COLORADO— Millions of tourists fly every year into Denver International Airport hoping to see the natural beauty Colorado is known for. Huge signs on the walls as they arrive exclaim “WELCOME TO COLORFUL COLORADO,” against color-saturated pictures of people straddling mountain bikes looking astonished at mountain vista they find themselves in, and skiing chest deep…
DENVER – Land conservation is a tricky business, and everything is a trade off, according to David Lucas, manager of The Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, outside metro Denver. Native insects most likely perish from the chemical-laden flea spray wildlife managers use, but the endangered mammals that live on the refuge stay plague-free. The…
ALAMOSA — Renewable Water Resources, a Denver-based company, is considering a diversion of up to 22,000 acre-feet of water a year out of the San Luis valley for Front-Range municipal use, according to Cleave Simpson, general manager of Rio Grande Water Conservation District. The San Luis valley is one of the poorest and driest regions…
SUMMITVILLE — The Summitville cleanup site, between towering San Juan Mountain peaks in southwest Colorado, has cost taxpayers almost $300 million thus far. It will continue to cost an additional $2 million every year, according to site manager Mark Rudolph of the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment. He oversees an industrial water-cleaning…
GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK — Rangers at Great Sand Dunes are fighting to save the population of Rio Grande cutthroat trout within its borders, according to Park Resources Manager Fred Bunch. The fish has seen serious population decline in the southwestern part of Colorado after invasive Brown and Rainbow trout push cutthroats out…
COLORADO SPRINGS — Colorado Springs Utilities officials are embarking on major shifts in the way they are producing electricity for a growing city. With the planned closing of the coal-fired Martin Drake Power Station by 2035, and a wide public backlash to coal, utility officials say they are looking towards renewables. “But we will never…
DENVER – Call him the Ice Librarian. He wears a brown beanie over a long ponytail. He has a curly goatee and glasses. Richard Nunn. His library is not books. He is the keeper of the nation’s ice cores, up to 420,000 years old, pulled from deep under Greenland, Alaska, and Antarctica. The library is…
COLORADO SPRINGS– Feeling stressed out? It may be the pollution. Pollution can take many forms— air and water pollution are familiar and known to cause adverse effects on health, but what about noise? Noise pollution, from airplanes, highways, and trains, can also negatively impact health. Colorado College lays next to a major highway, railway,…
