Happy Monday and welcome back to the Roundup. Usually we take this time to write about the news of the hour, but today, we need your support to ensure this work continues and expands in 2024 and beyond.
Our community has access to investigative, independent journalism thanks to this newsroom, and the readers and funders who support this work. Free to the public, editorial independence is our value and marching song. Your support helps us deliver the kind of in-depth journalism you’ve come to expect. It’s the kind of reporting that can make a real difference in our community.
Even in the midst of our end-of-year campaign, we are keeping up the high quality editorial production you know us for. See below for a comprehensive report on ski town affordable housing from Data Editor Laurine Lassalle and an investigation into what has come of the predictions from 10 years ago that the CRJ-700 — the only commercial aircraft serving the Aspen airport — would be phased out by 2025. Add that to two pieces by Water Desk Editor Heather Sackett from opposite ends of the Colorado River Basin — one sharing an analysis of what happened when Grand County irrigators cut their water use, and her latest piece reporting from the Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas, where lower basin representatives acknowledged that they must do something to fix a structural imbalance that is draining the system’s reservoirs.
Our end-of-year campaign is nearing the end, and we are still $70,000 from our goal to ensure a strong start to 2024. We are over halfway there, and your donation gets us to our goal twice as fast thanks to the generous support of NewsMatch, Colorado Media Project, and members of the Aspen Journalism Publisher’s Circle who are collectively matching $78,000.
Thank you for supporting Aspen Journalism and doubling your impact by donating today.
– Curtis Wackerle
Editor and Executive Director
Aspen Journalism
Imminence of CRJ-700 retirement overstated in initial airport expansion studies
Consultants in 2014 reported that airlines would retire the plane by 2025, but it is expected to be in service for ‘years to come’
By Laurine Lassalle | December 17, 2023
Consultants studying the airport for Pitkin County predicted in 2013 that the CRJ-700 fleet would be phased out “sometime in the next decade,” with retirements beginning in 2018. Half the fleet would be retired by 2021, with planes no longer in use by 2025, according to presentations delivered to Pitkin County commissioners in 2013 and 2014. That prediction about the CRJs being well on their way to retirement by now hasn’t borne out in the time frame presented. SkyWest, which operates flights for the three commercial carriers serving Aspen, is flying about 16% fewer CRJ-700s today than in 2018.
Lower basin water managers say it’s time to fix their supply/demand problem
Colorado has long pushed for recognition of overuse
By Curtis Wackerle | December 15, 2023
Representatives of the seven Colorado River basin states have begun negotiating new guidelines for reservoir operations to replace the current ones, which expire at the end of 2026.
More than two-thirds of Aspen’s occupied homes are deed-restricted
2023 housing report shows progress but wide disparities in the number of affordable units across 43 rural and resort communities in the West
By Laurine Lassalle | December 14, 2023
Among the 3,278 full-time occupied units in Aspen, 70% are deed-restricted as of July, for a total of 2,303. This represents about 39% of the city’s total units. Aspen has the highest number of deed-restricted units out of the 43 communities surveyed and the second-highest proportion of deed-restricted units after the 1,266 deed-restricted units in Breckenridge accounting for 73% of that community’s full-time households.
Study finds that livestock growers need more compensation for water conservation
Costs of buying hay high in extreme drought year of 2020
By Heather Sackett | December 8, 2023
These findings could have basinwide implications for the Upper Colorado River Commission’s System Conservation Program, which in September water managers voted to continue in 2024.
Data dashboard: Roaring Fork basin snowpack reaches 114% of median
ASE reports swinging high air temperatures from 25°F to 46°F.
By Laurine Lassalle | December 11, 2023
• Above-average snowpack at Ivanhoe and North Lost Trail. Snowpack at McClure Pass reached 100% of median on Dec. 10.
• Lake Powell was 36.72% full on Dec. 10, down from 36.91% last week.
• High air temperatures at ASE went from 25°F on Dec. 2 to 46°F on Dec. 6.
Now through Dec. 31 your gift will be matched! Thanks to NewsMatch, Colorado Media Project and local community members, new monthly donations will be matched 12 times or one-time gifts will be doubled of any amount. Help us reach our campaign goal – $70,000 by New Year’s Eve. Thank you for supporting Aspen Journalism and doubling your impact by donating today.
