Steamboat Pilot & Today
Coal trucks at Trapper Mine are seen in the I pit in early January. Craig Station can be seen in the background. (Joshua Carney / Craig Press)
For more than a year, Colorado Office of Just Transition Director Wade Buchanan has been a one-man show running the new state office that aims to help communities and workers move away from coal.
After pandemic-related disruptions to state hiring, Buchanan now has help on the way with approval to add employees by summer to oversee the implementation of the ambitious Colorado Just Transition Action Plan finalized on Dec. 31, 2020. Buchanan hopes to be able to expand his office to some five employees throughout this year.
Photo by Jason Connolly / Jason Connolly Photography
Summit County COVID-19 numbers are trending downward, and with vaccination and incident rates continuing to improve, the county could see another loosening of restrictions as early as next week.
Summit County Public Health Director Amy Wineland provided officials with an update on the county’s coronavirus situation during a meeting with the Board of Health on Thursday, April 29, sharing some positive news on the area’s progress.
The county’s seven-day cumulative incidence rate dropped to 96.8 new cases per 100,000 residents this week, which brings the metric into level green on the county’s dial. Summit County is currently in level yellow. In order to go to level blue, the county must fully vaccinate 60% of the population and have a seven-day cumulative incidence rate of 250 or fewer cases per 100,000 residents. To move to level green, the county would need to either fully vaccinate 70% of residents or meet a seven-day c
In Colorado, 32.3 percent of Colorado adults down from 46.5 percent in late March are living in households that are not current on their rent or mortgage payments and where eviction or foreclosure in the next two months is either very likely or somewhat likely, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.
Eviction filings have been steadily increasing since Colorado’s statewide eviction moratorium expired on New Year s Day. So far this year, 6,124 evictions have been filed across the state. That number does not include evictions filed in Denver County, as that data is compiled separately. Some tenants are still protected under the federal eviction moratorium, which is set to expire at the end of June.
The City of Pueblo could bring on its own legal representation in the Public Utilities Commission’s ongoing investigation of electric and gas company’s response to February’s cold weather event.
The PUC announced an investigation on Feb. 17 to determine whether energy providers purchased natural gas at an above-market rate during that cold snap with the intention to pass the cost on to consumers.
The city could enlist Mark Davidson, an energy lawyer with the Denver-based firm Fairfield and Woods, to represent its interests in that investigation.
“The cost that he could save, not just with Black Hills but also with Xcel, and passing on those costs to the shareholders and not to the rate payers could be worth millions to the city of Pueblo,” city attorney Dan Kogovsek said in his staff report during the April 26 Pueblo City Council meeting.
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