Steve Pomerance

From observing the recent city council discussions on water, I thought it would be useful to go over some of the basics. Boulder’s water comes from three sources: North Boulder Creek (the “Watershed” below Arapahoe Glacier), Middle Boulder Creek (flows into Barker Reservoir near Nederland), and the Colorado-Big Thompson project (from the Colorado River, includes Windy Gap reservoir). North Boulder Creek drains the east side of Arapahoe Peak; the water is stored in multiple small lakes/reservoirs within the Watershed. The water flows into the Betasso Pipeline, starting on the west side of the Peak-to-Peak Highway near Caribou Ranch, then to the Betasso Treatment Plant near Sugarloaf. Barker Reservoir water is piped to Koessler Lake, west of Green Mountain, and then down a pipeline to Boulder Canyon and up to the Betasso plant. Some of this water runs down to the hydro plant in Boulder Canyon. The C-BT water flows from the Colorado River headwa...

In my last Camera piece, I said, “If all it takes is the council similarly claiming something is an ’emergency,’ then the council could pass most anything ‘by emergency’ and avoid public hearings completely.” Well, the council did exactly that at their next opportunity, abusing Charter Section 17 by passing “by emergency” the new rules for council meetings’ start times and schedules. Almost every definition of “emergency” I’ve found requires an event to be “unexpected” or “sudden,” and “demanding immediate attention” to prevent loss of life, property, etc. But the situation with “open comment” has been a mess since the war in Gaza got going. And after well over a year of failed attempts to fix the situation, it is hardly “sudden” or “unexpected.” If it is so serious, why weren’t these new fixes proposed two weeks sooner? Or why not wait one more meeting and get some public input? All this raises the serious question of why the council doe...

On July 1, the City of Boulder filed a motion in the lawsuit brought in early April by Boulder citizens regarding the bonding of the South Boulder Creek flood control dam. The City’s motion claims that the citizens’ lawsuit is “frivolous” and asks them to pay over $46,000 in attorneys’ fees. When I heard about this, I inquired of the city attorney, the mayor and councilmembers. The city attorney only said she “authorized the filing of the motion.” But councilmembers either didn’t respond or refused to even say whether they had discussed this with her. Apparently, no one wants to own what seems a blatant attempt to suppress citizens’ dissent. The fundamental legal issues in the citizens’ original lawsuit are clear, and in my opinion, the exact opposite of “frivolous.” Can the City charge fees based on the “impervious surface area” of people’s lots within the City to pay for this dam, when the floodwater being controlled comes (almost) totally from outside the city? Can the City pass the...

In Sunday’s Camera, I noticed the huge disparity in information content between the City and County meetings announcements. The City’s had only four column-inches, versus the County, which had 20 column-inches. The City’s had date, time and name of board or commission, but zero content as to what the meeting was about. The County’s, in contrast, were very detailed. Then I noticed a line in the City’s ad, in small print, saying that an asterisk indicates that the complete agenda is in the Public Notice part of the classifieds. Three of the six boards’ names had asterisks, so I went to the Public Notice section and looked. But there was only one agenda; two were missing. One of the two missing ones was Open Space, so I went online and, after some searching, found that meeting’s agenda outline, but the individual items had no content. I dug further but was frustrated by a notice that I needed to allow cookies, but provided no way to allow them. My second try, using a different set of page...

At the beginning of each regular council meeting, it is the tradition to hold open comment. This used to be a chance for citizens to raise issues or concerns they think the council needs to focus on. Unfortunately, it recently has become more of a forum for protests on various non-city issues. The good news is that the council will be discussing how to fix this. But I feel that some more in-depth consideration is needed to avoid just changing the format or timing without really addressing the underlying desires of citizens to really be listened to, versus the apparent lack of value that council members give to what is said. Supporting this perspective, the poll the City just did says that barely over half of respondents approve of the job the City is doing in providing services to residents. That low rating indicates a need for real change. Council members are not better or smarter or even many times more well-informed than the rest of us. And the council is not supposed to be separate...

Last Sunday, June 8, the Denver Post had an extensive article on the  “Data Center Boom”  in Colorado. Data centers can be small, in nondescript buildings, and support our use of internet and emails. Or they can be huge, like the ones supporting the use of artificial intelligence. Per the article, Xcel currently estimates that the current requests for data centers will increase electric use by 1,923 megawatts over the next 6 years. That’s enough to power 2.1 million homes; it is an increase of 31% above our current power supply. The total requests by 2031, not all of which will come online, is estimated to be 6,181 megawatts, which would nearly double Xcel’s current electric power needs in Colorado. Generating this massive increase in electricity requires either burning lots more fossil fuels, with attendant greenhouse gas emissions, or installing a huge number of photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, batteries for storage or building nuclear plants. Cooling the da...

Note: This column has been updated to reflect that six cities are a part of the lawsuit against the state to protect local authority. A key story in Monday’s Camera was about Lafayette having joined Aurora, Arvada, Glendale, Greenwood Village, and Westminster in a critically important lawsuit that will decide whether home rule cities, including Boulder, get to determine their own land use, or if the Legislature and governor can dictate how to zone and manage our cities. I’ve put a fair amount of time into researching this issue; here’s what I’ve found to date: The Colorado Constitution allows cities to become “home rule” and in effect, self-governing by the citizens passing a charter defining their form of government, with certain basic structural rules. Article XX, Sec.6 provides that the laws of home rule cities “supersede … any state law in conflict therewith.” The case law refining this system started in the late 1800s on topics relevant to all cities, like how courts operated. The...

The first meeting of the group of 48 volunteers to discuss “15-minute neighborhoods” was Saturday, May 10. According to one of the many pages on the city’s website devoted to this subject, “15-minute neighborhoods are neighborhoods where daily goods, services and transit are within a 15-minute walk (about a 1/4 mile) of where people live or work.” Unfortunately, because much of the city’s material comes across as being biased towards establishing these neighborhoods (which require massive densification of most residential areas), the people who volunteered were possibly biased toward that outcome. But the rest of us will not know, and have no way to determine, the extent of such bias in this process, because the meetings’ locations, names of participants, agendas and materials are secret. So, those of us who were not among the chosen cannot attend these “Citizen Assembly” meetings even as observers. I think that is terrible. A process this consequential should be done openly! The argum...

I was surprised by a recent move in our Legislature by some Democrats who are pursuing House Joint Resolution 25-1023. This resolution, if passed by both houses, would initiate a lawsuit in state court to invalidate Article X, Section 20, of our state constitution, commonly known as TABOR. Their objective apparently is to disempower our ability to vote on state-level tax increases, a power that we voted for ourselves over three decades ago. They want to do this without having to put it on the ballot so we get the final say. The politicians’ position is based on the U.S. Constitution’s Article IV, the “Guarantee Clause,” which requires that states have “a Republican Form of Government.” Their argument is that this does not include “direct democracy,” like citizen-sponsored initiatives. Although the resolution specifically targets TABOR, this could end up being applied to other direct democracy votes, because the arguments would be the same. My first research was to look at which states ...