Steve Pomerance

Back almost 30 years ago, when I was on the City Council, we engaged in a very detailed study of the major drainages that flow through Boulder, and the likely damage that could result from floods. Our objective was to come up with appropriate risk mitigation standards. Council member Spense Havlick and I even went to CSU and tried to walk across their artificial flume at various flow rates and depths to test our ability to walk through a flood. Out of this study came Boulder’s regulatory standard using the 100-year and 500-year flood maps and also the high hazard areas, which were based on such flows. The “100 year flood” is a statistical notion that uses historical data to attempt to indicate what areas would have a 1 percent probability of flooding in a given year. The “500 year flood” has an annual probability of 0.2 percent. Setting the rules based on these standards was a compromise. The council did end up requiring some buildings that were at very serious risk to be torn do...

There has been a lot of misinformation lately about Boulder’s attempt to municipalize its electric service. Here’s my bare-bones analysis: The wind deal: In 2011, Xcel made a last-minute offer to sell Boulder energy from a yet-to-be-built wind farm. Boulder would bear all the risks, but Xcel would set the numbers, so Boulder turned it down. Then Xcel had the farm built, and got a lower per Kwh price. So the CO2 savings occurred anyway. Buying the local grid: We are already paying Xcel for the local poles and wires, but when we’ve finally paid them off, Xcel will still own them. If we municipalize but bypass this equipment, we will still have to pay Xcel for their abandoned assets. So why not get something for our money? And even for homeowners and businesses that want to self-generate, the grid allows access to backup power, large-scale solar and energy storage, and cheap wind power from eastern Colorado. The courts: Unfortunately, our state legal system does not define a clear...

The Colorado state constitution gives cities the absolute right to create their own electric utilities. We now have had positive votes in three elections — replacement of the franchise fee in 2010, conditional authorization to create the muni and provisions for funding the process in 2011, and this year when Xcel, through surrogates, put its own item on the ballot. The next steps are negotiations and court proceedings over the price for the distribution system and how the parts will be separated between the two utilities. And there will be proceedings at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over whether Boulder’s departure will “strand” any of Xcel’s generation facilities. The roots of this struggle go back about a century. Very briefly, to eliminate multiple sets of wires being run down streets and the resulting competition that dampened profits, both governments and electric companies opted for regulated monopoly status. The regulators were supposed to design rules that creat...

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to listen to the former mayor of Las Cruces, N.M. discuss the struggles that they went through in trying to create a municipal electric utility, just as Boulder is considering. Two things struck me: First, Boulder is way ahead in terms of doing the homework of evaluating options and considering upsides and downsides. Second, Boulder`s circumstances are quite different. Clearly, we can learn from Las Cruces` mistakes, but fundamentally we face far fewer obstacles than they did. However, one thing is a constant — Boulder will have a fight with Xcel Energy just as Las Cruces did with El Paso Electric Company (EPEC). Monopolies hate to give up their customer bases. Las Cruces spent millions of dollars in legal fees and years of time to gain the power to condemn the distribution system. (The distribution system is the wires, poles, transformers and substations that take power from transmission lines and deliver it to our homes and businesses.) But und...

The negative ads have taken their toll, so it`s been difficult to generate much enthusiasm for this election. But there are some bright spots. Cary Kennedy, running for re-election as Colorado state treasurer, has done some seriously good things for this state. Normally, the state treasurer is not noticed, as the job involves managing the state`s accounts in a risk-averse way. But in an economic collapse when many smart investors lost their shirts, Kennedy managed to prevent significant losses and even made money. Kennedy is also willing to invest the time to investigate new approaches that could help Colorado maintain its budget. She made a fundraising call to me that ended up lasting almost three-quarters of an hour, as we discussed the state transportation funding shortfall and alternatives to help solve it. Most fundraising calls are cursory, as the candidate is trying to get a donation and move on. For her to spend that amount of time with someone she doesn`t know is quite r...