Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- And Now, Back to Your Local News…Since the weather’s getting better, I’m sure we’re all totally jonesing to get onto the trails, but in general, they’re a mess. It’s a bummer to see nice singletracks get trashed and widened, so like all of you, I’m grinding my teeth in annoyance while I try to be patient. The good news is that you [...] […]
- Downieville, Take ThreeOkay, well, things went pretty haywire in race promotion after the registration debacle. The organizer received so many hateful emails and comments about the mishap that it made him wonder if he should even bother putting the race on. I can’t blame him, really. In his shoes I might do the same thing. It sounds [...] […]
- And Now, Back to Your Local News…
- Edgy Veggie
Was building Boulder’s smart grid a smart idea?
In March 2008, it all sounded great. Xcel Energy announced that Boulder would be home to the very first smart grid in the country, and people loved it. City council members thought the idea was stupendous; environmentalists said it would help the average person conserve electricity — or at least spread out their electricity use so that peak loads could be diminished (and, therefore, so could peak-load plants that are most often run off of coal and natural gas).
The costs of Xcel Energy's SmartGridCity project in Boulder are far higher than originally projected.
But two years later, the smart grid doesn’t look as shiny as it once did. For one thing, costs have skyrocketed. At first, Xcel thought that it would cost the company about $15.3 million to actually build the grid, not including the cost of running and maintaining it. By May 2009, Xcel realized it was going to be far more, perhaps $27.9 million. Now, Xcel is guessing that total capital expenditures — we’re talking digging ditches for fiber cable and installing smart meters in people’s homes — will cost $42.1 million. Read more
Update: Boulder takes stimulus money for hydro turbine
Water power!
Boulder City Council decided last night to make a big buy — they’ll put up about $4 million, in addition to $1.18 million in federal stimulus money, to replace the 73-year-old hydroelectric turbine in Boulder Canyon.
Apparently, the turbine would have kicked the bucket in about five years without an upgrade. Read more
Boulder to support goals of UN’s Copenhagen conference
The conference kicks off Dec. 7.
Tomorrow night, Boulder’s city council is expected to pass a resolution expressing general support for the goals of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, also called COP15.
The city if Boulder is sending a delegation to Copenhagen to advocate on behalf of local governments and to talk about Boulder’s efforts to cut its own greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmentalists hope that world leaders will come to an agreement about how to tackle global carbon emissions at the conference, ultimately signing an accord that would pick up where the Kyoto Protocol left off.
The United States did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which would have obligated us the reduce our carbon emission by 7 percent below 1990 levels. But in 2002, the city of Boulder decided to try and meet the target on its own.
Aside from the Boulder delegation, scientists from the University of Colorado and other locals are headed to Copenhagen as well. If you’re going, BigGreenBoulder wants to know about it. E-mail Laura Snider at laura@biggreenboulder.com.
Boulder considers charging at trailheads
Things are grim in open space land.
Or at least in the Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks department’s pocket book, which is filled almost entirely by sales tax revenues. And sales in Boulder are down.
Left to right, Christine Ferguson, Heather Grooters, Laura Baer, Peggy Kuhn, Heather Cunha, Alejandra Rubio, and Pito Roslansky, members of the Singletrack Sistahs, ride the Marshall Mesa trail. Photo by Marty Caivano.
Already, the city has walked away from three land deals totaling 1,000 acres (see post below). Now, the city is talking about raising cash for open space by charging those who live outside the Boulder Bubble for using Boulder’s trails.
While the city has spent $208 million to purchase more than 45,000 acres of open space in and around Boulder since it began a systematic buy-up of land in the late 1960s, it still has more than 5,800 acres left in its master plan — at an estimated cost of about $100 million.
Among the suggestions for creating more revenue to fund those remaining purchases is to begin charging a fee for non-Boulder County residents who use certain city-owned trails.
City Councilwoman Lisa Morzel said she routinely sees people drive to Boulder’s open space to use its amenities, but never stop in the city to spend money on food or retail purchases. Sales tax on such items, she said, largely make up the budget for open space programs. Read more
