Environment

GREEN-ISH

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THE COLOR GREEN IS OFTEN applied as an adjective to various energy technologies that are seemingly more enviro- or eco-friendly when compared to the unfriendly drilling for oil or the mining of coal. Photovoltaic solar panels, wind turbines and other green technologies do not ravage the natural environment — or do they? At a macro …

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Cleaning of tainted water continues at old mines

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Brief by Allen Best

Environment – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Decades after they closed, the mines near Colorado mountain towns continue to demand attention.

Breckenridge has begun operating a $1.2 million water-treatment plant that is supposed to remove the zinc, cadmium and lead that contaminate the water coming from the Wellington-Oro Mine. The Wellington, explains the Summit Daily News, was the largest mine in Summit County from the 1880s to the 1930s. Mining there did not finally cease until 1972, or 11 years after the Breckenridge ski area began operating.

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Clean air hard to find

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Brief by Allen Best

Environment – June 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

People want to move to rural areas, because the air quality is good. But a tide of news stories suggests that air quality, because of natural gas wells and gold mines, can be bad even in rural areas.

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Plastic shopping bag bans discussed in mountains

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Brief by Allen Best

Environment – June 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

The call for a ban on plastic shopping bags is sweeping the Rockies, from Alberta to New Mexico.

Taos is among those communities now considering a ban, both within the town and in the broader Taos County. The Taos News says one store, Cid’s Food Market, has ceased to give out plastic bags and has instead persuaded many Taoseños to use cloth bags.

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Just another earth hour

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Column by George Sibley

Environment – May 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Perhaps the difference between carbon man and the silicon devices he is creating is like the relationship between the caterpillar and the iridescent, winged creature that the caterpillar unconsciously prepares to be.

— O. B. Hardison, Jr., “Disappearing through the Skylight”

IT’S “EARTH HOUR 2008,” as I start this. The house is dark except for three lights. One is the orange flicker of a fire in the heating stove, whose glass door is the closest thing to television in our living room. In the winter my partner and I dine from TV trays in front of the stove, watching the fire, but we can still talk since the stove lacks the TV’s noise problem.

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Summit County considers cleaning old mine

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Brief by Allen Best

Environment – May 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

The heyday of the Pennsylvania Mine is now more than a century past, but the mine is still causing problems in Summit County. At this point, reports the Summit Daily News, some people are thinking that a Superfund designation may be necessary.

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Creede seeks limited help from EPA

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Brief by Central Staff

Environment – April 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

To put it mildly, the Environmental Protection Agency made itself less than popular when it started cleaning up around Leadville years ago. That may explain why Creede wants some help from the EPA — but with strict limits on where the EPA works.

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It’s raining and snowing mercury in the San Juans

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Brief by Allen Best

Environment – February 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Various lakes and reservoirs in the San Juan Mountains have elevated levels of mercury. People are advised to limit how many fish they eat from Vallecito, McPhee and other lakes and reservoirs because of the high mercury levels.

The question is where the mercury is coming from. Sometimes mercury is found naturally in the environment.

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Greetings from Honduras

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Letter from Pepe Herrero

Environment – January 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

Editors:

During the 1980s I lived in Salida when a season pass at Monarch cost $84, had no picture or restrictions and I could loan it to my Salida friends when I traveled to Honduras. I manage to visit every year since some of my very best friends still live there and have been able to observe that the long awaited growth is now a reality with all the consequences.

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Working Landscapes

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Column by George Sibley

Environment – December 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

THIS COLUMN STARTS with a strange moment on Kenosha Pass. I’ve always loved that moment when you come around the curve at the top of Kenosha, and suddenly there’s South Park and the mountains that are the spine of Central Colorado, all the way south and west to wherever. To just say it’s “beautiful” avoids the challenge of really describing it, but it seems to have all of the attributes of the essential American West: it’s vast, it’s empty in the way of a promised land, it’s desolate in a way that both challenges and affirms the proud and lonely part of the human soul; it makes me think there is more and better than just beauty to seek on earth.

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Hybrids cause emissions in somebody else’s back yard

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Brief by Allen Best

Environment – November 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

Four new diesel hybrid-electric buses are being added to the fleet that takes visitors from Aspen to the popular and congested viewing area for the Maroon Bells Peaks. The buses, notes The Aspen Times, were purchased with the aid of a $1.68 million federal grant.

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Green-talking columnist attacked as hypocritical

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Brief by Allen Best

Environment – September 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

The practices of many evangelists are very different from what they preach, and the same can be said for some environmentalists. Take climate crusader Al Gore, his 10,000-square-foot home, and galloping electrical consumption.

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They shoot horses don’t they? No, they don’t

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Essay by Sharon O’toole

Environment – June 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

IMAGINE A PROPOSAL to scatter millions of pounds of poisoned meat around the United States, close to human populations. Much of it would be accessible to scavengers including eagles, hawks, coyotes, foxes and badgers, as well as to dogs and cats. An animal feeding on the poisoned meat would probably die.

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Walking the Talk

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Essay by Ed Quillen

Environment – April 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

TO WHAT DEGREE should we expect people to “walk their talk?” This question popped up again recently in respect to two out-of-office politicians: Al Gore, former vice-president of the United States, and Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives.

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Lessons in Making-Do from a contrarian nonagenarion

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Essay by Alexa Mergen

Environment – April 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

MY LATE GRANDMOTHER, Helen, was a lifelong Republican who, along with her sheep-ranching sister, bristled at the Endangered Species Act, both shaking their heads when they talked about tortoises getting more rights than people. In spite of cancer running through the family like uranium ore in the ground, my great-uncle mined uranium to keep the ranch out of hock, and Helen liked to say that atomic testing had to happen somewhere, and well, the desert has a lot of open space.

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Looking at other inconvenient truths

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Column by George Sibley

Environment – February 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

ALONG WITH PROBABLY a lot of the conscientious readership of Colorado Central, I’ve seen “the Al Gore Movie,” An Inconvenient Truth — although it’s been so culturally “mediated” that I didn’t really need to actually see it to know what it’s about and get the message. Gore’s Inconvenient Truth is that we humans are putting humongous quantities of heat-trapping gases into the planet’s atmosphere that are changing the global climate in unpredictable, often violent, and potentially catastrophic ways, and we only have about a decade left to get really serious about mitigating this situation.

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Environmental hypocrisy in action

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Essay by Gail Binkly

Environment – February 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine

I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER the evening a candidate for local political office, an environmentally minded and intelligent citizen whom I liked and admired, passed me on the highway between Cortez and Mancos. I was traveling somewhere between 60 and 65 mph, my usual cruising speed. He blew by me — passing over a double yellow line — as if I were a slug crawling along the asphalt.

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Action on global warming

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Letter from Gary Minke

Environment – November 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Ed,

I appreciated your practical analysis of the global warming problem several months back. As someone who worked in the energy-minerals industry for nearly 30 years I feel somewhat qualified to toss in my comments.

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Leadville all over again

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Column by Hal Walter

Environment – October 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

I’D NEVER REALLY SEEN my child bleed before, but there I was, locked in a chair, and hugging him tightly with both arms as two lab technicians drew a tiny amount of blood from his arm.

Despite my efforts to hold him still, when the needle drove home he jerked his arm just enough to shut off the flow. One of the technicians went to the phone to find out if the tiny amount of blood would be enough to detect heavy metals.

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Who really needs to go?

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Essay by John Mattingly

Environment – May 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

WHENEVER I HEAR about the scourge of salt cedar, also known as the tamarisk, I can’t help but notice how similar Tamarix aphylla is to Homo sapiens. Both species transplanted to the southwestern United States for what seemed like good reasons at the time, only to proliferate out of control. Both produce a toxic effect on their surroundings, at the expense of predecessor and competing species. And both are very fond of water.

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The Trouble with Tamarisk

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Sidebar by Marcia Darnell

Environment – May 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Doze it, dig it, cut it, poison it. Removing tamarisk is a task.

Tamarisk, also know as salt cedar, is deadly to streambanks. The plant absorbs an enormous amount of water, up to 200 gallons a day, then leaves a salt residue that kills native plants. It is therefore designated enemy number one in many areas.

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Teamwork restores the banks of the Rio Grande

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Article by Marcia Darnell

Environment – May 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Cooperation among environmentalists, landowners, and government is rare, but when it works, it flows. Such teamwork is taking place on the historic Rio Grande in southern Colorado.

The Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project unites disparate groups who depend on the river in order to restore and preserve the great waters, one reach at a time. This endeavor was started by the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District in 1999 when the district’s board applied for funds from the Colorado Water Conservation Board for a study of the Rio Grande and its functions.

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Gunnison county may rein in wood-burers

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Brief by Allen Best

Environment – March 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine

Gunnison County is revisiting the issue of air pollution from fireplaces in unincorporated areas.

Like Vail, Aspen, and many towns in more developed areas, the towns of Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte require fireplaces and woodburning stoves that meet Environmental Protection Agency standards to minimize emissions. Gunnison County almost went the same route in 2003, but instead gave wood- burners the option of paying $1,000 in lieu of installing stoves that pollute less.

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Colorado’s own flammable waterway

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Brief by Central Staff

Environment – September 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

One event often credited with starting the environmental movement happened on June 22, 1969. The Cuyahoga River, which flows in Ohio and empties into Lake Erie, caught fire near downtown Cleveland. More precisely, a floating oil slick ignited, sending flames 50 feet high and damaging two railroad trestles.

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Not just a bad air day

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Essay by Dennis Hinkamp

Environment – April 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

LOGAN, IN NORTHERN UTAH, doesn’t make too many national headlines, but in January it set a dubious record for the worst air quality in the country. The airborne microscopic particles registered higher than that of a city next to a raging forest fire.

The official record of 180 for PM-2.5 air pollution* was subsequently called into question because of measuring differences, but even the revised level was twice what the EPA defines as “unhealthy.” It also remained the highest in the nation for that day.

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With the silent majority

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Column by George Sibley

Environment – March 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

FOR THE SAKE OF the earth and all life thereon, not to mention a century of fumbling but earnest efforts to create a fair and accessible society, I am hoping that the neoconservative assault on everything I value as an American will be turned back this November, and I am heartened by what seems to be a growing awareness of how massive this assault has been in the past three years.

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O bury me out on the lone prairie

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Essay by Patricia Walsh

Environment – March 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

IT’S NOT EASY being buried green, but here’s how I want it to happen:

Someone, preferably an old friend, dresses me in my oldest, softest clothes.Let’s see, how about my favorite and virtually threadbare navy blue flannel shirt and my tatty black sweat pants? If shoes seem important, hopefully they’ll go for my sheepskin bedroom slippers. Then, I’m wrapped in one of my flannel sheets.

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Monarch gets a B on environmental report card

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Brief by Allen Best

Environment – February 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine

Monarch this year got a “B” in an environmental report card designed to gauge environmental impacts. The report card assembled by the Ski Area Citizens’ Coalition graded 76 ski areas across the West, coming up with a composite score of a C+.

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Restoring the Alamosa River

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Article by Hal Clifford

Environment – December 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

THE SAN LUIS VALLEY is a high desert with table-flat farmland surrounded by mountains. It’s a slice of Colorado that feels like New Mexico.

Just over a decade ago, the Valley made national headlines when cyanide holding ponds at the Summitville gold mine failed spectacularly and poisoned the Alamosa River, which runs through the village of Capulin. The 1990 spill killed everything living in a 17-mile stretch of the river — and turned a national media spotlight on the dangers of modern mining.

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Reading the Environment

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Column by George Sibley

Environment – June 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

“Environment” was a word I don’t remember hearing when I was growing up and going to school in the 1950s. It’s a lot different today; our young people are immersed in information about “the environment” from grade school on. This is a commendable change, in my opinion, but there’s a further step I’d like to see in this new awareness, and that is to begin raising awareness of the true nature of the “environment” we live in.

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Welcome back, Cotter?

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Article by Gail Binkly

Environment – January 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

LAST WINTER, when Deyon Boughton read in her local newspaper that 470,000 tons of “mildly contaminated soil” might be coming to rest at the uranium mill near her home, she winced. Her husband, Lynn, had been a chemist at the mill from 1958 to 1979, and died of lymphoma that doctors linked to uranium exposure. Learning that the Cotter Corp. mill, which has been in and out of production for years, was now in the business of storing radioactive waste hit Boughton hard.

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Resort towns aren’t turning green yet

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Brief by Central Staff

Environment – January 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine

Ski resorts are getting greener these days, with more of their electricity coming from wind power, rather than coal. The latest announcement came from Aspen, where the ski company made a deal to run the gondola entirely by wind-generated electricity.

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Uranium: Haul it away, then bring it back?

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Brief by Central Staff

Environment – April 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine

There was a time when they mined uranium hereabouts, and back in the late 1970s, when prices were high on account of energy shortages, there were substantial plans for big new uranium mines — one on the west side of Marshall Pass, and another northwest of Cañon City.

Those fell through when prices dropped (Three Mile Island was not a good development for the uranium industry), and now the process might be undergoing a reversal. Instead of removing radioactive rocks from the area, we might be acquiring them by the trainload.

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Earth Day Dialogue, 1996

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Poem by Jude Jannet

Environment – November 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine

Earth Day Dialogue, 1996

Said I do this for love of my mother.

Ah, but does she really love me,

you ask. Thought maybe

I was speaking of one particular

human, did you, the one we

blame all our troubles on?

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The unforgettable smell of lead carbonates and fish

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Column by Hal Walter

Environment – December 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine

IF THERE’S ANYTHING I learned from my stint in Leadville as editor of the weekly newspaper there in 1989, it’s the smell of lead carbonates and the smell of something fishy. Now I live in Custer County, where public officials have told us that lead concentrations ranging from 3,000 to 4,000 parts per million on public roads are no big deal. The stench is strangely familiar.

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Nature Conservancy starts operating in San Luis Valley

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Brief by Marcia Darnell

Environment – May 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine

If they throw a reception, it’s official. Peter Coors, CEO of guess what company, was host to a buffet and speeches event in Alamosa on April 2 to announce the establishment of a Nature Conservancy program in the San Luis Valley.

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Building a wetland: the natural way to treat sewage

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Article by Sharon Chickering

Environment – April 1996 – Colorado Central Magazine

I sat in the sunny corner window of the Mt. Elbert Lodge with owners Scott Boyd and Laura Downing, watching flighty chickadees attack the hanging bird feeder. Just beyond the line of brown willows flowed the icy water of Lake Creek. There was nothing to indicate that under the picnic table sitting just below us in the snow lay the wastewater treatment system for the bed and breakfast resort.

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The Environment Church

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Letter from Lisa S. Dolby

Environment – November 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine

Dear Mr. Quillen,

I certainly enjoyed your article, “The Pass Between the Rockies” [in the August, 1995, edition of Colorado Central]. We don’t appreciate enough, the history and geological origin of the world around us. The forces that created this geological make-up are certainly nothing to scoff at.

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Obscure the 14ers

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Letter from Myrna Schrader

Environment – July 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine

Dear Ed & Martha:

I am so glad that you printed those three articles on the plight of the Fourteeners [in the May edition], or more aptly, the pathetic state of the crowds who are addicted to them. For many years, all kinds of people have suggested that I emphasize the Fourteeners on my maps, whereas my aim has been just the opposite: to make them as obscure as possible.

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Heavy Metal Water

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Article by Jeffrey Keidel

Environment – January 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine

Several state-run water-quality improvement projects, including one in Central Colorado, have come to a screeching halt because the federal Environmental Protection Agency has changed the rules.

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