Coal Creek Canyon Community Blog

Letter from the Coffee Shop proprietors:

Dear Canyon Residents –

We need some input from our neighbors as to what you want from us as a coffee shop.

We had been told that staying open until 2pm and offering a lunch special would be much appreciated, so we obliged. However, the response hasn’t been what we had hoped for. We hired extra staff for the anticipated increase in business, but there hasn’t been that increase. We now need to reevaluate our decision and determine whether it is in our best interest to continue with the extended hours and lunches.

Last fall at the ‘emergency community meeting’ when Darwin and Kristin announced they were closing the doors, nearly every small group there suggested ‘take and bake’ dinners. We again obliged, with little success. Those who have used it have had only good things to say, so there must be a reason people aren’t taking advantage of this option.

In order for us to keep this business running, we need to know what the community wants/needs from us. Please send us any thoughts or suggestions you may have – we will give each suggestion our full consideration. We feel the coffee shop is a staple in a small community such as ours (and have been told so by many of you). We desperately want to make this work. We are just at a loss as to what is needed. We appreciate that you want us here, but until we win the lottery, we can’t just be there in case someone wants something to eat.

Please don’t misinterpret this as whining or complaining! We are simply asking for suggestions from those of you who care that we are here.

Thank you for your time and support. You can contact us at coalcreekcoffee@hotmail.com

Patti and Mallorie

On Saturday April 4th, we’ll be joining together to walk 5 miles from Camp Eden to Wee Creekers via the back roads to raise money for the Park and Rec. District! Come and walk with us! We’ll have a shuttle service available from the Wee Creekers parking lot as early as 8:45 am with registration tables available at Wee Creekers or at the starting point on Camp Eden.

Registration is $20 for adults (18 and older) and $10 for kids. You can either pay your full reg. fee or choose to collect pledges from your adoring fans, to pay part or all of the fee. The registration fee will get you an awesome Walk for the Park T shirt and a chance to win fabulous prizes!

We encourage people to walk individually or form teams, walk quickly or amble slowly. It is all up to you! There will be Host Houses along the way where you can stop, rest, grab a beverage, mingle, and use the facilities if needed.

You don’t have to sign up early but the first 120 people will get their T shirts that day. (After we run out, we will simply order more but it does take 2 weeks) Just show up at Wee Creekers if you need to park or at Camp Eden around Aspen/Katie Lane if you are within walking distance or can get dropped off (we do not wish to negatively impact the neighborhood so please do not park up there) between 8:45 and 10:45 and you can walk with your neighbors.

Look for Pledge forms starting March 15th at the Kwik Mart, Coffee Shop, Canyon Liquors or Wee Creekers (or pick one up the day of). If you think you might be along the Walk route and would like to be a Host House (or for any questions at all) please call Linda at 642-2223 or 0273 and leave a message.

Prizes will be awarded as follows:

1) Fastest Individual
2) Fastest Team
3) Largest Team (# of people)
4) Largest Pledge sheet amount–Individual
5) Largest Pledge amount–Team
6) Slowest/Most Social Individual and
7) Slowest/Most Social Team.

Thanks and we’ll see you Saturday, April 4th (snow or shine!)

Yesterday I attended a presentation on Mountain Pine Beetle by Professor Jeff Mitton at CU. I learned a lot, here is some information I found interesting:

• The forestry service predicts that in 5 years all mature lodgepole (i.e. greater than 8inches in diameter) in Colorado will be dead. (Smaller lodgepole are attacked, but perhaps will not be killed.)
• Prof. Mitton believes that the beetles are not exactly migrating, more the conditions that causes beetle populations to become at epidemic level are moving. The beetles are already here.
• Global warming is likely significant in the epidemic (as is overgrowth of trees due to fire suppression and such) but more because trees are drier and have less access to water than due to less cold winters.
• Such MBP epidemics usually start after a drought, and end due to wetter summers. This epidemic is already 4 times larger than any other recorded outbreak, with no sign of it stopping.
• The battle between tree and beetles is typically over in one day. If the tree has sufficient water balance (resin pressure) to expel the beetles it’ll live, if not it’s fate is sealed that day. (In short: giving the tree water after seeing the bore holes is not going to help.)
• A well watered tree can fend off 2000 beetles, whereas a dry one might succumb to just tens.
• Beetles initially call in other beetles for help on a target tree (using pheromones.) When a tree has lost the battle the beetles sense this and deter other beetles (again using pheromones.) The beetles that were coming, but arrive too late, then pick on neighbor trees. Hence the initial pock marks in the forest as trees die in groups.
• If there are (say) 2000 beetles are taking out one tree, then a year goes by with only tree dead & the offspring need to share that tree. If however it took only 20 beetles a tree, then 100 trees are killed, and the offspring feast/prosper in emptier trees. Clearly the spread increases…
• Bigger trees are killed in preference to smaller tree because it allows for more ’space’ under the bark for a beetle gallery. Nothing was mentioned about freezing under the bark.
• Limber pine are being attacked also (perhaps preferentially) but not so the Ponderosa Pine. Inexplicably there is no past evidence that this epidemic will spill over to that species even if/when their Lodgepole food source run out.
• Woodpecker, Nuthatch and a few bugs predate on MPB. Unfortunately, clearly insufficiently.
• If the MPB didn’t carry “Blue Stain Fungus” they’d not be anywhere near as capable of killing trees.
• Exit holes (clean, beetle diameter, no resin) mean the larvae has matured and moved on.
• There are 3-5 times more trees in Boulder county than when settlers first moved here; i.e. each trees has to share it’s water supply significantly.
• Green trees are most flamable, even red (dead) trees hold less resin; less hydrocarbons. Dead/needle-less grey trees even less flammable.

The talk was “the beetles are coming”, and little (if anything) seems able to stop them.

From: Erik Gasner
To: customer@ferc.gov;
Subject: Gross Dam Reservoir, Colorado Expansion
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 10:23:45 -0600

Hello. I just wanted to post my disapproval to the Gross Dam Reservoir expansion project being proposed by Denver Water. As a mountain resident who will see no benefits from this project, it is disheartening to know that I will be inconvenienced in many ways by this expansion if it is allowed to go forward. These comments are in regard to FERC Project No. 2035.

-The res. would be closed to recreational use (it just opened for use a few years ago).

-Expansion will invite more urban sprawl down the mountain from me (even after the housing bubble has burst, Denver Water keeps projecting growth based on a pre-housing bubble paradigm, and Denver Water does not impose the maximum mandatory conservation practices which mountain residents abide by year round on their town residents). Denver Water claims a water shortfall will be coming by 2016, but this figure does not apply the new reality of our economic situation. Mini-malls, civic centers, and sprawling communities all complete with lawns, flowering shrubs, and non-native trees which annihilate our water resources are not going to be built anywhere near the speed or number they have in the past 30 years.

-With the res. capacity weakened in the next few years of proposed construction we will be unable to airlift and fill to trucks water for the very real threat of major forest fires (a huge safety concern).

-The environmental impact statement which Denver Water is putting together is, of course, downplaying every end of the impact this will have on our community (habitat loss, dangerous 18-wheelers and dump trucks on our narrow two lane paved and dirt mountain roads -up to 100 per day, 7-days a week, for 4-6 years-, increased travel time for mountain residents, safety concerns driving with these trucks all winter long).

-Our community has also fought proposals to start a quarry for concrete in our community several times. Denver Water says they will explore other ways of getting concrete to the proposed construction site (via rail for example, even though there is no way the rail company will be stopping at the reservoir on its mega cross country transit route) So, if the dam project moves forward we are sure we will again be fighting a renewed battle against a quarry.

-Finally, Denver Water has put together a standard P.R. campaign designed to assuage these exact concerns by glossing over them or concealing the true cost of this expansion in every sense of the word. They hold ‘public meetings’ while most people are at work, and invite ‘public comments’ at their offices-where they are not required to pass them along to FERC who oversees this issue.

As the Federal entity designed to grant or deny this expansion project, I and the citizens of Coal Creek Canyon Colorado encourage you to see through the smoke and mirrors of Denver Water’s campaign to get a very small benefit from a long, protracted, inconvenient project; an expansion which will compromise our recreational use, habitats, wildfire safety, road conditions, travel time, driving safety, the battle against urban sprawl, and the threat of quarries in our small residential and rural mountain community. PLEASE DENY ANY AMENDMENTS TO THE ONLY 54 YEAR OLD GROSS DAM RESERVOIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sincerely,

Erik Gasner