December 23, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Immigrants, Refugees
Recent beatings of South Asian refugees have prompted Denver police to hand out cellphones to newcomers from abroad. On Dec. 11, a group of men beat and robbed teenage refugees from Bhutan in east Denver, following them from an RTD bus, according to police. Six were beaten, one requiring emergency-room treatment. The attack spread fear among refugees from Bhutan, Burma and elsewhere — who are concentrated in low-rent apartments and have been victims of previous robberies. The hope is that the emergency-only phones, which require no payments, will help refugees reach paramedics and police to prevent future trouble and give a sense of security.
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December 21, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Water
Colorado Front Range residents are using less water, but some parts of the Western Slope have seen per capita water use explode in the past decade, according to a new state study.
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December 14, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment
Taxed by increasingly complex requests for climate modeling, the National Center for Atmospheric Research will build a new supercomputer — but house it in Wyoming, not Boulder. While climate-change modeling once dealt with global scenarios, the typical request now is more complex: ” ‘Where are the impacts?’ ‘How fast is it coming?’ and ‘What does it mean on a regional scale?’ ” Those who request models include utilities in major Western cities, insurance companies, an international bank and a ski area. All want to plug unique variables into computer models for climate change to anticipate how people can prepare and adapt.
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December 9, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Denver has hit turbulence in its biggest water-supply project since the 1960s — a $225 million effort to prevent future shortages. Denver Water proposes to divert enough for 45,000 families from mountain rivers on the western side of the Continental Divide, then pump it through tunnels to Front Range reservoirs, including an expanded Gross Reservoir above Boulder. But the plan requires federal approval, and at public hearings, opponents concerned about environmental harm have argued that Denver must rely more on using less water — not pump more from the mountains.
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December 6, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Water
State water stewards have continued to permit groundwater pumping south of Denver, despite data and near universal agreement that underground water levels are falling and the resource is being depleted.
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December 6, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Iraq-related, U.S. Role in the World
Three Iraq combat veterans from Colorado have launched themselves on a new kind of mission abroad: fighting poverty as civilians. Discharged this year from the Quebec Battery, 5th Battalion, 14th Regiment of the 4th Marine Division, a reserve unit based at Buckley Air Force Base, the three are devoting themselves to humanitarian aid projects in Asia and Africa. A fourth is setting up a domestic violence support service he will pursue when he leaves the Marine Corps. “After you’ve experienced the world at its worst, it seems to be a natural instinct to want to make it better,” said Cpl. Brenton Hutson, 24, a Wheat Ridge High School graduate who joined the military at age 17 and served in Ramadi and Fallujah in 2006 during the worst of Iraq’s sectarian war. National veterans group leaders say the jump from combat to humanitarian aid is becoming common as Americans return from war and want more than a comfortable domestic existence.
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November 13, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Food Supply, Pakistan-Afghanistan Borderlands
If the United States really wants to stabilize Afghanistan, say six Afghans visiting Colorado farms, then it should focus more on building agricultural options beyond the illicit drug trade for the war-torn nation’s mostly agrarian people. “If we keep people busy in agriculture, that will be good for security,” said Abdul, a veterinarian from northern Afghanistan. “We have a lot of land that is not used for drugs. We have no water to irrigate that land,” Abdul said. “If our agriculture is supported by the United States — if we can have a good irrigation system — this could be good land and a lot of people could get jobs.” U.S. agriculture officials brought the six Afghan veterinarians to Colorado for a month as part of nonmilitary efforts begun during the war that was launched shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks. Retired Colorado State University professors have escorted the six to farms, feedlots, research stations and clinics.
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November 10, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Water
An armada of giant yellow earthmovers on the prairie south of Denver is racing to dig one of Colorado’s biggest water-supply reservoirs in decades — a hole 180 feet deep across 1,400 acres — designed to wean suburbs off waning aquifers. But the water to fill this reservoir? Not yet secured. The prospect of what critics call an empty bathtub is generating anxiety around Colorado as water managers clash over the last unclaimed mountain river flows.
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November 5, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Human Rights, Immigrants, Refugees
A Denver center that offered counseling and legal help to asylum-seeking immigrants who said they had been tortured in their home countries has closed after losing its federal grant. Now hundreds in Colorado — among the 50,000 who seek asylum in the U.S. each year — must look elsewhere for help. Torture-survivor programs in Atlanta, Jersey City, Chicago, San Diego and Detroit also have had federal funding cut and are struggling to stay open.
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October 27, 2009 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Pollution
A Canadian company’s push to build the United States’ first new conventional uranium mill since the Cold War has cleared local hurdles — despite environmental concerns — and won wary high-level support. Many residents of the economically bereft western Colorado area around Nucla and Naturita (approximate population 700 each) now count on the Energy Fuels Inc. project to bring back Atomic Age prosperity. Beyond the mill, they envision uranium mining jobs as part of a national nuclear renaissance that could spur homebuilding, better schools, restaurants and recreational amenities. “Nothing’s going to happen without a mill,” said Mike Thompson, 25, board member of the Naturita-based Western Small Miners Association. “Right now, we can’t support 18- to 30-year-olds because we just don’t have the jobs.”
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For 20 years, journalist Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. A staff writer for 