The temporary restrictions, which were put into effect at noon Monday, extend from the western boundary of unincorporated Jefferson County through the eastern limits of Golden, including Vanover Park.

Kayaks, river boards, whitewater canoes and multi-chambered professionally guided rafts are exempt but are encouraged to take extreme caution due to the safety concerns surrounding swift moving water and floating debris. All authorized users and occupants must use a Type I, Type III or Type V Coast Guard-approved flotation vest and helmet.

Water height and flows are expected to rise as the heavy snowpack continues to melt in the coming days.

The restrictions will be strictly enforced and violators may be issued a summons for a class 2 petty offense, punishable by a fine of up to $100.

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Legislators had to balance $1.2 billion in needed budget cuts with the necessities of preparing for a drier future — with the prospect of more extreme weather — and sustainably managing the lands, water and wildlife that define the state.

Officials from Gov. Jared Polis’ administration cheered the bills passed this session in a news release Friday. Polis said the laws passed by lawmakers will help the state keep moving in the right direction.

“This legislative session marks a bold leap forward in protecting both community health and our environment,” Jill Hunsaker Ryan, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said in the release. “From tackling air pollution and building decarbonization to supporting environmental justice and water security, Colorado is demonstrating that smart climate policy is also smart public health policy. We’re proud to help lead this work for the well-being of all Coloradans.”

Environmental advocates, however, said progress was mixed — and stymied by the budget cuts as well as a truce between Polis, legislative leaders, and the oil and gas industry.

“The energy and environment committees were tougher this year than they have been historically, both with budget cuts and shifting ideologies,” said Ean Tafoya, the Colorado state director for GreenLatinos.

Legislators passed a bill that added nuclear energy to the state’s definition of clean energy, despite passionate pushback from some environmental and community groups. A bipartisan measure, House Bill 1040, now signed into law, makes nuclear energy projects eligible for financing set aside for clean energy and allows utilities to count energy from nuclear sources toward their clean energy goals.

Lawmakers also considered moving up the deadline for sourcing 100% of the state’s power from clean energy sources to 2040 from 2050, but they ran out of time to introduce legislation to implement the change.

Tafoya expected that effort to return in next year’s session, along with a bill that proposes tax breaks for data centers in exchange for meeting energy efficiency goals.

Impact of oil and gas truce

This year’s session was the first full session since the oil and gas truce was agreed to by leading Democrats and some environmental groups in the last days of the 2024 legislative session.

Both the industry and the environmental groups agreed to drop ballot initiatives set for the 2024 election, while lawmakers agreed to drop bills targeting ozone pollution in exchange for a fee program paid by oil and gas companies to fund public transit. The truce also included a promise that nobody involved would run new ballot measures or legislation for several years.

That truce frustrated some environmental groups that were not part of the negotiations. It also hamstrung efforts to address greenhouse gases — the primary driver of climate change.

“The deal last session … really set us up for not being able to do much on the No. 1 cause for pollution and the climate crisis in our state — the oil and gas industry,” said Heidi Leathwood, a climate policy analyst at 350 Colorado. “The lawmakers in leadership didn’t want to touch anything with oil and gas with a 10-foot pole.”

350 Colorado, a clean energy advocacy group, instead pivoted to support legislation that would have required warning labels on gas pumps and other fuel products stating that using the fuel would release pollutants that cause heath impacts and climate change. The bill did not pass after Polis threatened to veto it, Leathwood said.

Another important bill to environmental groups that also failed would have required employers to implement policies to protect workers from extreme hot and cold temperatures.

“While there are some legislators that are really cognizant of the risk of climate change, and that it’s here and having impacts in Colorado already, we’re also seeing that a lot of legislators may not know the full extent of how fast this is moving and what we need to do to do our part,” Leathwood said.

More budget cuts are expected next year. Tafoya urged lawmakers to remember that addressing climate change will require investment.

“I think that we have to be really prepared to continue to push back on the expected cuts next year and make sure environmental programs aren’t disproportionally cut,” he said.

Lawmakers next year may also face pressure to draft state policy to address environmental protections rescinded by courts and the Trump administration, as when they passed a water pollution regulation last year in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

“I would hope that Colorado lawmakers would continue to step up,” said Henry Stiles, an advocate with Environment Colorado. “I would expect to see more of that in the future.”

A run-down of measures passed

Here are some of the environment and climate measures that Polis signed into law:

• A bill that bans the use of nonnative turf — like Kentucky bluegrass — for aesthetic purposes in new apartment and condo complexes. It also requires local governments to regulate the use of nonfunctional turf in a way that reduces water use. House Bill 1113 was the latest in a series of laws in recent years that have curtailed the use of such turf in an attempt to reduce water use amid long-term aridification.
• A bill that classifies wild bison as big game, which means they cannot be legally killed without a hunting license. Proponents of the bill said Senate Bill 53 was necessary to protect wild bison from herds in Utah when they wander into Colorado.
• House Bill 1269, which creates a process for the Air Quality Control Commission to set 2040 standards requiring owners of certain buildings to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
• A new law that gives state officials more authority over the herds of wild horses that roam Colorado’s Western Slope. House Bill 1283 gives the state’s Department of Agriculture the authority to implement a fertility control program to regulate the number of horses on the landscape. Federal authorities estimate about 1,400 wild horses are in the state — more than the 800 horses they say would be a sustainable population.
• A law that creates and funds a program that will collect and share data on snowpack levels and conduct research into better ways to measure snowpack and forecast water supply. “In Colorado’s challenging water landscape, we need all the tools in the toolkit,” Lauren Ris, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, said in a statement about House Bill 1115.
• A bill that requires local government approval of large-scale fencing projects on Sangre de Cristo Land Grant lands. House Bill 1023 came at the request of Costilla County residents who were fighting the installation of a massive fence around El Cielo Vista Ranch.

That ranch is owned by a Texas oil heir, but local residents retain legal rights for access. The fence caused erosion and blocked wildlife movements, residents said.

“This will enable other counties to protect themselves from the destructive, obscene displays of wealth that the ultrawealthy who are purchasing large mountain tracts in Colorado can engage in in order to separate themselves in their private sanctuaries from the regular people,” said Joseph Quintana, one of the San Luis residents who opposed the fence.

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But the road to that reality has been anything but smooth, with a rally last week in Castle Rock decrying the move, a tense town hall meeting at county headquarters that ended in shouts and jeers — and a lawsuit attempting to shut the whole thing down.

Meanwhile, ballots started hitting mailboxes less than a week ago for the June 24 special election. If voters back the idea, the vote would kickstart the drafting of a home-rule charter by a 21-member commission.

A second vote in November would then seek final approval for the charter itself.

Local control has become a mantra of sorts across Colorado in recent years, with cities and counties lashing out — even taking legal action — against a state government they accuse of overreach in matters of local concern. The resistance ranges from the “Second Amendment sanctuary county” movement of six years ago, which conservative counties launched in response to new gun control laws, to last month’s lawsuit against the state and Gov. Jared Polis by Aurora and five suburban cities. They were attempting to block two recent land-use laws aimed at increasing housing density.

Commissioner George Teal, one of the chief proponents of home-rule authority for the county of nearly 400,000, said the time has come for Douglas County to assert its independence from a state legislature that has shifted decidedly to the left over the last decade.

Home-rule authority, Teal said, will give Douglas County greater legal standing to take on state laws that its leaders believe go too far. It will represent a “shifting of the burden” onto the state, requiring officials to come after the county if the state believes its authority is being usurped — rather than the other way around.

Douglas County has sued Colorado twice recently over disagreements involving property tax valuations and the level of cooperation local law enforcement can give federal immigration authorities. The county lost both cases.

“We will be an independent legal entity under state law — and we are not that as a statutory county,” Teal said. “Home rule is the very mechanism of local control.”

Opponents, operating under the Stop the Power Grab banner, say the run-up to this month’s election has been anything but transparent and open. They accuse the commissioners of quietly concocting the home-rule plan over a series of more than a dozen meetings starting late last year — and then rubber-stamping the decision at a public hearing in late March. That meeting lasted mere minutes.

“What this has brought out in us is the question of — why now?” said Kelly Mayr, a nearly three-decade resident of Highlands Ranch and a member of Stop the Power Grab. “Why are they rushing it? If this is a good idea for the county, why would we not take our time?”

Three Douglas County residents, including state Rep. Bob Marshall and former Commissioner Lora Thomas, sued the Board of County Commissioners in April, alleging multiple violations of Colorado’s open meetings laws. They asked the court to stop the June 24 election from going forward.

But a judge sided with Douglas County last month, saying he didn’t see evidence that the board violated open meetings laws and ruling that a preliminary injunction to stop the election would “sacrifice the public’s right to vote.”

Marshall, a Democrat who represents Highlands Ranch, says the fight is not over, and he expects to prevail in the court case at the appellate level.

In the meantime, he is in the running as one of 49 candidates vying to fill the 21 seats on the commission that would be tasked with drafting Douglas County’s home-rule charter — assuming voters give the OK to the idea on the same June 24 ballot. All three Douglas County commissioners are also running for the charter commission.

“If elected, my main goal will be to ensure transparency,” Marshall told The Denver Post. “There has been none in this process as yet.”

The June election is projected to cost Douglas County around $500,000.

Weld, Pitkin first to adopt home rule

The state first approved home-rule powers for municipalities in 1902, and it extended the same authority to counties in 1970. Until then, counties were considered a statutory creation of the legislature and had to follow state law without exception.

Sixty Colorado counties still do.

Just two — at the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum — took advantage of the new designation in the decade after the law passed: Weld and Pitkin. Denver and Broomfield, though, have de facto home-rule status because of their combined city-and-county structure.

First to take up the home-rule mantle in Colorado was Weld County in 1976. County Attorney Bruce Barker said its three districts had essentially balkanized around that time, each running its own public works department and making its own purchasing decisions.

“The goal was to make things more efficient,” Barker said about the effort behind the switch.

The new charter included a one-of-a-kind five-member Weld County Council, separate from the Board of County Commissioners. The body sets salaries of elected county officials and fills commissioner vacancies. It can also suspend an elected official who has been criminally charged or indicted and it reviews conflicts of interest between county officers, appointees and employees.

“Remember, there was a complete distrust of government after Watergate,” Barker said of the era. “They wanted to have this County Council as a watchdog group.”

Pitkin County made its transition to home-rule governance in 1978, largely in response to concerns about rapid population growth and the desire to conserve threatened natural habitat in the Roaring Fork Valley, said County Manager Jon Peacock. His very role was created by Pitkin County’s new home-rule charter.

The county, home to ritzy Aspen, requires under its charter a vote of the people before it issues debt, as happened with a recent ballot measure that sought expansion of the county’s landfill.

“Home rule gives authority to counties to decide how they are going to organize to carry out the powers and responsibilities that are defined in state statute,” Peacock said. “We cannot exercise authority that is not given to us by state law.”

According to a briefing paper from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Council Staff, home-rule authority in Colorado was designed to place several administrative functions under counties’ purview. They involve “finances and property, debts and expenses, and the powers and duties of officials, including elections, terms of office, and compensation.”

“In general, home rule ordinances addressing local matters supersede state law,” the briefing paper states. “However, in matters of statewide or mixed concern, state laws may take precedence over conflicting home rule ordinances.”

Weld County learned that the hard way earlier this year when the Colorado Supreme Court struck down a redistricting plan the county had put into play two years ago. Officials drew the boundaries of commissioners’ districts without adhering to a 2021 state law that required it to follow a different protocol.

The high court concluded that redistricting “relates to the county’s function, not the county’s structure.”

“And because the Colorado Constitution requires home rule counties to carry out statutorily mandated functions, home rule counties, like Weld, must comply with the redistricting statutes,” the court ruled.

How much more power would the county get?

Metropolitan State University political science professor Robert Preuhs said it’s clear from the language of Colorado’s home-rule statute and court cases on the issue that “you’re not getting much more policy latitude” with home-rule status.

“Broader issues like gun control and immigration enforcement and police cooperation with (immigration authorities) are still going to be constrained by state law,” Preuhs said. “You are still a creature of the state, but with more internal flexibility — although Douglas County seems intent on testing that.”

Teal, the Douglas County commissioner, said there are bills passed in the statehouse every legislative session that explicitly exempt home-rule counties from having to comply.

“I would like that opportunity for the citizens of Douglas County to take advantage of these exemptions,” he said.

And there are other laws that sit in questionable territory, Teal said. Home-rule status “gives us new tools in the tool belt. At the very least, it allows the county to challenge the state.”

Teal said he could see the county pushing back on Colorado’s mandatory retail bag fee, the way property assessments are calculated and limits that have been placed on law enforcement.

But first, voters must weigh in. As the campaign over home rule heats up with billboards and signs sprouting up along Interstate 25 and other places in Douglas County, the political temperature is rising as well.

At a May 28 town hall, Commissioner Abe Laydon laid out the stakes in front of 100 or so people in the commissioners’ hearing room in Castle Rock.

“Are we OK with how the state handled COVID-19 and the pandemic?” he asked. “Are we OK with how the state has handled illegal immigration?”

There was some sympathy from the audience, but others were skeptical. When the hourlong session ended, several people stood up and demanded that more of their questions on home rule be answered. Each side accused the other side of “fear-mongering.”

“What are you afraid of?” one attendant yelled as Laydon called for order.

Last week, newly released campaign finance data stirred up a new angle of attack for home-rule opponents. The Yes on Local Control committee raised $110,000 from just five donors — one of them Teal’s wife, Laura. The bulk of the total — $100,000 — came from just two developers.

By contrast, Stop the Power Grab has raised just over $30,000 from several hundred individual donors.

That has Marshall, the state representative from Highlands Ranch, questioning just how much grassroots support the home-rule movement has in Douglas County. And layer on that a recent survey of nearly 1,800 residents conducted for the county that showed respondents opposing home rule by a 54% to 44% margin; some information, including the survey’s margin of error, wasn’t available.

“Where is the outpouring of support for home rule the commissioners claim?” Marshall said.

Amanda Budimlya, who grew up in Colorado and has lived near Sedalia for a dozen years, has been dismayed by the state’s sharp turn to the left and supports the home-rule effort. There will be two opportunities — the June and November elections — for residents to weigh in, she said, giving everyone plenty of time to air out their concerns and grievances.

“It gives us standing so we can try and put things in the charter that we want to protect — like our liberty and rights,” she said of home rule.

Budimlya, 50, said it’s rich that the opposition adopted the name Stop the Power Grab for their campaign in a state where political power has only drifted in one direction in recent years.

“There’s already a power grab happening — the governor, the House and the Senate — it’s all Democrat-run,” she said of Colorado’s political makeup. “Any conservative voice is railroaded.”

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350 Colorado, an environmental group that advocates for the elimination of fossil fuels, says in its recently released report that it reviewed Suncor’s self-reported documents connected to the shutdown and determined there was a notable increase in the frequency of permit violations while the refinery was offline.

During that time, the plant released excessive amounts of sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter such as soot, according to the report titled “Suncor’s Commerce City Refinery: Looking Back to Plan Ahead.”

The report counted each hour during which at least one of those regulated toxics was emitted. So if all four were released during the same hour, 350 Colorado counted that as four hours’ worth of permit violations.

At the time, people who live in neighborhoods surrounding the refinery hoped that the shutdown would result in cleaner air, but no one had looked into the data, said Heidi Leath, a climate policy analyst with 350 Colorado.

“They just thought they were going to get a break from the pollution,” she said. “We were really curious to see if the air quality would improve.”

The 350 Colorado report also looked at the three-month closure’s impact on gas prices and determined that although gas prices spiked at the time, the refinery does not help Colorado maintain lower gas prices.

Efforts to reach Suncor officials for this story were unsuccessful.

On Dec. 21, 2022, the Suncor refinery’s hydrogen plant malfunctioned during an extreme deep freeze, during which the temperature in Denver dropped 37 degrees in an hour, eventually plunging to -24 degrees. When the hydrogen plant tripped, it caused a cascade of problems for Suncor’s machinery, leading the company to shut down operations for three months to make repairs.

Suncor refines about 98,000 barrels of crude oil per day during normal operations and supplies about 40% of the gasoline used in Colorado. The state’s only refinery also produces diesel, jet fuel and liquid asphalt.

As for the pollution during the shutdown, refineries often release more chemicals during a malfunction as they race to stop production without creating a safety hazard, such as an explosion from accumulating fumes. They also tend to release more toxics when they restart production and calibrate their instruments.

But excessive emissions from those situations often are exempt from regulation, Leath said.

“They basically give a free pass and they allow emissions to go up during these periods and put people’s health at risk,” she said of state regulators.

That hasn’t stopped the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment from opening an investigation into potential violations during the 2022-2023 shutdown.

In January, the agency sent Suncor a compliance advisory, which is the first step in an investigation into permit violations, said Kate Malloy, a spokeswoman for the department’s Air Pollution Control Division.

That compliance advisory covers alleged violations that occurred between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, including the shutdown and restart period from the deep freeze.

The agency will be looking into Suncor for exceeding its emissions limits for air pollutants, failing to meet required operating parameters and failing to follow required procedures for operating and maintaining equipment, according to the 57-page advisory.

In July, the state health department and the Environmental Protection Agency served a notice of violation to the refinery, the first step in an enforcement action after both agencies discovered violations during inspections between 2020 and 2023. That notice is still pending.

Government investigations into environmental violations can take years, and they also allow companies to negotiate penalties.

In February 2024, the state hit Suncor with a $10.5 million penalty, the largest in Colorado history for air permit violations. That fine was for excessive pollution between July 2019 and June 2021.

A $9 million fine announced in 2020 covered multiple air pollution violations since 2017.

As for gas prices and their connection to Suncor’s operation in Commerce City, they rose dramatically during the shutdown — 51% in Colorado. Drivers paid as much as $4.10 per gallon during the winter months following the malfunction. Winter gasoline prices are typically cheaper because of lower demand.

But 350 Colorado argues in its report that Suncor’s presence does not benefit Colorado drivers overall when it comes to the price they pay at the pump. The study found that over the past five years, Colorado has seen higher gas prices than 85% of the states without refineries and higher prices than 79% of the states with them.

“Everybody said gas prices would rise, and they did in the short term,” Leath said. “But would it really be true that we would have higher gas prices in Colorado if we didn’t have the Suncor refinery? To our surprise, honestly, most of the states that don’t have refineries have lower gas prices.”

Grier Bailey, executive director of the Colorado Wyoming Petroleum Marketers Association, which represents gas retailers, was highly critical of the 350 Colorado report.

“In summary, it seems clear the entire ‘report’ relative to gas prices is a hit piece designed to assuage a policy audience that there won’t be any impact on fuel prices if far-left fringe groups like 350 get their way,” Bailey said. “That is simply not something that is responsible to assert.”

Bailey said the comparison between average gas prices in Colorado and other states did not take into account things such as taxes and other fees that Colorado places on suppliers and distributors, which eventually end up in the prices consumers pay. Those additional taxes and fees amount to about 30 cents per gallon and are slated to rise in the coming years.

He warned that it would be a mistake to close the Suncor refinery because people would still need all the products it supplies, meaning fuel would be delivered via pipeline, rail or trucks, which would increase emissions from pipeline terminals, place more trucks on the roads and put an additional cost burden on consumers to pay for the transportation to get fuel delivered.

Finally, it was unfair for the report to fail to acknowledge the extraordinary steps the oil and gas industry, Gov. Jared Polis and others took to keep the state supplied with fuel during the shutdown, Bailey said. He accused 350 Colorado of omitting key points to bolster its position that Suncor should be permanently closed.

“Trying to dress up a policy position paper as a ‘study’ doesn’t impress serious people who are trying to keep Colorado’s economy moving,” he said.

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The new complaint, brought by four new plaintiffs who live near the York Street pet food plant, alleges the odors released by the facility prevent them from renting out apartments, hosting parties or enjoying their backyards. The plaintiffs also say the scent causes nausea and headaches and can infiltrate their homes for days, according to the complaint.

“It’s like someone barfed in your backyard and then it baked in the sun and then you put a fan on the smell to keep it circulating,” plaintiffs Robert Boughner and Kelly MacNeil said in the lawsuit. (They were quoted as saying the same thing in the first lawsuit, though they weren’t plaintiffs in that case.)

The proposed class action would include anyone who lives within a one-mile radius of the plant, an area that includes an estimated 2,000 households.

The previous lawsuit, filed last year, was fully dismissed May 28 at the request of the remaining plaintiff. The original plaintiffs are not associated with the new lawsuit. Laura Sheets, an attorney with the Liddle Sheets law firm in Michigan who filed both lawsuits, said she could not discuss the previous case.

Efforts to reach representatives from Nestle Purina, which has its headquarters in St. Louis, were unsuccessful Thursday.

Purina first operated its plant in Denver in 1930 and for 42 years produced primarily livestock feed. The company transitioned the plant to a pet food factory in 1972, according to the Nestle website. The plant on York Street abuts Interstate 70 and is next to the Elyria-Swansea and Globeville neighborhoods.

The lawsuit mentions multiple air pollution violations committed by Purina.

Most recently, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment fined the company $7,000 for its odorous emissions that were more than double the regulatory threshold allowed by the state, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit also cited violations in 2021 and 2022.

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Seventeen miles west, in a dusty industrial nook of northern Denver, workers on a recent day scattered across a huge pit dug into the earth to lay the foundation for that city’s newest data center.

The two construction sites offer a glimpse into what a predicted boom in Colorado’s data center industry may look like as the industry expands exponentially nationwide to meet the needs of Americans’ increasingly online lives — and to provide the computing power demanded by artificial intelligence. The potential growth — and repeated proposals for state incentives to expedite that development — are creating concerns that the centers’ required power and cooling needs could keep Colorado from meeting its climate goals and drain already-stretched water resources.

“The speed at which the demand is increasing is scary,” said Joshua Darrin, the chief operating officer of Data Canopy, which operates 16 data centers across the country, including one in Denver.

Already, an “absolute arms race” among data center developers has prompted the state’s largest electricity provider to stop offering lower rates for the facilities, according to Xcel Energy executives. If all of the data centers’ requests to the utility for power were to come to fruition, Xcel would need to double its current generating power.

When completed, the Aurora data center will be a 160 megawatt hyperscale facility that, at max capacity, could consume as much power as 176,000 homes. The northern Denver data center, once completed in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, could use a maximum of 805,000 gallons of water a day for cooling — the same as 16,100 Denverites’ average daily indoor water use.

Regulators, environmental advocates and data center representatives all say Colorado faces a critical moment: Can the state balance the desire from some government leaders for the economic development brought by data centers with Colorado’s climate goals and water realities? And can it do that while protecting electric customers from bearing the costs of the burgeoning industry?

“What we’re seeing in Colorado is (that) we’re really trying to be thoughtful and get ahead of this — and make sure we’re doing this in the right way,” said Rebecca White, the director of the state’s Public Utilities Commission.

Dozens of smaller data centers already operate across the Front Range. But the two new, much larger data centers under construction will require more resources, reflecting the needs of a pivoting industry that needs more power.

“If a state doesn’t enact policies to deliberately mitigate environmental impacts, you can have really serious environmental repercussions from data centers,” said Matt Gerhart, a senior attorney for the Sierra Club focused on the clean energy transition.

A bill that would have granted state tax incentives to data centers died in the statehouse after its first committee hearing this spring, but lawmakers and those watching the industry said the topic will resurface in coming years.

“I expect that we’ll see something similar next year,” said Justin Brant, the utility program director at the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, which advocates for greater energy efficiency and clean transportation across the Southwest. “If the projections are to be believed, a lot of new data centers are coming to Colorado in the next five years, and I think it’s important to think about how we intentionally bring that new electric load to the state.”

Front Range could be hot new market

In a Centennial office park last month, rows of servers sat in a nondescript, windowless building that neighbors a volleyball training facility and a pilot school. The whirring and clicking of fans dominated the clinically bright room as the building’s cooling system worked to whisk the palpable heat away from the servers.

Nine 30-ton air conditioning units were ready to go if needed, but only two were needed for Expedient’s data center that day.

The 2-megawatt facility is typical of Denver’s current industry: a relatively small center that provides cloud services and leases out space for other companies to securely store their servers.

For decades, data centers were seen simply as infrastructure or a commodity — stable, almost boring, said Brian LaComb, the company’s area vice president.

“But we’ve seen an exponential growth in the past five years,” said LaComb, who has worked in the industry for more than 15 years.

Data center servers function as the main infrastructure for the digital world. They crunch financial data, store patients’ health information, process online shopping, register sports betting and — increasingly — make possible the heavy data demands of AI.

“Our entire digital life is housed in data centers somewhere — whether it’s TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, email, Google Maps, all of AI,” said Darrin of DataCanopy. “Everything that we do in our digital lives is being stored in data centers somewhere.”

The Denver Post identified 28 companies operating 50 data centers across 38 campuses in Colorado — all located on the Front Range. Most of those data centers are relatively small facilities whose maximum power needs amount to less than 20 megawatts.

Hyperscale facilities, like the 65-acre Aurora project, are needed to meet the computing demands of AI. A February analysis by Goldman Sachs found that the global power demands by data centers will increase 55% by 2027, fueled primarily by an increase in AI workloads. The international investment bank and finance firm estimated that AI currently uses 13% of global data center power, a share that will more than double to 27% in the next two years.

QTS — a global data center company with 40 facilities across the U.S., the United Kingdom and the Netherlands — declined an interview about its Aurora hyperscale facility near the intersection of Interstate 70 and E-470 unless The Post provided interview questions ahead of time. Company spokeswoman Karen Cohen instead sent a statement that highlighted the company’s generation of millions of dollars in tax revenue, its creation of construction jobs and its commitment to environmental stewardship.

Increasingly, data center companies are looking favorably at Colorado, according to real estate companies and industry groups. A report last year by a real estate firm found that Denver and Colorado Springs had potential to see a significant increase in the number of data centers.

“The industry is chasing cheap power; they’re looking for cheap power and land,” Darrin said.

Compared to states like Virginia and Georgia, Colorado has a relatively small market and has not yet seen the large-scale developments of other states. But it has many qualities that companies are looking for, said Dan Diorio, the senior director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, the membership association for the industry.

“Colorado has a lot of things working for it right now: the infrastructure, the workforce, access to energy and access to land,” Diorio said.

Drastic shifts in market, power demand

Colorado’s largest utility fields requests from data centers almost weekly, Xcel Energy executives have told the Public Utilities Commission.

The data center market has shifted drastically in the last two years, and after years of relatively flat growth, the industry is the main driver of increased demand, said Amanda Rome, Xcel’s executive vice president and group president for utilities. While smaller data centers remain in the mix, the utility is hearing from more potential hyperscale customers.

Xcel estimates that new requests from data centers and manufacturers  — called large-load customers — could generate the need for 1,923 megawatts of power by 2031, according to its filings with the PUC. That’s enough electricity to power 2.1 million homes and would be a 31% increase to the current power supply.

“It’s going to require all the generation we have,” Rome said.

That estimate is a small fraction of the total 6,181 megawatts of power requested by large-load customers to come online by 2031. But not all of those requests will become reality, so Xcel used a probability formula to estimate how much demand will likely materialize, a projection the utility called conservative.

If all of the 6,181 megawatts were to come to fruition, it would nearly double the utility’s current power needs.

About 70% of new large-load customers seeking power from the utility are data centers, most of which are looking to develop in Aurora and Denver, according to Xcel documents provided to the PUC.

The utility crunched those numbers in the spring of 2024. If it were to do the analysis again, the expected increased load would be closer to the high end it calculated a year ago, Rome said.

While Xcel has previously negotiated lower electricity rates with data center customers — like QTS — it is far less likely to do so now in the face of so much demand, Rome said. The AI boom sparked an “absolute arms race” between hyperscale facilities looking to get power as quickly as possible, she said.

“It’s just not where the market is today, versus where it was two (or) five years ago,” she said.

The increase in data center interest has prompted the PUC — the state’s utilities regulator — to contemplate a new, streamlined regulatory process to evaluate data centers. The commission does not have the perfect process to review new data centers’ power needs in the way it needs to, PUC director White said. The development of data centers moves quickly, she said, while the commission’s processes can take years.

“Under current law, utilities have to deliver two things: reliable and safe power for their customers, while maintaining progress toward the climate requirements and getting to the 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions” by 2030, White said. “We’re holding them to both those standards.”

Impacts on clean-energy goals, water supplies

Colorado lawmakers have set several goals to reduce the amount of climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions in the state. By 2050, the state aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, which means reducing emissions to a point where the remaining amount can be offset by carbon removal efforts like carbon capture and tree planting.

The state is making progress, though it is projected to fall short of achieving interim benchmark goals.

Environmental advocates worry that an influx of data centers will necessitate the generation of more power through carbon-emitting plants, or require a delay in the planned retirements of coal power plants.

Sierra Club Colorado is not opposed to data centers, but it’s “skeptical and concerned” about their potential environmental impacts, said Garrett Royer, the group’s senior government affairs and political advocate.

“We know we can’t draw a line in the sand about data centers and just say they’re bad. But this needs to be done in ways that don’t harm communities,” he said.

Data centers could help the transition toward clean energy, such as by using excess wind power at night or providing investments for new green energy sources like geothermal, White said.

But in other states, increased demand from data centers has also extended the operation of coal power plants and spurred further investment in natural gas, she said.

“We need to make sure we get this right,” White said. “I generally have a lot of optimism that we’re going to get this right. We’ll figure this out and do it in a way that makes sense for Colorado.”

In addition to power, some data centers use massive amounts of water for cooling. Environmental groups say those demands must be considered in a state where water is already scarce and climate change is expected to shrink supplies.

“The water impact is really, really important, especially for Colorado,” Royer said. “We are very familiar with droughts and water usage and know that is one of our most important and valuable resources.”

The amount of water used by a data center varies widely depending on its location, its size, its computing density and the cooling technology installed, according to the Data Center Coalition. Air cooling uses less water but more power, while liquid cooling uses less power but more water.

A report compiled for the Virginia General Assembly found that “most data centers use about the same amount of water or less as an average large office building, although a few require substantially more, and some require less than a typical household.”

Records obtained by The Post through a records request to Denver Water and Aurora Water show that data centers in Denver and Aurora use a wide range of water every year. Average annual water use among the 14 facilities ranged from 1 acre-foot to 40 acre-feet per year. An acre-foot is enough water for two families’ annual water use.

One of the larger facilities under construction will be much thirstier.

CoreSite’s data center in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea could use up to 805,000 gallons of water a day, company officials have said, though the average daily use would be less. About 80% of the water that will go through the system will be lost to evaporation. What remains can be chemically treated and reused.

The QTS hyperscale facility in Aurora, however, will use “water-free” liquid cooling, according to the company.

In a 2023 interview with DataCentre Magazine, the company’s vice president of energy and sustainability, Travis Wright, said the cooling system “uses a low-pressure, pumped, refrigerant system that uses outside air economisation to deliver world-class energy efficiency metrics, as well as using minimal water.”

Demand for water for municipal and industrial uses across the state is expected to outpace supply by 2050, according to the Colorado Water Plan. In dry years, the supply gap could range from 230,000 acre-feet to 740,000 acre-feet.

Proposed data centers must be assessed through the state’s water adequacy laws and local water policies, said Katie Weeman, spokeswoman for the Colorado Water Conservation Board. State law requires that local governments deny an application for development unless the company has demonstrated that there is enough water supply.

Any future laws or state policies about data centers must further consider their water usage, said Royer, from Sierra Club Colorado.

“We live in a state that has a really fraught relationship with water, which is a resource that is absolutely something to protect,” he said.

Are tax breaks needed?

Aside from their resource needs, Colorado officials also are eyeing the positive economic impacts of data center development.

People considering the future of Colorado’s data center industry fall into two camps: Those who believe tax incentives are necessary to lure the companies here and those who believe the companies are coming, incentives or not.

“There’s no boom without an incentive structure — we’re just not competitive on the cost side as to what other states are,” said Sen. Nick Hinrichsen, a Pueblo Democrat who sponsored this session’s tax incentive bill. “Companies have been pretty clear that right now we’re not a serious option that’s being considered because of that hurdle.”

Hinrichsen’s bill, Senate Bill 280, passed out of its first committee but did not make it further. The bill would have exempted new, large-scale data centers from state sales and use taxes for 20 years if they met certain benchmarks for investment and water and energy efficiency.

Hinrichsen said he “absolutely” thinks similar legislation will come in next year’s session.

“The success of this year’s bill is that we were able to get some serious conversations going with this,” he said. “The issue’s not going to go away.”

Environmental groups, consumer protection advocates and other lawmakers questioned the need to give up tax dollars when demand seemed high and large projects like QTS’s were already underway. For the Denver project, CoreSite initially pursued local tax breaks but eventually decided to build its 40-megawatt facility without any tax incentives after facing pushback from the City Council, based on the facility’s environmental and community impacts.

If the state were to grant tax breaks, advocacy groups said, the data center companies receiving the incentives would need to be held to sustainability standards, like mandating the use of renewable energy as well as setting water and energy efficiency standards.

“We’re not opposed to data centers but want to make sure that if we’re providing incentives to locate more data centers in Colorado, they’re tied to specific environmental safeguards and guardrails,” said Brant of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project. “In general, these are highly profitable companies and they’re coming here regardless.”

Thirty-two states have implemented tax incentives to attract more data centers to their communities. Some of them are now reconsidering.

Since 2010, Virginia has exempted large data centers from its state sales and use tax. It’s now home to the largest data center market in the world. But in 2024, the state’s General Assembly ordered a review of the program that found most of the data centers’ positive economic impact occurred during construction.

While 1,500 people may be employed to build a center, the number of jobs winnows to the double digits once construction is complete. The centers can provide a source of local tax revenue — if local governments don’t grant huge tax breaks, the report found.

In 2025, Virginia lawmakers considered 30 bills that would change the incentive program, though most failed, according to Good Jobs First, a national policy think tank that investigates corporate tax subsidies.

Georgia lawmakers passed a bill last year to pause the state’s incentive program, but the governor vetoed it. Washington’s governor in February ordered a study of that state’s tax incentive program as well as the industry’s economic and environmental impacts.

“There’s an opportunity to construct sound policy around data centers that can be nation-leading,” Parks Barroso, Western Resource Advocates’ Colorado clean energy manager, said in an email. “This is an issue impacting so many states across the U.S. that many will look to Colorado if we properly balance the load growth demands of data centers with strong guardrails to keep us on target for a net-zero future.”

Amid the discussions of economic pros and cons and electric grid capacity, there is a larger picture and moral question being ignored, said Rachael Lehman, who followed SB-280 as the legislative affairs representative for Black Parents United Foundation, a Colorado nonprofit that advocates on a variety of issues in the state, including environmental justice.

Colorado should not forfeit taxpayers’ dollars to profitable companies looking to speed the growth of AI when the country has yet to establish guardrails around the use of the society-altering technology, she said. She worried that poor and non-white communities would bear more of the costs and fewer of the benefits of AI.

“Before we have a full-on explosion of AI in our day-to-day lives, we need to reckon with that first,” she said. “We’re literally putting the cart before the horse by building the data centers to run the AIs. There just is not enough conversation.”

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Miller moths, infamous in Denver for their large numbers and ability to find their way into homes, are critical for Colorado’s environment, Butterfly Pavilion lepidopterist and entomologist Shiran Hershcovich said.

As they travel from one plant to the next, transferring pollen while following the blooms across the state, moths help sustain Colorado’s environment, Hershcovich said.

“As they come into our spaces, just approach them with curiosity and respect,” she said. “They’re not coming into our living rooms, we’ve built our home in theirs.”

When is miller moth season in Colorado?

Miller moths typically swarm across Colorado from mid-May to mid-June, Hershcovich said.

Moths metamorphose from army cutworm caterpillars on the Great Plains in March and take off for western Colorado’s mountains in late spring, making pit stops on the Front Range during their journey, according to the Colorado State University Extension.

The moths come in waves as they emerge from their cocoons, said Genevieve Anderegg, assistant collections manager of invertebrate zoology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

They travel west across the state for the cooler weather and to feed on the vast pollen and nectar that Colorado’s diverse environments offer, Anderegg said. They do the same thing on the other side of the mountain, but the population is smaller and less noticeable, she said.

The number of miller moths can vary dramatically each year and is largely unpredictable, Hershcovich said.

“Even though they visit our backyards each year, we know next to nothing about them,” Hershcovich said. “They’re so essential to life as we know it, but they’ve only recently begun to gain visibility in terms of research.”

The climate and the number of flowers in bloom have the biggest impact on the moth population.

How long do miller moths live?

Miller moths live about a year — just long enough to emerge from their cocoons on the Great Plains, migrate west to Colorado’s mountains and return to the grasslands in the fall to lay their eggs, Anderegg said. That is, if they don’t die during the migration.

The moths get confused by urban lights and often end up finding their way into Colorado homes, Hershcovich said, adding that miller moths use light from celestial objects like stars and the moon to orient themselves.

Once the moths start to appear in Denver, depending on the year and weather conditions, the peak will last from two to four weeks, Hershcovich said.

How can people control the number of miller moths in their home?

To prevent miller moths from making a home inside human spaces, Coloradans should seal any obvious openings, especially around windows and doors; reduce the number of lights in and around the home; or substitute yellow lights, according to the CSU Extension.

Miller moths may concentrate around buildings with more plants and increased humidity, the CSU Extension’s article stated. This effect is seen particularly during drought years when there are fewer flowering plants at lower elevations.

If they do make it inside, residents should carry them outside in a cup or their hands, Hershcovich said.

What happens if your pet eats a moth (or several dozen)?

“Miller moths are not dangerous in any way to us, our pets or our kids,” Hershcovich said. “They’re not venomous or poisonous.”

Many animals in Colorado — including birds, lizards and bears — rely on the moth population for food and as a key source of protein, she said.

“Your cat could eat cupfuls of moths and still be safe,” she said. “Honestly, the moths have the short end of the stick on this one.”

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Wildlife officers watched the three moose for two days before deciding to move them, according to a news release from the agency.

The risk to the moose’s safety and the safety of people living in the area was too high, and the three animals were too comfortable to move out of the city on their own, agency officials said in the release.

Officers tranquilized the cow moose on Wednesday and loaded her into a horse trailer, according to the release. The two calves were then picked up, fully awake, and put into the trailer with her.

All three were taken to an unspecified area outside of Steamboat Springs, agency officials said.

The mother was fitted with a collar and will be monitored by Colorado Parks and Wildlife as part of a moose population and movement study being conducted in Steamboat Springs, agency officials said.

It’s common to see moose in and around Steamboat, wildlife officers said in the release.

Moose are often found in areas near water with an abundance of willows, their primary food source. It’s important to maintain a safe distance from moose and to keep dogs on a leash when hiking in moose habitat, agency officials said.

If you know there’s moose in the area or see signs warning about an aggressive animal, you should find another spot to spend time outdoors, officials said.

The woman injured in Sunday’s attack was airlifted to a Front Range hospital with serious injuries. No update on her condition was available.

River Creek Park reopened to the public on Wednesday.

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SHAMROCK, Texas (AP) — As severe storms once again soak, twist and pelt the nation’s midsection, a team of dozens of scientists is driving into them to study one of the nation’s costliest but least-appreciated weather dangers: Hail.

Hail rarely kills, but it hammers roofs, cars and crops to the tune of $10 billion a year in damage in the U.S. So in one of the few federally funded science studies remaining after Trump administration cuts, teams from several universities are observing storms from the inside and seeing how the hail forms. Project ICECHIP has already collected and dissected hail the size of small cantaloupes, along with ice balls of all sizes and shapes.

Scientists in two hail-dimpled vehicles with special mesh protecting the windshields are driving straight into the heart of the storms, an area known as the “shaft” where the hail pelting is the most intense. It’s a first-of-its-kind icy twist on tornado chasing.

“It’s an interesting experience. It sounds like somebody on the outside of your vehicle is hitting you with a hammer,” said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini, one of the lead researchers.

A team of journalists from The Associated Press joined them this week in a several-day trek across the Great Plains, starting Tuesday morning in northern Texas with a weather briefing before joining a caravan of scientists and students looking for ice.

Driving toward the most extreme forecasts

The caravan features more than a dozen radar trucks and weather balloon launching vehicles. At each site, the scientists load and unload drones, lasers and cameras and other specialized equipment. There are foam pads to measure hail impact and experimental roofing material. There are even special person-sized funnels to collect pristine hail before it hits the ground and becomes tainted with dirt.

Already in treks across Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, the team has found hail measuring more than 5 inches (13 centimeters) in diameter — bigger than a softball, but not quite a soccer ball. The team’s equipment and vehicles already sport dings, dimples and dents that scientists show off like battle scars.

“We got a few good whacks,” said forensic engineer Tim Marshall, who was carrying roofing samples to see if there were ways shingles could better handle hail. “I look at broken, busted stuff all the time.”

At Tuesday’s weather briefing, retired National Weather Service forecaster David Imy pointed to potential hot spots this week in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Computer models show the potential for a “monster storm down here near the Red River” later in the week, he said. Acting on the latest forecasts, Gensini and other leaders told the team to head to Altus, Oklahoma, but be ready to cross the Red River back into Texas at a moment’s notice.

A few hours after his briefing, Imy had the opportunity to chase one of the bigger storms, packing what radar showed was large hail at 8,000 feet in the air. Because of the warm air closer to the surface, the hail was only pea sized by the time it hit the ground. But the outing still provided good data and beautiful views for Imy, who was with a group that stationed themselves about a half-mile from the center of the storm.

“Beautiful colors: turquoise, bluish green, teal,” Imy said, pointing to the mushroom shaped cloud dominating the sky. “This is beauty to me and also seeing the power of nature.”

A costly but overlooked severe weather problem

This is not just a bunch of scientists looking for an adrenaline rush or another sequel to the movie “Twister.” It’s serious science research into weather that damages a lot of crops in the Midwest, Gensini said. Hail damage is so costly that the insurance industry is helping to pay for the mission, which is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation.

“These are the stones that do the most damage to lives and property,” Gensini said. “We want the biggest hail possible.”

A 2024 study by Gensini found that as the world warms from human-caused climate change, small hailstones will become less likely while the larger ones become more common. The bigger, more damaging ones that the ICECHIP team is studying are projected to increase 15% to 75% this century depending on how much the world warms. That’s because the stronger updrafts in storms would keep stones aloft longer to get bigger, but the heat would melt the tinier ones.

The experiment is unique because of the combination of driving into the hail and deploying numerous radars and weather balloons to get an overall picture of how the storms work, Gensini said, adding that hail is often overlooked because researchers have considered it a lower priority than other extreme weather events.

Outside scientists said the research mission looks promising because there are a lot of unanswered questions about hail. Hail is the No. 1 reason for soaring costs in billion-dollar weather disasters in the United States, said meteorologist Jeff Masters, who cofounded Weather Underground and is now at Yale Climate Connections.

“Now a large part of that reason is because we simply have more people with more stuff in harm’s way,” said Masters, who wasn’t part of the research. “Insurance has become unaffordable in a lot of places and hail has become a big reason.”

In Colorado, hail is “actually our most costly natural disaster,” said Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado, adding that “hail does such incredible damage to property.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

High winds overturned a boat with three anglers on Lake Pueblo at about 8 p.m. Friday, near Bogg’s Creek Cove, according to a news release from the agency.

None of them were wearing life jackets, agency officials said in the release.

Two adults were able to swim to shore, but the third was missing for nearly 23 hours before the state wildlife agency’s Marine Evidence Recovery Team found his body, the release stated.

The search — which involved state wildlife officers, Pueblo County sheriff’s deputies and a crew from the Pueblo West Fire Department — used multiple boats with sonar capabilities, an underwater robot, a drone to scan shorelines and thermal cameras to find the missing fisherman.

Crews found the victim at about 6:30 p.m. Saturday. He will be identified by the Pueblo County Coroner’s Office.

“Our hearts go out to the loved ones of the victim,” Lake Pueblo State Park Manager Joe Stadterman stated in the news release. “Any loss of life in our state parks is a terrible day.”

Everyone on the water should wear a life jacket in Colorado, including boaters, kayakers and paddle boarders, state officials said.

Life jackets are required when operating or riding in a boat, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. One U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket must be available for each person on board.

Lake Pueblo visitors can use free life jackets from the park’s loaner station.

“Most boating accidents happen when someone falls overboard,” the agency’s website states. “A life jacket will keep your airway clear of water and your head above water, and it will support your body should you stop swimming or become unconscious.”

Roughly nine out of 10 people who drown in Colorado are not wearing a life jacket and 80% of boating accident deaths could have been avoided if a life jacket had been worn, according to wildlife officials.

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