New West Network

My Page: David Frey

OLYMPIC FEVER

Skiing and snowboarding aren’t exactly the TV spectacles that baseball and football are in this country, but every four years when the Winter Olympics roll around, they have their moment in the spotlight.

Resort operators hope the Olympics will inspire more people to get out on the slopes this winter, and more traveling skiers to avoid Vancouver’s crowds to come to ski areas south of the border.

“The Olympics coming up are going to bring so much attention to the sport of skiing and ski resorts,” says Billy Kidd, a former Olympian and director of skiing at Colorado’s Steamboat Mountain Resort, as he signs posters for fans wearing his trademark Stetson hat at the annual Denver Ski & Snowboard Expo.

'FLAT IS THE NEW UP'

If you’re a ski resort operator, it’s hard to be optimistic when the country is suffering the effects of a grueling recession and about one in 10 Americans is jobless.

But when snow is dumping in the high country and across the room at the Colorado Convention Center people are walking out with armfuls of ski gear, optimism creeps in.

At the annual Denver Ski & Snowboard Expo last weekend, resort operators sounded notes of cautious optimism for the upcoming ski season. Many companies are seeing upticks in season pass sales, early bookings are on the upswing and after last year’s drop in skier numbers, any improvement would be welcome.

LAND BUY

The Bureau of Land Management announced on Monday it is buying a key piece of private land in the midst of southwest Colorado’s Canyon of the Ancients National Monument believed to hold hundreds of undocumented prehistoric sites.

The purchase is of one of seven deals to buy 5,026 acres of private inholdings of conservation land within or next to public land in Colorado, Montana and Nevada.

JUNK FOOD FOR FISH

What seem to be pristine alpine lakes high in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park are getting greener, and not in a good way.

A report in the current edition of Science finds that those lakes are being swamped with nitrogen from the atmosphere, caused by pollution from cars, factories, feed lots and fertilizer. The nitrogen is essentially fertilizing lakes that aren’t used to being fertilized, causing a growth of algae and threatening to harm the fish at the top of the food chain.

In addition to our carbon footprint, researchers say, human activity leaves a more subtle nitrogen footprint that is affecting natural systems around the world, even in some of the most remote places.

HEALTH CARE

Richard Angus had been managing just fine without health insurance. A careful skier and cyclist, the Glenwood Springs, Colo., resident figured he could avoid the costs of health insurance, and the risks of going without it. Then last year, he contracted a blood infection that nearly cost him his life.

Instead, it cost him his livelihood. Three weeks in the hospital left him with $90,000 in medical bills he says he’ll never be able to pay off. His credit rating trashed, he’s seeking bankruptcy protection to stay afloat.

“You’re very happy that you get home. You’re alive!” says Angus, 48. “Then three months, four months down the road, you have to deal with the bills and the people. You almost wonder why they’re keeping me alive when they’re just going to make my life hell.”

Angus isn’t alone. The West has one of the highest rates of uninsured in the country, due largely to the region’s dominant industries. Apart from lots of small, independent businesses, much of the West is driven by the service sector, which often doesn’t provide health insurance. Neither do many construction contractors, energy industry contractors or agriculture operations. 

OIL SHALE

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Tuesday a new set of experimental oil shale leases with stricter controls than Bush-era leases, and he’s calling for an investigation of an 11th-hour move by the previous administration that critics saw as a giveaway to energy companies.

Salazar said he had “serious questions” about whether the January 15 lease addenda, which opened up 50,000 additional acres to oil shale leasing for six companies, “are in fact legal or whether or not they should be rescinded.”

He asked for the department’s inspector general to launch a probe into the Bush move before his office would take action on it.

DOC SHOCK

For residents of the West’s gas patch, the story is a familiar one. Gas companies roll in, wanting to drill. Homeowners find out they may own the land, but they don’t own the gas reserves underneath.

The drill rigs appear. For some, a battle ensues. Some complain of environmental problems. Some complain of health problems.

Outside the gas patch, the story of the battle between natural gas companies and residents is less well known, but a new documentary may help change that.

Santa Fe, N.M., filmmaker Debra Anderson set out to capture the stories of residents of western Colorado and New Mexico in her documentary Split Estate. The film is scheduled to run Oct. 17 and Oct. 22 on Planet Green, a Discovery Communications network.

AMERICA'S HOTTEST IDEA

It’s not just melting ice at Glacier National Park. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council calls climate change the “greatest threat” to America’s national parks.

It lists 25 parks most at risk to melting ice, drought, flooding, diminishing wildlife and other factors.

“This is not just a concern for the future,” says the report, which was produced by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization for the NRDC. “The national parks that we Americans so cherish are already being harmed by a changing climate.”

YES, NO, MAYBE

Following a review of 77 controversial Utah gas leases, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has put a halt on eight of them, deferred 52 of them and is allowing 17 of them to go forward.

The decision follows the recommendations outlined in an interagency report on the leases, which Salazar found had been rushed through by the Bush administration without adequate review.

“I think the report demonstrates that there was a headlong rush to leasing in the prior administration and it ended up taking the kind of shortcuts that we have discovered here,” Salazar told reporters on Thursday. “There were areas that should not have been leased because of the ecological values.”

HOME OFF THE RANGE

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is proposing to move wild horses – for many an iconic image of the wildness of the West – to controlled preserves in the East or Midwest. The plan is intended to tackle the growing environmental problems associated with wild horses and burros as their populations swell on what are often marginal desert landscapes.

“It’s both a humane solution and a fiscally-responsible solution,” said Bob Abbey, director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management which runs the wild horse program, on Wednesday.

Salazar is asking Congress to create two new preserves to maintain herds of nonproductive horses and burros that are rounded up on public lands each year but are not adopted.