When Samuel Garcia opened his grocery in New Castle a decade ago, it was a sign of changing times. The town’s old general store became a grocery serving the Latino population at the same time New Castle’s complexion was beginning to change. By 2010, New Castle’s Hispanic population grew five times its size in 2000, […]
After recession, empty homes fill the region
When the recession ended the boom times of the first decade of the 21st Century, it left the lights out in thousands of unoccupied homes across the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys. Results of the 2010 U.S. Census show vacancy rates climbed from Aspen to Parachute, largely as a result of new construction outpacing […]
Garfield County, New Castle lead Western Slope growth
In the first decade of the 21st Century, a wave of newcomers filled manufactured houses and million-dollar golf course mansions to make New Castle the fastest-growing town on the Western Slope and put it in the ranks of Colorado’s biggest boomtowns. Garfield County became the state’s fourth fastest-growing county, trailing only the metro suburbs. Neighboring […]
Districts withdraw claim for new dam on Crystal River
The decision takes away the long-simmering prospect, however thin, that two Ruedi-sized dams would be built on the Crystal River, including the 129,00-acre-feet Osgood Reservoir, which would have put Redstone underwater.
Stormwater mismanagement in the gas fields
The state’s Water Quality Control Division says a division of Williams natural gas company failed to take measures at a gas field construction site to keep dirt and mud from running down steep hills into a tributary of Parachute Creek, which flows into the Colorado River in Parachute. On Nov. 1, 2010, state inspectors witnessed […]
Two other gas field stormwater violations
Williams is not alone when it comes to failing inspections at construction sites in Garfield County’s gas fields. The Petroleum Development Company received two stormwater permits, one in 2002 and one in 2007, for construction of an access road for oil and gas exploration on 56 acres about 10 miles north of Parachute. Under the […]
The market for Crystal River water
If the Colorado River District dammed the Crystal River, would anyone want to buy the water stored behind the dams? Probably so, according to Kerry Sundeen of Grand River Consulting, with large landowners along the Crystal River seeking irrigation water perhaps the strongest potential market.
West Divide Project water rights chart and map
An updated look at the conditional water rights associated with the West Divide Project was provided at a meeting on Wednesday, March 16, 2011.
PitCo’s Ely barred from executive session, new maps show range of reservoirs
Pitkin County Attorney John Ely was asked to leave a closed-door session on Wednesday, March 16, so two water district boards could talk about potential dams on the Crystal River without Pitkin County, which sits on one of the boards, in the room.
The Phantom Dams of the Crystal River
A dam once envisioned on the upper Crystal River would drown the town of Redstone under an artificial lake bigger than Ruedi Reservoir, submerging the Redstone Castle and putting the town’s historic coke ovens under water.