Author Archives: Curtis Wackerle

Water Desk Editor Heather Sackett has been on a roll lately, with her three most recent stories taking you to distinct corners of the beat. Sackett posted breaking news in recent weeks on basin-by-basin runoff forecasts, which are looking strong; a bill up for debate in the state legislature that would establish a task force […]

Aspen Journalism’s work since our last edition of The Roundup highlights something I’ve been thinking about regarding our structure of providing coverage under a series of “desks,” or focus areas.  Since AJ’s first story in spring of 2011, we’ve categorized our reporting using more than a dozen such desks. That list has included wealth and […]

Three years after the first COVID-19 case was reported in Colorado and Pitkin County, this week’s update of “Tracking the Curve” will be the last.  Over the past few months, the data has become less reliable as people rely more on at-home testing, resulting in fewer cases and positive tests being reported to the state […]

“Show what it’s like to have a home.” Vague as it might be, that was the direction photographer Daniel Bayer and I settled on before he made his way to Eagle to meet the Carlton family, to gather images for our story published this week by freelancer Andrew Travers, about the efforts of a new […]

Anyone who has dealt with childcare in the Aspen-to-Parachute region knows it’s a tough business. If you are lucky enough to find a spot for your little one, you probably had to sit on a waitlist for quite some time and the cost is right up there with a second mortgage. Providers face a constant […]

Water managers set criteria for conservation program participation Grand Valley Water Users propose payment for land, not water By Heather Sackett | February 22, 2023 The Grand Valley Water Users Association (GVWUA) is rejecting the concept of paying farmers based on an amount of unused water, even as the association’s board voted to participate in […]

When Aspen Journalism got an invited to check out the operations center staffed by the Pitkin County incident management team assembled to help handle the public safety aspects of Winter X Games, we saw it as an opening for our data desk to mine the rich vein of metrics coming out of what has historically […]

Our Water Desk broke news on two fronts. We also posted our write up from the Jan. 5 event we hosted with author Ted Conover,

It’s clear that this stock of housing is important to the community, based on the sheer numbers. But there’s something more. The ability to own a home, affordable to those who work in the community, might be the strongest incentive there is to hold on, stick it out, keep playing “the lottery” because eventually something will work out.