Ned eyes buying Eldora Mountain
The Town of Nederland is considering buying Eldora Mountain Resort and making it “the flagship of a future recreation district” after current-owner POWDR listed it for sale in August.
Owning the resort would “enable the town to control the use of the mountain area for activities beyond the current winter sports, such as concerts, night skiing, as well as summer events,” according to the town’s FAQ page about the acquisition.
Expected cost of the resort is $100 million to $200 million, according to the page. Ned is currently exploring funding options and evaluating the Eldora’s financial health. There is not a contract or agreement yet.
Draco Pad paused
The Draco Pad oil and gas project has been halted indefinitely after a unanimous Nov. 15 vote from the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission — but that doesn’t mean there won’t be new fracking activity in Boulder County. The current Draco Pad plan would have put a fracking well just outside Erie and in close proximity to residents. The wells extend underground into Boulder County, but the pad itself would be in Weld County, putting it outside the jurisdiction of the Town of Erie and Boulder County.
Commissioners said they were putting a stay on the application because of these jurisdictional issues and to allow further analysis on a different location within Erie’s borders.
The proposed location, which received significant pushback from residents, is within 2,000 feet of five existing homes and 72 planned homes. Some commissioners said they weren’t convinced the developers had properly followed the required “mitigation hierarchy,” which first requires avoiding any harm possible.
The commission’s chairman, Jeff Robbins, said he’d like to see the alternative site analyzed further, but if it didn’t come to fruition he would “feel comfortable that the current location is ultimately approvable.”
Study: Colorado prisoners at risk from climate change
Colorado prisons have “failed to provide humane protections from growing environmental hazards brought on by climate change,” according to a release on a recent CU Boulder study.
Of the 35 formerly incarcerated people from 23 prisons and 15 jails in the state who were interviewed for the study, all of them said they experienced “uncomfortable temperatures, poor air quality or water issues, such as burst pipes and sewage backups.”
The study, published last month, found that 60% of those interviewed had directly experienced “at least one of the four main climate hazards in Colorado: extreme heat, extreme cold, wildfires and floods.” More than a third had experienced at least one wildfire while incarcerated and said they were “left to breathe soot and ash for days,” according to the release.
“That kind of discomfort, over long periods of time, I suppose is a very small form of torture,” one interviewee told a researcher, according to the release.
At least three-quarters of Colorado’s jails and prisons are susceptible to at least one natural disaster in the next year, according to the team’s prior research.
“Even if we fully agree that the response to a crime is that you should be locked in a cell for a certain amount of time, nowhere in the law does it say you should be exposed to poor air quality, extreme temperatures, or the risk of living in sewage water for a week,” the study’s first author, Ben Barron, said in the release. “These vastly exceed unreasonable, disproportional punishment.”
In other news…
The City of Boulder is looking for feedback on the future of its civic area. This phase of the project encompasses the area between 9th and 14th streets and Arapahoe Avenue and Canyon Boulevard. Two design concepts are on the table, and the city is accepting feedback through Dec. 14. View the concepts and take the survey: bit.ly/CivicAreaBW.