On Wednesday, the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission will consider two proposals — including a potential ban on the sale of new gas-powered lawn equipment along the Front Range — as part of its efforts to clean the air. One proposal was created by a state agency, the Air Pollution Control Division, and the other was written by a nonprofit whose board is appointed by the governor: the Regional Air Quality Council.

Gas-powered lawn and garden equipment contributes to the poor air quality along the Front Range because those tools release tons of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides — two key ingredients in the ground-level ozone pollution that is particularly bad on hot summer days, when that equipment is most likely to be in use.

The air quality council’s plan would essentially phase out gas-powered equipment usage along the Front Range, while the state’s proposal would impose minor statewide limitations but largely allow landscaping companies and homeowners to continue working with gas-powered equipment.

The Air Quality Control Commission could pick either plan or adopt a combination of the two.

Environmentalists are pushing for the more stringent restrictions, saying the Front Range’s air quality is so poor the commission cannot afford to take small steps. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency designated a nine-county area along the northern Front Range as being in severe non-attainment of federal air quality standards, leading to more governmental regulations in the region.

“Ultimately we shouldn’t have the dirtiest, most polluting equipment on store shelves,” said Kirsten Schatz, clean air advocate for the Colorado Public Interest Research Group. “That equipment for sale now could last 10 or 12 years. It’s important we get the dirtiest equipment off of the store shelves as quickly as possible.”

The Regional Air Quality Council’s proposal would impose the most restrictions.

Under that plan, a prohibition on the sale of gas-powered equipment would begin in 2025 in the nine-county region that stretches from Douglas County in the south to Larimer and Weld counties in the north. The plan also would restrict government agencies, school districts, colleges and universities, and other special districts from using small, gas-powered equipment starting in 2025.

A restriction on usage by commercial operators and homeowners’ associations would go into effect in 2026, according to an outline of the plan provided by the air quality council.

Private residents would not be banned from owning or using gas lawnmowers and other equipment. But over time, as sales became limited, that equipment would be phased out, said David Sabados, a Regional Air Quality Council spokesman.

“We aren’t going around to round up gas mowers out of people’s garages,” he said.

Under the proposal written by the state’s Air Pollution Control Division, there would be no sales prohibition anywhere in Colorado. But it would ban state government agencies from using the equipment during the summer starting in 2025, and it would ban city and county governments along the Front Range from using the gas-powered lawn equipment beginning in 2026.

That plan would have a limited impact on increasing the use of electric equipment in Colorado because government restrictions on gas-powered equipment already are coming.

In September, Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order that requires state-owned facilities to phase out gas-powered equipment such as push mowers, leaf blowers, weed whackers and other small equipment.

The governor wrote in the executive order that those things create high levels of hazardous air pollutants.

“These ‘nonroad’ emissions significantly contribute to air pollution, raising concerns about the impacts on public health,” the order stated. “Gasoline-powered lawn and garden equipment is also exceedingly loud contributing to noise pollution as well as air pollution.”

So far, Colorado has targeted the transportation sector and the oil and gas industry for reductions in greenhouse gasses and other air pollution. Limiting gas-powered lawn and garden equipment is a new strategy that could result in quick improvements in air quality, Sabados said.

A recent report from the Colorado Public Interest Research Group estimated that gas-powered lawnmowers, string trimmers, leaf blowers, chainsaws and other garden tools generated 671 tons of fine particulate matter pollution in 2020, which is equivalent to the amount produced by 7 million cars in a year.

The machines also contributed an estimated 9,811 tons of volatile organic compounds and 1,969 tons of nitrogen oxides — the same amount emitted by 880,554 cars — into the air in a single year, according to the report, which used EPA data.

“When it comes to lawn and garden equipment, these tools emit an astonishing amount of harmful pollution,” Schatz said. “We can cut a significant amount in a short period of time.”

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The I-25 widening to add express toll lanes between Fort Collins and Berthoud includes a new kind of center-of-the-highway Bustang platform — Colorado Department of Transportation officials call it a “multimodal hub” — designed to reduce bus travel time.

But state transportation and political leaders, gathered by that hub, also acknowledged planning forecasts of worsening traffic congestion over the next 25 years. Colorado’s population is expected to grow by more than 1 million before 2050 and the latest Denver Regional Council of Governments study concluded total vehicle miles traveled will increase by 40%, leading to worse I-25 congestion by 2 p.m. in 2050 than the current bumper-to-bumper I-25 traffic around 5 p.m.

CDOT officials say simply widening roads will not prevent paralyzing jams. Federal government officials, key players in securing transportation funding, concur.

“We’re being overwhelmed by the growth,” the Federal Highway Administration’s Colorado Division director John Cater said, adding that an “all-of-the-above” approach including trains and more bicycles will be necessary.

The I-25 Northern Express Lanes project, for now at least, addresses urgent needs for a reliable flow along I-25 by off-loading drivers who can afford to pay toll fees out of main lanes and onto express lanes. The new express lanes are scheduled to open Dec. 15 with toll fees waived until 2024.

This expansion also incentivizes car-pooling by giving free long-term access to express lanes for vehicles carrying three or more riders. The central Bustang platform at Loveland — more of these are planned — lets bus drivers along the Denver-to-Fort Collins route pull out of express lanes without lumbering across non-express lanes to drop off and pick up passengers. CDOT officials said this will shave 10 minutes to 15 minutes off travel time between Fort Collins and Denver.

A final phase of the northern I-25 expansion – widening a six-mile stretch between Mead and Berthoud, starting next spring – will mean at least three lanes along I-25 from Denver to Fort Collins. That builds on the recent widening of I-25 south of Castle Rock, another project that incorporated express lanes.

The expansions bring wider highway shoulders for emergency access as state safety officials increasingly raise safety concerns. Roadway fatalities in Colorado have increased from around 400 a year a decade ago to more than 760 last year, government records show.

Multiple new bridges installed along I-25 — the 35 completed so far include five overhauled interchanges — enabled the improvement of a 45-mile bicycling and walking trail along the Cache Le Poudre River, giving residents and wildlife better access to natural open space.

I-25 now “is safer,” Gov. Jared Polis told a crowd of CDOT employees, contractors, and elected officials Thursday morning at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. “It is more efficient. It saves people time getting to where they want to go.”

Polis cited the I-25 project as “a great example of how you can do lane expansion as well as multi-modal” that encourages bus riding and car-pooling.

“I don’t know what’s going to be happening in 2050,” Polis said in an interview. “But by then we’ll be working on Front Range Rail.”

A $500,000 federal grant awarded to Colorado this week is meant to spur planning for train travel along the I-25 corridor from Fort Collins to Pueblo.

The planning for a northern I-25 expansion began more than two decades ago. State and local governments initiated a required environmental impact study in 2001. At first, the project was scheduled to be done by 2035.

But rapid population growth in northern Colorado compelled faster action and a coalition of local and state officials, developers and lawmakers mobilized to compress timelines and get more work done.

“Waiting just wouldn’t have worked. Traffic would have been grid-locked,” said Steve Adams, the city manager in Loveland, where the population of around 80,000 residents has increased by nearly 50% over the past two decades.

“We are looking forward to having this done,” Adams said of the I-25 expansion, adding that future mobility also will require a broadened approach.

“We won’t be able to build enough roads to get out of the congestion. We will want to increase other modes. That’s why this hub is so important,” he said.

Last year, state transportation officials canceled a long-planned expansion of I-25 through often-clogged stretches in central Denver due to rising concerns about the environmental impacts of pollution from vehicles burning gas and diesel. That project depended on Colorado receiving federal transportation funding, and government agencies increasingly are prioritizing mass transit and other options that lead to less pollution.

“Widening freeways and adding express lanes can be a solution at times and mitigate some of the worst impacts,” said Robert Spotts, the manager of DRCOG’s mobility analytics program. “But we need to look at all congestion mitigation strategies. These include more people working from home. We need to get people out of single-occupant vehicles, whether that means shifting them into transit or carpools. It is going to take all hands on deck, all forms of congestion mitigation, to reduce the worst impacts that are coming.”

The “Roadmap to Colorado’s Future: 2026” lays out six broad objectives, largely targeted at increasing housing supply and affordability while seeking to dovetail those efforts with improved access to transit and the state’s climate goals. Polis unveiled the plan at an affordable apartment complex near a transit stop in Lakewood, highlighting the connection he’s made in developing more transit and more housing.

Though the governor repeatedly stressed the roadmap as a vision for the state to pursue, the 34-page document further cemented Polis’ broader desire to reform land use and zoning across Colorado, along with calls for more strategic growth to maximize resources, prepare for wildfires and protect the state’s outdoor areas.

Zoning reform and coordinated strategic planning are policy solutions that the governor and other Democrats see as a panacea to several of the state’s current and future ills, from climate change to housing and transit development to water limitations. The roadmap comes seven months after Polis’ marquee zoning proposal collapsed in the Capitol and four weeks before legislators return to Denver to debate the issue at length once again.

“We have too many obstructions that get in the way of building more homes, especially starter homes — homes in the 200 (thousand), 300 (thousand) range, multifamily and apartments,” Polis said in an interview. His office previously released similar roadmaps to address climate change. “What we’re really seeking to do is create a vision, a compelling vision, for Colorado’s future that’s more livable, more affordable, protects our water and our open space.”

The plan, which is pegged to the state’s 150th birthday as well as the end of Polis’ second term in 2026, details a list of worrying data points about Colorado’s present and future: The state, Polis’ office wrote, is the 12th most expensive for renters and sixth most expensive for homebuyers. Nearly three-quarters of renters making less than $75,000 spend more than 30% of their income on rent. Crop land is decreasing. Homelessness has increased.

What’s more, the report notes, the state is going to continue growing. Thirty-five thousand new households are expected to move here each year through the end of this decade.

“Unless we direct this growth in thoughtful ways, and build enough housing in existing communities and near job centers, this reality will drive up the cost of housing and put additional pressure on open space, our quality of life, affordability, and our environment,” Polis’ office wrote.

Collaboration with local governments

To hit the broader vision, the roadmap calls for eliminating exclusionary zoning practices and promoting a mix of housing types, a nod to the need for condos and multi-unit buildings, as opposed to single-family homes. Polis specifically called out making it easier for Coloradans to build accessory-dwelling units, also known as carriages houses or granny flats. ADUs are regulated differently across the state. Polis set aside money in his budget proposal to subsidize ADU construction, and a bill to allow for the building of more ADUs is expected to be introduced in the coming legislative session.

Other strategies include updating housing regulations and modernizing “regulatory and zoning policy”; supporting expedited local government permitting and housing construction; and focusing on more walkable neighborhoods and development near existing and future transit corridors.

While acknowledging that more renewable and electric energy will be a “major” part of the state’s climate change strategy, the roadmap argues that “the design of both buildings and transit systems over the coming years will have pollution, traffic and cost-of-living implications for decades, further emphasizing the importance of expanded transit and smart building design.”

In a way, the Lakewood development where Polis unveiled the plan Thursday is a perfect synthesis of land-use reformers’ ideals. The building charges $950 a month to rent a one-bedroom unit, and it’s available to people making 30% to 60% of the area’s median income. It’s near public transit and neighborhood schools. It also has baked-in requirements to keep it available for lower-income renters. Affordable housing advocates have repeatedly said they support land-use reforms, so long as they include affordability requirements.

Local governments, meanwhile, were strident critics earlier this year of the governor’s proposed land-use reforms, which would’ve legalized ADUs across the state and eased zoning restrictions in transit areas. They promise to be similarly opposed in 2024, arguing that zoning decisions are best made by local officials.

Polis said his plan doesn’t focus solely on zoning reform and noted that he was seeking to collaborate with local governments, including with millions of dollars in incentives to make reforms more palatable. His roadmap includes several examples of local governments’ own efforts to improve housing, and he and other speakers pitched the roadmap as a collaborative vision.

“Your skepticism is not just valid — it’s essential,” Peter LiFari, who runs Adams County’s housing authority, said of reform skeptics. “…How do we navigate growth without forsaking the essence of our Coloradan identity?”

Polis and other proponents of reform have argued that the housing crisis — and the broader climate and water challenges facing Colorado — don’t care about city or county boundaries and that coordination, including on a statewide level, is required to provide more housing and improve transit.

“Move as fast as possible”

Polis pitched his vision as a roadmap not just for the coming decades but for the rest of his term, though he said Thursday that there weren’t specific benchmarks to judge if his roadmap is coming to fruition.

Proponents acknowledge that land-use reforms take time to bear fruit. But there’s an urgent need in Colorado for renter relief now: Evictions are surging across the state and have already hit record levels in Denver. Polis’ roadmap encourages interventions to prevent and reduce homelessness, but it otherwise focuses on his preferred, supply-side solution to the housing crisis of development and strategic growth.

“We are going to partner with the legislature and with local government to implement this roadmap,” the governor said. “We believe that Colorado needs to move as fast as possible and, in a perfect world, we would have moved a couple of years ago on this route, but it’s not too late.”

Echoing what land-use reformers have long advocated, the roadmap argues that improved transit availability can cut down on car pollution and ease congestion. Polis’ office argues that the state “should be on the forefront of rail infrastructure in the United States,” and Polis touted the $500,000 in seed money that the state will receive from the federal government to bolster a Front Range passenger rail system.

The roadmap calls for increasing transit options; improving new and existing networks while planning for new ones; and promoting a complete and connected system.

“Zoning is a part of any discussion, but it’s a lot broader than zoning,” Polis said. “It’s about tax credits for placemaking, including art spaces. It’s about reforming and investing in transit. It’s about Front Range rail. It’s about the kind of Colorado that we want to live in. That saves people time and money, reduces traffic improves air quality, and it’s fundamentally more affordable.”

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Space Command will be headquartered in Colorado Springs after our Senators especially congressmen Jason Crow and Doug Lamborn put their foot down and refused to accept a scandalously executed basing location process that for a time threatened to take Space Command from the Centennial state. Now Crow and Lamborn are working together to create a Space Force National Guard.

Representatives Ken Buck and Joe Neguse led the delegation’s push for the U.S. Senate to finally recognize Camp Amache as a federal historic site that will be managed by the National Parks Service.

Senator Michael Bennet fought alongside Democrats and Republicans from Colorado for years for the Arkansas Valley Conduit to bring clean drinking water to thousands of Coloradans in the southeastern plains who had been promised the project for decades. Bennet and John Hickenlooper secured $60 million in Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Act to finally make the dream a reality.

Working diligently behind the scenes of this progress is Rep. Diane DeGette, the senior member of our delegation and the coordinator of a regular Colorado delegation meeting to plan just such coordinated efforts. We’ve been told by several people familiar with the meetings that Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, whose district includes southeastern Colorado and Pueblo, is the only person not to attend the bipartisan Colorado delegation meetings.

But the next frontier for the other more productive members of Congress is pushing the U.S. Army to complete the cleanup of the Pueblo Chemical Depot. The old weapons facility which until recently housed thousands of tons of chemical weapons and munitions needs an estimated $600 million investment from the Army to clean up a legacy of contamination.

The restoration of the land to industrial standards is critical for the area’s economy.

Thousands of acres of prime Pueblo real estate are tied up by a combination of toxic chemicals leached into the ground by industrial spills and unexploded ordinances that were once ignited by a lightning strike.

The Army has reduced the groundwater contamination at the facility but TNT and TCE concentrations still exceed the EPA’s standards for drinking water. So far, according to CDPHE none of the contaminants have spread beyond the site, and the Army is actively treating groundwater and returning it to the ground cleaner.

Still, local residents south of the depot in Avondale reported to The Denver Post’s Bruce Finley that they don’t drink the well water out of fear of contamination. The area faces the same problem with unsafe drinking water as much of the area. The main trunk of the Arkansas Valley goes straight through Avondale illustrating the importance of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act finally funding projects like these that have languished for years.

Cleaning up the Depot is critical not only to the environment but to the economic vitality of the region.

Russell DeSalvo, executive director of Depot’s state-created economic development group,  PuebloPlex, has been working to make use of nearly 1,000 storage structures at the site and some of the useable land, including subleases for the space, aviation, and train industries that could bring needed jobs to the area.

But an estimated 7,000 acres cannot be used because of buried munitions.

“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,” DeSalvo told The Post. “People could be killed if they find a piece of unexploded ordnance that may be live.”

The Depot was once a hub for jobs building chemical weapons and explosives. Then it became a hub for the slow decommission of those same weapons that had been stored. Now that the cleanup is complete, the land must be put to use for the community. A third-life of activity, and not relegated to the same fates as other military waste sites that were remediated only to the level needed to become wildlife refuges portions of which are closed to pedestrian traffic due to fear of ongoing pollution just below the surface could be disturbed accidentally.

Pueblo doesn’t need a wildlife habitat.

Our Congressional delegation should work with laser focus to ensure the Depot is quickly cleaned up to the standards for industrial use. The more quickly the Army funds and prioritizes the project the better for the community.

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However, 6 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions is just a bite-sized chunk of the air pollution Colorado wants to reduce. The state’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap calls for a reduction of 12.7 million tons in annual transportation emissions by 2030.

People who chose to ride RTD’s buses and trains in July and August likely reduced the number of vehicle miles traveled by 145,393 a day, or 9 million miles over the course of two months, according to the Zero Fare for Better Air 2023 Evaluation report released Thursday.

By not traveling all those miles, drivers did not contribute to the pollutants that combine on hot summer days to create ground-level ozone.

The Regional Air Quality Council, which is tasked with finding ways to cut air pollution, helped RTD officials figure out how much was reduced during the two-month program. The air council used the modeling formula that federal officials use to measure greenhouse gas and other emissions created by transportation.

The air council’s study concluded that 2,583 pounds of volatile organic compounds and 2,235 pounds of nitrous oxide were reduced during the two months, according to the report.

Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions is crucial in the nine-county region surrounding Denver because the area is not in compliance with federal air quality standards. Metro Denver and the northern Front Range are listed in serious violation of ozone standards by the Environmental Protection Agency and are under pressure to improve conditions.

Poor air quality is dangerous for humans, especially children, the elderly and people who suffer from chronic lung conditions such as asthma. The pollution from cars, trucks and other gas-powered vehicles also creates a brown haze that blankets the area, and transportation-related pollution is one of the largest contributors to climate change and global warming.

Mike Silverstein, the air council’s executive director, said in a news release that increased use of public transportation reduces fuel production by the oil and gas industry, which also contributes to air pollution.

“RTD’s Zero Fare for Better Air initiative helps reduce both our fossil fuel use and the demand for its production, making a positive impact on our local air quality during peak ozone season,” Silverstein said.

The Zero Fare for Better Air evaluation also included statistics on how increased ridership impacted crime, including drug use, vandalism and assaults, on RTD property. Train operators and bus drivers feared security problems would undercut the program and they complained to RTD’s elected board just before the program launched.

There were fewer arrests and narcotics usage decreased during the Zero Fare period when compared to the average number of incidents during the rest of the year, the evaluation said. However, there were increases in criminal mischief/property damage reports, assaults, trespassing and biohazard incidents.

RTD also reported a jump in security incidents —  interactions with people fighting or otherwise disorderly, sick or impaired — during the two-month free fare period. In June, RTD recorded 601 security incidents but that number rose to 750 in July and 914 in August. In September, 737 security incidents were reported.

The transit district noted that it is difficult to make year-to-year comparisons on crime during the Zero Fare program because it recently changed how it accounts for crime on its buses and trains.

This year, the free ridership program expanded to two months rather than one and that longer period resulted in a 10% increase in ridership, with more than 6 million people taking advantage of the free transportation.

The program cost RTD $15.2 million in lost fares and other expenses such as marketing and surveys that help understand how the program impacts employees and customers. The Colorado Energy Office reimbursed RTD $13.9 million to help offset the lost fares, the report said.

This story was updated to correct the name of the Regional Air Quality Council executive director.

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The vapor was released from a pump that was not functional and had not been used or properly inspected in seven years, according to the report detailing the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration‘s investigation into the accident. The fire burned for six hours.

The report, obtained by The Denver Post through a federal Freedom of Information Act request, said the likelihood of injury had been higher because “employees were exposed to the hazards for nearly 7 years without the equipment being inspected properly.”

Suncor was fined $15,625 — the maximum allowed — in June for a serious violation of federal safety standards in connection with the fire at Colorado’s only oil refinery.

Most of the 1,090-page report was redacted, but it still revealed some new information about the circumstances surrounding the Dec. 24 fire that burned one person’s face so badly that he was hospitalized. A second worker was injured but did not need hospitalization, according to the report.

OSHA officials could not be reached to explain why so much of the investigative report was withheld from the public.

In response to a Denver Post inquiry about the investigation, Leithan Slade, a Suncor spokesman, wrote in an email, “Suncor has repaired and replaced the equipment related to the fire and is identifying, inspecting and testing all dead legs in the unit where the December 24, 2022 fire occurred. That work will be complete by the end of the year.”

The OSHA investigation raises questions about how Suncor manages its inspection of “dead legs,” an industry term for pipes that are no longer used and are shut off from liquids and vapors.

The explosion took place after a cold front rolled into the region, causing an extreme and fast temperature drop, on the afternoon of Dec. 21. The deep freeze caused extensive problems, and Suncor officials over the course of about a week shut down the refinery.

The Commerce City facility remained closed until early April while it was being repaired, fueling a more than 50% jump in gas prices in Colorado.

The cause of the shutdown was shrouded in secrecy with Suncor revealing little information about what had happened. Since then, details have been emerging in bits and pieces.

At a Nov. 16 meeting of the Air Quality Control Commission, state air regulators gave a briefing on Suncor’s operations and their efforts to enforce environmental regulations at the refinery. That briefing included an update on the December shutdown, which remains under investigation by the state’s Air Pollution Control Division.

The extreme weather caused instruments to freeze and the refinery was unable to make steam, said Shannon McMillan, who manages the air division’s compliance and enforcement program. Other equipment also needed to be shut off because of freezing and thawing issues.

“There were also two people that were injured during the initial days of the shutdown, which obviously further elevated the concerns about what was going on,” McMillan said.

However, her division does not investigate injury accidents. Instead, the air division is looking into air pollution violations that occurred during the shutdown. The refinery exceeded the amount of hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and visible emissions allowed under its air permits and exceeded the benzene limits allowed in its water permit. That investigation is ongoing, McMillan said.

The Suncor refinery has more than 200,000 flanges and valves that require inspection, according to the air division’s briefing.

Suncor gave OSHA a copy of its dead leg inspection program but it was redacted in the copy of the report provided to The Post.

John Jechura, a Colorado School of Mines professor in the chemical and biological engineering department, described a dead leg as being like a garden hose that is turned off at the spigot and has the valve closed on the nozzle.

“If it gets water in it and there’s a deep freeze, it freezes and expands,” Jechura said. “You don’t really know it until it thaws out.”

The report shows the pump that exploded was a backup and rarely used, Jechura said. It would make sense for the refinery to have a system of backups in place so that operations would not be interrupted if one failed.

Jechura, who reviewed the OSHA report for The Post, said too much information was blacked out to determine whether there were oversights that led to the explosion or what Suncor could have done to prevent the accident.

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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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That was one hopeful note sounded Tuesday as environmental advocates released a report showing that Coloradans have diverted 16% of waste from filling landfills over the last six years by recycling or composting — a rate that is half the national average and one of the worst in the country.

Eco-Cycle and the Colorado Public Interest Research Group, the nonprofits behind the annual research, say recycling rates in Colorado have remained low and stubbornly unmoving for years.

“Which is abysmal,” said Suzanne Jones, the executive director of Eco-Cycle.

The main reason for the lack of progress is a lack of access to recycling programs, said Rachel Setzke, a senior policy and research associate at Eco-Cycle. Only 35 communities in Colorado have guaranteed access to recycling in residential housing, though looser programs of varying types exist elsewhere.

But environmental nonprofit leaders said a slate of state laws enacted in recent years, paired with changes at the local level, could start to raise the recycling rate:

• Colorado’s Plastic Pollution Reduction Act, passed by lawmakers in 2021, will ban single-use plastic bags at checkout lines and foam takeout containers beginning Jan. 1. The law contains an exception that allows some locally based stores and restaurants to continue using plastic bags.
• As part of the same legislation, a state law banning local jurisdictions from implementing their own plastics ban will lift on July 1. That will allow them to enact even stricter rules than the state if they choose.
• A bill passed in 2022 created a statewide program that, beginning in 2026, will expand no-cost recycling for residents, public places, small businesses, schools and government buildings.

Unrecyclable material can be difficult to avoid, said Danny Katz, the executive director of CoPIRG. He recently ordered a set of towels online and each towel was individually wrapped in plastic.

“One of the easiest and best ways to improve that recycling rate is to not produce waste in the first place,” he said.

Reducing consumption of new products and eliminating single-use packaging is a way to reduce waste, the report says. Coloradans should aim for a “circular” economy in which products are reused or recycled after their intended purpose is fulfilled — reducing the need to produce more new products, the report argues.

In contrast, products in a “linear” economy are created, used and then trashed.

“Recycling and composting alone are not enough to address our waste problem,” Jones said.

Further policy changes that would reduce waste include implementing reusable eating utensils and trays at schools, giving tax breaks to food producers that donate food they can’t sell, and getting hotels to switch from single-use shampoos and soaps to refillable containers.

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Revved-up climate change now permeates Americans’ daily lives with harm that is “already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States,” a massive new government report says.

The National Climate Assessment, which comes out every four to five years, was released Tuesday with details that bring climate change’s impacts down to a local level.

Overall, it paints a picture of a country warming about 60% faster than the world as a whole, one that regularly gets smacked with costly weather disasters and faces even bigger problems in the future.

Since 1970, the Lower 48 states have warmed by 2.5 degrees (1.4 degrees Celsius) and Alaska has heated up by 4.2 degrees (2.3 degrees Celsius), compared to the global average of 1.7 degrees (0.9 degrees Celsius), the report said. But what people really feel is not the averages, but when weather is extreme.

With heat waves, drought, wildfire and heavy downpours, “we are seeing an acceleration of the impacts of climate change in the United States,” said study co-author Zeke Hausfather of the tech company Stripe and Berkeley Earth.

And that’s not healthy.

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 report said.

Compared to earlier national assessments, this year’s uses far stronger language and “unequivocally” blames the burning of coal, oil and gas for climate change.

The 37-chapter assessment includes an interactive atlas that zooms down to the county level. It finds that climate change is affecting people’s security, health and livelihoods in every corner of the country in different ways, with minority and Native American communities often disproportionately at risk.

In Alaska, which is warming two to three times faster than the global average, reduced snowpack, shrinking glaciers, thawing permafrost, acidifying oceans and disappearing sea ice have affected everything from the state’s growing season, to hunting and fishing, with projections raising questions about whether some Indigenous communities should be relocated.

The Southwest is experiencing more drought and extreme heat – including 31 consecutive days this summer when Phoenix’s daily high temperatures reached or exceeded 110 degrees – reducing water supplies and increasing wildfire risk.

Northeastern cities are seeing more extreme heat, flooding and poor air quality, as well as risks to infrastructure, while drought and floods exacerbated by climate change threaten farming and ecosystems in rural areas.

In the Midwest, both extreme drought and flooding threaten crops and animal production, which can affect the global food supply.

In the northern Great Plains, weather extremes like drought and flooding, as well as declining water resources, threaten an economy dependent largely on crops, cattle, energy production and recreation. Meanwhile, water shortages in parts of the southern Great Plains are projected to worsen, while high temperatures are expected to break records in all three states by midcentury.

In the Southeast, minority and Native American communities — who may live in areas with higher exposures to extreme heat, pollution and flooding — have fewer resources to prepare for or to escape the effects of climate change.

In the Northwest, hotter days and nights that don’t cool down much have resulted in drier streams and less snowpack, leading to increased risk of drought and wildfires. The climate disturbance has also brought damaging extreme rain.

Hawaii and other Pacific islands, as well as the U.S. Caribbean, are increasingly vulnerable to the extremes of drought and heavy rain as well as sea level rise and natural disaster as temperatures warm.

Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb, who wasn’t part of the assessment team, said, “at the center of the report are people — across every region of the country – who have escalating risks associated with climate change as well as clear opportunities for win-win climate action.”

The United States will warm in the future about 40% more than the world as a total, the assessment said. The AP calculated, using others’ global projections, that would slate America to get about 3.8 degrees (2.1 degrees Celsius) hotter by the end of the century.

Hotter average temperatures means weather that is even more extreme.

“The news is not good, but it is also not surprising,” said University of Colorado’s Waleed Abdalati, a former NASA chief scientist who was not part of this report. “What we are seeing is a manifestation of changes that were anticipated over the last few decades.”

The 2,200-page report comes after five straight months when the globe set monthly and daily heat records. It comes as the U.S. has set a record with 25 different weather disasters this year that caused at least $1 billion in damage.

“Climate change is finally moving from an abstract future issue to a present, concrete, relevant issue. It’s happening right now,” said report lead author Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy and a professor at Texas Tech University. Five years ago, when the last assessment was issued, fewer people were experiencing climate change firsthand.

Surveys this year by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research show that.

In September, about 9 in 10 Americans (87%) said they’d experienced at least one extreme weather event in the past five years — drought, extreme heat, severe storms, wildfires or flooding. That was up from 79% who said that in April.

Hayhoe said there’s also a new emphasis in the assessment on marginalized communities.

“It is less a matter … of what hits where, but more what hits whom and how well those people can manage the impacts,” said University of Colorado’s Abdalati, whose saw much of his neighborhood destroyed in the 2021 Marshall wildfire.

Biden administration officials emphasize that all is not lost and the report details actions to reduce emissions and adapt to what’s coming.

Americans on every level of government are “stepping up to meet this moment,” said White House science adviser Arati Prabhakar. “All of these actions, taken together, give us hope because they tell us that we can do big things at the scale that’s required, at the scale that the climate actually notices.”

By cleaning up industry, how electricity is made and how transport is powered, climate change can be dramatically reduced. Hausfather said when emissions stops, warming stops, “so we can stop this acceleration if we as a society get our act together.”

But some scientists said parts of the assessment are too optimistic.

“The report’s rosy graphics and outlook obscure the dangers approaching,” Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson said. “We are not prepared for what’s coming.”

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

“The finding that we can minimize costs to consumers by moving on a trajectory that will not only get us to near-zero emissions for greenhouse gases, but also other pollutants like nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides, over the next decade and a half, that’s very good news for Colorado utility customers,” said Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.

The office commissioned Boulder-based Ascend Analytics to study various scenarios for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. Already, state law requires Colorado’s eight power-generating companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2030, based on 2005 levels. But it was unclear whether new policies were needed or whether the utility companies would need to plan to invest in more technology to bring down their emissions even further by 2040, Toor said.

Now, the state believes the sector is on the right track to meet its goals even with a need for more electricity because of a growing population and an increasing demand to fuel electric cars and trucks. That was a pleasant surprise, Toor said.

Colorado’s utility companies are shuttering coal-fired power plants and developing plans to increase wind and solar power production to meet those state-mandated goals. But there had been a question about whether wind and solar power would be enough or whether utilities would need to invest in more expensive or unproven technologies such as nuclear, hydrogen and geothermal.

In September, Xcel Energy filed a new clean energy plan that would make 80% of its system run on wind, solar and biomass energy by 2030 and would add 6,500 megawatts of renewable energy to the grid as it closes its last coal-fired power plant.

On Wednesday, an Xcel spokesman said the company was encouraged by the energy office’s findings.

“We agree there is a need for new 24/7 carbon-free technology to achieve deep carbon reductions,” Tyler Bryant, an Xcel spokesman, wrote in an emailed statement. “The state’s policies will enable us to reduce carbon emissions greater than 80% by 2030 and will inform our future investments into the local infrastructure necessary to move clean energy reliably into our customers’ homes — while keeping bills low.”

Gov. Jared Polis wants Colorado to be using 100% renewable energy by 2040, and in 2019 he introduced a road map to get there. Electricity and transportation are the largest sources of greenhouse gas pollution in the state, and the governor’s administration has said it’s important to cut those emissions to slow climate change, prevent catastrophic wildfires, floods and other natural disasters, and to protect the state’s ski industry.

Environmentalists agreed the report is good news for Colorado.

Justin Brant, utility program director for the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, said he had not dug into the nitty gritty details of the modeling but found the preliminary results encouraging.

“We don’t have to get into some of these novel and more complicated technologies that have challenges,” Brant said. “For the vast majority of the reductions, we can count on wind and solar and things that are already proven.”

Ean Thomas Tafoya, executive director of GreenLatinos Colorado, said the state should be more bold in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now.

“We could do this way before 2040, I think,” he said. “Wind and solar is a no-brainer in Colorado. What this tells me is we’re on the path. Let’s be bold.”

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