When Keith Huck, an Adams County senior oil and gas inspector, walks onto a well pad he looks, listens and sniffs. There is a lot to keep his eyes, ears and nose busy as the county has become the fastest-growing oil producer in the state. Since 2017, oil production has grown 15-fold as the county became Colorado’s second-biggest producer churning out 12.8 million barrels in 2023, with some companies still filing December numbers. Adams County remains a distant second to Weld County, where the output is 10 times as large, but since 2021 Adams County production is up about 58% and Weld’s has dr ..read more

A pair of sugar beet and corn farmers would seem an unlikely duo to take on the oil and gas industry and the state’s biggest utilities over the issue of pipeline safety, but that is exactly what Mark and Julie Nygren have done. The Nygrens’ battle before the Colorado Public Utilities Commission is now close to bearing fruit as the commission is slated to take up draft rules Wednesday. The comprehensive pipeline safety regulations were required by Senate Bill 108. The new rules will come none too soon, state Sen. Tammy Story, a Democrat from Conifer who was a prime sponsor of the 2021 legislat ..read more

Surrounded on both sides by shelves of books with titles familiar and obscure, retired reading teacher Colleen Sawyer feels the warm glow of literature. Sawyer volunteers at Broomfield’s Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library, making sure each title is properly aligned with its neighbor and no printed work is out of place. “I couldn’t ask of a better place to spend my days,” Sawyer said. “I have always loved to read and like to get more people to read.” “But it’s not just the books,” Sawyer said. “This library is also a center of our community. We are very proud of our library and the mayor and ..read more

Broomfield has joined a swelling wave of Colorado communities sharply limiting thirsty turf grass in new development, with more communities about to follow, while other cities and parks departments are starting to rip out useless grass in medians and rights of way for replacement with water-wise landscapes.  State water officials, meanwhile, have closed out the first year of $1.5 million in local turf removal grants with nearly 40 applications for the money, and water resource experts hope to use the momentum from the anti-turf evolution to create a bigger state-funded buyback next year ..read more

SEVERANCE — Two large electric vehicle charging kiosks sit in the gravel parking lot outside the Severance Town Hall, emblazoned with the Xcel Energy logo and the motto “We power the EV charging future.” The future has yet to arrive as technical problems have plagued the chargers since they were substantially completed last December. Meanwhile about 20 miles north, at a Kum & Go service plaza, just off Interstate 25 in Wellington, four chargers have been up and running since the summer of 2021.  And Starbucks, in cooperation with Volvo Cars, is building a 1,350-mile charging corridor ..read more

By Dylan Simard, KUNC At first glance, the Biofire Smart Gun is different from other firearms. The large handgun looks part Halo, part Cyberpunk in design. It’s an appropriate look since the gun is made with new technology ripped straight from science fiction. It’s unlocked biometrically, meaning it can only be activated with an authorized user’s fingerprint or face. That, in turn, means only authorized users can shoot it. Kai Kloepfer is the CEO of the Broomfield-based company Biofire. He said making a gun like this was impossible until very recently. “A lot of the technology we’re using did ..read more

1stBank Center, the sports and entertainment venue visible from U.S. 36 in Broomfield, will go dark Nov. 30 and likely will be torn down by next spring.  The 16-year-old, city-owned venue built to jump-start development near the busy Wadsworth Boulevard and U.S. 36 intersection is heavily in debt and never broke even for Broomfield, which on Tuesday decided to put the facility to rest. “It’s time we ripped the Band-Aid off,” city manager Jennifer Hoffman told the Broomfield Urban Renewal Authority’s Board of Directors on Tuesday night before the panel voted to end its operating agreement ..read more

Oil and gas activity in 2022 was heavily focused on the Front Range, which accounted for 72% of the 838 new wells approved and almost two-thirds of the new drill sites in the state, according to an annual report on the industry’s cumulative impacts. The 2022 number was a sharp increase over 2021 when 48 wells were approved in the Denver-Julesburg Basin and the Eastern Plains. Estimated air emissions for new projects and water consumption were also up, according to data provided by operators to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. As part of Senate Bill 181 — the 2019 law that mad ..read more

Colorado nonprofits took a beating during the COVID-19 pandemic, bleeding volunteers and employees who were either forced to stay home or were terrified of leaving their homes for fear they would get infected by the virus. “We had older and retired volunteers who had to stay home because they were the most vulnerable to the virus,” said Dayna Scott, executive director of Broomfield FISH, a nonprofit providing help with food and housing. “There were real fears about death. No one knew what was going to happen day to day.” Local food banks that help feed and clothe low-income and homeless peopl ..read more

Ozone pollution is a serious health hazard that is easily overlooked because you can’t smell it, see it, or taste it. However, ground-level ozone pollution is very real, and we experience hazardous levels far too often. In fact, the northern Front Range has been downgraded to “severe” nonattainment — just one step away from the worst possible classification — because our state has not been successful in getting this dangerous lung irritant under control. Despite the serious health impacts of breathing high ozone, most of  my constituents do not make that association and rarely realize th ..read more