Posts tagged Daily Camera
Boulder cancels fireworks show due to high fire risk
Jun 27th
Boulder city officials today announced that the annual Ralphie’s Independence Day Blast is canceled due to extremely dry conditions in and around Boulder. The fireworks show had been scheduled for Folsom Field on Wednesday, July 4.
“Public safety was our primary concern in deciding to cancel the fireworks show. Given the current fire in south Boulder, along with fires in neighboring cities and extremely dry conditions, the public safety risk to the Boulder community is significant,” said Boulder City Manager Jane S. Brautigam. “The fire marshal has been monitoring conditions around Folsom Field since early June, and our wildland fire crews have been on daily patrols to prevent wildfires. Given the dangers and Colorado’s statewide fire restrictions, it would be irresponsible to launch 4,000 fireworks over the city this year.”
Boulder Fire Marshal Dave Lowrey said firefighting crews need to remain focused on the current fire. Even if that situation improves, the lack of rain over the past month and the forecasts for continued hot, dry weather would make it very challenging for crews to quickly douse an escaped firework that landed in a dry field.
“We know it’s disappointing to celebrate the Fourth of July without fireworks, but it would be a real tragedy if we went forward and someone’s home caught fire as a result,” Lowrey said.
Lowrey cautioned that individuals should not set off fireworks on their own; it is illegal for individuals to possess or use fireworks within the City of Boulder.
“While it’s disappointing that conditions warrant canceling the fireworks display, public safety is the first priority,” saidLew Kingdom of Wright Kingdom Real Estate, primary sponsor of the event. “The Associates of Wright Kingdom continue to be proud sponsors of Ralphie’s Independence Day Blast, and we’re looking forward to bringing back an amazing show next year.”
Ralphie’s Independence Day Blast has been held at Folsom Field since 1941. The 2012 event was sponsored by the associates of Wright Kingdom Real Estate, the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) and the City of Boulder. Media sponsors included the Daily Camera, KBCO and Boulder Channel 8.
CU Boulder’s toxic avenger and teacher dead
Sep 20th
By Ron Baird
Adrienne Anderson had been an anti-toxics crusader⎯ helping poor communities and labor unions battle corporate polluters and crooked government agencies⎯for 30+ years.
Her targets included Rockwell International, the former operator of Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant and the subject of a federal Grand Jury investigation for environmental crimes at that facility; defense contractor Martin-Marietta, whose rocket fuel was suspected of polluting the groundwater of communities with high rates of cancer in southwest Denver; and ASARCO Metals, which has been accused of environmental violations at 94 sites across the country, including the recent revelation that it had incinerated 5,000 tons of hazardous waste from which it was supposed to be recycling heavy metals.
For more than a decade, the University of Colorado/Boulder Environmental Studies instructor taught her students to use the Open Records and Freedom of Information acts to ferret out and make public those dirty little (and sometimes big) secrets that lie in thousands of pages of public documents that are stacked on shelves, packed in cardboard boxes and file cabinets in government agencies like the Colorado Department of Health and Environment and the EPA.
She managed to survive 11 years mostly due to student support. But it was always a battle.
As a college instructor, Anderson and her students took on about 150 companies, collectively known as the Lowry Coalition, which had dumped unregulated hazardous waste into Lowry Landfill for decades before it was designated a Superfund site and closed. All, including the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, had signed a once-secret agreement with the City of Denver and Waste Management, Inc. to treat groundwater from the landfill and blend it with the effluent from a massive sewage treatment plant operated by the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District. Sludge from the plant is used to fertilize agricultural operations in eastern Colorado and the “treated” water is pumped into the South Platte River.
The political heat was cranked up to “broil” after Anderson discovered a 1991 letter from the Lowry Coalition to the EPA admitting groundwater test wells at the landfill contained high levels of plutonium and americium and pointing out that those radioactive components could only have come from Rocky Flats. After she went public with the information, Metro Wastewater executives engineered a smear campaign against Anderson, who was on the plant’s Board of Directors as a delegate of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, which represented the plant’s workers.
She subsequently filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Metro Wastewater.
Most if not all of Anderson’s accusations were supported by Pulitizer Prize-winning investigative reporter Eileen Welsome in her 2001 series “Dirty Secrets,” published in the Denver weekly newspaper Westword. Welsome reported that Lowry officials have bolstered their case that no nuclear waste is present by sealing up dozens of wells that had tested hot, which made further testing impossible. Then they drilled 35 new test wells outside the area of historic contamination, along with a slew of other Machiavellian sleights of hand.
Anderson’s continued saber rattling on the issue prompted a flurry of derogatory emails from two top officials in the Colorado governor’s office to CU administrators in late 2004 and early 2005.
Under this pressure, the high ratings and student support was not enough to protect her, and the faculty of Environmental Studies voted on Jan. 28, 2005 not to renew Anderson’s contract. They claimed the vote nothing personal; it was simply due to departmental “resource allocation priorities” and a “change of direction.”
Not even the Rocky Mountain News bought that bureaucratic backwash and published an editorial on Feb. 10, 1995, saying, “CU Making the Right Call on Anderson,” describing her as “an instructor whose rhetoric on environmental issues has been almost as reckless as the ranting of Ward Churchill.” Churchill was a CU faculty member who generated considerable controversy by calling some victims of the 9-11 attacks “little Eichmanns.” He, too, was fired from his job.
Anderson’s subsequent appeal of the decision was denied. But this time, it has been the CU faculty members who had come to her aid. They asked members of a prestigious faculty committee representing the four CU campuses to investigate. Their report revealed that the emails had been passed down to the same administrators who denied her appeal.
“If the intent of the emails was to put pressure on the university, the way they were handled ensured that this pressure was felt at all levels,” the report said. The committee recommended rehiring Anderson and funding her course.
Anderson released the report at a press conference on Sept. 17, 2006 organized by the American Association of University Professors.
At that time, English Professor Paul Levitt accused the administration of “abject cowardice” and in danger of becoming “a hand maiden of industry and government.”
Not everyone in high places had a problem with Anderson. David DiNardi, a federal judge assigned to hear Anderson’s whistlebower harassment case against Metro Wastewater, awarded her $450,000 in damages in 2001, as well as taking the somewhat unusual step of ordering Metro Wastewater to place a full page apology to Anderson in the Sunday Denver Post.
The judge noted in his ruling that then-Denver Post Editorial Page Editor Al Knight had become a “third-party agent” in the case by printing Metro’s allegations as facts.
In the decision he wrote, “This entire case is about a dedicated, conscientious and public-spirited citizen who, in following the tradition of Karen Silkwood, Erin Brockovitch… and others, has spent her entire adult life in pursuing union and environmental activities and in attempting to correct perceived wrongs and problems in society.”
Anderson has decided to forgo the final step in the appeal process because the same administrators who had been biased by the emails would be sitting in judgment again. Instead, she’s appealing to the court of public opinion, as she has for the past 30 years.
The judge’s ruling and award was subsequently overturned by the Bush administration’s Labor Department on a technicality. And that decision was upheld by a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals panel on a 2-1 vote. The two judges who upheld the Labor Department’s decision were recent Bush appointees to the court. This association is relevant in that the Bush administration has waged a relentless war on whistleblowers in federal agencies and even censured, harassed and dismissed federal scientists who have reported information that runs counter to his administration’s policies of promoting big business interests over public welfare. Recently, the EPA closed most of its libraries so that citizens like Anderson would not have access to information damaging to his friends and campaign contributors.
Boulder celebrates Colorado Children’s Day
Apr 26th
Ken Hotaling, Kiwanis of Boulder and co-chair for the Colorado Children’s Day event, stated, “The purpose of this event is to reflect on the value our children bring to our lives and our future, celebrate their accomplishments and nourish them in their quest to learn.”
With more than 30 different organizations planning activities, this year’s festival is expected to top last year’s estimated attendance of 1,200 children and adults.
This event is the result of a joint effort between the City of Boulder Children, Youth and Families Division, Kiwanis Clubs of Boulder, the Boulder Valley School District and media sponsor, the Daily Camera. Children, Youth and Families is a division of the city’s Department of Housing and Human Services.
In order to encourage visitors to Colorado Children’s Day to leave their cars at home, Go Boulder and Special Transit are offering families free rides to and from the event on the HOP bus. Please visit www.goboulder.net for maps and bus schedules.
For more information and a list of the activities and participating organizations, visit the Colorado Children’s Day at Boulder Website at www.childrensdayboulder.org or email: coloradochildrensdayboulder@gmail.com
–CITY—
Photo Opportunities:
§ Children investigating a worm compost and planting seeds in take home gardens;
§ A children’s African-style performance troop with marimbas, drums, dancing and singing;
§ Children exploring a HOP bus, police car, ambulance, street sweeper, fire truck and more;
§ An instrument zoo where kids will be trying out a variety of instruments;
§ Children playing parachute games on the lawn; and
§ Children experiencing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and much, much more!