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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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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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 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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The commission is expected to make a decision by year’s end on the second phase of Xcel Energy-Colorado’s clean energy plan, which maps out the utility’s strategies for meeting a state mandate of reducing its emissions by at least 80% by 2030 in a cost-effective manner.

Xcel Energy frequently bumps heads with other parties in proceedings before the PUC, but its proposal to add a total of 6,500 megawatts of renewable energy resources and battery storage to its system has drawn praise.

One megawatt of solar or wind energy can supply electricity to several hundred homes.

“Overall, the amount of solar, wind and storage that’s being added is something to be celebrated and something we really want to trumpet to our neighboring states, that you can get to a resilient, stable, high renewables grid,” said Mike Kruger,president and CEO of the trade group Colorado Solar and Storage Association.

Gwen Farnsworth, deputy director of state advocacy with environmental group Western Resource Advocates, lauded the company’s expectations that it will reduce emissions 87% by 2030 and produce 83% of its power from clean sources by 2028. The utility also intends to take advantage of $10 billion in tax credits through the federal Inflation Reduction Act.

But Xcel faces headwinds from critics who say the utility’s proposal to own most of the new power generation will keep costs high for customers for years to come because the infrastructure costs will be added to the rates. They worry that new natural gas plants could end up being the financial albatross coal plants have become as renewable technology continues to advance.

And Eastern Plains residents whose land could be a corridor for new transmission lines to accommodate new power want their local elected officials to make Xcel build elsewhere.

“It hurts my heart to even think about this because where we live is beautiful and so many people have put their heart and soul and dreams into living out here,” said Kerry Jiblits, who lives near Kiowa.

Jiblits and other Elbert County residents want Xcel to build the transmission lines farther to the east in the county where fewer people live. The segment would be part of the company’s Colorado Power Pathway, 610 miles of transmission lines approved by the state utilities commission. The project also needs the approval of the counties it runs through.

“We continue to work with the community to find out what the best path forward is,” said Robert Kenney, president of Xcel Energy-Colorado. “Without getting into the specifics of Elbert County, our goal is to continue working with our community to find a mutually agreeable route.”

The 184-page clean energy plan details Xcel Energy’s preferred blueprint for meeting goals to cut heat-trapping emissions and expand renewable energy. The company has its own goal of producing carbon-free electricity by 2050.

“There are multiple benefits that make this plan exciting,” Kenney said. “It’s the size and amount of renewables we’re able to bring onboard, the additional transmission investment.”

Xcel has said it received more than 1,000 competitive bids for the projects proposed.

Kenney knows there’s opposition to building new natural gas plants. He said they will be used less frequently than Xcel uses the existing plants, but the utility still needs “dispatchable” energy, which can be turned on and off as needed, to “fill in the gaps when renewables aren’t able to perform.”

Dan Haley, CEO and president of the trade group Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said it’s important that consumers can continue to rely on reliable and affordable energy as Xcel works toward the state mandates.

“Natural gas will remain a key part of this effort and serves as a potentially life-saving energy source during periods when renewables are not capable of meeting the demands of the grid,” Haley said in an email.

Fear of stranded assets

Others aren’t convinced that Xcel Energy’s clean energy future should include new natural gas plants. The company’s proposal calls for closing six older gas-fired units and building three new plants totaling 600 megawatts.

“They’re retiring some (plants) but then they’re going to build more. It doesn’t make any sense,” said KK DuVivier, a professor at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law and an expert on national resources and energy law.

The new gas plants could end up as “stranded assets,” DuVivier added, meaning they’ll be closed earlier than planned when they were designed, financed and built. Xcel Energy, like other regulated utilities, can seek approval to tap ratepayers to cover the costs of those assets.

The company has about $1 billion in stranded coal plants that have to be paid off, said Leslie Glustrom, a Boulder resident with the nonprofit Clean Energy Action. “It is important to not now make the same mistakes on the gas side.”

Xcel expects to close all its coal plants in Colorado by the start of 2031, but customers will shell out for years to close the books on them.

Farnsworth of Western Resource Advocates said Xcel’s proposal relies much less on new natural gas generation than originally projected. She said it might be possible to further reduce that reliance “both for lower emissions and to avoid high fuel costs.”

Even with the new gas plants, there will be a net reduction of 700 megawatts of natural gas, Kenney said. Xcel is looking at shortening the depreciation time for the plants so it can cover costs more quickly. Xcel also wants to explore blending hydrogen with natural gas in the plants to decrease emissions and potentially burn 100% hydrogen.

So-called “green” hydrogen fuel is produced only by renewable energy, but more than 90% of the hydrogen currently produced in the country uses natural gas. Sierra Club spokesman Noah Rott said despite “many positive elements” in Xcel’s plan, the company is asking customers to bet on speculative hydrogen technology.

“If technologies like hydrogen that could reduce emissions from gas plants don’t end up being cheap or reliable, then we can still be on the hook paying for the company’s failure to find real solutions to the climate crisis, and that only benefits the company’s shareholders, not our communities,” Rott said in an email.

Another sticking point is that under Xcel Energy’s preferred plan, the utility would own about 66% of the new facilities. Kruger, with the statewide solar and storage trade group, noted that a 2019 law requiring utilities to write clean energy plans established a target of a utility owning about half the infrastructure and the other half being privately owned. In the case of cost overruns or malfunctioning plants, a private company would bear the costs, not customers, Kruger said.

Xcel Energy has been criticized by customers, legislators and consumer advocates for seeking frequent rate increases while its parent company, based in Minneapolis, reported $1.74 billion in profits for 2022, up 8.75% from 2021. The company’s net profits in Colorado were $727 million, up from $660 million in 2021.

Xcel, which provides electricity to 1.6 million customers in Colorado, said its proposal would amount to an average annual rate increase of 2.3% for customers.

Kenney said an advantage of Xcel owning the facilities is that it can use the tax credits available to utilities under the Inflation Reduction Act and the savings can be passed onto customers. “We do make profits. We don’t make outsized profits and we’re making substantial investments back in our community.”

Colorado Power Pathway

The Colorado Power Pathway, planned in several counties on the Eastern Plains and the Front Range, will be a conduit for tapping solar and wind resources detailed in Xcel’s clean energy plan. The plan pegs transmission costs at roughly $4.5 billion, not including $123 million in interconnection costs.

Construction has started on some of the transmission project’s segments and counties have approved some of the land-use permits Xcel will need. The utility is expected to submit a formal application this spring for a permit to Elbert County, where the project is proving to be a hard sell for residents.

“I have not met one person in this area who is in favor of this route,” said Jiblits, who lives 10 miles northeast of Kiowa.

Jiblits is a member of the Elbert County Environmental Alliance Board, which opposes a route that would cut through the middle third of the county. The group has suggested routing the more than 50 miles of lines farther east where it is less populated and people’s property is measured in thousands of acres.

“Whereas here we have several landowners who are on just 5 acres of land so it’s impacting many more landowners,” said Jiblits, who has attended open houses hosted by Xcel on the project.

The eastern part of the county doesn’t have the forest and the variety of wildlife the middle part does, Jiblitz added. “We’re just saying build it in a place that makes more sense, in a place that’s not going to negatively impact so many people.”

Chris Richardson, chairman of the Elbert County Board of Commissioners, said Xcel Energy had proposed “a multitude of routes,” including one farther east that would parallel existing transmission lines serving its Rush Creek Wind Project.

“To us it seemed like the logical route to take, but it appears Xcel feels otherwise. Until we actually have an application before us, we’re kind of in a holding pattern,” Richardson said.

The county staff and commissioners will review the application. Richardson stressed the county will wait until it has the all information it needs before making any decisions. He just thinks the process could have been smoother if Xcel Energy had engaged with the community earlier.

“Probably the last six months, I don’t think we’ve had a public meeting where we didn’t hear concerns about the route,” Richardson said. “I think there was a way to approach us that would have been a lot more collaborative.”

Updated Nov. 13, 2023, to clarify the plan’s expected impact on customers’ rates.

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The ECMC unanimously voted against the plan by K.P. Kauffman Co. Thursday after several hours of testimony stretching over three days. The company originally proposed putting up $10.3 million to ensure it will take care of all its wells. ECMC members voted to require the company to provide roughly $133 million over 10 years.

A so-called financial assurance plan is required of all oil and gas companies under new rules approved in 2022 and are intended to ensure that operators have enough money to cover the cost of closing wells and reclaiming well sites.

Previous required bonds were seen as too low, making it easier for some companies to walk away rather than pay to plug a well, clean up the site and restore surrounding land.

“In order for us to make a statement that we have some of the strongest financial assurance requirements in the country, it is our responsibility to apply the rules in the way they were intended to be applied,” said John Messner, a commission member.

Opponents of the plan by K.P. Kauffman, or KPK, saw the commission’s decision as a test of how the rules, part of a sweeping revamp of state regulations, would be implemented. Critics, including the communities of Frederick and Dacono, argued KPK’s plan didn’t meet the requirements and was grossly underfinanced.

The ECMC staff accepted KPK’s financial plan but the commission said the company needed to post a bigger bond to clean up leaks and contamination at several sites. KPK proposed upping the bond by $2.9 million, but the staff said an additional $24 million was necessary.

In the end, the ECMC rejected both approaches after finding the analyses failed to show the proposed bonds would be enough. The commission required KPK to pay a standard per-well cost: $30,000 to close each well and $100,000 to reclaim each well site. The bond will cover a little over 1,000 wells. The company will have 90 days after an order is issued to post 10% of the overall bond.

As of Sept. 26, the ECMC had approved 151 financial assurance plans, covering nearly 38,000 wells and providing $570 million. The industry has paid fees for several years into an orphan well fund to help pay to close wells when the owner can’t or won’t or isn’t known.

K.P. Kauffman said it’s disappointed by the commission’s decision and is exploring all administrative and judicial options for relief.

“Yesterday’s decision by the commissioners is the latest in a series of rulings in which KPK has been treated differently and more harshly than other operators,” the company said in a statement. “If the commissioners’ order were to stand, KPK would be the highest-bonded oil and gas operator in the U.S.”

The ECMC has approved financial plans similar to KPK’s for other operators, the company said.

However, Jeff Robbins, commission chairman, said the decision was not influenced by the state’s enforcement actions against KPK or any legal disputes. “This is its own ball of wax.”

The company has been under state scrutiny for a while because of complaints that it has violated state regulations and not cleaned up spills  and contamination.  After finding KPK out of compliance with a plan to resolve the complaints, the ECMC gave the company until Aug. 1 to comply with state rules or face losing its license.

A June 30 ruling in Denver District Court put the ECMC’s order on hold until KPK’s appeal is decided. A trial is scheduled for 2024.

Municipal officials in Dacono and Frederick urged the commission to require KPK to post a much larger bond or order the company to close its low-producing, older wells in their communities. There have been spills and leaks at several well sites, they said. The wells have hindered development and posed hazards to public health and the environment, city officials told the ECMC.

“I do appreciate the relevant local governments taking the time to hire counsel and be involved in this,” Robbins said. “It’s important because they are the boots on the ground that are dealing with some of these things.”

Dacono was proud to have participated in the process and believes it helped ensure continued protection of residents of the city and the state, said Steven Louis-Prescott, an attorney representing the city. He said questions remain about KPK’s plans to close its aging wells and its ability to pay the required bond

Frederick town officials said 95 of KPK’s wells in the town are low-producing, which means they generate fewer than two barrels of oil a day. They have said the company has 17 open remediation sites in the town.

“The Town of Frederick was involved in this issue because it is uniquely impacted by legacy oil and gas wells that are now owned by KPK,” Mayor Tracie Crites said in an email. “These wells have had numerous issues, including leaks causing contamination of both soil and water.

“We hope the decision in this case will lead operators to commit to stronger financial assurance planning and fewer orphaned wells throughout the state of Colorado,” she added.

Updated Oct. 29, 2003, with information on the number of financial assurance plans approved.

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The Pueblo tragedy confirms that hauling hazardous materials by the trainload always involves severe risk. The Pueblo tragedy warrants a second look at a guest commentary that appeared in the August 14 Denver Post. There, Julius T. Murray, speaking for his Ute Indian Tribe, urged federal taxpayers to finance the railway to make up for historical mistreatment of his tribe by the federal government.

The railway would connect Uinta Basin oil fields to the Union Pacific’s main line in Utah. From there, trains would wind through Colorado’s treacherous mountain passes and follow the Colorado River for over 100 miles before heading to the Front Range and points east. It would quadruple production of Uinta oil by making it cheaper to ship it to refineries along the Gulf Coast, increasing the royalties collected by the Ute tribe.

Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper and Gov. Jared Polis oppose federal financing of these potential oil “bomb trains,” which would cross Colorado’s most at-risk ecosystems daily.  Mr. Murray says this opposition is unfair because the federal government treated his tribe unfairly in the past.  Past abuses of his tribe are real and tragic, but they cannot be atoned for by abusing Colorado’s environment in the present.

While Mr. Murray reveres the Colorado mountains from which his people were moved long ago, he dismisses the threats to those same mountains which these oil trains pose — both the threat that inevitable derailments could ignite wildfires in Colorado’s inaccessible timbered canyons or spill crude oil into the Colorado River, and the certainty that burning these fossil fuels will worsen Colorado’s climate. He rightly laments that his people were moved from Colorado to the arid infertile Utah plateau where they now reside. Regarding heat, drought, and infertility, however, the plateau on which he lives “ain’t seen nothing yet” as the climate catastrophe from burning fossil fuels accelerates.

Central to Mr. Murray’s charge of unfairness is his claim that these oil trains pose little environmental risk because they will transport crude oil as a harmless solid that couldn’t ignite a fire or leak into the Colorado River if a train derailed. This was a favorite talking point of Keith Heaton, the railway’s chief spokesman, until a reporter asked him how he knew that. Mr. Heaton admitted that he didn’t know, conceding that private shippers would decide whether to transport the railway’s crude as a hot liquid or a solid, whichever is cheaper.

Based on cost, their choice will likely be hot liquid. That is how Uinta waxy crude emerges from the well. It is customarily shipped in insulated tanker trucks or railcars designed to keep it that way until it reaches the refinery. Shippers bear this extra expense because allowing Uinta waxy crude to cool and congeal clogs and corrodes any metal container it is put in. Over time, a system that routinely handles Uinta waxy crude as a solid would become a maintenance nightmare, which explains why it is rarely attempted.

The Uinta Basin already violates the EPA’s ozone standards, due mostly to oil and gas activity on reservation lands. If, as expected, building the railway quadruples that activity, it would increase ozone levels as well. Much of that extra ozone would drift downwind over Colorado’s Front Range, harming the health of its residents as well.

Threatening the environment of Utah and Colorado while putting the health of their residents at risk is not the way to make Mr. Murray’s people whole.

Malin Moench, a Utah resident, spent 37 years analyzing the economics of public utilities and logistics at the federal level. Now retired, he volunteers for organizations focusing on environmental integrity and public health.

Nearly a year later, there are no air monitors set up in the community to take samples of ground-level ozone pollution, fine particulate matter or methane. And the organization is nowhere close to getting started, said Nikie “NikieDay” Wells, director of Black Parents United’s environmental justice program.

“Equipment costs a lot. Scientists cost a lot. Research costs a lot,” Wells said. “It’s a lot and the support is not there.”

Last November, the EPA announced seven local governments and nonprofit agencies across Colorado would receive $2.9 million to conduct air pollution monitoring, including in metro Denver and the northern Front Range — areas that are in severe violation of national air quality standards. The grants were part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and were among 132 projects in 37 states receiving a total of $53.4 million.

The EPA wanted to help communities figure out just how much pollution people are breathing, with a focus on disproportionately impacted communities where residents inhale noxious fumes in neighborhoods near industrial zones and interstates. But nonprofits listed to receive the grants are learning that air monitoring is expensive and complicated, and they are struggling to roll it out — if they choose to do it at all.

“The goal of these grants is to improve air quality monitoring in and near underserved communities, and to support local leaders who have developed plans to monitor their own air quality,” said KC Becker, director of the EPA’s Region 8, which includes Colorado.

Cultivando, a Latinx nonprofit based in Adams County, was listed as a grant recipient when the EPA announced the new programs in November. But the organization turned down $500,000.

Cultivando already spent nearly two years monitoring the pollution around the Suncor Energy refinery in Commerce City and decided that the EPA’s rules were too burdensome to make collecting more data worth the organization’s time and effort, said Guadalupe Solis, the organization’s director of environmental justice programs.

Plus, the organization’s leaders felt like the data they already had collected was ignored by policymakers and did not lead to meaningful change.

“It’s really time for us to come back to our community organizing and advocacy and doing what we need to do for our community rather than this treadmill of data collection,” Solis said.

Others, however, are pleased with the increased air monitoring as Colorado tries to reduce air pollution, making its residents more healthy and doing its part to slow climate change.

On Wednesday, representatives from Adams and Jefferson counties joined Becker and Michael Ogletree, director of the Air Pollution Control Division at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, to roll out their air monitoring programs, which also were funded by the EPA.

Those monitors will feed a public data dashboard at clean.lovemyair.com, where people can go to learn in real-time just how dirty the air is.

“In the city of Northglenn, we recognize that air quality impacts everyone’s quality of life,” Mayor Meredith Leighty said. “Through this partnership, the city will be able to leverage the EPA funding for air quality sensors and public access to the data dashboards to help inform, educate and create changes to improve our air in the city and region.”

Ean Thomas Tafoya, director of GreenLatinos Colorado, cheered those air monitoring programs.

“We need local governments to jump in,” Tafoya said. “Use their local resources to protect the community,”

In Adams and Jefferson counties, county health and environmental departments will run the air monitoring programs. They have bigger budgets and experts on staff who are equipped to do it, said Steve O’Dorisio, chairman of the Adams County’s Board of County Commissioners.

But O’Dorisio said it’s not the responsibility of local nonprofits to hold polluters accountable and do the government’s work — although he said there is value in allowing community groups, who lack trust in corporations and government, to run their own programs as part of an overall system of checks and balances.

“Placing more burden on the backs of local nonprofits to do the work that government and industry should be doing is not acceptable,” O’Dorisio said. “We need to leverage their strengths and not have them in the business of what others should be doing and that is monitoring and enforcement.”

When the EPA announced grant recipients in Colorado in November 2022 there were three nonprofits on the list.

The third nonprofit, 350 Colorado, received $498,537 to monitor volatile organic compounds, ozone, methane and particulate matter near two public schools in Greeley that are close to oil and gas operations. That program also has not started.

“Deeply disappointed by the response”

Cultivando was the first nonprofit in Colorado to run an air pollution monitoring program. The organization was awarded the money in 2020 through a settlement between the EPA and Suncor after that company was penalized for continuous air pollution violations. That program ended in July.

Cultivando contracted Boulder Air to set up a monitoring station about 1.3 miles northeast of the refinery and began taking air samples to detect multiple toxic compounds.

In March, Cultivando hosted a meeting at the University of Denver to present its findings from a year’s worth of data. No one from the EPA or the state health department attended, which offended Cultivando’s team.

After the nonprofit reported that it had found more harmful pollutants in the air than people realized, state officials said Cultivando looked at short-term spikes of benzene and particulate matter and that those readings were snapshots of air quality conditions and did not comply with established standards for measuring air quality.

“We are deeply disappointed by the response from government organizations like CDPHE and the EPA and the corporate partners like Suncor,” Solis said. “When we came out with our data, it ranged from inaction to dismissal.”

Still, Cultivando applied for the round of EPA air monitoring grants in 2022 and its application was accepted. Then the nonprofit started learning about all the rules that come with a federal grant and decided not to take the money.

“Overall, it’s an overly complicated and antiquated process that does not align with nonprofits. It places unnecessary burdens on us to create systems that are more relevant to large institutions and government agencies,” said Olga Gonzalez, Cultivando’s executive director.

Of the $500,000, Cultivando would have kept just $40,000 with the rest going to the company that provided the expertise to monitor the air.

The EPA wanted Cultivando to create a complex accounting system to track the money, Gonzalez said. The nonprofit had an established relationship with Boulder Air, but the EPA wanted a competitive, national bidding process to choose a company.

The grant was not worth all the work that was required, Gonzalez said.

“The $40,000 was spent before any funds were even received,” she said.

Becker, who leads the EPA’s region that includes Colorado, told The Denver Post that she understood federal grants are complicated, especially for nonprofits that haven’t received them before. But her agency has to follow the law.

“Getting a half a million dollars is amazing, but it doesn’t come without strings,” Becker said. “You still have to comply with federal government laws. That means developing a quality assurance program.”

The EPA is focusing on environmental justice under the Biden administration, Becker said.

“One of the biggest priorities of the EPA is finding ways to connect directly with the people we serve,” she said.

The grants “reflect a determination to do more than just work behind the scenes, invisible and over the heads of the people we aim to protect,” Becker said. “At the core of this approach is the idea that we do better when we inform, engage with and share our work with the people we serve.”

“Air monitoring is not cheap”

The Black Parents United Foundation wanted to test the air in Aurora to inform residents whose children suffer from asthma, Wells said. She and her children have asthma and their breathing problems are exacerbated on hot summer days when ozone pollution is high, she said.

“It’s affecting our communities and they deserve to know the information,” she said.

But starting a program is proving more challenging than expected even with $472,656 coming from the EPA.

The companies that are in the air monitoring business are expensive and almost all of the money Black Parents United received will go to them, Wells said. When the money runs out, her foundation won’t own any equipment to keep testing the air.

“I’m sure in those scientists’ warehouses somewhere there’s an air monitor sitting and collecting dust,” she said.

The budget from the EPA only goes so far, she said.

Black Parents United’s members have talked to Cultivando to learn from that organization’s experience. And the work to stand up a program continues, albeit slowly, Wells said.

“It’s hard. Air monitoring is not cheap at all,” she said. “It’s discouraging. It makes you want to give up. It’s not fair to those who put in all the work or to the community who needs to see the work.”

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The way the state tackles the problems under new rules mandated by a sweeping redo of oil and gas regulations could shape how the industry is governed going forward.

Larry, who recently retired from his construction business, said K.P. Kauffman, or KPK, responded when he called in July 2022 about an oil spill on the nearly 6-acre property where he and his wife live. The company found the problem with the pipeline, dug up and removed contaminated soil, tested the couple’s well water and dug more dirt.

More than a year later, the Bosaws have a pit more than 10 feet deep and about 40 feet by 50 feet. What they don’t have is an idea of when the gaping hole will be filled in or when they can let their neighbors use their pasture for their cattle.

“We rent the pasture and we haven’t had any income since they started doing this,” Mary said.

In a Sept. 12 email to KPK, Larry alluded to the long list of well sites the state says the company needs to clean up. He said the work on his property “would take far less effort and then you could scratch it off your list.”

While the Bosaws wait for the next steps by KPK, the company is getting even more scrutiny from state regulators and communities where it has wells.

The Denver-based, family-owned business might seem like a special case after being declared out of compliance with state regulations and threatened with losing its ability to operate. However, KPK is also considered a microcosm and a test of the system as regulators implement new rules for companies and new oil and gas wells continue to be drilled along the Front Range.

The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission, which regulates oil and gas, is scrutinizing KPK’s proposal detailing its financial wherewithal to meet all its obligations under the law, a requirement for all companies. Ahead of an Oct. 24 hearing, the ECMC staff filed comments saying the company needs to allocate another $24 million to cover cleaning up 146 sites.

The communities of Frederick and Dacono, which have several KPK wells within their boundaries, want the state to make the company put more money behind its proposal or be ordered to close non-productive, uneconomical wells.

The ECMC didn’t address the cities’ request on closing the wells in an August hearing after determining it wasn’t the right forum. But Jeff Robbins, ECMC chairman, said new rules passed as part of a major overhaul of oil and gas regulations allow local governments to petition to force the closure of wells deemed no longer useful and a threat to the public or environment.

If Fredrick and Dacono invoke the rule, they would be the first local governments in Colorado to do so. Frederick Mayor Tracie Crites said the town is urging the ECMC to reject KPK’s financial plan because its proposed budget for closing wells and reclaiming well sites is considerably lower than the staff’s estimate of what it costs: roughly $130,000 per well.

In an updated proposal, KPK projects its per-well cost to plug and abandon a well, or close a well and reclaim the site, will be $42,181.

“KPK acknowledges the right of Dacono and Frederick to participate in financial assurance proceedings under ECMC rules but believes they do not have the right to demand that KPK plug and abandon wells as part of financial assurance. A separate set of ECMC rules governs plug and abandonment demands, and KPK is prepared to address their claims separately,” spokesman Paul Raab said in an email.

Depending on what happens in the Oct. 24 hearing on KPK’s plan, Frederick might petition the state to force KPK to shut down some of its wells. Crites said the town has determined that 95 of KPK’s wells in town are low-producing, meaning they yield fewer than two barrels of oil a day.

The company also has a history of spills and releases from its well sites in Frederick, the town said in a statement to the ECMC. The latest information suggests there are 17 open remediation sites in Frederick. An ongoing matter is the cleanup of a well site and tanks near Legacy Elementary School.

Crites said the town hears from developers and landowners wanting to build on their land that KPK refuses to plug old wells or wants $250,000 per well to do the work. There are at least 400 more wells owned by other companies within the town, but KPK’s sites are of top concern.

“From the town of Frederick’s perspective, in order to uphold the well-being of our community and our public health, our safety and welfare and prevent any undue financial strain to our taxpayers,” Crites said, “we’re advocating for the state of Colorado and the ECMC to reject any of KPK’s proposed financial assurance plans and mandate a plan that provides more security and protection for the welfare of our community.”

KPK has about 70 wells in Dacono and 59 of those are low producers and, in the opinion of city oil and gas experts, should all be plugged, said Steven Louis-Prescott, an attorney representing the city. About 22% of the 59 wells have had leaks or spills, based on the available data, he added.

Louis-Prescott said the city has talked to KPK about closing the wells and the company responded it would cost $250,000 for each well. Dacono is waiting to see what the ECMC will require KPK to do.

Under state regulations, smaller companies with lower-yield wells can pay over time into a fund to cover cleanup costs. Louis-Prescott said Dacono wants KPK to pay the full amount upfront so the city isn’t stuck with a bunch of abandoned wells down the road and no money to shut them down.

“The city’s big concerns are health and safety. A bond is not going to protect a spill tomorrow,” Louis-Prescott said.

Zombie, orphan wells

All oil and gas companies operating in Colorado must have financial plans. A 2019 law mandating an overhaul of state oil and gas regulations included strengthening the bonds and other financial assurances that companies must provide to cover shutting down wells and restoring sites.

The concern is the public will end up paying if companies go bankrupt or walk away, leaving what’s called orphan wells. Another worry is so-called “zombie wells,” ones that produce little or no oil or gas and whose owners don’t have the money to properly maintain or close them.

The state has an orphan well program, which uses fees paid by the industry to pay to close wells when the owner can’t or won’t. Colorado got $25 million from the federal infrastructure bill in 2022 to help cover costs.

And the ECMC approved new financial requirements in 2022 that are meant to ensure every oil and gas company can meet all its obligations under the law. The agency and supporters hailed them as some of the toughest in the country.

The rules vary, depending on a company’s size, number of wells, well depth and oil and gas production rates. Producers can put up large, multimillion-dollar blanket bonds; pay a standard per-well cost, approximately $130,000; or submit a financial plan justifying the company’s proposed expenses and bond and analyzing each well site.

KPK chose the so-called demonstrated-cost plan, and that’s the problem, critics said. Those objecting to the proposal contend the projected costs are too low. Written comments from the town of Frederick said the company didn’t follow the rules requiring a site-by-site analysis.

The ECMC said KPK has to include what it will cost to remediate several sites and will hear from the company in the Oct. 24 hearing.

Matt Sura, an attorney representing the town of Frederick, said in an August ECMC hearing that while the rules allow a company to show it can plug wells for less than the staff’s estimated cost, KPK’s plan fails to make that case.

“When the financial assurance rules were passed, the commission was right to be proud. They were truly the strongest rules in the nation,” Sura said.  “However, they need to be implemented properly.”

The proposal by KPK will be the commission’s first opportunity to demonstrate what is expected if a company wants to diverge from ECMC’s cost estimates for closing and reclaiming wells, Sura said.

What does it cost to plug a well?

As KPK defends its financial plan before the ECMC, it is defending its existence in the courts. A Denver District judge granted the company’s request in June to put on hold the ECMC’s order that KPK comply with all state regulations or halt operations.

Earlier this year, regulators determined KPK had not complied with a 2021 plan requiring it to clean up sites and resolve what the ECMC staff said were multiple violations over several years. KPK had until Aug. 1 to fix the problems or face losing its license to operate in Colorado.

A June 30 ruling in Denver District Court said the company couldn’t safely shut down all its wells by the deadline and stayed the ECMC’s order until KPK’s appeal is decided.

KPK has roughly 1,200 wells in the Denver-Julesburg basin of northeastern Colorado. The majority of the wells are low-producing.

Meanwhile, questions about KPK’s old, low-producing wells in various communities remain unresolved, too. Frederick Mayor Crites said although KPK is telling regulators it can close its well sites for thousands of dollars, it is quoting developers and landowners prices of $150,000 to $250,000 to plug one well.

“And then typically we’ll get that call from the developer or landowner to say, ‘Hey, it’s already really expensive to develop anything in the town of Frederick with your limited water resources,’ ” Crites said. “It certainly slows down development for us.”

Louis Conrad, general manager of BCL Colorado LP, knows the drill. His company is developing the subdivision Clearview Villages on 103 acres near Legacy Elementary School in Frederick and asked KPK to close two wells on the property. The development company owns the surface, but KPK has the right to mine the minerals.

“They said we can do it, but there’s a cost,” Conrad recalled.

The cost was $500,000 for each well and more money to remove some tanks. Talks continued.

“We got to $250,000 per well plus the tank,” Conrad said. “It can be even lower if you keep negotiating, but the thing is, it takes a lot of time.”

The wells are on the edge of the property, so the developer decided to leave the wells and add more green space. Construction on the 301-home project is set to start next year. Conrad figures losing the spaces occupied by the wells will result in four fewer homes.

“No big deal, but what is a big deal is that, ethically speaking, I feel it’s my duty to make sure the site looks the best for the school, the kids and our future residents,” Conrad said.

Two subdivisions developed by Community Development Group in Frederick have wells peppered through the neighborhoods. Jon Lee, the company’s executive vice president, said some of the wells in the Wyndham Hill and Silverstone developments belong to KPK. The oil and gas producer has closed some of the wells, but others are still in production.

“We have had some success at working with KPK,” Lee said. “We are working with them to try and plug as many of the old ones as we can.”

Lee acknowledged that KPK’s opening price was high, but he kept negotiating. Where the two sides couldn’t agree on closing the wells, new flowlines were installed to improve safety.

“It can be frustrating because you’re basically asking them to shut down a business that they have. They would like to get as much money as they possibly can for that business,” Lee said.

All the while, Lee understands that the barely producing wells would have never made the kind of money being paid to shut them down. But he also believes that the bigger the spaces that communities require between new homes and wells, the more incentive oil and gas companies will have to ask for more money to close up and walk away.

“We share the town’s vision that it would be nice just not to have these wells there. They’re not going to get better. They may become an environmental issue,” Lee said.

KPK spokesman Raab said the roughly $40,000 for the company to close its wells reflects internal costs. When the company plugs a well at a landowner’s request, KPK seeks market-rate compensation for the sources of economic values it gives up. Raab said the fee includes the removal of flowlines, decommissioning of tanks in some cases and environmental sampling and engineering expenses.

In the case of the Bosaws, the Fort Lupton couple, Raab said KPK is ready to fill in the hole once additional soil samples are collected. He said the couple’s property is one of several sites KPK has been ready to backfill pending the ECMC’s approval, which he called “unreasonably delayed” by questions about levels of naturally occurring metals in the soil.

For its part, the ECMC sent KPK a notice Sept. 29 saying its remediation plan for the Bosaws’ land doesn’t comply with state rules.

The Bosaws left for vacation in September not knowing what they would return to.

“They were just supposed do one hole. Before you know it, it was big,” Mary said. “And I know it’s going to get bigger. That’s what really bothers me.”

Colorado’s Air Pollution Control Division first discovered elevated benzene emissions at the company’s disposal well sites in Platteville and Kersey in May 2022, and a toxicology analysis determined the levels of benzene to be above health guideline values, according to a news release from the health department Wednesday.

The well sites, used to dispose of wastewater from oil and gas operations, can generate emissions when water is improperly transferred from a truck to the basin.

“We took action to protect Coloradans in a major way with this settlement,” Michael Ogletree, director of the Air Pollution Control Division, said in a statement. “The changes we’re requiring the company to make will have a transformative impact in protecting air quality for the people who live, work, learn and play in communities near the sites.”

In accordance with the settlement agreement, the company will also be mandated to obtain new permits for the disposal well sites requiring them to use economically feasible technology and/or preventative practices to protect the air quality of surrounding communities, according to the news release.

Additionally, it will install equipment at three of its other facilities along the Front Range that will help mitigate emissions violations from past years.

Some of the money received in the settlement will go to the state’s general fund, according to the news release, and the rest will go toward the community impact cash fund created by the 2021 Colorado Environmental Justice Act, supporting the department’s environmental justice grants program.

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