastating wildfire and post-fire impacts — evidenced this summer by rockfall and mudslides from burn scars impacting communities like Glenwood Springs — led a wide collaboration of municipalities, water-guardians and land managers in the Upper Arkansas River Basin to fund the pilot logging project on Monarch Pass that will likely become a model for communities across the West. As the budget-strapped U.S. Forest Service grapples with increasingly large and destructive wildfires, local communities are acknowledging the need to support forest management projects themselves.

And those projects need to be economically viable.

Oregon-based Miller Timber Services, which contracted with the Forest Service to harvest dead spruce on Monarch Pass, is able to sell timber to lumber mills in Montrose and the San Luis Valley. Smaller trees are sold for local firewood. And Monarch ski area hired the company to remove dead trees this summer.

“If we didn’t have that forest industry and those mills to be able to send this stuff, it would be impossible to do this kind of work,” Lerch said, repeating a mantra among foresters that nearby timber mills are essential for most logging and wildfire mitigation projects.

It’s taken two summers to thin about 466 acres of forest on Monarch Pass. The Miller Timber loggers left last week. Lerch is still tallying final numbers but he estimated his crews have pulled 9,000 tons of timber, or 2.3 million board feet of beetle-killed spruce, off the pass in the past two years. That’s about 53,500 trees.

A Ponsse Bear 8-wheeler cut-to-length harvester machine navigates through the freshly cut forest on Sept. 24, 2021, at Monarch Pass near Poncha Springs. The harvester head is equipped with saws and measuring tools to cut trees one at a time before leaving them on a mat of slash piles as it clears the beetle-kill forest. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)

The new technology — computerized cut-to-length logging machines that are prevalent everywhere but the U.S. — allows foresters to reach dead timber on steep slopes while protecting the ground to prevent erosion. Each of the eight massive tires on the articulating Ponsse harvester and forwarder machines has a pounds-per-square-inch impact on the ground that is less than that of a mountain bike tire, Lerch said. A winch on the back of the machine keeps them tethered to ridgelines, allowing them to access slopes as steep as 35 degrees.

The light touch of the machines, with slash piled on the forest floor, has limited the amount of debris that flows down the slopes during rain storms and spring runoff. Typical logging operations leave scars that can become rivers of sediment when soaked. That’s not happening on Monarch Pass.

Chuck Rhoades, a research scientist with the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, has been studying erosion below the logging operation on Monarch Pass. So far, he said, “we’ve not seen anything widespread or alarming.”

Hydrologists and soil scientists in the U.S. do not have a lot of experience with these mechanized, Nordic logging machines, so the results of Rhoades’ erosion studies, as well as how the logging might reduce the impacts of catastrophic wildfire, could enable more future mitigation in steep terrain, he said.

“If we only treat fuels on flat ground, we are not going to be able to treat many spaces, especially in Colorado,” Rhoades said. “This could allow the Forest Service to think about how this new tool can help the agency be more flexible when it comes to working with steep terrain.”

But the technology and on-the-ground impacts of the logging on Monarch Pass — pioneered in the U.S. by Miller Timber Services — are just one way that the project is a model for future forestry management in Colorado’s drought-and-beetle-impacted high country. The community support for the project also is a first.

“It’s a convergence of values,” Lerch said. “We are seeing that investment from so many different groups and communities, because it does affect so many people.”

The Monarch Pass project is actually a tiny step in a much larger plan to reduce wildfire risk on more than 20,000 public acres and 10,000 private acres in the Upper Arkansas River watershed. The Chaffee County Community Wildfire Protection Plan traces back to a valley-wide planning effort called Envision Chaffee County and a voter-approved sales tax in 2018. That tax revenue fills three buckets for investment in forest health and wildfire mitigation, preserving agricultural land and mitigating the impacts of outdoor recreation.

The forest health funding is helping Chaffee County attract a flood of federal money. There’s an alphabet soup of acronyms involved in the now 4-year-old wildfire mitigation effort, which blends local, regional, state and federal agencies, utilities, communities and advocacy groups. The watershed-wide effort to reduce fire risk worked with Colorado State University’s Colorado Forest Restoration Institute to create a map of where mitigation work should focus.

Chaffee County Commissioner Greg Felt called it “our bang-for-your-buck map.”

“If you treat the right 5% of your acreage, we can reduce our risk of catastrophic wildfire by 50%,” he said. “That was a huge realization and really validated by the science.”

Forest stripped of beetle-kill spruce trees with younger trees remaining seen on September 24, 2021 near Monarch Pass. In effort to reduce wildfire fuels, the Arkansas River Watershed Collaborative worked with Miller Timber Services to remove the dead trees using the CTL logging equipment. Early studies show the light-touch logging machines are not creating significant erosion in the headwaters of the Arkansas River. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)

The community wildfire protection plan, which by 2030 could see $40 million spent to treat more than 30,000 acres, last year started chipping slash that homeowners piled at the end of their driveways. That program was called Chaffee Chips. The county also started carving fire breaks between forested public lands and neighborhoods, part of the Chaffee Treats program.

Then the National Forest Foundation created the Upper Arkansas Forest Fund to serve as a clearing house of grants and federal dollars for wildfire mitigation work. That fund, directed in part by the county’s 35-partner Envision Forest Health Council, has already built fire breaks on Methodist Mountain above Salida, and above the Arkansas River above and below Browns Canyon National Monument.

Last week the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program announced it was investing $5.7 million in the Chaffee County Community Wildfire Protection Plan, using the Upper Arkansas Forest Fund created by the National Forest Foundation.

And don’t forget to add the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to the mix, as federal land managers overseeing all forestry work on federal land. There’s also umbrella groups, like the Rocky Mountain Restoration Initiative and the Arkansas River Watershed Collaborative adding their letters to the acronym stew as they gather partners to protect water and forests and work beyond all kinds of local and regional boundaries in the headwaters of the Arkansas River

For fans of acronyms and math problems, that recent grant looks like this: USDA + USFS + BLM+ NRCS + RCPP = $5.7 million for CWPP + ARWC + RMRI + NFF + UAFF.

This summer Felt flew out to Washington, D.C., to share the border-dissolving wildfire mitigation plan at the National Association of Counties’ annual meeting. He titled his talk “Building community through wildfire resilience.”

“In a time of, you know, really polarizing politics and difficulty in talking about almost anything without setting people off, when you find something that really resonates across all the partisanship and political lines and can just be viewed as a community challenge we all need to address, that’s the kind of success we need to have right now if we have any hope of returning to a more functional society,” Felt said. “Yeah it costs a lot of money, but it speaks to our role as stewards. We are surrounded by 80% public lands. That’s an incredible asset but also an incredible responsibility and we need to do our part.”

The effort through large groups like the Rocky Mountain Restoration Initiative is stirring more communities to look beyond borders for statewide solutions to forests withering with declining precipitation and spiking temperatures.

“Chaffee County is creating the model and a lot of other communities are looking at that,” said Marcus Selig, the vice president of field programs for the National Forest Foundation and a longtime Salida resident.

The $5.7 million grant will be matched one-to-one, so at least $11 million will be invested in wildfire mitigation on public and private land above the Arkansas River in the next several years, Selig noted.

“If we can’t make it work here in Chaffee County, with all these things lined up and all these partners at the table and the community support and the different funding sources and a fantastic execution plan,” he said, “we may not stand a chance.”

The Dirtiest Lakes

Today's Unfettered Free Market Paradise. Be business will regulate itself - the market will fix any problem that comes along because the owners always put the health of people and their living space first. Right?

Florida lakes are not clean - they're too polluted for swimming or healthy aquatic life. Because of course.

The study by the Environmental Integrity Project analyzed biennial pollution reports sent by states to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Florida has climbed to the top of another ignominious list, thanks to its hundreds of thousands of acres of dirty lakes.

The state's waters have long been fouled by dirty stormwater and algae blooms fed by fertilizer run off from farms. Now a new study examining water quality across the U.S. shows Florida ranking first for the highest total acres of lakes too polluted for swimming or healthy aquatic life. That means water can have high levels of fecal matter and other bacteria that can sicken people , or have low levels of oxygen or other pollution that can harm fish and other aquatic life. The state ranked second for polluted estuaries.

The Environmental Integrity Project launched the project to track the progress of the Clean Water Act as it nears its 50th anniversary.

“Fifty years ago, we had the imagination and political will to face big problems and try to do something about them,” said Eric Schaeffer, the project's executive director and former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulatory office . “We're hoping at this half-century mark that we can find the courage to recommit.”

The group based the findings on Florida’s 2020 water quality report filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The same reporting from other states was used to compile the rankings. Ohio and the Great Lakes were excluded because they compile data on lakes differently.

The 1972 law made it a federal crime to directly discharge pollution into waters, but remained vague about runoff that drains into waters. That’s created decades of problems for states like Florida, where farms and dense urban areas line waterways.

Across the U.S., it’s also allowed industrialized agricultural operations to largely bypass pollution limits, Schaeffer said.

“A failure to confront agriculture is probably the biggest program failure in the Clean Water Act,” said Schaeffer, who resigned from his EPA post in 2002 after criticizing the Bush administration for gutting the Clean Air Act. “We have to confront the fact that agricultural runoff is really the leading cause of water pollution in the U.S. today. I don't think that was true so much 50 years ago.”

In Florida, nearly 900,000 acres of lakes are classified as impaired for swimming or healthy aquatic life. About 2,500 acres of estuaries are polluted, accounting for 99% of the total assessed.

A big driver of that is Lake Okeechobee, which covers about 450,000 square acres and has been polluted by decades of agricultural and stormwater runoff. The $23 billion Everglades restoration plan is intended to undo much of the damage caused by polluted water flowing out of the lake. But Florida has not yet been able to slow the amount of phosphorus flowing into the lake, which can feed algae blooms.

The amount remains about three to five times higher than the 140 metric ton limit set by the state. And even more legacy phosphorus sits in about four inches of muck at the bottom of the lake.

The state and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are now in the midst of revising restoration work planned for Lake Okeechobee . Plans originally included about 46,000 acres of storage but will now include about 50 deep aquifer storage and recovery wells at 10 locations around the lake.

The Clean Water Act was created in 1972 after decades of industrialization had left the nation’s waters a foul, stinky, poisonous mess. Ohio’s Cuyahoga River set the stage after routinely catching fire , finally drawing national attention and a renewed concern over polluted rivers across the U.S. The law set goals for reaching healthy targets for recreation and aquatic life by 1983 and stopping the discharge of pollution into navigable waters by 1985.

"Things have changed for the better since then, there's no doubt," Schaeffer said. "The Potomac River is now a major bass fishery. You can actually canoe down the Cuyahoga River. But we don't have the fishable, swimmable waters we were promised, and we have more work to do before we get them. "

The law made it a federal crime to discharge any pollution from “a pipe” or point source into waters and required states to regularly monitor water for impairments. That meant industrial facilities or sewer plants, like those in South Florida, could no longer dump waste directly into canals or the ocean. The EPA used the law to force Florida Power & Light to create cooling canals for Turkey Point rather than dump water used to cool the plant directly into Biscayne Bay.

But what it failed to address, the study notes, was the runoff that drains from cities and neighborhoods , and especially the tons of fertilizer used in agriculture that flow off of fields and in to water ways every year. While there are pollution limits , enforcing the limits is largely voluntary. Florida uses Best Management Practices, or BMPs, for its farms.

The Florida Department of Agriculture has been chronically understaffed and the Department of Environmental Protection has slashed its staff over the years.

A 2020 review of DEP enforcement by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility found that despite promises of reform, enforcement under Gov. Ron DeSantis continued to drop. While the number of inspections increased, finding more cases of noncompliance, the rate of enforcement fell.

DeSantis also formed a task force aimed at tackling the toxic algae increasingly spreading in state waters. But so far, state lawmakers have failed to adopt the task force's recommendations.

In order to achieve the goals set out in the Clean Water Act , the report recommends Congress:

• Require pollution standards be updated more frequently to keep pace with changing industry
• Close the loophole for urban and agricultural runoff
• End the patchwork of guidelines across states and set universal standards
• Make it easier to enforce clean-ups