In case you missed it | Visit lovely NoColor!

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VISIT LOVELY NOCOLOR!

We’d like to whole-heartedly endorse this proposal from Weld and other northeastern Colorado counties to secede from Colorado and create their own state.

In fact, we have some very helpful advice on how they might market this new entity to encourage major employers to relocate there and boost tourism.

First of all, North Colorado, or, as we’ll subsequently refer to it, NoColor, should tout its extremely low property values, which continue to fall thanks to all of the oil and gas wells in residents’ backyards. But hey, industrial operations should feel right at home.

Next, we think NoColor could attract tourists by offering tours of its slaughterhouses and meat-packing operations, complete with free breathing masks for every visitor. And no, don’t return them at the conclusion of the tour, you’ll need them for your next stop, the National Oil and Gas Museum, which will feature a room in which you can inhale genuine methane and other airborne contaminants caused by this energy extraction method.

The museum will have a host of other exhibits, including an authentic unlined disposal pit filled with used fracking fluid for the kids to wade in, an interactive drilling game that challenges you to avoid hitting aquifers, and a time-lapse video that shows how concrete casing around pipes will crack and break over the years, allowing oil, gas and other unmentionables to seep up into groundwater.

Finally, in the gift shop, you’ll be able to pick up Encana keychains, Fluffy the Fracker stuffed animals and handy maps showing the pin cushion of wells covering virtually all of NoColor.

Won’t we be lucky to have such a great getaway just a short drive from Boulder County? Yes, we’re sure that instead of heading west to the mountains, scores of folks will head north and east instead, to breathe in all that NoColor has to offer.

CREEK CLEANING

So, this week our sage leaders on the Boulder City Council began reviewing ambitious long-term plans for the “civic area,” the section of downtown between Canyon Boulevard and Arapahoe between Ninth and 17th streets.

Yes, there was much talk about building a performing arts center and creating an expanded and covered year-round farmers’ market. (Of course, the timing of all this depends in no small part on the extent to which the city chooses to clean up the contamination from the former gasification plant at the Dushanbe Teahouse property.)

And then, amidst all of this grandiose dreaming, came the report from city staff that, first things first, there are some issues that need to be, um, cleaned up in the short term. Yes, before we can provide more play areas for wealthy Boulderites, we need to do something about all of those undesirables who hang out in that area. Among the steps that city staff want to take in the next year or two, with the $300,000 in pocket change the city currently has at its disposal, is to increase enforcement of illegal behavior in the area around City Park.

Read: Go after the homeless. Again.

As if it weren’t enough that our transient community has been targeted through a punitive camping ordinance that deprives them of the basic human right of sleep, and through a public parks closure that subjects them to fines for daring to use taxpayer-funded land in the wee hours, now the city wants to increase its law enforcement in the area.

You gotta love Boulder. We like to talk the talk about being progressive, but when it comes to walking the walk, we can’t let those unsightly homeless people down by the creek upset our good time — or be reminded that in the real world, not everyone can afford $4 lattes and shiny SUVs.

Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com