GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK- At the Great Sand Dunes National Park, Fred Bunch, the park resources manager, faces a conundrum. He wants to make the night quieter, the skies darker, and increase visitor traffic. The dunes lie in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. They rise out of the landscape between…
COLORADO SPRINGS- The Ray Nixon Power Plant, located on the outskirts of Colorado Springs, exemplifies what it means to be using coal, one of the oldest and dirtiest resources, in the midst of a present day push to shift away from fossil fuels. Driving into the plant, all is calm. Open prairie stretches for miles…
GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK – The sun glints off of a long line of cars sitting outside the entrance of Great Sand Dunes National Park. It got so congested that park officials even went as far as to place an outhouse along the road for guests as they waited to enter. The park simply…
COLORADO SPRINGS- As our group of Colorado college students rode up to Colorado Springs’s (CSU) coal fired power plant southeast of the city, CSU’s public relations chief Amy Trinidad waited energetically in front of the plant. She greeted us as we got off our bus, seemingly eager to show off the utilities recent efforts to…
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…
ERIE- Erie resident Amanda Harper stands by the road in front of her house, the sun sinking towards the Rockies, wondering whether voters will help her pass a statewide set back rule on oil and gas next week Her dog circles around her nudging a dirt caked ball. She throws the ball and the dog…
ERIE — Across the plains of Weld County, Colorado, metal towers splinter the blue skyline: oil rigs in every direction. One sits next to a high school in Erie. Another operates in a green public park where children shoot down playground slides. Others extract oil and gas within a few hundred feet of homes. They…
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– A huge federal government freezer west of Denver holds the nation’s collection of ice cores crucial for analyzing climate change. The ice cores come from Antarctica, Greenland and Alaska. In order to keep them from melting, curators keep the freezer set at around at least as cold as minus 11 degrees Fahrenheit. They have backup generators in…
COLORADO SPRINGS—Colorado Springs Utilities electricity providers still rely largely on coal but say they increasingly will rely on natural gas and solar. “We’re not all the media portrays us to be,” public relations chief Amy Trinidad said during a recent visit. The latest efforts are focused on implementing more solar panels. Solar energy currently costs twice as much per megawatt…
