photo by Zane Selvans

The city is considering alternatives for the Fourmile Creek path in the vicinity of 19th and Upland near Crest View Elementary School (see project map here).

The staff recommendation is to put the multi-use path along the creek right of way. This alternative is not only best for flood mitigation, but is the only alternative that provides safe separation between cars and people walking or biking. The paved path would be maintained by the City of Boulder to a transportation standard. It would be plowed in the winter, providing safe, separated, year-round access for school children and bicycle commuters, thereby meeting goals of promoting walking and bicycling for both the Boulder Valley School District and the city. The completed path will ultimately be a part of a continuous Fourmile Creek path running from the Diagonal Highway almost to Lee Hill Road, providing safe access to the foothills trails. Compared to the rest of the city, north Boulder is sorely lacking in a long, continuous, multi-use path for recreation and commuting.

Nearby landowners have objected to this path. If we want to see a safe, continuous Fourmile Creek path in north Boulder, interested cyclists, walkers, Crest View parents and students should attend the Public Hearing at the Greenways Advisory Committee Meeting at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 15 at the Municipal Building lobby, 1777 Broadway, to show support for the staff recommendation of a paved, multi-use path along the creek right of way. Public comments will be at the beginning of the meeting. Please plan to attend and let your voice be heard! And forward this notice to others who might be interested.

For more information:
Overview of the project
Staff report and recommendations

“Imposing, impersonal buildings that bear no resemblance to their communities are off-putting. Traditional architecture draws people to its harmonious, human scale. Local, natural materials not only protect our environment, but connect us to it. And the character of a community is preserved in attention to historical precedent so that we don’t have a cookie-cutter country but a patchwork that represents who we are both individually and collectively. I believe that cities should be built to last, so that we retain the unique sense of place that accrues over time.”

Read the entire article at Atlantic Cities: Should Cities of the Future Look More to the Past?.

“The extraordinary rise of living alone is among the greatest social changes since the baby boom. Until recently, no culture in human history had sustained large numbers of people in places of their own. Today more than 40% of households have just one occupant in cities such as Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Denver, St. Louis, and Seattle. In Manhattan, nearly 50% of households consist of a single occupant, a number that seems impossibly high until you discover that the rate is similar in London and Paris, and even higher — a staggering 60% — in Stockholm.”

Read the entire article at Term Sheet: Solo nation: American consumers stay single.

Read the entire survey at Realtor.org: smart_growth_comm_survey_results_2011.pdf.

Boulder County farm (photo by Meaghan Huffman)

At a PLAN-Boulder forum on Monday, January 30, a panel of five Boulder County farmers, moderated by a CSU extension agent, related, among other details, that their practices have changed significantly over the years so that they plow much less — thereby depleting the soil of less moisture — and apply less pesticides.

The five panelists — Keith Bateman, Jason Condon, Dan Lisco, Paul Schlagel, and Jules Van Thuyne — reflected in a general fashion about their lives as farmers and the state of agriculture in Boulder County. Between them they grow wheat, corn, barley, sugar beets, alfalfa hay, grass hay, organic vegetables and small grains, and cattle. Lisco also raises, rents, and sells horses.

All of the farmers declared that they liked farming. Each of them is descended from a multi-generational farming family — two of which settled in Boulder County in the late 1850s. Most of them lease land from the Boulder County Parks and Open Space Department and/or cultivate land encumbered by a conservation easement held by the department. Several of them claimed that they would not have been able to farm in Boulder County without the county open space department, because farm land would have become too expensive to own or lease.

Some of them recounted that agriculture in Boulder County changed dramatically in the 1970s. They said that the county had contained many dairy farms, which closed. A John Deere dealership in Longmont shut down. A seed store moved away. Feed lots disappeared. A Kuner canning plant closed. A sugar mill was shuttered. Later on, in the 1980s and 1990s, the vegetable farms around Longmont that were owned by Japanese-American families collapsed. The number of farmers dropped significantly, and the famers who hung on began to cultivate much more acreage. Schlagel commented that up through the middle of the twentieth century, “80 acres used to be enough to support a family.” Very few farmers have moved into Boulder County from other areas.

One panelist commented that the changes had meant that he needed to stock many more spare parts for agricultural machinery. Others said that they led to much more time driving to and from Greeley to obtain parts. Van Thuyne observed that he spends a large portion of his time serving on ditch boards and agricultural committees, because there are fewer farmers to share the burden of collective action.

Most of them claimed that their biggest challenges are labor and water. A few of the panelists mentioned the difficulty of retaining skilled labor to operate complicated, expensive machinery and sometimes make critical farming decisions. The one organic farmer on the panel, Condon, said that he employs up to 30 laborers at a time, and that locating convenient housing for them was often difficult. Lisco cited “weed pressure” as a major problem, which he asserted often originated from seeds in irrigation water and from weeds growing along the side of roads.

All of them listed water as a critical concern, because they are often unsure whether they will have enough when they need it. Some, however, indicated that the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, by providing late season water, had helped to lessen the problem. One panelist, though, commented that the Boulder County Parks and Open Space Department had often blundered when buying properties by allowing their Colorado-Big Thompson water rights to be stripped off and transferred elsewhere.

Bateman claimed that the location of his farms in southeast Boulder County made water management particularly tricky. He claimed that until the Denver Water Board built Gross Reservoir, South Boulder Creek used to provide significant irrigation water into early August. Condon related that he has to water his vegetables every day of the growing season and that, after his ditch rights are depleted, he depends upon buying water from the City of Boulder and other municipalities.

Adrian Card, the moderator of the program, claimed that the experience of farming east of Highway 95 is quite different from that of farming west of it. Most of the panelists said that they have to coordinate the movement of their agricultural machinery along roads and highways with rush-hour traffic, sometimes having to work fields at night to accommodate vehicular transportation. Lisco, who, among other operations, runs Sombrero Ranch north of the City of Boulder, said that he used to be able to drive his horses from pastures south of the city along roads to the ranch. But for many years he has had to carry them in trucks.

Condon, the organic farmer, disclosed that retail marketing demands a lot of his attention. He said that he sells his produce to retail stores — including, occasionally, Alfalfa’s, to restaurants, to a “CSA” (community-supported agriculture), and at a stand. Almost all of it is sold between Fort Collins and Denver. He commented that the stand requires a lot of labor time to staff. He also noted that he feels obligated to provide the CSA with a variety of crops, some of which entail a loss or no profit.

The others said they generally sold their crops to processors or bulk consumers. Some sell corn to a large egg farm in Platteville that markets its eggs under the “Morning Fresh” brand. Shlagel said he sells beet sugar to Great Western Sugar, which, after bankruptcy many years ago, emerged as a producers’ co-op. Schlagel and another panelist said they sell barley to Miller/Coors. A couple of the farmers sell wheat to Con Agra in Commerce City. Lisco said he supplies forage on a retail basis to local cattle and chicken producers.

The conventional farmers indicated that they are deterred from organic farming by the paucity of markets. For instance, they claimed that only one mill will buy organic, Boulder County wheat, which is fairly low in protein.

The conventional farmers reported plowing much less than was formerly the custom, practicing “conservation tillage,” and leaving stalks and other residue on the surface of the land. This relatively new approach conserves moisture in the soil. Van Thuyne said that he has the soil in every part of his properties tested every year, so he knows exactly how much fertilizer to add.

Condon, however, observed that conservation tillage is usually not feasible for vegetable farms, because surface residue is detrimental.  “Getting enough nitrogen through organic sources is probably the biggest challenge of organic vegetable farming,” Condon commented. He asserted that vegetables heavily deplete the soil of nitrogen, and that to compensate for the loss he must spread on his farm large volumes of composted manure.

The conventional farmers claimed that they use pesticides more sparingly than in the past. A couple of them disclosed that they used to apply “pre-emergent” herbicide to the soil at the same time they seeded, but no longer. Van Thuyne remarked that seeds are now better than before, and that he avoids pesticide use by monitoring early plant health. He observed that corn and other crops can be planted in narrower rows by using GPS technology and that the narrower rows lead to a thicker plant canopy that discourages weeds. He asserted that Round-Up is the only herbicide that he uses on corn.

Schlagel said that he sometimes has to spray his barley to combat Russian wheat aphids. Lisco declared that he sprays his alfalfa with a synthetic, organic compound, sold as “Warrior,” to fight the alfalfa weevil. He claimed that he always consults with neighboring bee-keepers before he sprays to avoid harming the insects. Others recounted that they had to use special spraying techniques near residential areas to prevent dispersal of the chemicals.

Condon uses no pesticides. Consequently, he said that he sometimes loses entire crops.

Hence the pertinence of the question whether building the proposed highway at Rocky Flats would endanger people by exposing them to plutonium. To answer this question, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center contracted with Marco Kaltofen of the Boston Chemical Data Corp. to collect soil samples in the area proposed for construction of the highway and to analyze the samples for plutonium content.

We asked the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the agency that manages the wildlife refuge, to allow Kaltofen and his colleague, Strongbear, to enter the refuge to collect samples in the area intended for the highway. FWS denied this request. Thus, in September 2011 when Kaltofen and Strongbear came to Colorado they collected samples outside the refuge fence along Indiana St., route of the proposed highway. In this area they collected 19 samples from surface soil, plus 3 at a depth of 12 inches and 1 at a depth of 6 inches. Samples in which they detected plutonium were further analyzed for composition and the size of individual microscopic particles to identify those that represent a significant inhalation hazard.

Principal findings from soil samples

Kaltofen and Strongbear found that the Indiana St. study area was contaminated with plutonium and traces of americium. The plutonium concentrations in their samples were roughly equivalent to concentrations found in the same area in 1970 by P. W. Krey and E. P. Hardy of the Atomic Energy Commission (see Figure 1). According to Kaltofen, “There was no statistically significant difference between this data set and the 1970 data set. Plutonium losses appear to be approximately equal in magnitude to plutonium inputs [from upwind portions of the site] in the Indiana St. area.”

Figure 1: Plutonium distribution in soil in 1970; adaptation of a map prepared in that year by P. W. Krey and E. P. Hardy of the Atomic Energy Commission. The Rocky Flats site is clearly identified on this map. The dotted red line indicates the route proposed for the Jefferson Parkway. Click to enlarge.

Plutonium: The Indiana St. samples showed the presence of both plutonium-239/240 and plutonium-238 (see Figure 2). Plutonium-238 is far more radioactive than 239 because its half-life is only 87.7 years, while that of 239 is 24,110 years.

Uranium and thorium: Soil samples taken along Indiana St. as well as from more remote locations showed elevated levels of naturally occurring uranium and thorium. Though these materials are not part of the contamination from Rocky Flats, Kaltofen points out that they do represent an inhalation hazard because they contain alpha emitting particles that are in the size range of respirable particles (0.5 to 5.0 microns). This means there is more alpha radiation in the area proposed for the highway than simply that emitted by plutonium.

Hot particles: Particles that contain substantially more radioactivity than surrounding inert material and that are in the size range that can be inhaled and entrapped in air sacs of a lung are referred to as hot particles. Plutonium-bearing samples in this study contained multiple hot particles. Many of the particles catalogued in this study were in the size range that is easily inhaled and retained in the lungs. Official standards for permissible exposure are not calculated in a way that takes account of the concentrated danger posed by hot particles.

Figure 2. Location of samples collected along Indiana St. that contained either plutonium 239/240 or plutonium-238 or both. Each sample is indicated by a number assigned to it followed by its plutonium content in picocuries per kilogram (pCi/Kg). To translate into picocuries per gram (pCi/g), multiply by 1,000. Thus the 30 pCi/Kg content of sample 50S = 0.030 pCi/g, the 1,579 pCi/Kg content of sample 5S = 1.579 pCi/g. All samples are soil samples except for 44B, which shows plutonium found in tree bark at that location.

Questions about average background deposits

Plutonium is not part of natural background radiation, but due to fallout from atmospheric detonations background radiation around the world now includes some quantity of plutonium. Specifying the average background for plutonium in soil along the Front Range of the Rockies in Colorado means that deposits in excess of this amount can be attributed to Rocky Flats. The “cleanup” of the Rocky Flats site was predicated on an average background level for plutonium of 0.04 picocuries per gram of soil (pCi/g).

By contrast, according to Kaltofen’s calculation, the average background level measured by Krey and Hardy in 1970 is 0.010 pCi/g. In addition, in 1994 Scott B. Webb and colleagues at CSU in a study on “The Spatial Distribution of Plutonium in Soil Near the Rocky Flats Plant” found a median level of 0.011 pCi/g in samples collected along the Front Range more than 10 miles from Rocky Flats. Finally, an August 2002 Los Alamos National Laboratory study found between 0.010 and 0.023 pCi/g of plutonium-239 in soils and sediments of the upper Rio Grande valley of southern Colorado (LA-13974-PR). Collectively, these studies suggest that the Rocky Flats “cleanup” may have been done in a way that underestimated the amount of plutonium deposited in the environment from the Rocky Flats Plant itself. The quantities, ranging from 0.01 pCi/g to 0.04 pCi/g, are very small, but when dealing with plutonium very small amounts matter. If Krey and Hardy’s background number is more accurate, the “cleanup” may have been less protective than it should have been.

A recommendation: In response to the foregoing, the EPA and CDPHE should perform a comprehensive analysis of undisturbed soils along the Front Range in areas least likely to have been affected by Rocky Flats to arrive at a definitive calculation of average background for plutonium from global fallout in the area. This number would serve as a baseline for all future work related to plutonium in the environment on and off the Rocky Flats site.

Drill rig at Fairview and Hwy 119 in Weld County (photo courtesy Teresa Foster)

On Monday, February 6th, the City of Longmont will host a Community Open House to ask the public to respond to carefully framed questions regarding the city’s revision of Longmont’s Oil and Gas Regulations. This orchestrated format precludes meaningful options for responsible regulation.

Most Longmont residents want regulations that protect our health, safety, well-being, and property values. We don’t want fracking near our homes, schools, churches, and sensitive environments. We want responsible regulations that sustain our rights, but we will not be given an opportunity to vote on fracking in Longmont.

Monday’s Community Open House allows us to be seen and heard, without having to speak up or stand out.

Please attend the February 6th Open House to participate in a unified response.

LongmontROAR representatives will be outside to greet you when you arrive. We will have information and instructions on how to deliver a surprising and respectful message to our City Government. Your presence will be the voice of our community.

We would like to have an estimate of how many people might attend. Please signup here or at LongmontROAR.org. The website has additional information about the City Open House, the issue of Oil & Gas Wells and Fracking in Longmont, how this threatens Longmont residents, and what we can do.

When: February 6 th, 2012. 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm

Where: Longmont Civil Center, 350 Kimbark Street, Longmont CO 80501

Why: To demonstrate that we expect Responsible Oil and Gas Regulation.

We hope to see you there,

LongmontROAR

“One of the key elements that will ultimately determine how many millions of dollars will be spent cleaning up contamination that originated from milling operations once located on the City of Boulder’s 103-acre Valmont Butte property is whether or not adjacent properties were also contaminated by those operations.”

Read the entire article at the Boulder Weekly: Valmont cemetery families say city in danger of digging up human remains.

In the summer of 2010, Boulder’s innovative Climate Smart Loan Program screeched to a halt, because the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) decided that the property assessed clean energy (PACE) financing mechanism amounted to a lien on any property enrolled in the program (read FHFA’s statements, and Boulder County’s response, both as PDFs).  Because of this, they said they were unwilling to purchase and securitize PACE encumbered mortgages.   In case you don’t remember, the FHFA oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government sponsored mortgage consolidation giants, through which nearly all consumer home loans pass at some point in their existence on the secondary market.  And if they won’t buy your mortgage, then you’re not going to get a loan.  This is unfortunate, since PACE financing programs had proven an effective way to get homeowners to make sensible long-term investments in energy efficiency and renewable generation, without having to take on the risk that future buyers would inappropriately undervalue the resulting savings.

However, the FHFA made this rule without engaging in any public process, and they were subsequently sued by the State of California and several cities and counties.  The case has finally made it to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and while they have yet to make a ruling, the Court has directed the FHFA to begin collecting public input on the proposed rules.  The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has been involved in the suits and has had good ongoing coverage of the case:

• After the Earthquake and Before the Hurricane (8/29/2011)
• Be a part of PACEs revival (1/25/2012)
• PACE Lives! (1/26/2012)

The outcome of this case and the nature of the rules which are eventually adopted may have big effects on Boulder.  Energy efficiency retrofits and local small scale renewable energy installation are high-quality local job producing industries.  They allow our community to develop expertise that we can only hope will be in great demand in the near future.  They’re absolutely vital to meeting our climate action plan goals.  We have the financing mechanism in place to do this work; all we need is the go-ahead from the FHFA to get it underway.  We should comment on these rules loud and clear.

The notice of the proposed rulemaking has been posted in the Federal Register, in all its gory detail.  Details on how to submit comments can be found here.  The easiest way is to e-mail Alfred M. Pollard, General Counsel: RegComments@fhfa.gov.  You must include “RIN 2590-AA53″ in the subject line of the message.  All comments must be received by March 26th, 2012.

Another resource to keep an eye on is PACE Now, a bi-partisan group advocating for PACE programs in congress.  They’re developing talking points, and have been working to get legislation passed which would protect PACE programs introduced in congress (like H.R. 2599, the PACE Assessment Protection Act of 2011… which unfortunately didn’t get very far).

It’s not crazy to think that the FHFA or some other federal agency might have a useful role to play in the regulation of PACE programs.  It’s important that the financing be set up to incentivize the most cost effective improvements first so as not to unduly burden future property owners, and to save as much energy as possible with a finite pool of funding (e.g. attic insulation and air sealing before solar panels…), but the outright ban is clearly far too broad.

Below is what I sent.  Post what you send in the comments if you feel so inclined!

Property Assessed Clean Energy financing programs, as have been initiated by many states and local governments, are a potentially transformative financing mechanism, enabling property owners to make good long term investments in energy efficiency and behind-the-meter renewable energy production.  They address a market failure, in that buyers often do not appropriately integrate a property’s energy costs into their price assessment.  So long as the state and local PACE programs are performance based, and incentivise both efficiency and renewables, preferring those investments which have the greatest (positive) net present value, given the financing rate which is available to the government entity sponsoring the program, they do not pose a significant risk to mortgage holders, and should be allowed in FHFA held mortgages.  Additionally, local energy efficiency and solar power installation provide high quality, skilled jobs which cannot be exported, stimulating the economies of the localities implementing the programs.  These types of energy efficiency and local renewables programs can go a significant way toward reducing the energy intensivity of our existing building stock, and help insulate the US economy from fluctuations in fossil fueled energy prices.

FHFA’s previous ruling has directly affected my community, stalling out energy efficiency programs here in Boulder, CO.  Rather than effectively banning these programs, I encourage the FHFA to work with the building retrofit industry and the state and local governments which have instituted these programs to develop guidelines which ensure the most cost effective use of PACE financing, including the use of before and after energy audits, and other energy efficiency retrofit best practices.

photo by Michael Seraphin

At least three times a week during the summer, I find myself ripped from sleep, wide awake listening to the local coyotes report in.  At times the calls are song like and dreamy and other times they sound downright creepy and alien.  While they sound like they are right outside I never get up to investigate, I just wait for the meeting to end so I can go back to sleep.  If I gathered all the people in the Boulder County area losing sleep because of coyotes I could probably fill a football stadium.  In many communities around Colorado, especially the Front Range, people are not only dealing with the noise at night but also with the conflicts that arise when people and coyotes share space.

Coyotes catapulted into the headlines this summer when multiple children were injured in Broomfield.  They have also catapulted into many of our individual lives as they use Boulder neighborhoods to forage, travel, and live.  Neighbors have lost cats and dogs and have struggled to figure out how best to live with what may seem like a brand new variable in their lives.

The coyote issue is a divisive one.  Many people probably just want to do the right thing for the animals while still being able to protect their pets and maintain a reasonable sense of safety.  There are also other, sometimes louder, voices that call for lethal population control.  Then, still there are other, sometimes equally loud, voices who want to protect them at all costs as “they were here first.”  In some communities, this is countered by “no WE were here first; I’ve never had a problem with a coyote until recently…”  Like a lot of species of wildlife we live with it doesn’t matter who was here first, what matters is that we’re all here now and I don’t think anyone is going anywhere.

The coyote issue also does not have a ready solution.  Many of the challenges we are facing in the urban interface are relatively new and while we’ve seen some coyote conflicts decrease in certain areas we have yet to find a concrete fix.  As an agency we manage wildlife in urban areas as best we can with the tools we’ve got and we make a lot of tough decisions while trying to reasonably protect public safety.  We look to studies that have been done and are hopeful about studies to come including a local one headed by Stewart Breck from CSU.  Most importantly, we absolutely depend on members of the community whether they want to see coyotes protected or don’t want to see coyotes at all (or both) to do what’s right.

There are three fundamentals every community member should be doing to coexist with coyotes:

1.  Don’t feed wildlife.  Don’t feed the coyotes directly by leaving food out for them or offering food from your hand.  It may be neat to have a coyote eat out of your hand but if you think you are helping them you’re not — hand feeding coyotes leads to people being bit and the coyote being put down.  You are, in essence, killing that coyote.  Don’t feed them indirectly by feeding the squirrels or rabbits or foxes that will then serve as a meal for the coyotes.  Be cognizant of your property and its wildlife attractants.  There is nowhere in Boulder where you don’t have to consider your garbage, apple trees, pet food, barbeque grills, vegetable gardens, and water features as invitations to all wildlife, not just deer and foxes but also lions, bears, and coyotes.  Whether you are feeding them on purpose or inadvertently you are teaching them that there is food to be found in the city, next to houses, by schools, and in your yard.
2. Protect your pets.  Coyotes can jump six foot fences, can learn that some pets are let out into a yard alone every night, and will prey on cats and dogs of all sizes.  Go with your dog outside and put it on a leash.  Keep cats inside.  If you have to leave your pet outside alone, leave it in a fully enclosed kennel (e.g. with a roof).  I have observed firsthand a coyote or coyotes go from preying on loose cats in a neighborhood to, in that same neighborhood, systematically and routinely patrolling the split rail fences along back yards waiting for dogs to be let out.  Don’t teach the coyotes that your and your neighbor’s pets are easy targets.
3. Haze coyotes when you see them.  It is so hard to go against what we’ve been taught our whole lives.  “Don’t harass wildlife” is still sage advice and I do not advocate harassment, but as coyotes are such astute learners the best thing you can teach them is to be afraid of people and houses.  If you see a coyote in a neighborhood in the city, scare it away.  Yell, use an air horn, spray it with your garden hose, throw small stones in its direction (the goal being to scare not to injure), shake a pop can with pennies in it, or whatever you are comfortable with.  Also, haze the coyote if you see it on open space close to a trail or getting too close to people.  Don’t just watch the coyote running down the street with your mouth open wondering “is that a…?” If you can, you should do something.

photo by Michael Seraphin

Most conflicts with coyotes are a result of too many benefits and not any costs associated with approaching houses and people.  When food is easily available in neighborhood yards and nothing bad or dangerous ever happens in those yards then that’s where the coyotes will go.  The solution, then, is not killing or removing a coyote that is behaving naturally (especially considering that the next coyote will behave the same way, and the one after that).  The solution is to remove any benefit and increase the cost so that coyotes will instinctively stay away.

Coyotes are the most adaptable species of wildlife I know about.  Historically, when other predators were successfully or nearly extirpated coyotes remained.  During this time of increasing development and loss of habitat, coyotes are finding a way to survive.  Throughout a time when many species’ ranges have shrunk, coyotes have expanded their range.  Much like humans they have found a way to live in nearly every habitat in Colorado from Kit Carson to Breckenridge to downtown Denver.  You absolutely have to admire how they have survived and adjusted and learned.  It’s that intelligence and adaptability that have led to conflicts when they learn to lose their fear of people and are rewarded with the food that we provide.  Hopefully, our intelligence will help us adapt to our habitat in a way that we can both learn how best to thrive together for a long time to come.

More information on coyotes can be found at the Colorado Division of Wildlife website.