by Patty LaTaille
When No Solar is a Good Thing
Tessera Solar withdrew its bid to construct a 1,525-acre industrial solar power plant in Saguache County. For two years, residents and ranchers have fought the massive installation of 8,000 forty-foot hydrogen-fueled dish Stirling SunCatchers.
According to the Pueblo Chieftain, “Tessera’s original proposal failed to meet state limits for noise and drew sharp criticism from county residents for its effects on neighboring property, wildlife and the environment.”
“Fresh” Fossil Finds Down Forty Feet
Back in March a Saguache County bulldozer driver spotted bone fragments in Noland Gulch gravel pit (located near Villa Grove), which led to an excavation of 25,000-year-old remains. Those digging for the initial fragments reported finding bones belonging to two Columbian mammoths, a camel, a ground squirrel, a burrowing rodent and two different species of snails.
Researchers with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science said that while a mammoth discovery in the San Luis Valley was not surprising to the researchers, this find will shed light on what the area was like at the time.
According to the Pueblo Chieftain, researchers shared that “the mammoths in the Villa Grove area would have found a landscape far different from the chico brush and short, bunchy grass lining the valley floor today.
Instead, they would have trod a medium- or tall-grass prairie, appropriate for a species that could eat hundreds of pounds of grass per day.”
“Dry as Toast”
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Mike Blenden submitted his report to the Rio Grande Water Conservation District quarterly meeting in Alamosa in which he described the Baca National Wildlife Refuge as “dry as toast.”
Level I Fire Bans are still in effect throughout the Valley. Interestingly enough, according to the Valley Courier, it’s been an “odd water year,” with the San Luis Valley desert drier than usual and fires a constant threat, “yet more water has flowed in the rivers than predicted, so water officials have had to curtail irrigators to make sure Colorado delivers its obligation downstream to New Mexico and Texas.”
High Altitude Canoeing
Willow Lake is “nestled in with three of Colorado’s hundred tallest peaks, and filled by a 100-foot waterfall in the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness. It’s a high altitude lake with falls, and surrounded by rugged mountains at an elevation of nearly 11,700’,” according to LocalHikes.com. So it was a source of wonder to find some climbers paddling around the high lake recently. How – and why – did they portage the canoe 3,000 vertical feet? Supposedly they “found it” by the lake, but the real mystery is how a canoe got there in the first place.
Police Out to Pasture
The unanimous decision to fire its entire police force to save money by the San Luis City Council on July 2 brings back visions of the Wild West. The Sheriff’s in charge. San Luis, established in southern Colorado in 1851, is facing a $750,000 budget deficit. The town – the oldest community in Colorado – has 740 residents with a median income ofs $20,875.
“We just did not have the money to pay these people,” San Luis Mayor Theresa S. Medina reportedly said by telephone.
Medina added that firing the police chief and three part-time officers would save about $10,000 a month in salaries, gas and car maintenance. The town’s maintenance worker was also fired, leaving the town clerk as the only employee.
At the monthly town meeting, the only opposition came from the police chief, Medina said. Supposedly, discussions about a volunteer force “didn’t make sense” because the town would have liability issues.
(Source: AOL News – Karen Schwartz, Contributor)
