Sage man
Hickenlooper has pledged relief for the much besmirched greater sage-grouse by bringing oil and gas companies on board to help with conservation efforts. “Governor Hickenlooper’s greater sage-grouse executive order clearly illustrates the dedication of the state and all other stakeholders to ensuring that Colorado’s sagebrush lands are protected. The historical declines in greater sage-grouse populations have shown us that we need to restore balance to this ecosystem,” Conservation Colorado executive director Pete Maysmith wrote in a press release. Via The Grand Junction Sentinel.
Tough stand
John Hickenlooper stood up for Colorado’s Human Services director Reggie Bicha after 80 lawmakers signed a no-confidence letter asking for her resignation, reports The Denver Post. Despite disorder in the state’s youth prisons, foster-care system and services for disabled people, Hick has her back.
Offline
Not exactly bullet proof. Someone accidentally cut a single fiber cable in Denver and 100,000 Comcast subscribers in eastern Boulder County lost access to the Internet in the middle of the work day. It took six hours in some quarters for service to get up and running again. Via The Daily Camera.
Healthy serving
The Health Insurance Exchange gets a lot of flack from disgruntled customers and conservative politicians alike. But Kevin Patterson, the new CEO, says he’s here to make it work. How long? “Until they tell me they don’t want me anymore,” he told The Denver Post.
Concrete improvements
A look at the Aurora corner of Colfax Ave. and Dayton St., where day laborers begin congregating at 5 a.m. most days. There are few amenities on the corner. Traffic piles up and men criss-cross the intersection willy-nilly all day long. City Council member Sally Mounier wants Aurora to buy the parking lot on the corner and set up a construction trailer and porta-potties. The city would own the property and could develop it or sell it at a later date, she says. Via The Sentinel.
Nasty crash
Another road story from Boulder, featuring a careless driver and a competitive cyclist, via The Daily Camera: “She was heading downhill at 35 mph when she noticed a car in front of her had stopped, for no apparent reason… She braked so hard her hands were bruised purple for days. Her back tire’s skid marks were more than 50 feet long… She flew through one of the car windows. One side of her face quite literally peeled off, her jaw detached and her tongue was sliced in two.”
Photo credit: USFWS Mountain Prairie, Creative Commons, Flickr.
All well and good that the Gov’r has big oil and gas on board to save the grouse from extinction….too bad our good Govn’r wasn’t as serious about saving clean water at the source as he is about saving the grouse…