Steve Pomerance

As many of you know, the city’s 2020 Franchise Agreement with Xcel grants Xcel exclusive rights to deliver electricity in Boulder for 20 years. But Xcel also agreed to give Boulder the right to exit the franchise every five years. This year, 2025, is the first opportunity. The money for undergrounding powerlines, which Xcel denied Boulder during the 10 years we were out of franchise, has been committed for that purpose. So that concern is resolved. And the Legislature finally clarified existing state law guaranteeing equal treatment for all customers to ensure that all Xcel-served areas get undergrounding money, whether in franchise or not. According to all reports I’ve received, the Xcel-Boulder advisory panel, created as part of the 2020 settlement with Xcel, has not produced much of consequence. Thus, there is a significant level of dissatisfaction with what Boulder has gotten, and some enthusiasm for pursuing an alternate path. This dissatisfaction was strongly amplified by Xcel’s ...

This summer’s air quality here in the Denver metro region has been appallingly bad. According to AirNow.gov, almost every day we in Boulder have fairly high levels of pollution. As I write this, both PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels have the warning, “If you are unusually sensitive to ozone, consider reducing your activity level or shorten the amount of time you are active outdoors.” This has been the situation for most days for the last few months. How bad must it be in places like Commerce City? There was a recent Camera story about how Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission has provided new escape clauses in its rulings, in spite of the 2021 state law (HB21-1266) which supposedly encourages stronger enforcement of existing laws. I looked up the main state law on air quality (CRS 25-7-102, passed in 2019), and, no surprise, it has huge holes in its language:  “To that end, it is the purpose of this article 7 to require the use of all available practical methods which are technologicall...