18 minute read
OPINION
Thu 3/31
Featured
Destination World: Japan @ 4pm Anythink Wright Farms, 5877 East 120th Avenue, Thornton. mhibben @anythinklibraries.org, 303-4053200
Tara Rose and The Real Deal
@ 6pm Clayton Members Club & Hotel, 233 Clay‐ton St, Denver
Featured
Colorado Avalanche vs. San Jose Sharks @ 7pm / $34-$9999 Ball Arena, 1000 Chopper Circle, Denver
Red Sweater and Volunteer Social at Eagle Pointe
@ 10:30pm Eagle Pointe Recreation Center, 6060 E. Parkway Dr., Commerce City. 303-2893760
Tiny Treks - Earth Appreciation
@ 4pm Apr 1st - Apr 15th Bison Ridge Recreation Center, 13905 E. 112th Avenue, Commerce City. 303-2893760
Featured
Weld Re8 District Art Show @ 5pm High Plains Library District- Fort Lupton Public & School Library, 425 South Denver Avenue, Fort Lupton. kdavis@highplains.us, 303-857-7180 Anne Lamott at Paramount Theatre
@ 7:30pm / $25-$42 Paramount Theatre, 1621 Glenarm Place, Denver
Sat 4/02
Adventure Explorers: X-Treme Series
@ 2pm Apr 2nd - Apr 23rd Bison Ridge Recreation Center, 13905 E. 112th Avenue, Commerce City. 303-2893760
Accessible Nature Hike
@ 4pm Eagle Pointe Recreation Center, 6060 East Parkway Dr., Commerce City. 303-2893760
Saturday Night Stand-Up
@ 6pm / $15-$18 The Denver Comedy Lounge, 3559 Larimer Street, Denver
Featured
Colorado Rapids vs. Real Salt Lake @ 7pm / $23-$200 DICK'S Sporting Goods Park, 6000 Victory Way, Commerce City
Many Mountains @ Long's Peak Pub!
@ 7pm Longs Peak Pub & Taphouse, 600 Longs Peak Ave, Longmont
Ariel View: Rockabillies- Arvada
@ 7pm Rockabillies, 12363 W 64th Ave, Arvada
Featured
Black Market Translation @ 8pm Trailside Saloon, 10360 Colorado Blvd, Thornton
Sun 4/03
Featured
Mon 4/04
100 Things to Do Before You're 12
@ 3:30pm Bison Ridge Recreation Center, 13905 E. 112th Avenue, Commerce City. 303-2893760
Featured
Colorado Mammoth vs. New York Riptide @ 7pm / $10-$9999 Ball Arena, 1000 Chopper Circle, Denver
STEAM Rollers
@ 9pm Apr 4th - Apr 18th Bison Ridge Recreation Center, 13905 E. 112th Avenue, Commerce City. 303-2893760
The Page Turners- Book Club
@ 10pm Apr 4th - Apr 25th Bison Ridge Recreation Center, 13905 E. 112th Avenue, Commerce City. 303-2893760
Tue 4/05
Featured
powered by
Face Vocal Band
@ 5:30pm BDT Stage, 5501 Arapahoe Ave, Boulder
RIVALS w/ Ashland, Josh Lambert and Ethan Cutkosky
@ 6:30pm Roxy Theatre, 2549 Welton St, Denver
Discovery Kids- Cherry Blossoms
@ 8pm Apr 5th - Apr 28th Bison Ridge Recreation Center, 13905 E. 112th Avenue, Commerce City. 303-2893760
DJ Rockstar Aaron: Forbidden Bingo at 'Bout Time Pub & Grub
@ 8pm Bout Time Pub & Grub, 5225 W 80th Ave, Arvada
Wed 4/06
Color Outside the Lines
@ 12am Apr 6th - Apr 5th Bison Ridge Recreation Center, 13905 E. 112th Avenue, Commerce City. 303-2893760
Boost Your Digestion Class
@ 3pm Eagle Pointe Recreation Center, 6060 E. Parkway Dr., Commerce City. 303-2893760
Thu 4/07
Featured
Disney On Ice presents Mickey and Friends @ 1pm Denver Coliseum, 4600 Humboldt Street, Denver
Featured
Denver Nuggets vs. Memphis Grizzlies @ 7pm / $26-$3000 Ball Arena, 1000 Chopper Circle, Denver
BY JESSE PAUL THE COLORADO SUN
A Colorado House committee voted down a bill that sought to stop employers from denying jobs to or firing workers for their off-the-clock cannabis use, either medical or recreational.
House Bill 1152 also sought to require employers to let their employees consume medical marijuana while on the job. The legislation included exceptions for workers whose jobs are in dangerous fields or require fine motor skills, such as positions involving the use of heavy machinery.
The bill was rejected on a 12-1 vote in the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee on March 23 afternoon even after the measure’s sponsor, Rep. Edie Hooton, a Boulder Democrat, offered an amendment to dramatically scale back the legislation before the vote was taken.
The amendment, which was adopted, would have erased all of the bill’s provisions and instead convened a panel to study the issue and make recommendations to the legislature about how employers can accommodate medical marijuana users. But even that wasn’t enough for lawmakers on the committee, who were concerned about any move toward forcing employers to allow their employees to use marijuana on or off the job.
Many in the business community are fiercely opposed to the measure and testified in opposition to it on March 2.
The question of whether the use of cannabis off the clock can disqualify a person for a job or lead to their firing has been swirling in Colorado since voters passed Amendment 64 in 2012, which legalized the sale and use of recreational cannabis. Most states that have lifted prohibitions on pot leave the question of how to handle employees’ marijuana use up to employers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Nevada and New Jersey are two exceptions. In New Jersey, employers can prohibit employees from using cannabis while on the job or from showing up to work impaired. But they are not allowed to penalize an employee solely because of their off-the-clock recreational cannabis use.
In 2015, the Colorado Supreme Court sided with Dish Network, which fired an employee, Brandon Coats, after he tested positive for tetrahydrocannabinol – or THC – in a random drug test. Coats had a medical marijuana card as a result of back spasms caused by his quadriplegia. Muscle spasms are one of the seven debilitating conditions for which medical marijuana can be recommended under Colorado law.
The closely watched case highlighted Colorado’s pot paradox: Marijuana is legal but consuming it can still be grounds for termination.
Amendment 64 included the following provision: “Nothing in this (ballot measure) is intended to require an employer to permit or accommodate the use, consumption, possession, transfer, delay, transportation, sale or growing of marijuana in the workplace to affect the ability of employers to have policies restriction the use of marijuana by employees.”
Amendment 20, the 2000 ballot initiative allowing medical marijuana sales and use in Colorado, included a provision about how it does not “require any employer to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any workplace.”
This story is from The Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support The Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun.com. The Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.
Dangerous materials used in firefighting foam are showing up in drinking water, soil
Lawmakers to address ‘forever chemicals’
BY MICHAEL BOOTH THE COLORADO SUN
The sale of many products containing the dangerous “forever chemicals” known as PFAS would be banned in Colorado as early as 2024, under legislation recently introduced and backed by a host of consumer and environmental groups.
Toxic PFAS chemicals, used as lubricants and repellants in products ranging from firefighting foam to clothing and cooking utensils, leak into groundwater and have been found in drinking water supplies in Colorado and across the country.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser recently joined multiple states in suing the chemical manufacturers for decades of contamination that is proving exorbitantly expensive for state health departments and local water agencies to clean up.
“We know these things are dangerous for our health. We know they are forever chemicals that are poisoning our water supply,” said Danny Katz, executive director of the nonprofit consumer group CoPIRG, in welcoming the bipartisan bill. “We need to act now to phase out as many of them as possible to protect our health and protect Colorado’s water.”
The first sale ban would begin Jan. 1, 2024, for products with PFAS intentionally added in these categories: Carpets or rugs; cookware; cosmetics; fabric treatments; food packaging; juvenile products, oil and gas products; and textile furnishings. Through 2030, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment would be charged with identifying more categories of goods, and those would be added to the banned list.
The earliest categories are in businesses where alternatives to PFAS are already being developed, sponsors said.
Colorado may have the largest number of sites in the nation that have handled PFAS chemicals, due to firefighting drills and operations at military installations, mountain wildland firefighting, and from PFAS chemicals in firefighting and other industrial materials at oil and gas exploration sites.
About 21,000 industrial sites in Colorado appear on the previously undisclosed EPA database of locations that “may be handling” PFAS, with more than 85% of those places related to oil and gas, and heavy concentrations of possible locations at the industry’s core in Weld County, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which forced EPA to release the data.
The same properties that make PFAS a lubricant or seal cookware also make them resistant to long-term impacts of heat or water, conferring the moniker “forever chemicals.” CoPIRG and others say the chemicals have entered Colorado waterways and “polluted communities like Fountain, Frisco, parts of Denver, South Evergreen and Golden,” threatening serious health impacts.
State health officials have launched a buyback program taking firefighting foam containing PFAS off the hands of local fire departments and replacing them
SEE FOAM, P12
Event Details and Registration
www.runningguru.com/E1.asp?eID=93125
Come out and run/walk with the raptors at Barr Lake!
New course for 2022! Bring your friends & family to cheer you on. Lots of fun after-race activities! The Raptor Run is a fundraiser for Friends of Barr Lake to help fund future projects at the park. Early Bird Day of Registration Fees (until April 8th) Registration
Adults (16-59) $40 $45 Children (15 & under) $35 $40 Seniors (60+) $35 $40
Event Features
• Goody Bag • Race T-Shirt • Timed Event • Awards • Breakfast
Post Race Activities
• Awards Ceremony • Doggieraptor Costume Contest • Live Raptor Presentation • Mascot Race
NEW THIS YEAR DOG-FRIENDLY EVENT!
Bring your best four-legged friend(s) dressed up in their best Doggieraptor costume and they could win a great prize! (All fourlegged friends must remain on leash at all times).
BOLDERBoulder Qualifi er!
www.bolderboulder.com/strava-qualifier/
How will the state decide who gets in, and who gets hurt?
BY MICHAEL BOOTH THE COLORADO SUN
If anybody could work the system and get access to wildly popular open space this summer, you’d think Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commissioner Taishya Adams would have a good shot.
But there she is, just like everyone else, penciling early March on her planner as the day she can fi rst swing sharp elbows online to get summer group backpacking reservations at Rocky Mountain National Park, not far from her home in Boulder.
“I’ve had it marked in my calendar for six months,” Adams told her fellow commissioners last week. She endorsed a new timed entry proposal for Eldorado Canyon State Park, where overfl owing parking lots on weekends back up onto lawns in the little town of Eldorado Springs.
But she added a warning message: Intergenerational families love the big picnic areas at Eldorado and other state parks. They come in more than one car. Managing crowds by managing cars should not shut out diverse uses of state open space.
“I would hate to see that become a barrier,” Adams said.
Up, up and away
Everyone agrees Colorado’s open spaces are growing alarmingly crowded on popular days. The numbers are startling.
Visitation at close-in Front Range state parks has doubled or nearly tripled. Sprawling Lake Pueblo had to turn away cars for the fi rst time in 2020, the year it passed 3 million visitors. Jefferson County Open Space does not have gated entry for counting, but believes visitation to its 28 foothills gems passed 7 million last year.
Staunton State Park near Conifer rocketed from 89,000 in 2015 to 277,000 in 2020. Barr Lake in Brighton, a hit with birders and fl atland bikers, went from 119,000 in 2015 to 258,000 in 2020, before settling back a bit with indoor pandemic restrictions easing in 2021. Open space offi cials expect use to keep climbing rapidly, if not quite as steeply as in the fi rst year of the pandemic.
Made with Flourish
A Center for Western Priorities study of reservable camping spaces at federal and local public lands showed more than 95% of sites were taken at peak periods, with an overall 39% increase in summer camping at public spaces.
And the state parks commission may have just opened the gates on a new fl ood — the annual Keep Colorado Wild state parks pass will be only $29 in 2023, tacked on to annual car registration with an option to decline it, less than half the current $80 fee for one car.
Need to find a better solution than first come, first served
Open space managers across the West are scrambling to accommodate the growth without provoking a public backlash against new rules. Mandatory shuttles from remote lots, parking fee add-ons, timed entry, seasonal trail closures for wildlife protection, and extra fees for non-residents are all under consideration in every parks-related offi ce.
“You do have to be ready to say OK, fi rst come, fi rst served doesn’t work if you have an entrance line that’s a half mile long every day,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the nonprofi t Center for Western Priorities, which advocates for expanded public lands and more parks funding. “We have to fi nd a better solution.”
The answer can’t just be forcing everyone to online reservation systems or discouragingly high fees, Weiss and others say. The fi x has to include more open land, they argue, including the Biden administration’s executive order seeking to protect 30% of U.S. land and water by 2030.
“Increased use of state and federal lands is a good thing, and the solution isn’t to curtail access, but rather increase it by conserving more land and removing barriers to entry from those who feel excluded or unable to access the outdoors,” said Jackie Ostfeld, director of Sierra Club’s Outdoors for All campaign.
“The threat of overuse poses in these small spots, and it is a legitimate threat, is miniscule compared to the threat posed by development,” Weiss said.
Anecdotal evidence and polling data show the online ticket jockeying and the turned-away cars, from Pueblo to Roxborough, are altering the way Coloradans use — or try to use — the great outdoors.
About 58% of Coloradans said crowding in the last two to three years has changed where and how they recreate, according to this year’s annual State of the Rockies Project poll of Western states by Colorado College and New Bridge Strategy. The average across all eight Western states polled was 48% changing their time and location of outdoor recreation.
Larimer County hiker Suzy Paquette said she understands the need for control experiments like timed entry, but added that the online regimen started at Rocky Mountain National Park last year did change how she and her husband get outdoors.
Even on weekdays in the summer, the national park passes are “gone like lickety split,” she said. “So that’s one of the problems, you can’t just say ‘Oh, let’s go to the park today.’”
It’s not just the human visitors and residents whose behavior and attitudes are impacted by the outdoors rush, said Dana Bove, a volunteer who helps keep track of eagles and hawks at places like Barr Lake, St. Vrain, Boyd Lake and county parks. He feels he’s lost his own “solace” in the crowded parking lots and packed trails, but worries more about the birds.
The outdoors are turning into an overcrowded theme park
Pueblo is proud that people come from all over to boat on Lake Pueblo, swim at Rock Canyon, or mountain bike on dozens of miles of trails, said Jamie Valdez, who has led mountain bike classes at the state park. Pueblo gets less snow, and the warm winter sunshine attracts recreation from multiple states, he said.
Valdez has his eye now on the city’s Pueblo Mountain Park, with its own hiking trails in the foothills southwest of town sitting as a hidden gem. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful park, and it seems to be almost forgotten,” he said.
The nonprofi t Boulder Climbing Community weighed in early on the proposed changes to how Eldorado Canyon is managed, knowing many of its members go dozens of times a year and count on driving, rolling or striding in just a few minutes after class or work.
To their credit, Boulder County and the state have consulted closely with climbers on improving the shuttle to the park and making sure timed car passes aren’t hoarded or sold, said Boulder Climbing Community executive director Kate Beezley. The shuttles have spaces for climbers’ crash pads and other gear.
Robert Fix of Westminster and Mike Wright of Boulder prepare to go climbing at Eldorado Canyon State Park in Eldorado Springs on March 4. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)
Robert Fix of Westminster and Mike Wright of Boulder prepare to go climbing on March 4, 2022, at Eldorado Canyon State Park in Eldorado Springs. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)
More controlled-entry rules for open space are inevitable, Beezley said, so parks managers need to make sure they consider all the user groups and keep things fair.
“Who is the primary user group? Who are your frequent fl yers? And how can you help them maintain those patterns of their health and wellbeing?” she said.
Parks managers fl inch when they think of the potential overuse coming to stunningly picturesque, newly minted state parks like Sweetwater Lake in Garfi eld County, and Fishers Peak near Trinidad. Weiss, of the Center for Western Priorities, uses the word “harden” to describe how open space planners must anticipate the places a frenzied public will park, hike, build fi res or camp, and create protections for those natural areas.
Marketing experts also must join in to help spread people out by showcasing alternatives to the closest, most Instagrammed locations, experts say.
Otherwise, Weiss said, the great outdoors becomes “this massive Disneyland problem that you end up with at Zion National Park, or at Chautauqua for that matter. There’s a lot to be said for making sure folks are aware, hey, there are equally great if not better experiences, because it’s less crowded.”
Angel’s Landing at Zion is one of Weiss’ favorite spots. But it’s no fun, he said, “If it looks like the line to ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’”
Looking for other solutions
So what else can be done? Scott Roush, who oversees some of the busiest Colorado state parks close to the Denver metro area, said park users should expect more experiments with timed entry like the one moving forward for Eldorado Canyon this summer.
Highline Lake State Park is a place managers worry about, he said. Parking lots fi ll fast on weekends at the rare body of water in the high desert near Grand Junction. Without more parking controls, people leave their cars wherever they feel like it, just as at Eldorado Canyon, Roush said.
Jeffco Open Space is adding new parking spaces at Alderfer/Three Sisters Park outside Evergreen, community connections director Matt Robbins said. That may head off “volunteer” parking. Jefferson County also puts stock in educating park users on simple, highly effective tips like staying on the trail even in mud season. Hikers sidestepping mud create “braiding” that turns single track into 4-foot-wide throughways, Robbins said.
Charging for parking or timed ticketing are tougher, Robbins said, because Jeffco does not have controlled entry at its 28 parks in the way national or state parks do. The county did try an experiment last year partnering with Lyft for $2.50 off rides to and from open space parks. It was a bust, Robbins said.
SEE PARKS, P17
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