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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
A federal push to protect 18,462 Front Range acres as habitat for the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse has set off an endangered-species battle royale.
Wildlife conservationists cheered the release Wednesday of the federal proposal, which could limit development on the land, mostly along 184 miles of rivers and streams.
Representatives of developers promised a court challenge, arguing that protecting more habitat isn’t necessary because the mouse itself already is protected as a threatened species.
Among projects that could be affected: the planned Jeffco Parkway southeast of Rocky Flats, an expansion of Chatfield Reservoir and housing developments in El Paso County along tributaries of Monument Creek.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to nearly double the current 20,680 acres of protected habitat for the mouse — a bug-loving brown omnivore that springs up as high as 3 feet to evade predators.
State, feds take a fresh look at once-rejected protections
From wolverines to black-tailed prairie dogs, dozens of species in Colorado and across the nation are being re-evaluated for possible threatened or endangered status. The Obama administration is taking a fresh look, in many cases under court order, at Bush administration rejections of special status.
Skepticism about Zazi case gives way to hard questions
The evolving case of terrorism suspect Najibullah Zazi — the Afghan immigrant jailed in an alleged bombing plot — initially struck some in Colorado’s Islamic community as another example of FBI overenthusiasm. But as details trickled out, skepticism morphed into surprise and embarrassment, prompting leaders to ask searching questions about themselves, the community and how U.S. actions abroad could imperil Americans at home.
Once it became clear to the FBI that Najibullah Zazi posed a real threat, some of the police and intelligence reforms instituted after the 2001 terrorist attacks worked just as planned.
Wiretaps helped reveal what Zazi was saying. Travel records were mined to build a record of Zazi’s journeys.
The arrest of Zazi, and apparent disruption of an alleged bombing plot, “is a situation brought about by the changes in the way we do business since 9/11 — knocking down the walls (between law enforcement agencies) that allows us to work collaboratively here and overseas,” Denver FBI Special Agent in Charge James Davis said in an interview.
But it is still too early for anyone outside of law enforcement to gauge whether the techniques and cooperation that led to Zazi’s arrest make the United States considerably safer than on Sept. 11, 2001.
If, for example, Zazi was able to attend an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, move from his New York neighborhood to Colorado, collect bomb-making chemicals and test them in a hotel suite kitchen without drawing the attention of the CIA, FBI or other federal agencies, then there’s still much work to be done, according to intelligence experts.
“It’s impossible to say, based on the facts of the investigation that have been made public so far, what breakthroughs were involved in the investigation and what can be claimed as a success,” said Paul Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, a 28-year CIA veteran who currently runs graduate security studies at Georgetown University.
Not knowing whether information about Zazi’s activities in Pakistan was developed by agents abroad or solely through police questioning in the United States, “there’s not a basis for drawing conclusions about pre- 9/11 vs. post- 9/11 differences,” Pillar said.
Zazi is charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction.
A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
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