Denver Water’s recycled water program, a supposedly green solution for the increasing demands on one of the metro area’s most precious resources, has been coming under some tough scrutiny lately. As detailed our recent cover story, “What’s Killing the Trees in Denver’s Parks?”, neighborhood groups and park advocates believe that…
The current Westword cover story, “What’s Killing the Trees in Denver Parks?”, examines an emerging controversy over Denver Water’s recycled water program, which provides wastewater that’s been sufficiently treated for irrigation purposes at a fraction of the cost of potable water. Denver’s parks department has saved millions by switching numerous…
The former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant was officially declared cleaned up – or as close to clean as it was going to get – ten years ago. That was fifteen years after the FBI led a pre-dawn raid on the facility that produced plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs, a…
The attack came without warning. It was carried out swiftly, with ruthless, mechanized efficiency. And when it was over, it was as if the trees had never been there in the first place. Rich Grant had never seen anything like it. A forty-year resident of the Washington Park area and…
The more people who visit the White River National Forest and other wilderness areas in Colorado, the greater the chances of encounters with bears, who seem increasingly unafraid of humans. For these reasons, White River has released emergency orders for each of the last two summers requiring that visiting backpackers…
It’s been a rough time for people who rely on the Animas River in southwestern Colorado, ever since the August 5 blowout at the Gold King Mine that released three million gallons of toxic, heavy-metal-laced gunk into the river. A consortium of businesses, public agencies, environmental groups and other stakeholders…
The former Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant was declared cleaned up — or as close as it was going to get — ten years ago this week, more than fifty years after the facility sixteen miles upwind of Denver started producing plutonium triggers for hydrogen bombs. In 2017, 5,000 acres of…
As the U.S. Bureau of Land Management sees it, last month’s removal of 167 wild horses from a rugged, remote area in Rio Blanco County was a success, easing the strain on damaged rangelands and substantially reducing a herd that had become too large to be sustainable. Wild-horse advocates tend…
Boulder is known as one of the most bike-friendly cities in the country. Yesterday, however, the Boulder City Council voted to scrap protected bike lanes along a four-block stretch of Folsom (a process dubbed “right-sizing”) in favor of returning to four lanes of traffic — the configuration that had previously…
In our 2012 post featuring ten Best of Denver bike rides, we showcased a number of locations chosen with mountain biking in mind. Now, the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit partner of the U.S. Forest Searvice, has upped the ante. The organization recently posted about eight mountain bike rides not…
Alpine Waste and Recycling has expanded the capacity of its Denver recycling plant, more than doubling its ability to process single-stream recycling material. “Alpine Waste and Recycling has invested in the future of recycling,” says Brent Hildebrand, the company’s vice president of recycling. “In investing in that future, we’ve also…
Two weeks after an EPA crew accidentally released three million gallons of toxic mine water into the headwaters of the Animas, the river has been declared safe for irrigation, recreation, and other uses. No doubt many people — including Governor John Hickenlooper, who guzzled some Animas water to demonstrate that…
Yesterday, we shared video of Governor John Hickenlooper drinking water from the Animas River in an attempt to show that pollution from the environmental catastrophe caused by the Environmental Protection Agency’s accidental discharge of millions of gallons in wastewater was beginning to dissipate. Of course, he added an iodine pill…
Yesterday, our Alan Prendergast wrote about the environmental disaster on the Animas River, caused by the Environmental Protection Agency’s accidental release of mining wastewater measured in the millions of gallons — and noted that the situation was many years in the making. During a visit to the area, Governor John Hickenlooper…
There are half a million abandoned mine sites across the western United States, including more than 23,000 in Colorado. Many of them have the potential to expose high-country waterways to runoff from a highly acidic brew of tailings, mine dumps and metal ore. Last week’s dump of millions of gallons…
It’s a Saturday morning in June, which means that Gary Lefko is cruising the Pawnee National Grassland in his 1999 green Subaru Impreza, looking for birds. With the windows down and camera and binoculars close at hand, Lefko drives along, noting any specimens that pass his sightline. There’s a red-tailed…
The Colorado Court of Appeals has dismissed a lawsuit in which four concertgoers claimed they were injured by falling rocks at Red Rocks Amphitheatre because of Denver’s negligence. The decision is a victory for the City of Denver, but a loss for the people who were hurt in the 2011 incident…
It took months of work by local activists, working in conjunction with a statewide land trust, a national conservation group, and other funding partners, but the backers of an innovative “healthy living park” in the heart of Alamosa have finally secured the money to complete the acquisition of 38 prime…
Ever wonder if all that stuff you put in your recycling bin actually gets recycled? So did we. As explained in this week’s cover story, “Breaking Bad,” none of the glass that Denver residents put in their purple bins gets recycled into new glass. Because Denver has single-stream recycling —…
At last, the weather in Colorado is heating up. But with the rise in temperatures comes increased dangers of avalanches in the high country, with numerous slides in recent days — one of which prompted a daring rescue operation. A man on Buffalo Mountain was reportedly swept over a waterfall by…
In May 2014, legendary climber Dean Potter was in Telluride for the premiere of the controversial film When Dogs Fly — controversial because it features scenes of Whisper, Potter’s dog, joining him on numerous high-flying BASE-jumping adventures. The trip to Colorado was hardly unusual for Potter, who’s spent plenty of time over…
In a move that could have far-reaching implications for the the West’s ailing coal industry, a federal judge in Denver has ruled that U.S. Department of Interior officials failed to follow the law in approving expansion plans at two Colorado coal-mining operations — and that the agency has an obligation,…
