Jewish community leaders on Monday reported healthy turnouts at holiday gatherings and more menorahs in windows than usual. Seldom have Jews felt a greater need for this eight-day religious celebration, said Dan Leshem, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, which represents 40 Jewish organizations in the state.

“We are in a very dark place and we need light, ” he said.

But the estimated 110,000 Coloradans who identify as Jewish also have braced against rising antisemitism and intense public criticism of Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Defense Forces launched the military campaign in Gaza after Hamas, which has been designated by the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization, attacked Israelis on Oct. 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people. Hamas fighters also took about 240 hostages.

Now more than 17,000 Palestinians have been killed, many of them women and children, according to health officials in Gaza. The war has displaced 1.9 million Palestinians who live in Gaza — 85% of the population — prompting international calls for a cease-fire that the U.S. government has opposed. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has warned of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Over the past two months, pro-Palestinian rallies on college campuses and in cities have left Jewish Americans in Colorado, including some who have ties to Israel, feeling insecure and targeted themselves, Jewish community leaders said. And as Hanukkah began, one rabbi said, many were reluctant to display candles in menorahs.

“What’s happening is that there’s been a bit of an erasure between what is Jewish and what is Israeli,” Leshem said. “People who want to protest Israel are not pausing to consider the distinctions. … These are Jewish-Americans.”

A spike in antisemitism has spread into schools. Leshem said his 10-year-old daughter, a fifth grader in Denver, suffered a verbal attack by a classmate who saw her drawing the Jewish Star of David in her notebook.

“A lot of the anti-Israel activists have wanted to say Jews are implicated because Jews support Israel,” Leshem said. “But, of course, Jews in this country — even Israelis in this country — do not influence the policy in Israel because they do not get to vote. A lot of Jews are saying: ‘We have never felt so unsafe.’ ”

There’s a diversity of opinion among American Jews regarding Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks. This month in Denver, Jewish Voice for Peace activists rallied in Denver, calling for a cease-fire as part of pro-Palestinian demonstrations targeting the Global Conference for Israel hosted in Denver.

Hanukkah as a holiday celebrates freedom from oppression. It marks the rededication around 165 B.C.E. of Judaism’s temple in Jerusalem after Jewish fighters liberated it from foreign occupiers. The fighters found a tiny supply of ritually purified oil in the temple and relied on it to light a menorah that miraculously kept burning for eight days.

During Hanukkah, which began Dec. 7, Jews gather on each of eight consecutive nights to light a candle in a menorah and remember that ancient heroism.

Security officials at synagogues around Colorado were anticipating possible protests, aware of public ceremonies canceled in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Toronto.

No events in Colorado have been canceled, said Scott Levin, director of the Rocky Mountain regional headquarters of the Anti-Defamation League, which combats antisemitism.

Hundreds gathered at the end of last week for Hanukkah first-night celebrations in Denver at Temple Sinai and Temple Emanuel — where Rabbi Emily Hyatt saw these as especially hard times. Jews in Colorado “are thinking about the war between Israel and Hamas and they are thinking about the rise of antisemitism here in the United States,” she said in an interview last week.

Many in the Jewish community are torn as they weigh whether to display menorahs in home windows, fearful of putting themselves at risk, she said. Infusing light into the community during a dark time of year lies at the core of Hanukkah.

“The whole Jewish community feels different right now — the way we are talking in the community, and what we are talking about. It is all framed with great worry and awareness that the world feels different,” said Hyatt, who also serves as president of the Rocky Mountain Rabbis and Cantors. “So many people have been injured, or worse, in Israel. We have hostages that still haven’t been released. That is top of mind, and everybody is thinking about security here.”

Around Colorado, the number of people contacting the Anti-Defamation League increased fourfold over the already-elevated level a year ago, submitting 10 to 15 reports a day earlier this month about incidents such as harassing calls to synagogues, Levin said. The number of reported incidents has decreased to about five per day this week, he said. Those include a report of swastikas scrawled in a Denver-area elementary school bathroom and the tearing down of a mezuzah — parchment that displays Hebrew verses from the Torah — from an apartment door.

The war has inflamed tensions. Nationwide, the number of antisemitic incidents documented between Oct. 7 and Dec. 7 reached 2,031, according to an ADL report released Monday. That’s more than quadruple the 465 recorded during the same period in 2022.

The new incidents included 1,411 “clearly linked to the Israel-Hamas war,” an ADL memo about the report said. Among the reported incidents were 40 physical assaults, 337 cases of vandalism, 749 incidents of verbal or written harassment, and 905 rallies where participants made antisemitic statements or called for terrorism against Israel.

Conflict over the war in Israel also was cited by the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a factor in a surge in reported bias incidents targeting Palestinians and Muslims in the United States.

In Colorado, some Jewish students have been hiding their identity, tucking necklaces inside their shirts, Levin said.

“The best thing people can do is still engage in their community and try to show confidence in themselves and their positions,” Levin said, acknowledging anxieties around displaying menorahs in windows. “I don’t think people should hide their identities. It is understandable why people are questioning it. You have got to be safe and secure in your home. But it is a great symbol to put in your window.”

At Temple Emanuel, Rabbi Hyatt said more community members are requesting consultations with her this year compared with the past. Religious matters are intertwined with conversations about Israel, where “the fate of the Palestinian people, and Gazans, is directly tied to Hamas more than anything else — a hard place for them to be,” she said.

“I feel a great sense of grief for what we have lost in Israel and for the continued war and pain and loss of life — loss of innocent life,” Hyatt said. “As humans, we are complex thinkers. We can deeply mourn the loss of all innocent lives. No one loves war. This is hard and painful and heartbreaking and challenging. We can love and support Israel and its right to exist and defend itself, without having to sign off on every decision the IDF makes,” she said, referring to the Israeli Defense Forces.

The public criticism of Israel’s war seems to have revived antisemitic tropes that, to Hyatt and other leaders, seemed deliberate. They arise from more than confusion or “a feeling of standing up for Palestinians” who are seen as “the underdog,” Hyatt said.

And Jews in Colorado, who often have stood with and marched with U.S. minority groups fighting for social justice, now feel abandoned and left out, she said.

“It is a mandate for us that we stand with other people who are fighting for rights, equality and the life they want to build,” Hyatt said. “But the Jewish community now wants to know: Where are our friends that we stood with? We feel pretty alone right now.”

They range from seasoned all-weather campers to a family of Venezuelan refugee newcomers wearing shorts who wandered up to VOA’s mission downtown at 2877 Lawrence St. recently – as temperatures plunged to 25 degrees. They were among the tens of thousands who found hot meals and a place to stay at VOA facilities around the state. The Venezuelans got warmer clothes, coats, and gloves.

Needs are increasing due to “the current times in Colorado and everywhere else in the United States,” VOA vice president Faustine Curry said on her way to a Christmas party with low-income seniors at VOA’s Sunset Towers on Larimer Street. “Costs of living are high. Inflation is high.”

“We have a waiting list for our Meals On Wheels programs for elderly residents who can’t easily go out. We have waiting lists at many of our affordable housing facilities.  A lot of people are looking for a place to start their lives moving in a positive direction.”

VOA’s capacity to help its clientele is increasing, too.

A  faith-based organization, VOA was founded in 1896 by Maud Booth and her husband, Ballington, who established VOA’s westernmost mission at the time in Denver at that Lawrence Street site. The facility was renovated last year. VOA’s priority has been helping older adults, children, families, and military veterans. Driven by 400 employees on an annual budget of $40 million, VOA now operates 42 facilities around Colorado, promising “a hot lunch for anyone who needs food.” The facilities provided help, including temporary housing, counseling, and other guidance, for more than 100,000 clients this past year.

Construction contractors are scheduled to break ground this month on one of VOA’s most ambitious projects to create a full-service temporary housing complex – done in partnership with the city of Denver using $17.7 million in city bond and federal funds. Launched under former Mayor Michael Hancock, this project jibes with Mayor Mike Johnston’s priority of ensuring shelter for the city’s growing population of homeless residents. Construction crews are scheduled to replace the former 1960s-era Aristocrat Motor Hotel at 4855 W. Colfax Ave., near the Xavier Street intersection, with the five-story VOA Colorado Theodora Family Hotel — a place with underground parking for up to 150 non-paying guests in 60 rooms.

The design incorporates a grassy courtyard space envisioned as a safe zone where children can play. The hotel is scheduled to open in the spring of 2025.

A public elementary school nearby can accept the children, Curry said. “Children need to be in school.”

Guests will receive hot meals delivered from VOA’s central kitchen facility in Commerce City.

The idea is for temporary stays, as brief as possible, she said. VOA’s strategy for decades has been based on the idea that, once basic needs are met, people can pursue personal goals and improve their quality of life.

“Faith-based” doesn’t exclude guests, Curry added. “We are accepting of anyone.”

Facility supervisors do enforce behavioral rules. “At our new family hotel, we would love to be able to support and help more families. They need to hold up their end of the deal, which is to not use drugs and work to progress themselves forward. Then they can use our case services to get their lives into the next step – a successful plan to find permanent housing.”

Volunteers of America Colorado

Address: 2660 Larimer St., Denver, CO 80205

Number of employees: 400

Founded: 1896

Number of clients served in 2023: more than 100,000

Annual budget: $40 million

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.”

But a medical expert and advocates are pressing Mayor Mike Johnston to open shelters at 32 degrees and cancel sweeps of street camps when temperatures dip below freezing. New York, Seattle, Minneapolis and other cities have set thresholds at 32 degrees while also, like Denver, factoring in wind chill and snowfall.

Johnston wasn’t available to discuss the matter Tuesday but his administration issued a statement saying the mayor’s office is open to “re-evaluation.”

Hundreds of homeless metro Denver residents end up in hospitals for emergency treatment of hypothermia and frostbite, according to Dr. Joshua Barocas, an internal medicine and infectious disease physician at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus who sees homeless patients at the Denver Health Medical Center. At one metro Denver hospital where an informal study was done during a cold month last winter, 49 patients were treated for hypothermia and frostbite, Barocas said. The costs of such treatment at hospitals around the city exceed $5 million a year, above the cost of a new, fully-staffed cold weather shelter, Barocas said, noting “it is incredibly frustrating that we have a system set up that allows people to get frostbite or hypothermia and suffer.”

Denver City Council members Shontel Lewis and Sarah Parady have proposed changing the city’s threshold and ban sweeps when temperatures drop below freezing, Denverite reported Monday. A hearing is set for Dec. 20.

Denver’s current 20-degree mark reflects lobbying last year that led to a compromise to open cold weather shelters if the citywide capacity for sheltering homeless people is exhausted and National Weather Service forecasts include a wind chill advisory and more than two inches of snow or an overnight low temperature of 20 degrees or lower. The threshold aligns with the average overnight winter low temperature in Denver, the city’s Cold Weather Shelter Plan says; about half the nights between December and March typically drop below 20 degrees.

But prolonged outdoor exposure to temperatures of up to 40 degrees can lead to frostbite and hypothermia, said Barocas, who recently briefed city leaders at a council meeting.

The first symptoms include an altered mental state: confusion and slurred speech easily misdiagnosed as intoxication. Body movements slow, sometimes with shivering. At the worst stages of hypothermia, people sit down as their heartbeats and breathing diminish.

Homeless advocates favor swift action before temperatures turn colder. A cold spell after Thanksgiving prompted city officials to open shelters. Denver police reported four deaths of people living on streets, and city health officials on Tuesday said drug overdoses likely were the cause. Opioids, in particular, can exacerbate the impacts of cold weather.

The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless supports the change, spokeswoman Cathy Alderman said. “It will save lives,” she said. “It will take pressure off the broader shelter system, which is at capacity.”

Last weekend when city officials directed their contractor, Bayaud Enterprises, to open cold weather shelters, more than 200 people came in, below a capacity of around 500, said Tammy Bellofatto, Bayaud’s director. “We don’t force people to come in.”

Staffers are available should the city direct a larger deployment, Bellofatto said.

A statement emailed by Johnston’s press secretary Jordan Fuja addressed the cold weather sheltering.

“Winter in Denver brings dangerously cold weather, and the city is committed to saving lives by bringing people indoors,” the statement said. “Last year, the city increased the threshold for emergency cold weather sheltering from 10 degrees to 20, and we are always open to continued re-evaluation of our policies to better serve Denver residents.”

Shelters around the city currently house more than 4,000 people, officials said, “and city outreach teams and first responders work through the night on cold nights to connect unsheltered residents to warm, safe shelter beds.”

Fuja added in a follow-up email that, “We are constantly re-evaluating our programs. As we evaluate the city’s cold weather sheltering plan, we have to consider the availability of city resources like staffing, space, and funding.”

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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Following a vote to concur with the Senate’s changes to the bill that would create a task force to study property taxes and provide recommendations to the Colorado General Assembly, House representatives voted to approve HB23B-1003.

All bills will now head to the governor’s office for final signatures, and the special session has ended, mid-way through its fourth day — with the Senate adjourning last, at about 2:50 p.m.

Updated at 2:24 p.m.: The Colorado House resumed its work after Weinberg’s speech and passed the summer meal program bill with a vote of 44-16 on a mostly party-line vote, with some Republicans joining Democrats in approving the program for low-income families. That bill is now headed to the governor’s office.

Updated at 2:06 p.m.: Rep. Elisabeth Epps attempted again this afternoon to get an amendment introduced into the summer meal program bill before the House’s final vote on the measure. That request failed 39-21 — a rare vote during the special session that did not fall strictly along party lines.

Epps, a Denver Democrat, continued to speak about the bill, which would opt Colorado into a federal program that addresses food insecurity for children from low-income families. Epps made the comparison to children in Gaza who are starving during Israel’s latest military campaign. She ended her speech by saying, “In our thousands, in our millions — free Palestine.”

That remark prompted an uproar from Republicans, and Democratic leadership called for a recess. Rep. Ron Weinberg, a Loveland Republican, and other Republican leaders spoke to Democrats about allowing Weinberg, who is Jewish, a chance to respond.

When the session reconvened and Weinberg began to speak, Epps was sitting in the gallery with other pro-Palestinian activists. As he discussed his feelings about Epps’ comments and invoked the Holocaust, Epps shouted “Out of order!”

Democratic leaders then called another recess and said they asked that the gallery, including Epps, be cleared. Several minutes later, she remained in the gallery, speaking to Democratic lawmakers and asking that lawmakers call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Weinberg later resumed his remarks, flanked by the other Republican House members, and Epps left the gallery.

Updated at 12:47 p.m.: The Senate accepted the House’s amendments on the property tax relief bill and voted 23-12 to repass it, which means the bill will now head to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk. (Details on the bill and its impact are in the 11:10 a.m. update below.)

Updated at 12:42 p.m.: Colorado senators voted 20 to 15 to pass a bill creating a Colorado Commission on Property Taxes to explore long-term solutions that protect property owners and tenants from rising taxes and make recommendations to lawmakers.

The vote followed debate among lawmakers over who should be represented on the commission. Republicans objected to the inclusion of a teacher representative or an official from the Colorado Education Association. The commission, to made up of 19 members, will begin meetings in March and will include five county commissioners, four lawmakers and property owners from around Colorado.

Updated at 12:28 p.m.: A bill to refund taxpayers an equal amount of money on their 2023 tax returns has just been approved on a final vote in the Colorado House. SB23B-003 would provide each taxpayer about $800 for their Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights-mandated refund, instead of amounts that change based on how much the person makes annually.

That bill was the latest to pass on a party-line vote of 42-18, and it now heads to the governor’s desk.

During the final minutes of debate, while Rep. Elisabeth Epps of Denver was speaking, about a dozen people arrived in the House gallery, silently holding up Palestinian flags. Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy called for a brief recess and asked them to put the flags away, per House rules, but said they were welcome to remain in the gallery. The individuals remained and silently held up their fists in the air until Epps finished speaking.

Updated at 11:35 a.m.: The Colorado Senate gave final approval to a bill that will nearly double funds in the state’s rental assistance program by adding $30 million. The Senate voted 23-12, along party lines, and HB23B-001 now will head to the governor’s desk. The bill, once signed, will direct $30 million to the Emergency Rental Assistance Grant Program, raising the total in the state’s fund to $65 million, with all required to be spent by June.

The funding would flow to nonprofit organizations and, then, to landlords for the purpose of preventing eviction of at-risk tenants. Progressive lawmakers have prioritized aid for renters hard hit by rising housing costs in recent years, while Republicans have opposed the bill, with some citing it as straying from the session’s focus on property taxes.

It was approved without further debate Monday.

“People across the state live on the brink and are one job loss away, or one emergency away, from losing the roof over their head,” Rep. Mandy Lindsay, an Aurora Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill, said on Saturday. “We can do something about it, right here, right now.”

Updated at 11:10 a.m.: The Colorado House passed Democrats’ main property tax relief bill on a third and likely final vote about an hour after convening. SB23B-001 passed on a party-line vote of 42-18.

The bill will now return to the Senate for final reconciliation, a necessary step because a House committee amended the legislation Sunday.

Democrats planned to draw from $200 million that was previously set aside by the legislature for the property tax reductions. The bill would raise the deduction for residential properties for tax purposes to $55,000, up from $15,000. It also would reduce the assessment rate that is used to determine how much of that value will be taxed under mill levies set by local taxing authorities.

Though the changes won’t entirely offset the increases that are coming to tax bills early next year, they are expected to scale them back considerably. The owner of a house valued at $500,000 in an area with an average mill levy would save about $255 — shaving off roughly half of the coming increase. The percentage reduction would be higher for homes with lower values.

The House plans to consider two more bills this morning. The Senate, after approving a $30 million rental assistance bill, has one more on its agenda.

Original story: Colorado lawmakers have returned to the State Capitol on Monday morning for the fourth — and possibly final — day of a special session aimed at providing relief from skyrocketing property taxes, rents and other cost-of-living expenses for Coloradans.

The House and Senate both reconvened shortly after 10 a.m. Together, they have five bills scheduled for final floor votes, and, if needed, discussions to reconcile details between the versions passed by each chamber. The outstanding bills include the majority Democrats’ main property tax relief measure.

Lawmakers successfully passed two of the Democrats’ other priority bills on Sunday, with those headed to Gov. Jared Polis for his signature. The rest proceeded through preliminary votes to ensure they could be scheduled for final votes Monday.

Those that passed were HB23B-1002, which doubles the state’s match to 50% for the federal Earned Income Tax Credit for 2023 returns filed early next year; and HB23B-1008, which appropriates money to the state Department of Treasury to staff a property tax deferral program.

The governor called the special session after the state’s voters rejected Proposition HH in the Nov. 7 election. The ballot measure had targeted a reduction in homeowners’ upcoming property taxes, which rising due to surging property values across the state that average about 40% at the median. The measure also would have sent money to school districts, local governments and special districts that rely on property tax revenue for their annual budgets.

The major property tax relief bill, heavily opposed by Republicans, passed the Senate on Sunday and is set to be heard in the House on Monday. If the House passes it with amendments, it will need to return to the Senate for a concurrence vote.

Another bill still on the table is one that, at Polis’ request, would create a property tax task force to convene by June 2024. The panel would be charged with recommending tax reforms and other proposals to reduce property taxes to the General Assembly by October. The text of the bill was significantly changed on Sunday ahead of final votes on the rewritten version.

Other remaining bills include one that would increase the state’s allocation for a rental assistance program — which is aimed at preventing evictions — by $30 million, increasing the current fiscal year’s budget to $65 million. The money would go to nonprofit organizations and, in turn, to landlords to keep at-risk tenants in their apartments and homes. It must be spent by June 30.

The House had a late Sunday night, adjourning for the day just before midnight — with only minutes to spare before the deadline to take preliminary floor votes on its remaining bills and make them eligible for final votes Monday. Otherwise, the session would continue through Tuesday because of timing rules.

Democratic Rep. Elisabeth Epps of Denver proposed an amendment to a bill that would enable Colorado to participate next year in a federal summer meal program for children in low-income families. Epps’ amendment proposed a restriction related to Israel’s latest military campaign in the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

Her fellow Democrats passed a motion to limit debate to one hour before she began presenting the amendment, and several tense moments ensued as the clock ticked down. Ultimately, the bill passed its preliminary vote before midnight — without Epps’ amendment.

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This clinic, with 32 rooms, allowed doctors and nurses to provide primary care for more than 13,000 kids last year — 85% of them uninsured or from families unable to afford health care, relying on Medicaid, and often wrestling with hardships. Run by the Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation, the clinic is listed among the essential institutions for this year’s Season to Share charitable giving campaign.

For many of the patients, just getting to the clinic is a challenge, said Dr. Daniel Nicklas, the medical director, pointing to broader labor and economic policy problems. “If the parents take time off work, they could lose their jobs.”

Innovations aimed at “making it more convenient,” such as extended hours and flexibility for quick rescheduling, will make a difference, Nicklas said. “If a family canceled, an auto-text could be sent out and say: ‘Hey, could you come at this other time?’” These kids and their parents often speak other languages, including Somali, Arabic and Nepali — requiring translators.

“We love and care for our patients. We want to be able to connect. The more patient-centered you can be, the more likely that patient will come back to you and the more that patient will trust you. We have to improve our access for kids who are sick.”

The young patients seen here are hard hit by health problems related to obesity, sitting around too much and mental turmoil — exacerbated by the spread of technology that constantly appeals to kids to be online instead of the physical world around them, Nicklas said.

“When kids have to have a presence online and also in-person, it’s a lot of pressure. It takes a lot of time. There’s a lot of stimulation when you have kids on Snapchat having to respond in 30 different conversations. It causes their brains to move very quickly. And people project only their best selves online. These things are contributing to a mental health crisis,” he said.

“In an ideal world, we would have more therapists for these kids.”

The Child Health Clinic is located a mile southeast of Children’s Hospital Colorado, which moved from Denver in 2007 to a campus in Aurora near the juncture of Interstate 225 and East Colfax Avenue, with more than 450 beds for carrying out its mission of acute care and surgeries. The clinic sits on the first floor of a four-story reflective-glass building, called the Health Pavilion, at 860 N. Potomac Circle.

Staffers cast the clinic as “a medical home” that emphasizes relations with a trusted doctor for comprehensive primary care, including examinations classified as preventative — different from hospital care. The doctors at the clinic, beyond patient care, also increasingly engage in advocacy work, urging action to tackle societal problems that hurt kids, such as air pollution.

“How many kids with asthma are ending up in our emergency department with an asthma exacerbation? We want to minimize that,” Nicklas said. “How many kids are missing school with an asthma exacerbation? How many parents are missing work because of that?”

While at the clinic with children, parents can head to a fourth-floor pantry where the staffers display healthy food that families can take home.

The clinic serves as the state’s largest training site for medical students studying pediatric medicine. Care at the clinic is provided by certified doctors, pediatric and family medicine medical residents, and some of those students. Clinic workers make a point of connecting families with social service agencies around metro Denver that help families deal with non-medical problems that affect child health.

Child Health Clinic

Address: 860 N. Potomac Circle, Aurora, CO 80011

Number of employees: 52

Annual budget: $3 million

Clients served last year: 13,000

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Colorado Mushroom Farm owner Baljit Nanda declared in U.S. Bankruptcy Court that he secured sufficient financing and will make a comeback.

But the workers who for three decades propelled his farm — women and men who fled war in Guatemala and speak the indigenous language Q’anjob’al — haven’t been paid for nine months. They’ve been scrambling to sustain themselves and their families since Nanda declared bankruptcy in December. Some now are creating an alternative, worker-run Sand Dunes Mushroom Cooperative.

Colorado Department of Labor and Employment investigators looked into what happened following news reports earlier this year. State enforcers have ordered back pay and are imposing penalties of $463,076 against the Colorado Mushroom Farm for illegally exploiting “vulnerable immigrant workers,” said Scott Moss, director of the agency’s Division of Labor Standards and Statistics.

The pay and penalties owed to 52 former workers will increase to $675,301 (about $13,000 per employee) if not paid by Oct. 21, Moss said.

Now, as Colorado Mushroom Farm seeks to come out of bankruptcy, its former workers face a dilemma: resume work under Nanda, or devote themselves to the cooperative.

“These workers have dreams, hopes. A lot of them are saying: ‘We don’t want to be abused, be taken advantage of – not being paid or being overworked,’ ” said Melissa Mata, whose husband worked at the mushroom farm. Mata now works with him as one of seven employees in the cooperative, which has received a state grant.

“Success is going to depend on sales and on revenues. The workers know this, and they know it’s going to be a struggle for a while,” Mata said. “This is about dignity and respect.”

One of the cooperative supervisors, Matias Francisco, said the choice feels like “a battle for our people,” over social inequities dating back decades, “and I’m not sure if we’re going to win or lose.”

At the latest bankruptcy court hearing on Sept. 29, Nanda unveiled a plan based on a loan of $5 million secured from Southern Cross Investment Management financiers in Britain. Judge Michael Romero laid out a path over the next few weeks to move out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy status.

“We are going to bring it back, make it a success, and get people working again,” Nanda told The Denver Post.

And his first priority, once loan money arrives, will be “to pay the employees,” he said. “We have to return to them what they’re owed.”

Nanda blamed the failure to pay workers on financial hardships caused by breakdowns of outdated equipment and $7 million in losses following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It has been very challenging with the mushroom farm shut down and in Chapter 11. And, then, it has been challenging in the financial market to come up with the funding. But finally we have got it. I told the workers, as soon as the funding comes to us, they will get paid,” he said.

Colorado Mushroom Farm crews will install new equipment ordered from the Netherlands, Nanda said, planning to begin production with 120 employees in March 2024 and eventually expand to 220 workers. In the past, the farm produced up to 13 million pounds a year of portabello, crimini, and white button mushrooms delivered to  groceries and restaurants along the Front Range, as well as Albuquerque and other cities in the Rocky Mountain West — ensuring a freshness that competitors in California, Texas, and Pennsylvania could not match.

U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers project that the $50 billion global market for mushrooms will exceed $55 billion by 2030. The value of mushrooms grown domestically tops $1 billion a year.

“When we start up, we want experienced employees who have been working here a long time so that we not spending our money on training employees,” Nanda said. “The reason why I have stayed focused on this is that I have a feeling for these employees. I want to start the farm back up and get them back to employment. This farm is vital to the local economy and vital for the employees.”

Located on a 51-acre site northeast of Alamosa, the Colorado Mushroom Farm, run by Nanda and members of his family since 1985, became the largest in the Rocky Mountain West and an economic mainstay in the San Luis Valley, Colorado’s lowest-income area, employing up to 260 workers.

In August, the workers began training to create a mushroom-growing cooperative under a pilot project.  The Colorado Department of Agriculture has supported the effort with a $70,000 grant. The Denver-based AJL Foundation also has provided funds.

This month, workers moved from one leased parcel in Alamosa to a larger property with a warehouse. They’re planning to grow oyster and other specialty mushrooms — not competing directly with the Colorado Mushroom Farm.

So far, workers from six families are participating, said Minsun Ji, director of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center, a non-profit working to quadruple the share of wealth held by the lowest-income 50% of Americans.

Crowd-sourced donations to meet a $1.5 million target will be crucial for launching this enterprise, Ji said.

“We intend to scale up to hire more workers once we obtain a larger warehouse,” she said, estimating the cooperative eventually could employ as many as 200 workers. “It all depends on how much funding we raise. We are optimistic that we can pull it off.”

If Nanda reopens the Colorado Mushroom Farm, “this project will move forward anyway,” said Ji, who formerly taught politics at the University of Colorado in Denver.

It will make workers less vulnerable, she said. “There are many ways workers can protect their rights. Some form a labor union. Some form a worker cooperative. A worker-owned cooperative can protect their rights, create a sense of solidarity with other cooperative members, and also boost their income.”

The findings based on repeated testing, using multiple dating methods, place humans in North America thousands of years earlier than previously thought, a scientific paradigm shift.

“This is going to open a whole new avenue in the field of archaeology,” said USGS research geologist Kathleen Springer, co-lead author of a paper published in the journal Science.  “We were working in White Sands around one dried-up lake. Well, there’s hundreds of those around the United States.”

A colleague recently found a footprint in Utah near the Great Salt Lake, which has yet to be dated, Springer said. “Maybe more and more older sites will be found.”

The footprint confirmation is reverberating among archaeologists who study the timing of humans moving from Asia into North America. A dominant view has held that humans first arrived around 13,000 years ago, based on the dating of tools found in Clovis, N.M.

In September 2021, USGS and National Park Service researchers found the footprints at White Sands and announced, after initial radiocarbon testing of grass seeds, that they were 21,000 to 23,000 years old – implying humans lived in North America up to 10,000 years earlier than once thought and evolved for thousands of years alongside large Ice Age animals.

Their discovery was met with skepticism. Now they’ve buttressed their initial results through painstaking radiocarbon testing of fossilized pine pollen found in the footprints and through luminescence testing that measured the age of quartz crystals.

“Now we have evidence humans were here” between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, well before the end of the Ice Age, Springer said. “This is a time stamp – footprints on the ground. The question is how they got here. People may have come down the West Coast.”

And how did they live? Ancient lakes that held water would have attracted humans and animals, said USGS research geologist Jeff Pigati, co-lead author of the study. At White Sands, thousands of footprints preserved in clay give a window into the lives of human ancestors and interactions with animals. Some prints came from adults walking with small children. Others came from humans surrounding a giant sloth before it fled.

Standard textbook science has held that glaciers receded and that “people came in and wiped out animals” by over-hunting, Pigati said. “But these results show that people and the mega-fauna co-existed for thousands of years before the Ice Age animals went extinct.”

Bustang service between Denver and Fort Collins has been canceled nearly every day since Sept. 11.  Bus rides between Lamar and Colorado Springs also were canceled on Tuesday, according to the “alerts”  that the Colorado Department of Transportation’s contractor, Ace Express Coaches, posts at ridebustang.com and on X, the social media site formerly called Twitter.

These followed delays and cancellations over the past month on multiple routes around Colorado. CDOT and contractor officials blamed the frequent delays on traffic and the cancellations on “driver unavailability,” particularly along the high-demand route that links Denver and Fort Collins.

The cancellation rate for the 692 bus trips scheduled from September 11 through September 24 was 7.4% — about 51 rides, according to state data provided to The Denver Post.

No solution is likely for another six weeks, CDOT spokesman Bob Wilson said. “This is a sign of the times with driver and general employee shortages across many industries.  We expect increased hiring of operators and trainers by mid-November,” Wilson said.

Driver illnesses, driver family emergencies, and shortages of drivers forced many of the cancellations, he said.  Drivers cannot cover extra day shifts to replace sick colleagues, under federal regulations, if they already are working maximum hours.

CDOT officials have directed  Ace Express Coaches to alleviate the driver shortages by increasing advertising for a recruiting blitz and also by hiring additional trainers, who ensure new drivers are ready for their work, Wilson said.

Bustang has emerged, under CDOT sponsorship, as the state’s primary intercity public bus system with routes connecting Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Grand Junction, and the Denver Tech Center. Bustang “Outrider” routes link other cities including Alamosa, Craig, Crested Butte, Durango, Greeley, Gunnison, Lamar, Sterling, Telluride, and Trinidad.

State records show 261,609 passenger boardings between July 2022 and July 2023 on Bustang routes, up 46% from the previous year and equal to pre-pandemic highs. Of those passengers, 56,808 traveled the route between Denver and Fort Collins. More than 40,000 people rode the I-25 route between Denver and Colorado Springs.

“Drivers are foundational to transit,” Ace Express general manager Shawn Davis said. “Being staffed with well-trained and safe operators is critical to producing reliable services.”

Training a driver requires four weeks, Davis said. Ace Express Coaches pays Bustang drivers between $25 and $30 per hour.

“The job is difficult due to hours of operation, split shifts built around commuters, the safety of the operator, as well as the challenging driving environments such as I-70. Many Bustang drivers stay overnight in cities away from home, which is fairly unique for public transport,” he said.

When Bustang operators cancel a ride, they notify passengers who have paid in advance for tickets. They’re given the option of re-booking on another trip or receiving a full refund.

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