Higher wages are immigrant justice
I’ve lived in Boulder County since 2001. My father, an immigrant, worked tirelessly, taking on multiple jobs just to make ends meet. His first job in this country paid $5.15 an hour for cleaning offices. He moved from one minimum wage job to another. It took 12 years at the same company before his paycheck finally showed a raise. My family’s story is a testament to the harsh realities faced by many immigrants in Boulder County who are denied a liveable wage.
Municipalities across Boulder County are considering raising their minimum wage, an action that would benefit all in our community — especially immigrants like my father. A 2023 report by the Colorado Fiscal Institute highlighted the major disparities in wages for Colorado’s workforce. The study found that 37% of immigrants earn less than $37,800 a year, compared to 25% of their U.S.-born counterparts. Many of these immigrants, who form a fundamental part of the fabric of our community here, work in essential jobs — construction, healthcare, agriculture and food, education and elder care — yet are still severely underpaid.
Even though the minimum wage today is higher than it was 20 years ago, it does not reflect the dramatic increase in the cost of living in Boulder County — costs immigrants bear unequally. Raising the minimum wage is not just an act of economic justice; it is an act of immigrant justice.
It’s time for municipalities across Boulder County to take a stand for both economic and immigrant justice. Let’s honor the hardworking individuals, like my father, who keep our community thriving by ensuring they earn a living wage.
— Keilly Leon is an organizer with Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition
Fracking up our water system
As a longtime reader of the Weekly, I too will miss Will Matuska. Thanks for your stellar reporting!
I recall reading most of the articles mentioned by staff in the July 25 publication. “Below our Feet” (July 25) was another excellent in-depth look into groundwater in our state: very informative, and the article flowed well.
One thing I found missing was that fracking was not mentioned as a big user of groundwater. The fracking drilling process uses millions of gallons of water for every new well. It is worth mentioning in a state with more than 58,000 oil wells.
As we face water shortages in the future, we should consider whether fracking is a good use of a limited resource.
— Eric Tussey, Boulder
Erie endangered
Draco. The word has an ominous ring. And indeed, the proposed Draco well pad threatens Erie, a community already disproportionately impacted by years of intense drilling. A beyond-the-pale plan would site 26 wells just outside town in Weld County, with horizontal bores extending west for 5-plus miles to access minerals in Boulder County. (“26 new fracking wells planned near Erie,” July 24)
Directly in the path of danger are many of Erie’s densely populated neighborhoods, heavily dotted with existing wells. Draco puts those wells at risk for disruption, and they are slated to be plugged to avoid potential catastrophes. The plug and abandonment process is in itself a difficult undertaking, often taking years to remediate the environmental damage done.
More pollution from Draco’s emissions, further degrading the region’s air quality. More water wasted, with over 500 millions gallons of a scarce and precious resource permanently poisoned by the chemicals used to hydraulically fracture Draco’ s wells. And more expansion of infrastructure, when the climate crisis calls for us to rein in — not ramp up — oil and gas development.
Had enough of the fossil fuel frenzy? To learn more, please visit the Erie Protectors website at erieprotectors.com, and join the residents fighting to stop Draco and keep our neighborhoods safe and healthy at the Erie Community O&G Monitoring and the Flatiron Meadows O&G Monitoring group pages on Facebook.
— Liz Fisher, Erie
Rethink Iris redesign
After reading “Boulder planning ‘road diet’ for Iris Avenue” (Aug. 8), I saw the proposed new design with a two-way protected bike lane. The design may look good but actually creates serious new risks.
Some years back, I found out that a similar approach at 29th and Baseline has a high accident rate. [Editor's note: The planned design for Iris is a two-way, multi-directional bike lane on one side of the roadway. Bike infrastructure on Baseline and 29th is a buffered one-way bike lane and multi-use path.]
Cars turning left off Baseline onto 29th are aware of oncoming traffic and people in the crosswalk. What they don’t realize is that bikes heading east may enter that crosswalk at 8 mph (or higher) and those bikes appear unexpectedly because drivers don’t see them; the bikes are in a blind spot, coming from behind and two car lanes over.
From the bicyclist perspective, they are traveling at a reasonable speed. They likely see cars at the intersection or turning right onto 29th. What they don’t see or expect are cars two lanes over doing left turns from Baseline onto 29th.
Cars and bikes that don’t see each other but are crossing paths is exactly the recipe for accidents. The two-way bike lanes proposed on the north side of Iris are creating this same accident risk. As long as the intersections are uncontrolled, the risk is there.
It can be fixed with a traffic signal, with a left turn green arrow when car and bike lane traffic is stopped, but I doubt the city would do this at most intersections. It is better to simply avoid two-way bike lanes near traffic and use bike lanes that move in the same direction as traffic.
Separately, instead of barriers, the city should consider something like the rumble strips that are used in Boulder Canyon that signal to a driver when they cross the center line. They would signal to the driver when he drifts into the bike lane.
— Lee Gilbert, Boulder
Think of the children
I am part of a group of people who live adjacent to Iris Avenue in Boulder who are concerned about the impact that a road diet on Iris will have on our neighborhoods. We are concerned that a road diet will lead to increased traffic as impatient drivers turn to alternate routes, through which they will likely speed, and care less about the impact they have on the communities that exist there.
As more cars are diverted through these neighborhoods, the core of our communities — children running about and playing — will begin to erode and degrade, tacitly forcing those kids off the neighborhood streets and back in front of their video game consoles, and their televisions.
We have raised these concerns with the city planners, and we have been dismissed out of hand with platitudes that there will be no impact. We now know that the city plans to put traffic calming devices on Kalmia and on Glenwood, both key streets that run parallel to Iris. To me, this looks prima facie that the city knows there will be an increase in neighborhood traffic.
Proponents of road diets claim their efforts are to make transit safer for pedestrians and cyclists. We who live in the affected neighborhoods want to know: What about the safety and well being of our children and of our neighborhood?
If you share these concerns and have here-to-fore remained silent, or if these ideas are new to you as a parent and a community member, I urge you to write to your city council members to voice your concern. Absent any tangible action, I urge you to consider voting in future elections for people who value our voices and concerns, and not just those of a relatively very small ideologically-driven community within Boulder.
— Phil Smith, Boulder