Folks enjoying the Rez on Monday | Photo: Paul Aiken, Camera

The Camera reports on new proposed rules at the Boulder Reservoir. There’s a meeting to that effect tonight, so if you’re an avid Rez user, you might want to check it out.

Changing the plan, which hasn’t been updated since it was first adopted as a set of policy guidelines in 1983, has been in the works since last summer.

“The uses have changed at the reservoir — the types of uses and the numbers of people,” said Alice Guthrie, superintendent for Boulder’s Parks and Recreation Department. “It’s time for us to check in.”

What: Boulder City Council study session
When: 6 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Boulder Municipal Building, 1777 Broadway

Reservoir proposals

The city of Boulder is considering making changes to the Boulder Reservoir Master Plan, which guides the allowed uses at the 700-acre park. While nothing has been decided, here’s a look at the options for:

Boating

• Ban all watercraft
• Ban only fuel-powered watercraft
• Ban Jet Skis and two-stroke boat engines
• Maintain current regulations
• Expand restrictions on power boats, including the number of boats allowed and engine power
• Continue charging fees to monitor boats for invasive species of aquatic plants and animals

Alcohol use

• Require permits for alcohol consumption at all reservoir property except on the water or at the south shore

Special events

• Designate gatherings of more than 1,200 people as “signature events,” which are limited to one per month
• Prohibit special events at the north shore, Coot Lake and Tom Watson Park
• Require all special events to begin and end at the south shore
• Limit special events with more than 100 people to one per day

West shore

• Eliminate the Jet Ski Cove area
• Designate the area as a “Habitat Conservation Area” and allow only wildlife viewing, fishing and model airplanes.

North shore and Coot Lake

• Expand public swimming at the north shore
• Ban swimming in Coot Lake
• Reduce public access to the sensitive wildlife area
• Allow only passive uses, like dog walking, horseback riding, bird watching, bicycling and hiking
• Ban watercraft access from the north shore
• Improve the bridge over Boulder Feeder Canal
• Create a Lyons-to-Boulder trail connection
• Improve the crossing at 63rd Street

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.

To recoup $11 million of the extra costs, Xcel upped everyone’s electricity rate on Jan. 1. (This means that your grandma in Grand Junction is paying for Boulder’s smart grid.) That, in turn, got the attention of the Colorado Public Utility Commission, the three-person board that regulates big energy providers like Xcel. It turns out that there’s very little oversight of the smart grid. In other words, no one’s looking out to see if Xcel is making smart decisions.

Now, the commission has ordered Xcel to file a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, which is bureaucratic-speak for a document that will allow the commission to regulate the grid, and theoretically, make sure that Xcel doesn’t charge your Grand Junction grandma too much for their fancy project in Boulder.

Read more about Xcel’s SmartGridCity at the Daily Camera’s Web site.

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.

But while city officials said the project is much needed — because the aging turbine isn’t expected to work for more than five more years, and the hydroelectric plant could be decommissioned without a new turbine generator — the decision means the city also needed to come up with an additional $4 million that isn’t accounted for in the budget.

The extra money for the project, the council decided, will be borrowed from a fund set aside to monitor and manage the Lakewood Pipeline and will be paid back with 3 percent interest over 10 years.

During the lifespan of the new turbine, the city expects to generate about $8 million worth of electricity.

Still up in the air: Who gets the carbon credits from the turbine. Could be Xcel or it could be the city. Or they could split ‘em. And the carbon credit economy is weird and confusing, so it’s not going to be easy to make that decision. City Council says they’ll work on it for a couple of months.

Ned Williams, Boulder’s director of public works for utilities, said the credits are worth about $30,000 to $35,000 a year.

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.

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.

From today’s Daily Camera:

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.

“I would like to try a pilot program or two pilot programs where we have fees,” Morzel said. “I think we need to recover some money.”

Boulder County already has a similar program in place at some trailheads that has been successful, she said.

“It seems Boulder County has had very good luck with people paying their $3 and showing their little sticker,” she said.

Morzel said two trails in particular — Flatirons Vista and Marshall Mesa, located south of Boulder along Colo. 93 — could serve as pilot programs because many of the people who use those areas come from the Denver metro area.

Read the full story at DailyCamera.com.