Typically, Olander would let the soil rest through the winter months, but in recent years he’s begun experimenting with new varieties of barley that have been specifically adapted to withstand cold temperatures. Growing in the winter means the crops will absorb precipitation through the spring, a vital advantage as weather in the Western U.S. continues to get hotter and drier.

As the proprietor of both Olander Farms and Root Shoot Malting, which supplies Colorado breweries and spirit makers with locally grown and malted grains, Olander has to innovate to sustain his family’s 97-year-old farm. About five years ago, he began taking proactive steps to prepare for what he expects to be the next big challenge: the water crisis.

That looming threat was enough to begin cultivating the winter-friendly Lightning, Thunder and Buck barley without yet having customers for them.

“I can see the writing on the wall just with everything going on with water in Colorado. There’s a possibility of a reduction in our allotment and also the possibility of not having runoff we typically see from snowpack,” Olander said. “That’s why I’m trying to be ahead of the game.”

As the Colorado River continues to dry, local barley growers and maltsters are seeking out creative solutions to sustain their businesses in the face of climate change. Some are embracing nontraditional and drought-resistant grains while others are investing in technology to become more efficient. Their innovations aim to reduce water usage and bring the supply chain for craft beer and spirits closer to home, in hopes of ultimately building a resilient ecosystem that supports farmers, brewers and distillers in Colorado.

In 2022, local farmers grew 4,440,000 bushels of barley, the sixth most in the nation, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. A large portion of that is purchased by Coors Brewing, which contracts with around 800 growers in the Western states and Canada, according to the company’s website.

But Colorado is also home to several craft malthouses that kiln and roast barley for smaller brewers and distillers to use in making beer and liquor. Still, buying local has yet to become the norm since craft malt usually fetches a premium price.

Brewer Eric Larkin has been working with Troubadour Maltings in Fort Collins to procure custom malts since he opened Cohesion Brewing Co. in Denver two years ago. It’s not the cheapest option, but it works because the brewery specializes in specialty Czech-style lagers.

Larkin’s other options would be to import malt from Europe or use European-style malts grown in the U.S. While sourcing local might present unique challenges, the benefits of keeping his dollars in the local economy outweigh any potential downfalls, Larkin said.

“Every crop I get from Troubadour, the malt changes and I have to make adjustments in the brewhouse,” he said, acknowledging it’s easier for a small operation that focuses on a limited portfolio of styles to do that. “Keeping your dollars with local and small producers, the impact it can have really multiplies. It stays a little closer to home. That idea has always been really valuable to me from an economic standpoint and environmental standpoint.”

Spreading the gospel of local grain

The nonprofit Colorado Grain Chain aims to spread that ethos more widely with a variety of projects that connect local producers and makers, and incentivize collaboration. For example, the organization is currently building a digital marketplace where farmers can connect with companies or entrepreneurs seeking to purchase locally-grown grains.

Project manager Lisa Boldt, who also co-owns Primitive Beer in Longmont, sees a unique opportunity to amplify the Grain Chain’s message in the beverage space. That’s why the organization recently offered $4,000 “microgrants” to brewers and distillers who used novel grains in a new product.

Cohesion and WeldWerks Brewing Co. in Greeley received one grant to team up on a special release, Foamies Czech-style pale lager, using custom malts from Troubadour. The beer debuted in August and a second batch is due for release in November.

WildEdge Brewing Collective in Cortez earned a grant to experiment with a Munich wheat from Root Shoot Malting, with which it created a Dunkelweizen-inspired beer called From the Fields. Steamboat Springs’ Routt Distillery, another grant recipient, leveraged a trial batch of barley grown in Montrose by Proximity Malts for its new West Slope Sarvis Gin, which also features locally foraged sarvisberries.

Perhaps the most intriguing microgrant project came from Dune Valley Distillery in Mosca, which will release a vodka made from quinoa in January. The distillery, which opened this summer in the historic Mosca Community Hall and Gymnasium, shares a campus with a local food hub and a potato and quinoa processing plant. It specializes in making potato vodka specifically because of the resources at its disposal, said managing partner Nicholas Chambers.

“The local food approach is that you learn to consume what’s grown right near you,” Chambers said. “We are at literally the center of North American quinoa right here. It’s such a good crop for us because of low water use and it fits with our valley.”

Reducing water usage

One underutilized opportunity Audrey Paugh, marketing and networking specialist at the Grain Chain, sees for beverages is in millet. Colorado is the country’s top producer of proso millet, a gluten-free and drought-tolerant ancient grain. The state is also home to Grouse Malt House, one of the few U.S. maltsters dedicated to gluten-free grains.

Twila Soles founded the company with her late partner in 2013 after years of having celiac disease and being dissatisfied with gluten-free beer options. Malting even gluten-free grains requires a lot of water. Recently, Soles upgraded her system to include a steep tank that uses up to 40% less water than her original equipment.

Soles sources most of her grains within 200 miles of the malting facility in Wellington and has seen her producers weather unpredictable and sometimes devastating growing seasons.

“Using a crop (such as millet) that takes less water to thrive is important now and will be even more important as climate change continues to impact weather patterns,” said Soles, whose biggest Colorado client is the gluten-free Holidaily Brewing Co. “I’m hopeful that the use of more drought-tolerant crops for craft beer grows.”

In Alamosa, Jason Cody knows the value of diversifying crops and revenue streams. Cody saw firsthand the desire for local, craft malts when he opened Colorado Malting Co. in 2008. At one point, Cody had more than 100 breweries waiting for the opportunity to buy his products. The venture saved his family farm, which first began growing barley for Coors in the 1990s.

But business has slowed amid economic pressures and larger companies cashing in on demand for cost-effective malts. So these days he focuses on serving a niche base of distillers and brewers.

Water usage is always top of mind for Cody, who manages the 300-acre farm his ancestors purchased nearly a century ago. In 2018, Cody began making original beers at his Colorado Farm Brewery, which highlights sustainable practices from grain to glass. He grows and malts his own grains, uses an original strain of yeast and recycles all the water from the brewing process to irrigate his farm.

“Every single gallon of water we use in the brewery that goes down the drain, goes out to the center pivot irrigation sprinklers and is injected into the line that the sprinkler is running on,” Cody said.

An added bonus: The brewery’s wastewater repeatedly tests high in nitrogen, sulfur, potassium and other compounds that reinvigorate soil, so he needs fewer fertilizers to keep the ground healthy.

Back in Berthoud, Olander has yet to malt last year’s winter crop, so he doesn’t know what it tastes like or if brewers will be interested in using it. Olander is hopeful Lightning in particular will be an apt pilsner-style product and catch on, but he’s not waiting for feedback to continue his experiment.

Last year, he planted 15 acres of Thunder, 15 acres of Lightning and seven acres of Kernza. This year, he planted 20 acres of Lightning and 10 acres of Buck.

“We decided, let’s roll the dice and go with Lightning,” he said. “Hopefully winter treats everything well and they’ll survive.”

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Re: “How cold should it be to open shelters?” Nov. 29 news story

I read the recent article in The Denver Post with amazement that a question like this would even need to be discussed. Where is the humanity and compassion in such a question? If it is too cold for you to sleep on the cold ground all night or to consider leaving your pet outside, then it is too cold for an unsheltered person to be outdoors.

I have seen people of all ages pushing, carrying or pulling all their belongings with them, who need food, restroom facilities and shelter in nice weather.

For those of us lucky enough to have a roof over our heads and warmth from the cold, let’s not quibble about when it is too cold to deny another human being that same warmth.

Mary K. August, Lakewood

The value of subscribing

I continue to subscribe to The Denver Post and our Golden Transcript. It seems to me that there is personal and social value in reading the news and the stories from around Denver, the state, the nation and the world. We become aware of the interesting, rewarding, and sometimes heroic or difficult experiences of people and various organizations. However, I often read stories, letters, and editorials that increase my world of thought and community awareness and what I might be able to do to help in the community and for our institutions.

Yes, I often hear that newspapers are more limited and much more expensive than they used to be. With fewer and fewer people actually paying for newspaper delivery to our homes, the price of reporting, publishing, and delivery is bound to increase, and some news stories will be limited. For those who subscribe, we have seen our costs rise considerably. However, as in a third-grade economics lesson, “Everything has a trade-off.” The news stories and Open Forum letters are part of my trade-off for a more interesting and understanding awareness and participation in my small and larger community. So, I’ll continue my subscriptions to the newspapers and my support for their journalists and delivery persons.

Janet Johnson, Golden

Water a limited resource

Re: “As U.S. groundwater dwindles, powerful players block change,” Nov. 26 news story

Thank you, Denver Post, for reprinting a very comprehensive and informative story about how constructive changes in water policy are being blocked in our state capitals by big business and corporate agriculture.

It says a lot when the New York Times sends a pair of top-notch reporters out West to investigate what should have been readily apparent to our area’s politicians and voters all along.

Thus, we have the ongoing development of raw real estate in massive proportions along our Front Range. We see the big development trend extending to my small town of Buena Vista, where our town board is currently under pressure to issue more building permits even as the future viability of our water resources is in question.

We have numerous examples in Arizona and other states where new housing developments have prematurely drained their aquifers. I guess hauling water in by the truckload is cheaper for local authorities than using their common sense to limit unsustainable growth. Then, we have long drought periods in which water becomes scarce despite our efforts to limit our usage.

Mother Nature, not mankind, controls the availability and distribution of that precious liquid we call water. When we don’t take heed of her most glaring and alarming warnings, we will suffer the dire consequences of our ignorance.

Gary E. Goms, Buena Vista

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Those waxes, however, may be toxic.

Some ski waxes contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — a label for thousands of types of manufactured chemicals that do not break down in the environment. As that toxic wax glides along the snow, it slowly flakes off. As the snow melts into water, it carries the tiny deposits down into Colorado’s water supplies.

Humans who are exposed to PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” are at risk when the substances build up in the body. They can cause decreased fertility, increased risk of some cancers and suppressed immunity.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has focused more intently on ski waxes in recent years, though little has happened on the state or local levels to address the toxic waxes in Colorado — home to 28 downhill ski resorts, and even more nordic centers, that millions of skiers visit every year.

“This is a classic micropollution problem. On an individual basis, it’s small,” said Peter Arlein, founder of a Carbondale-based company called mountainFLOW that sells non-toxic, plant-based ski waxes. ”This is invisible, but it adds up.”

Many industries use PFAS to keep things from sticking. Chemicals are applied to cooking pans to create a non-stick surface, to furniture to help them resist stains, and to skis so that they glide easier and faster across snow.

The EPA has banned the production or importation of new flouro ski waxes, but already existing fluorinated waxes can still be sold and purchased. Fluorinated ski waxes often are expensive and are generally reserved for ski racing.

In 2020, ski wax company Swix Sports settled alleged violations for importing ski waxes with PFAS that violated the Toxic Substances Control Act. In 2021, a different company, TASR, settled alleged violations for also importing ski waxes with PFAS.

“Review of the risks from PFAS in ski waxes is particularly important,” the EPA said in an alert, given the potential exposure for ski wax technicians and skiers who apply their own wax. “Additionally, PFAS may enter the environment from the use of waxed skis and from the ski wax shavings scraped off during application.”

Colorado lawmakers in 2022 banned the sale of an array of products to which PFAS were added — including rugs, food packaging and cosmetics — but did not address ski waxes.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has not investigated how PFAS from ski wax might be affecting the state’s water. But a department spokeswoman said the agency was aware that some waxes contain forever chemicals.

“The Water Quality Control Division has been laser-focused on monitoring for and mitigating PFAS in drinking water because we know when drinking water is contaminated with PFAS, it could be a significant source of exposure,” spokeswoman Kaitlyn Beekman said in an email. “If any communities have concerns about the presence of PFAS in their drinking water, the division has resources, including grants, to help them with further testing to identify any potential contamination.”

No bans in Colorado

While neither local governments nor resorts in Colorado’s ski country have banned the use of fluoro waxes, at least one Rocky Mountain ski town has outlawed the products.

Park City, Utah, in March banned the use or sale of fluorinated ski wax after connecting PFAS in its water supply to a cross-country ski area that is directly above an aquifer, said Michelle De Haan, the city’s water quality and treatment manager. Further testing in the spring matched the chemicals found in the water with those tested at the cross-country race start line, as well as near the lifts at the resort.

“This is impacting our drinking water and our environment broadly,” she said. “It doesn’t go away. We don’t want the concentration to get worse or for it to hit another water source.”

Enforcing the ban is difficult, De Haan said. The city has focused its efforts on public education. Officials have encouraged people and ski shops to turn in any fluorinated ski wax sitting on shelves.

Since last winter, they’ve collected more than 600 pounds of wax, which must be incinerated by a contracted company.

“Being a small town, the community has responded well,” she said.

The ski competition community has begun to ban fluorocarbon waxes, though enforcement has proved tricky there, too. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation multiple times has postponed the implementation of a ban on the substance because testing whether athletes are using banned waxes is slow and expensive.

The federation, which oversees the highest level of alpine sport competition, finally banned flouro waxes for the 2023-24 season. It will randomly test for the substance.

In Colorado, Summit County officials are aware of Park City’s initiative but have no plan to follow suit, said Sarah Wilkinson, a county spokeswoman. The county will test for PFAS when there is a concern, she said.

But there have been voluntary changes.

Arapahoe Basin years ago swapped to a biodegradable ski wax, Purl, and recently added mountainFLOW wax to its shop, said Mike Nathan, the sustainability manager at the ski area. Arapahoe Basin will start a takeback program this winter in which people can drop off any fluoro wax they have and receive a free wax from the shop.

“It might be tough for us to ban it or know what people have on the bottom of their skis and snowboard,” Nathan said. “We’ll certainly be hoping to motivate people.”

Alternative wax options

As the ski world moves away from fluorinated waxes, companies are producing waxes that are better for the environment.

In 2019, Carbondale-based mountainFLOW began selling plant-based, flouro-free ski wax. Arlein, the founder, worked in the ski industry for more than 20 years, including years spent waxing skis in a shop’s small back room.

“The more I learned about it, the more I became passionate about something that was better for the planet,” he said.

People who have applied fluorinated waxes to skis, a process that includes melting the wax and releasing vapors, are most at risk of experiencing harmful health effects. The chemicals can build up in their bodies, increasing the risk for cardiovascular disease, liver damage, cancer and hormonal problems. Studies conducted in Norway and Sweden found that wax technicians working for World Cup ski teams had blood levels of some chemicals that were up to 45 times higher than the general population.

But as the industry shifts, Arlein has concerns about the waxes that will replace fluoro versions. Most are still petroleum-based products, he said, which carry their own ecological impacts.

“For the most part, we don’t know what’s in the wax, and we don’t know what they’re using instead of flouro — it could be good or it could be worse,” he said.

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Travelers flock to New Zealand to experience its lush mountainscapes, jaw-droppingly blue waters and world-renowned wines. Even if the Instagrammable landscapes are the impetus for a trip, those who visit receive complimentary schooling on the country’s native Māori culture, which shows up prominently in language and local traditions notwithstanding the history of colonialism there.

As far back as the late 1300s, Polynesian settlers inhabited the islands that comprise New Zealand and formed that distinct Māori culture. When British colonialists arrived in the 1800s, they signed an agreement with the Indigenous people known as the Treaty of Waitangi setting the stage for the Māori to maintain sovereignty over their lands and villages.

But the reality was not that simple. Because some English words did not directly translate into Māori, the Indigenous communities unknowingly signed away some of the very rights they believed they were codifying. That led to conflicts in the decades following the establishment of New Zealand as a British colony.

Today, New Zealand makes a concerted effort to acknowledge and celebrate its Indigenous roots. Māori language appears on road signs and in common greetings like kia ora (“hello”), as well as throughout local art and customs.

One Māori tradition I brought home with me from a recent two-week trip to New Zealand comes in the form of beautiful nephrite jade, also known as pounamu or greenstone. The stone is revered by the Indigenous people who have a deep spiritual connection to it as they consider it a stone from the Gods.

Importantly, New Zealand does not mine pounamu. Instead, people search for and find it in riverbeds and glacial valleys on the South Island, named Te Waipounamu in Māori, meaning “the Greenstone Isle.”

In 1997, the government deemed the South Island’s largest tribe, Ngāi Tahu, guardian of the mineral. The tribe ensures any local pounamu that is sold is harvested ethically from the island. The tribe also advocates for protecting the rivers where the jade comes from and the communities that surround it.

Māori communities have long used the stone, which is strong and durable, in tools and weapons. Given its rarity, pounamu is also worn as jewelry and gifted. The Māori believe that the stone embodies a person’s mauri – or a piece of their essence and being – when it’s worn, making it a sentimental heirloom.

Local artisans often carve the sturdy stones into six designs that symbolize additional sentiments that the gifter wants to bestow. I’m not a deeply spiritual person, but I was so touched by the story of pounamu and its connection to the people and the land of New Zealand that I did all my holiday shopping at a Mountain Jade store before returning home.

Surely someone you know deserves this for Christmas? pic.twitter.com/0Lx9dsUeUl

— Ngāi Tahu Pounamu (@NTPounamu) October 21, 2014

The six Māori symbols are as follows:

• Manaia: The design features a mythical creature in Māori culture that’s a spiritual guardian and protector.
• Toki: Shaped like an adze tool, it represents strength, courage and determination.
• Koru: The spiral shape harkens to the unfurling of New Zealand’s silver fern, symbolizing new beginnings, life and hope.
• Pikorua: This twisting shape represents an everlasting bond of friendship, love and loyalty.
• Hei Matau: The fish hook design nods to the importance of fish as sustenance in Māori culture and represents strength, good luck, and safe travels over water.
• Hei Tiki: Symbolizing the human form, the design is traditionally passed down from parents to their children as a form of protection and good luck.

Mountain Jade sources stone from New Zealand as well as other countries like Canada, Indonesia and Australia. Its network of artists carve it into the shapes above and others. The Ngāi Tahu tribe also sells authentic pounamu through an online shop.

If this sounds like the kind of storied gift you’d like to share with the loved ones in your life, nephrite jade jewelry is widely available online through Mountain Jade and other retailers on Amazon and Etsy. (Don’t forget to wrap in the free history lesson, too.)

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But this military base on 36 square miles of what once was short-grass prairie along the Arkansas River still is bleeding TNT (trinitrotoluene), which causes liver and nerve problems, and TCE (trichloroethylene), which causes kidney cancer, in underground plumes of contaminated water. Thousands of old bombs, grenades, and other munitions are scattered under the wind-whipped topsoil and weeds.

Colorado officials estimate cleaning the site to meet an industrial-use standard will cost more than $600 million, a cost the U.S. Department of Defense, which owns the site, is legally obligated to cover — though Colorado wants the land back. But if Congress fails to maintain a long-term focus and provide funds each year, state health officials and redevelopment authorities warn, the once-healthy prairie will remain a wasteland — more of a burden than a benefit.

“We cannot re-use the property if it is not clean,” said Russell DeSalvo, executive director of PuebloPlex, a state entity created by lawmakers in 1994 to redevelop the site.

“We just want to make sure the Army fulfills its obligation to clean up this property. It will hamper our economic development efforts if the property is unusable due to environmental contamination. Our congressional delegation will have to be diligent over a long time to hold the Department of Defense accountable to do what they say they are going to do for the people of Colorado,” DeSalvo said.

“It is unsellable if it is not cleaned up. It becomes a burden for the community and for the Army and for the state to monitor this contamination in perpetuity if it is not handled appropriately,” he said. “People could be killed if they find a piece of unexploded ordnance that may be live.”

Mustard gas gone

For 80 years, the land served World War II and Cold War military purposes of storing the deadly “mustard gas” weapons. Then the United Nations-backed Chemical Weapons Convention, ratified by the United States in 1997, prohibited making, stockpiling, selling, and using chemical weapons. U.S. military officials contracted with Bechtel to build a $6 billion plant to destroy them safely. Starting in 2016, a carefully trained force of 2,600 workers from Pueblo and Colorado Springs ran that plant. Workers wore protective white respirator suits. They operated machines that removed mustard gas by blasting 105-degree water into each of those 780,000 shells.

President Joe Biden  last summer praised the workers along with counterparts at weapons storage bases in Oregon and Kentucky for successfully getting rid of all outlawed weapons. On Oct. 6, arms treaty officials at the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons sent a letter to Bechtel certifying the total elimination of the mustard agent. The United States was the last of 193 signatory nations to comply.

Colorado’s senators now are pushing legislation to enable a swift transfer of the land, located just east of Pueblo, back to local control, no later than July.

Meanwhile, Army officials are negotiating with the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment to establish a cleanup plan. The federal process for re-using military bases requires that Colorado buy back the land once Army officials formally decommission the base and redesignate it as “surplus.” CDPHE officials emphasized, in a response to Denver Post queries, that “the U.S. Army is responsible for cleaning up all remaining areas as long as contamination remains.”

Bechtel has started dismantling its plant, and company officials estimated this will take 30 months. Workers will break down much of the facility, including titanium pipelines and vats — necessary due to mustard gas residue contamination. They’ll reduce the facility to pieces they can fit into steel drums, which trucks then will haul to hazardous waste dumps.

“We’re doing this for the future,” said Walton Levi, the federal government’s project manager in the plant. “I have a daughter. We want to leave the world a better place.”

Railway and aerospace testing hub envisioned

Colorado officials envision a massive industrial research and development hub — if all goes as planned.

For years, PuebloPlex officials have been working under a master-lease agreement with the Army to sublease safe parts of the property to the Association of American Railways, the United Launch Alliance (a space launch venture by Boeing and Lockheed-Martin), and others. An eventual re-sale would enable, beyond possible jobs, the collection of taxes that could boost the economy in southern Colorado.

The rail transportation work conducted by MxV Rail (MxV is the mathematical formula for momentum) brought an investment of $30 million. MxV installed a 60-foot-thick concrete crash-testing wall and a six-mile rail loop for analyzing high-speed trains and managing derailments. MxV also created a facility for training rail emergency responders.

PuebloPlex marketers tout the proximity to Pueblo’s airport, U.S. 50, railways, and the Evraz steel mill, where employees produce state-of-the-art 1,500-foot seamless rails.

Some 1,000 concrete quonset-shaped storage bunkers, which provide constant 50-degree storage conditions, are available for $1,700 a month. One of the 500 or so tenants keeps a collection of antique cars. A Pueblo organization devoted to helping the homeless stores cots in one, but using the units for housing is problematic because the land at the site isn’t classified as safe for residential use, DeSalvo said.

Antelope roam between the bunkers and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists this fall released 22 black-footed ferrets — an endangered species — in an effort to revive grasslands on the eastern side of the site. The federal government lacked funds to purchase the depot for conversion to a wildlife refuge, as was done in metro Denver with the 11-square-mile Rocky Flats and 25-square-mile Rocky Mountain Arsenal weapons-making sites.

Cleanup concerns

Cleanup anxieties have intensified since Biden trumpeted the destruction of weapons. Toxic groundwater and potentially explosive old munitions could prohibit re-development by increasing liabilities for future owners, DeSalvo said. “We have to be super careful so that we don’t acquire any liability.”

The CDPHE for decades has been charged with regulating all activities at the Pueblo Chemical Depot. State environmental officials say they regularly review work plans, conduct inspections to verify complete cleanup, and evaluate water and soil sampling data to ensure state standards are met — in this case conditions safe enough for industrial use. If standards aren’t met, state officials can impose controls on future land use.

A new permit specifying what the Army now must do should be completed this year and made public, health officials said.

“The Pueblo Depot will be cleaned up,” CDPHE hazardous materials and waste management division director Tracie White told The Denver Post. “Our primary goal is protecting human health — the people who are using that water. We still monitor, very closely, the off-site contamination.”

Nearby residents said they still feel vulnerable. Two miles south of the depot, people in the Avondale farming community (population 500), including former depot workers, had filters and water-cleaning systems installed by the Army so that nobody would drink water from wells. Those are still in place but some residents say they buy bottled water.

“Water here is an issue,” said Erica Birner, owner of Chuck’s Place, a local bar and restaurant established in 1928.

A 96-year-old customer advised her to never drink local well water, Birner said. She invested $37,000 to install a water vending machine that dispenses purified H2O for a fee outside Chuck’s Place. She runs that dispenser at a loss because she can’t bear to charge residents of Avondale and neighboring Boone more than 30 cents a gallon for a commodity essential for life, she said.

“We would hope the Army would clean it up before they leave. We are in a disaster zone.”

CDPHE officials said they monitor water in the towns and that plumes extend beyond the depot but there is no evidence drinking water is tainted.

Army committed

At the site, water tests conducted by the Army show a gradual decrease in the TNT and TCE concentrations in groundwater from as much as 250 parts-per-billion in 2009 to less than 60 ppb this year after water is filtered, state officials said. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set a health advisory guidance level for TNT in drinking water at of 2.2 ppb and a maximum limit for TCE at 5 ppb.

The Department of Defense is committed to full cleanup, said the Army’s Pueblo Chemical Depot commander Col. Rodney McCutcheon, a chemical weapons expert whose experience includes dealing with munitions stockpiles found in Iraq.

“The Army is not going to leave here until everything is 100% good to go,” McCutcheon said. “We housed a strategic deterrent against our enemies the Russians for years. We did that safely and securely. And, now, the community here will benefit.”

However, on a recent ride around the land, he and DeSalvo acknowledged that Congress must stay the course for cleanup to be done.

“We need Congress to function effectively,” DeSalvo said.  “We need long-term environmental remediation. Congress needs to authorize that each year. ….. When there’s no funding, cleanup just gets delayed. Some projects, if they were fully funded up front, could be completed quickly.”

Unexploded munitions

Colorado officials said the most costly cleanup task will be clearing a 7,000-acre area where munitions are buried. On Aug. 6, 1948, a lightning strike at the depot triggered detonations and the scattering of explosives, according to military records.

First, electromagnetic surveys must be done to locate explosives. Of 62 sites where unexploded materials are concentrated, 22 are classified as problem areas, said Dustin McNeil, leader of the CDPHE’s federal facilities remediation and restoration team.

Another long-term challenge will be monitoring and filtering out the toxic pollution from groundwater, which was contaminated after Army operators spilled industrial solvents and dumped explosives, McNeil said. Much of the toxic material has been confined to the property. “There are some off-site excursions,” McNeil said.

Largescale water-cleaning systems have been running for years and must continue to remove and contain contaminants.

The groundwater flows south from the base toward farm fields and the Arkansas River, about two miles south of the depot. At one of the treatment plants, TCE-contaminated water pumped to the surface is aerated — treatment that could be compared with “bubblers in a fish tank,” said Ann Mead, the Army’s remediation project manager. The cleaned water then is reinjected into the ground. At the southwestern side of the site, pumps raise groundwater to the surface where it is circulated through charcoal filters to remove TNT and other contaminants.

State data provided to the Denver Post shows that Army water-cleaning systems last year pumped more than 215 million gallons of water from 78 wells for treatment to remove TCE and TNT.

“The point of this is to stop the contamination at our boundary,” Mead said.

However, sustained water treatment over the next 25 years, she said, “depends on funding.”

Jobs uncertain

U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet were not made available to discuss cleanup issues. Hickenlooper staffers, in emails, did not respond directly to Denver Post queries about cleanup.

They’ve introduced legislation in Congress that would direct the Army to close the Pueblo Chemical Depot no later than July, a year after the completion of the chemical weapon destruction. Then, under the military’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, the site would be sold to PuebloPlex, the local redevelopment authority.

PuebloPlex officials said they will take ownership later this year of a 16,000-acre portion of the site. The legislation would enable a transfer of the remaining 7,000 acres from the Army to PuebloPlex.

The primary objective for Colorado has been generating jobs in the economically ailing southern half of the state. During the Cold War, the weapons depot employed as many as 8,000 workers, second to Pueblo’s steel mill in sustaining the southern Colorado economy.

Now Bechtel’s workforce is shrinking gradually and notices posted at the plant advise employees of upcoming opportunities for retraining. “We’re going to lose about 2,000 jobs over the next five years,” DeSalvo said. “That will have a huge negative economic impact. And that’s why we’re ramping up our efforts.”

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It comes out of what I do: For the last decade, I’ve guided multi-day whitewater fly-fishing trips through western Colorado’s Gunnison Gorge during the summer. Then I spend the fall guiding horseback hunting outfits in the wilderness. It adds up to around 100 nights a year sleeping rough.

I’ve met a lot of people from all over the country, and, sad to say, too many seem oblivious to how scarce clean water is in the outback and also how much work it takes to make water safe for drinking. That’s why I sometimes call them “water poopers.”

Spill a big batch of filtered water, treat a horse like a car rather than a living being, or behave in some other entitled way, and you might get saddled with this moniker. If a client takes offense, I explain that a water-pooper assumes that a flush toilet is necessary to life, and they usually agree: “Yep, that’s me. Never thought about it that way.”

On the river, and in hunting camp, water is precious: We filter every drop of water that we drink. We haul the water from the river or the creek to camp and then let gravity filters purify it, one drop at a time.

On overnight river trips we use a portable toilet setup with a great view, but some clients never get over their distaste of having to use it. At trip’s end, our portable toilet gets packed out, leaving nothing behind.

On the mountain every fall, we usually have to dig two 5-foot-deep outhouse holes at least 40 paces from the main tents. After a stalagmite of poop and toilet paper inevitably forms, the “camp-jack” has the unlucky job of knocking over the tower. We fill in the hole when it’s three-quarters full and then dig a new one.

Wilderness guides love saying things like “misery makes memories,” or “embrace the suck.” It’s good for a laugh when rain, mud or a sudden freeze moves in, but it helps make living deep in the wilderness an experience to learn from and remember. It also breaks the water-pooper spell we fall into in the “real world.” Being responsible for our personal needs connects us to the realities of life that modern civilization hides.

Our elk camp is located in an aspen forest licking down into Gambel oak brush, and every year I notice that the land is drier and hotter. Aspens are not doing well. The mature trees are dead or dying and only saplings seem to have any vigor. A little creek used to run cool enough to hold some fingerling trout, but vegetation is moving higher up the mountain and the creek is warm. The elk rut also happens later in the fall each year.

At some point every season after six weeks in the wild, I drive home, and as I crest the ridge and see the lights of Grand Junction, it hits me: Some 150,000-plus people live in the area, and they all defecate in purified water without a second thought.

For those first few days back in civilization, the absurdity is overwhelming. But I also can see the bigger picture of our careless lives. Living in a wild place separates us from what is essential: Shelter. Energy. Food. Clean water. Waste removal. We’re forced to take individual responsibility for all of those things in the backcountry.

Of course, I’m a water-pooper, too. No one is immune. No matter how you wipe it, we all clean ourselves with dead trees, even protestors sitting in old growth forests.

I might just be a river rat and mule skinner, but I know that many of our most pressing environmental and social issues stem from this water-pooper line of thinking.

Stepping out of the system to take responsibility for ourselves, even for a few days in the wild, can be eye-opening. It’s amazing to realize how fragile our luxuries are, from toilets that whisk waste away to having clean water pour out of a tap.

It is unwise to take these luxuries for granted.

Jacob Richards is a contributor to Writers on the Range an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about the West. He is an outdoor guide and writer and lives in Fruita, Colorado.

The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission on Friday approved the importation of the red swamp crawfish for human consumption — though with some restrictions. Starting Jan. 1, people who want to bring the southern food staple into the state can do so with an importation license, but they cannot possess the crawfish for more than 72 hours or release them into water.

Before the change, it was illegal to import or possess the species because of concerns that the crustaceans would damage lakes and rivers if they made their way into waterways.

But the species remained easily available for purchase live or at restaurants. If caught, a violator was subject to a misdemeanor that could carry a fine of up to $5,000. Most of the people cooking and eating the mudbugs were unaware of the regulation banning them, and the ban went unenforced for years, Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff said.

“There is a huge demand on these,” Ty Petersburg, assistant chief of law enforcement programs at the agency, told the commission at an August meeting.

Consternation about the ban began in March when wildlife officials cited someone for importing the species, which led to a larger investigation into the industry.

“As a result of that case, CPW has been made aware of a significant culture in Colorado regarding social gatherings and meals surrounding crayfish boils,” a CPW memo on the issue states. “CPW law enforcement has now documented dozens of restaurants across the (Front Range) alone that hold regular crawfish boils and meal services with live imported crayfish.”

For years, Cajun restaurants sold imported crawfish, caterers put on boils for private events and individuals bought live crawfish for backyard boils. One distributor told wildlife officials that they were selling between 9,000 and 11,000 pounds of live crawfish per week during the season, from January to August.

“If you extrapolate that, we have a whole lot of these critters coming into the state — something we didn’t really realize, to be honest with you,” Petersburg said.

Despite the tons of crawfish coming into Colorado, the state has not detected a population in lakes or rivers here, said Josh Nehring, assistant aquatic section manager at CPW. However, the agency does not test specifically for the species.

“The species, if established, is capable of altering the habitat and food chain of lakes and streams,” Nehring said.

The ban was intended to keep the non-native species from being introduced to Colorado’s waters if they were used as fishing bait or released live into the water.

Red swamp crawfish are native to the Gulf of Mexico but have established invasive populations in other states, including Minnesota, New Mexico, Maine and Washington.

If introduced into Colorado waters, the species could also spread downstream to other states and communities. Several native species of crawfish live in the state east of the Continental Divide, but there are no native crawfish on the western side.

“Red swamp crayfish mature early, and have rapid growth rates, large numbers of offspring and short life spans,” a CPW memo on the species states. “They can replace indigenous crayfish by competitive exclusion and/or transmission of crayfish plague.”

A different invasive crayfish species, the rusty crayfish, is one of Colorado wildlife managers’ top invasive concerns in the state. That crayfish has been found in Colorado’s waterways since 2009 and wildlife managers believe they were introduced after anglers used them as bait.

More than 200 people weighed in on the Gulf Coast crawfish issue during the agency’s public comment process. About two-thirds of those who commented supported removing the ban. Some of those in favor of ending the ban noted that few people would pay $6 to $9 a pound for live crawfish simply to dump them in a river.

The new regulation is an attempt to balance cultural and business needs with environmental risk, Petersburg said.

Under the new rules, people who want to buy live crawfish and host their own boils must have a copy of the providers’ importation license and a receipt of purchase, Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman Joey Livingston said.

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As Thornton filed its latest application for a water pipe permit with Larimer County on Monday, officials had hope that they would face less resistance this time. But forces that have lined up against the city in recent years have no intention of dropping their fight against a 42-inch-wide pipe that would run across the county — arguing the project holds the potential to negatively impact landowners while doing nothing to improve the health of the Poudre.

They want Thornton to leave its water in the Poudre, allowing it to flow through Fort Collins before it’s taken out.

The issue will once again land in the laps of Larimer County’s three commissioners, who could either approve or reject Thornton’s new pipe alignment in a vote expected by March.

A no vote would jeopardize long-term growth plans in Thornton, Colorado’s sixth-largest city, for years to come by hampering the ability to access water it bought the rights for decades ago.

“Though it has been frustrating all these years, I firmly believe this is a better project with all the community feedback,” said Brett Henry, executive director of utilities and infrastructure for the city of Thornton. “It’s more clear about what to expect. There are less unknowns.”

Larimer County is the linchpin in Thornton’s $500 million, 70-mile water pipe project.

Adams and Weld counties already have given their blessings, and Thornton has built and buried seven miles of pipe near Windsor and Johnstown. It is scheduled to construct another 16 miles just north of the city over the next two years, at a cost of $64 million.

Thornton says the pipe’s new proposed alignment through Larimer County holds several advantages over a route the county rejected in early 2019. It would take 16 fewer miles of pipe in the county than the original route called for, and the project’s western terminus would avoid a number of neighborhoods that had raised concerns around construction disruption.

The city is also willing to move a proposed pump station well apart from homes. The station would be used to divert the water shares Thornton owns in the Poudre to a collection of reservoirs northwest of Fort Collins.

The pipe would then traverse 22 properties in Larimer County before crossing into Weld County and turning south. City spokesman Todd Barnes said Thornton already has begun discussions with most of the landholders about obtaining easements for the pipe.

“It’s all rural farmland and Thornton owns two of the properties,” he said. “We’ve consulted closely with Larimer County and we feel we’ve gotten as much feedback as we could. We’ve let the community’s input guide our process and our design.”

That’s not so, said Save the Poudre executive director Gary Wockner. The community wants the water left alone rather than fed into Thornton’s “zombie” pipeline, he said.

“Save The Poudre’s position will be, again, that the water should stay in the Poudre River all the way to Windsor,” Wockner said. “Using the river as the conveyance is cheaper, faster, smarter and restores water to the depleted Poudre River through Fort Collins and Larimer County.”

K.A. Wagner, who heads opposition group No Pipe Dream, said her organization once again will get people involved in fighting Thornton’s plans.

“When the Board of Commissioners denied the first application, they noted that Thornton had not explored ‘all reasonable alternatives,’ as required by” the local land use regulations, Wagner said. “They also expressed disappointment that the future of the Poudre was not considered.”

But Barnes said courts have ruled that Larimer County can’t force Thornton to keep the water it owns in the Poudre River. And doing so would be counterproductive for those who will rely on it in coming decades, he said.

“Why would we willingly put our high-quality drinking water down the Poudre River past three wastewater treatment plants and all the urban runoff?” Barnes said.

Henry, Thornton’s infrastructure chief, said “no engineer would tell you to pollute or degrade the water before you treat it.”

Thornton expects to bring an average of 14,000 acre-feet of Poudre River water to the city each year. An acre-foot of water, or about 326,000 gallons, is what two average families of four use in a year. The city currently draws the bulk of its water from the South Platte/Lower Clear Creek system, at 26,500 acre-feet per year, and from Standley Lake, at 6,000 acre-feet.

If Thornton can’t secure its future water supply, the failure could stymie long-term growth plans for the city of 150,000. Barnes said the city already had a 10,000-plus residential unit backlog due to “water uncertainty.”

Barnes suggested the water stakes went beyond Thornton, potentially preventing the city from playing its part in helping to alleviate metro Denver’s affordable housing crunch.

Case in point: Maiker Housing Partners has paused the development of two affordable housing projects in Thornton due to the “uncertainty over future water delivery,” the head of Adams County’s housing authority told The Denver Post.

“As soon as the water is available, we will eagerly resume pre-development activities the following day,” said Peter LiFari, Maiker’s CEO.

But Wagner accused Thornton of employing smoke and mirrors with its water portfolio. It can still access all the water it needs without disturbing the residents and the landscape of Larimer County, she said, while also bolstering the health of a critical river segment in a part of the West beset by worsening drought.

“Instead of lamenting its backlog of building permits, Thornton should acknowledge climate change, respect the natural resources of Larimer County and plan for the unrelenting drought affecting the North Front Range,” she said.

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The Fifth National Climate Assessment — released by the White House on Tuesday — combines thousands of studies and spells out the risks a warming world poses to American society. The last such assessment was released in 2018.

Climate change is “harming physical, mental, spiritual and community health and well-being through the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events, increasing cases of infectious and vector-borne diseases, and declines in food and water quality and security,” the assessment said.

The lower 48 states since 1970 have warmed by 2.5 degrees compared to the global average of 1.7 degrees, according to the report. The warming has created rising sea levels, increased weather disasters, shrinking water supplies and increased disasters like floods, extreme drought, heatwaves and wildfires.

The impacts of climate change become more devastating with every fraction of a degree that temperatures rise. Since 2018, the Southwest — which includes Colorado — has weathered 31 large climate-related disasters resulting in 700 deaths and more than $67 billion in damage, the assessment states. The disasters in Colorado include the 2021 Marshall fire in Boulder County, ongoing severe drought and dangerous hail storms, like the one that injured concertgoers at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in June.

“Every tenth of a degree of warming that we avoid matters,” Allison Crimmins, director of the assessment, said Wednesday in a call with reporters.

The assessment examines climate change impacts in each of 10 regions. The Southwest faces a future with less water, more difficult agricultural production and more severe fire.

Climate impacts can also make energy production designed to reduce emissions more difficult.  More wildfire smoke makes solar energy less reliable. Less reliable water means less reliable hydropower.

The report states that the U.S. has made significant strides in reducing greenhouse gas emissions but must do more — and quickly — to avert more damage and death.

“One of the first and most important things people can do about climate change is to talk about it,” said Dave White, lead author of the chapter on the Southwest and the director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at Arizona State University.

These are four major impacts of climate change expected in Colorado, according to the report.

Shrinking snowpack

Persistent years of low snow are expected over the next 50 years if climate change continues at its current speed, the assessment states. Snow will be less common at lower elevations and melt earlier in the spring than in the past.

Rocky Mountain snowpack has been declining over the past century but the shrink has accelerated in recent years due to warming trends, White said.

“That water is essential,” White said.

Water from mountain snowpack flows through city faucets, irrigates farmlands and — before it melts — fuels a multi-billion-dollar winter sports industry.

As the snowpack shrinks, the landscape absorbs more of the sun’s heat instead of reflecting it, which further speeds melt.

Less water

Less snow means less runoff in the rivers Colorado relies upon for its water. Less snow, combined with higher temperatures that speed evaporation and drier soils that soak up more moisture, will lead to difficult decisions about how to use and conserve water. Underground aquifers will also refill more slowly with less rainfall and runoff.

The Colorado River — one of the major water sources for the region — continues to dry. Between 1913 and 2017, the river’s annual flow decreased by 9% for every degree Celsius average temperatures rose, the assessment states.

“We had a lot of conversations about the Colorado River but also similar issues that are happening in other river basins in the southwest,” said Elizabeth Koebele, one of the authors of the assessment and an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Long-term aridification — punctuated with serious weather events — will make water supplies more unpredictable. The unpredictability may threaten the region’s ability to consistently use dams to create electricity, disrupting a typically reliable and low-carbon source of energy, the report states.

More difficult farming

Warmer winters will be detrimental to orchard crops, false springs will increase vulnerability to late-season freezes and heatwaves will threaten production. Raising cattle on rangeland will also become more unsustainable as the region becomes more arid.

“Continuing drought and water scarcity will make it more difficult to raise food and fiber in the Southwest without major shifts to new strategies and technologies,” the report states. “Extreme heat events will increase animal stress and reduce crop quality and yield, thereby resulting in widespread economic impacts.”

If the rate of climate change is not slowed, increased temperatures and less water could lead to lower food availability, higher prices and fewer options.

“That’s determined by how we respond to these risks,” White said.

Increased heat will also threaten the health of people who work outside, especially migrant workers who are marginalized from health care and social services. Extreme heat can lead to dehydration and kidney illness while dust storms — which are expected to increase — can impact lung health.

Indigenous communities that have resided for centuries in the Southwest have successfully changed agricultural practices in times of drought, flood and fire, Koebele said.

“We can learn a lot from working with communities that have adapted in the past,” she said.

More severe wildfires

Wildfires in Colorado and across the region have become larger and hotter as the world warms, creating a string of unprecedented blazes.

“High-severity wildfires are expected to continue in coming years, placing the people, economies, ecosystems and water resources of the region at considerable risk,” the report states.

The three largest wildfires in Colorado’s history occurred in 2020. California’s seven largest wildfires all occurred since 2018. The largest fires in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah have all occurred since 2007.

The number of large fires on grassland — like the Marshall fire, which killed two people and destroyed $2 billion in property — has increased fivefold since 1984.

Earlier spring runoff from the mountains due to warming will increase plant growth in the spring, creating more fire fuel during warmer summers. Wildfire smoke poses risks to human health and can make solar energy less productive, as it did in Southern California in 2020.

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The proposed expansion of a rail transport facility could result in the shipping of a billion more gallons of oil each year on trains that run along the critical water source. At the Wildcat Loadout facility in northeastern Utah, waxy crude oil extracted from the Uinta Basin is transferred from trucks to trains that carry the substance east through Colorado to be refined on the Gulf Coast.

If approved by the federal Bureau of Land Management, the expansion could more than triple the amount of oil transported from the facility from 1.3 million gallons per day to 4.2 million.

Communities along the rail line, environmental groups and some members of Colorado’s congressional delegation have expressed concern about the potential environmental impacts from the increase, which adds up to just over 1 billion additional gallons transported each year. They worry the Colorado River and lands around the rail line would be at risk if a train derailed and the crude oil spilled.

The Colorado River provides water for 40 million people, irrigates 5.5 million acres of agricultural lands, generates electric power and fuels recreation-based economies across the West. It also provides an important habitat for several endangered species.

“It’s crazy to think a derailment wouldn’t happen,” said Jonathan Godes, a Glenwood Springs city councilman.

Concerned groups and river advocates are urging the Bureau of Land Management to produce a full environmental impact statement — a detailed process they hope would include an examination of potential threats in Colorado from the expansion — instead of a more limited environmental analysis.

“A train derailment that spills oil in the Colorado River’s headwaters would be disastrous to our state’s water supplies, wildlife habitat, and outdoor recreation assets, and the broader Colorado River Basin,” U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse wrote in a joint letter to the BLM about the project. “In addition, an accident on the train line further increases wildfire risk at a time when the West already faces historically dry conditions.”

BLM spokeswoman Angela Hawkins wrote in an email that the agency was gathering information about the Wildcat Loadout expansion and had not yet made a decision about which type of environmental review to conduct.

“As an early step in the environmental review process, the BLM will seek public feedback through a public scoping period,” she said.

At normal outdoor temperatures, waxy crude oil extracted from the Uinta Basin forms a solid about the consistency of shoe polish. It has to be heated to be turned into a liquid for transport.

In previous spills of Uinta Basin oil into rivers, the oil has formed into balls and solids that stuck to rocks or riverbeds.

“Those tend to stick in the water for a very long time and would be very hard to clean up,” said Josh Axelrod with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The proposed Uinta Basin Railway is a separate project that would build an 88-mile rail spur connecting to the existing network. It would increase the amount of crude oil transported through Colorado by a factor of 10, according to projections, and an environmental impact statement produced for that project described how a potential rail accident could spiral into a larger threat.

“If an accident were to release crude oil near a waterway, crude oil could enter the waterway, which would affect water quality,” the 2021 analysis reads. “If the force of the accident were sufficient to ignite the crude oil, a fire could result that could remain confined to a single car or could surround other cars and cause them to rupture if the thermal protection on the other cars were breached or damaged. A fire that surrounds other cars could, in turn, cause a larger fire.”

Axelrod said that while it considers the Wildcat Loadout expansion, the BLM likely will consider an August court ruling ordering a different federal agency to conduct a more thorough environmental impact statement for the Uinta Basin Railway Project. The order came in response to a lawsuit filed by five environmental groups and Eagle County.

Progress is now halted on the Uinta Basin Railway while the federal Surface Transportation Board reworks its analysis to include potential impacts to the Colorado River and Colorado communities that would experience increased train traffic.

“That case would give me pause about trying to get through this quickly, because it would be litigated,” Axelrod said.

Many towns along the Colorado River and the Union Pacific railway rely on outdoor recreation and tourism, Eagle County Attorney Bryan Treu wrote in a letter to the BLM.

“The Colorado River and its tributaries are not just the water source for tens of millions of people, businesses, and farms in the Western United States,” he wrote. “They are also the lifeblood of Colorado’s communities and ecosystems.”

In recent years, Glenwood Springs has weathered recurring disasters: wildfire, mudslides and historic rainfall. A major oil spill or wildfire sparked by a train would be economically devastating, said Godes, the councilman.

“Obviously, these companies are going to ship as much as they can,” Godes said. “You know, a lion is going to hunt. I can’t blame them. But it’s on us as a community and a state to say what is the right amount.”

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