Marissa Mayer, now the CEO of Yahoo!, was interviewed at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Monday, July 2, 2012 by Vijay Vaitheeswaran of the Economist in Paepcke Auditorium.

At the time, Mayer was VP of Local, Maps and Location Services at Google. Since then, she has taken a position as CEO of Yahoo!

The interview, which is inserted above via SoundCloud, touches on a wide range of topics, including the future of online search, mapping, Google in China, hacking, privacy, and leadership. There was no discussion of Yahoo!

Mayer’s employees at Yahoo! might be interested in listening to the section of the interview about her views on finding your “rhythm” in regard to work/life, as opposed to finding “balance.” Those comments come at about the 28-minute mark. At about the 26-minute mark, she talks about the need for more computer scientists and engineers.

The recording, done by Aspen Journalism, is not perfect, as there are a couple of minor glitches. But it is a pretty good listen, especially given Mayer’s new status in Silicon Valley.

- Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism

Maroon Creek Resevoir Map (PDF)

Maroon Creek Resevoir Map (Text)
A map of the potential Maroon Creek Reservoir. (Use the zoom slider in the upper right corner and the framing bars for a closer look). The City of Aspen holds conditional water rights for the reservoir, which, if ever built, might differ from this depiction. This is, however, an accurate representation of the city’s current conditional water rights for the reservoir based on a 1965 plat map on file with Pitkin County. A larger view and a link to the original pdf is available on DocumentCloud. Source: Aspen Journalism via the Pitkin County GIS/Mapping Dept.

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By Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism
Monday, July 9, 2012

The upper ends of both the Castle and Maroon Creek valleys would be the sites of two new city of Aspen water storage reservoirs and dams, under 47-year-old conditional water rights that the city has continued to keep alive.

With the threat looming that global warming could eventually render Aspen’s municipal water supply system inadequate, a state water court in 2010 extended the conditional water rights necessary for the reservoirs and their dams.

The extension is good through 2016.

“It is the city’s policy to maintain and protect its water rights,” said Aspen City Attorney Jim True, pointing to a 1993 City Council resolution on water policy.

Though the plans are little known to local residents, the city has done enough procedurally with the water court to keep the projects on the table.

They are seen by officials as a long-term contingency plan.

The feasibility of the dams and reservoirs is questionable, however.

One Bureau of Reclamation study found that soil conditions in the wetlands area where the Castle Creek dam would be built would make construction difficult.

And the U.S. Forest Service has also raised objections to placing a dam and reservoir on public land near the Maroon Bells.

Looking upvalley in the vicinity of the Castle Creek Reservoir site. The river and the wetland on the valley floor between Fall Creek and Sandy Creek, two miles below Ashcroft, would be flooded behind a 170-foot dam if the city exercised its current conditional water rights. Much of the land that would be flooded is privately owned. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

Castle Creek Reservoir Map (PDF)

Castle Creek Reservoir Map (Text)
This map depicts the potential Castle Creek Reservoir and the private property ownership in the area based on the city’s 1965 conditional water rights and a plat map updated in 1977. City officials note that the upper end of the reservoir should be shown ending below the property owned by the Hedstroms, due to a 2010 agreement not to flood their property. The city also questions whether Castle Creek Road would be flooded to the extent shown. A larger view and link to the pdf is on DocumentCloud. Source: Aspen Journalism via the Pitkin County GIS/Mapping Dept.

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If built as currently described by the city’s conditional water rights, the Maroon Creek Reservoir would store 4,567 acre-feet of water behind a 155-foot-tall dam just below the confluence of East Maroon and West Maroon creeks.

By comparison, Ruedi Reservoir stores about 90,000 acre feet and Grizzly Reservoir about 600 acre feet.

The Maroon Creek Reservoir would cover 85 acres of U.S. Forest Service land about a mile-and-a-half below Maroon Lake, which is one of the most highly visited sites in the national forest system.

The reservoir would inundate portions of both the East and West Maroon Creek trails in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness.

As currently conceived, the Castle Creek Reservoir would hold 9,062 acre feet of water behind a 170-foot-tall dam located about two miles below the historic townsite of Ashcroft.

The reservoir, inundating 120 acres, would affect mostly private land between Fall Creek and Sandy Creek, but would also flood a small piece of Forest Service land within the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness.

Both reservoirs would require extensive federal review as well as approvals from Pitkin County and the Aspen City Council.

“Aspen will build the Castle Creek and Maroon Creek reservoirs if necessary and in the best interest of the citizens of the community,” a committee of city officials wrote to Aspen Journalism last week in response to questions.

The answers were prepared by True, the city’s Denver-based water attorney Cindy Covell, and Phil Overeynder, a utilities engineer with the city and former head of the department.

“Aspen views these reservoirs as a contingency plan,” the city officials stated. “Maintaining options is prudent municipal planning.”

The view looking upstream from Castle Creek in the area that would be flooded by a Castle Creek Reservoir. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

Few in the Aspen community are aware that the city has been keeping the prospect of the two dams alive since 1965.

“I didn’t know that the city had conditional water rights for these two reservoirs,” said John Ely, Pitkin County’s attorney and in-house expert on local and regional water issues.

Sloan Shoemaker, executive director of environmental watchdog group Wilderness Workshop in Carbondale, also said he was unaware of the conditional water rights.

“I wasn’t aware of those potential reservoirs,” Shoemaker said. “I had to pick my jaw off the desk top.”

But the city’s draft “1990 Comprehensive Water Management Plan,” which informed the 1993 city council resolution affirming the long-term planning strategy, states that “the reservoirs are the final step to be implemented in the upgrading of the entire Aspen water supply system, to ensure reliability of water quality and quantity during successive drought years.”

If the city were to move forward with the reservoirs, officials said a number of factors would be considered, including whether such measures as water conservation had been put in place and how much water was available in the face of a prolonged drought.

“Any construction at these sites would require extensive permitting as well as consideration of environmental values and community priorities at the time,” the city officials wrote in their responses to questions from Aspen Journalism.

They also noted that the conceptual design of the reservoirs would likely change during a review process.

City officials have barely mentioned the reservoirs in the context of a proposed hydropower facility on lower Castle Creek.

A 2010 environmental report by biologist Bill Miller on Castle and Maroon creeks includes a one-sentence mention of the dams, acknowledging that the city owns the conditional water rights.

Both reservoirs would be upstream from the city’s diversion dams on lower Castle Creek and Maroon Creek, so water from the reservoirs could easily be delivered to the proposed Castle Creek hydro plant.

In 1989 the city told the water court that water from the Maroon Creek Reservoir could be used to power the Maroon Creek hydropower plant it had recently built.

But city officials said last week that “these reservoirs are not part of the Castle Creek hydroelectric project.”

A view looking downstream at the approximate location of the dam for the Maroon Creek Reservoir. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

The conditional water rights date back to September 1965 when Darrel Rae, a consulting engineer for the city, laid out plans for the reservoirs.

In November 1966, Rae testified in water court that given low seasonal flows and occasional dry years, Aspen would need at least one reservoir by 1975.

He predicted that both reservoirs would likely be in place by 2000 to meet the water demands from a projected population of 30,000.

Today there are 6,600 residents in Aspen but the peak holiday population reaches about 30,000, according to the city’s 2010 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.

The conditional water rights were first recognized by the water court in a 1971 decree which stated that the dams “shall be completed” within “a reasonable length of time.”

The city has since obtained extensions of the original decree at least eight times, and filed evidence of its diligence in 1972, 1977, 1981, 1985, 1989, 1995, 2002 and 2009.

In its September 2009 diligence filing the city told the water court “it has steadily applied efforts to complete” the reservoirs “in a reasonably expedient and efficient manner.”

A court official, known as a water referee, agreed.

“To date, the city of Aspen has not needed to construct the storage structures as it has devoted considerable resources to reducing per capita water consumption,” the unnamed referee reported.

“However, during the last diligence period, the city has analyzed studies on global warming and climate change, and implications for the city of Aspen’s future water demand and supply and water management strategies.

“Such studies have indicated a widespread and large increase in the proportion of rainfall versus snowfall and the need for the city of Aspen to develop these reservoir storage rights to preserve and retain its water supply for future needs,” the referee found.

In October 2010 Garfield County District Court Judge James Boyd agreed with the water referee and issued a new decree good until 2016.

A beaver pond off of the main Castle Creek channel in the area of the potential Castle Creek Reservoir. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

The city’s decision to hold on to its conditional water rights differs from a recent decision by the Colorado River District and the West Divide Water Conservancy District in Rifle.

Those districts voted in 2011 to abandon conditional water rights for the 129,000-acre-foot Osgood Reservoir, which would have flooded Redstone, and to reduce a potential Placita Reservoir, located below Marble, from 62,000 acre feet to 4,000 acre feet.

“It was not economical, it wasn’t politically feasible, and there certainly was not institutional or local support for such a project,” Chris Treese, the external affairs director for the Colorado River District, said at the time about the Osgood Reservoir.

A number of groups are preparing to go to trial in water court in August 2013 to oppose the conditional water rights for the smaller Placita dam from being renewed, including Pitkin County, American Rivers, and Trout Unlimited.

In 1970 the Bureau of Reclamation drilled three test bores at the Castle Creek dam site and found 142 feet of “pervious sand gravel” piled up below the valley floor, which meant it would be hard to keep water in the reservoir from seeping out.

It also said “the bedrock was also quite broken and believed to represent a possibly dangerous fault zone.”

The bureau concluded it was a relatively poor location for a dam and told city officials it would not study the Castle Creek Reservoir any further.

The city recently acknowledged the 32-year-old drill tests and said that “costly mitigation of soil conditions, such as grouting and lining,” would likely be necessary for the Castle Creek Reservoir.

More recently, the U.S. Forest Service weighed in on both reservoirs.

A November 2009 letter from Scott Fitzwilliams, forest supervisor for the White River National Forest, told the city the reservoirs would require federal review and “would not comply with the goals and objectives” of the current forest plan.

“For example, the Maroon Creek Reservoir, as currently sited, would not be compatible with the specific management of this highly visited area for the protection of its high scenic value,” Fitzwilliams wrote. “Both proposed structures would conflict with our management objective to maintain or improve long-term riparian ecosystem conditions in the forest.”

Both reservoirs would flood what are today complex wetland areas.

A frothing hole in the woods near the potential Maroon Creek Reservoir dam site. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

The city also got recent pushback from a private property owner in the Castle Creek Valley.

Mark and Karen Hedstrom, who own a home and 21 acres of land on what would be the upper shore of the Castle Creek Reservoir, formally opposed the city’s 2009 diligence filing in water court.

But in May 2010 the Hedstroms agreed that if the reservoir did not flood any of their land, they would withdraw their opposition.

Another property owner whose land would be flooded by the Castle Creek Reservoir, Simon Pinniger, said the notice he was sent by the city’s water attorney in Denver in 1990 obscured many of the details of the city’s reservoir plan.

“Wouldn’t it have been nice if the city had explained to the three landowners affected, in non-legal jargon and with a decipherable map, exactly how each property would be affected if the Castle Creek Reservoir is built; what would make the reservoir necessary, why it has to be located on our land and when this might happen,” Pinniger said in an email.

In 1965, the Castle Creek Reservoir was estimated to cost $790,000, while the Maroon Creek Reservoir was estimated at $770,000, according to the original plat maps of the reservoirs.

According to a 2007 report prepared for the city and Pitkin County by Grand River Consulting, reservoirs on the Western Slope now cost between $5,000 and $10,000 an acre-foot to build.

At $7,500 an acre-foot, the 9,062-acre-foot Castle Creek Reservoir would cost $68 million and the 4,567-acre-foot Maroon Creek Reservoir would cost $34 million.

Editor’s note: This story was also published on Monday, July 9, 2012 in the Aspen Daily News in collaboration with Aspen Daily News Managing Editor Curtis Wackerle.

Looking upstream toward the confluence of West and East Maroon creeks where the Maroon Creek Reservoir would be located. The meadow, which has a dramatic view of the Maroon Bells (out of frame to the right) is known by some as “the wedding meadow” and by others as “Stein’s Meadow.” Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

Additional Documents and Story Notes:

There are also a number of other documents related to this story that are not specifically mentioned in the above story.

The draft 1990 Comprehensive Water Management Plan.

This document is apparently the most recent, complete and up-to-date Comprehensive Water Management Plan for the City of Aspen. It is, at least, the most recent document provided to Aspen Journalism through a Colorado Open Records Act request.

We have asked if the draft document was ever finalized, but apparently the draft document informed the 1993 water policy resolution but was not ever finalized. If it was, we’ve yet to receive a copy.

We’ve posted the complete 252-page document on DocumentCloud and annotated the sections relevant to the two reservoirs. One section is also linked above in the body of the story.

Draft 1990 Comprehensive Water Management Plan, part 1
Draft 1990 Comprehensive Water Management Plan, part 2
Draft 1990 Comprehensive Water Management Plan, part 3
Draft 1990 Comprehensive Water Management Plan, part 4
Draft 1990 Comprehensive Water Management Plan, part 5

The authorizing legislation for the Fry-Ark project

Here is the authorizing federal legislation for the Fry-Ark project which put forward the Castle Creek Reservoir as something of a consolation prize for taking the Roaring Fork Reservoir off the books. That reservoir was once proposed to be built three miles east of Difficult Creek on the Roaring Fork River. Here is the plat map (albeit in sideways format) for that reservoir, now apparently taken off the books. More on the reservoir can be found in this historical note from The Aspen Times.

1987 letter from Aspen Assistant City Engineer Chuck Roth

This letter provides some insight into how the city viewed the prospect of the reservoirs in 1987. Roth asks a consultant for more information about using the Maroon Creek Reservoir for hydropower and about the prospect of recreation on the new body of water.

Guide to Colorado Well Permits, Water Rights, and Water Administration

There is a good brochure from the state on Colorado water rights, including a definition of conditional water rights. In its definition of a “conditional water right” it states that “it gives the holder of that right time to complete a project as long as they diligently pursue completion of the project.”

Another view of the potential dam and reservoir site just below the confluence of East and West Maroon creeks. The Maroon Bells, the most photographed peaks in Colorado according to the U.S. Forest Service, are visible in the background up West Maroon Creek. Photo: Dan Bayer

The audio above was recorded by Aspen Journalism at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival with the permission of the Aspen Institute, which produces the Ideas Festival.

The audio is from a discussion on July 1, 2012 between NPR’s Steve Inskeep and Mike Mullen, a retired U.S. Navy admiral and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The session was entitled “What Does It Mean to Be a Military Superpower.”

The discussion didn’t seem to get a lot of attention but it is full of substantive issues and Mullen’s perspective, given his service, is unique.

Mullen says the U.S. is growing closer to intervening in Syria in some capacity, discusses the differences between Syria and Libya, the survival mentality of leaders such as Assad and the value of a no-fly zone action is appropriate.

At ten minutes into the audio track, Mullen discusses the high suicide rate of active and retired U.S. soldiers and the growing cultural divide between the people serving in the U.S. military and the rest of the country.

And Mullen says it would be “a disaster” for Iran to obtain nuclear capability and that the “space is narrowing” on the issue.

In regard to drone attacks, he notes that “there is going to come a time when our enemies have drones” and raised the question of what happens when the weapons – increasingly both accurate and lethal – get into enemy hands?

Mullen also noted in regard to the use of drones, “we have to remain a principled value-based country.”

He goes on to discuss corruption in other countries, the lack of leadership in countries emerging from dictatorships, cyber threats, and leaks of national security material.

- Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism
Saturday, July 7, 2012

By Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism
Friday, June 29, 2012

Eric Schmidt of Google today cited the importance and value of “long-term investigative research” from journalism organizations.

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic interviewed Schmidt at the Aspen Ideas Festival today and he asked about ”the future of journalism and Google’s role in either saving or destroying journalism.” 

“Aggregation is not the same thing as original reporting,” Goldberg continued. “And obviously this is a pararohical concern. Somebody on The Atlantic said to me today, ‘Ask him if he thinks there is still a purpose for a monthly magazine.’ So I’ll ask you that … ”

“What I particularly like about the question about The Atlantic is The Atlantic is actually making money and growing in popularity,” said Schmidt, who is the executive chairman of Google. “So good judgement, good leadership, excellent reporting … .”

“Keep going, keep going,” Goldberg said. “No, that’s great.”

“So what we’re seeing now is we’re seeing a number of institutions, of which The Atlantic is one of a number, that are figuring it out,” Schmidt said. “Let me point out two.

“Politico. Very successful, largely online but has a print component. The Huffington Post, also very successful … does not have a print component.

“All monetizing in different ways. So clever entrepreneurs are figuring out a way to make money in this new model. So a reasonable model going forward is that the traditional incumbents have been reduced, if you will, in scale but there are plenty of new voices.

“And by the way, if you take a look, we just announced a tablet which includes the ability to have dynamic magazines, where the magazines are not just static, but actually on a page, you can go deep in it and it’s interactive in various clever ways.

“If you, again, think about it over a five- or 10-year period, most people here will probably be reading this sort of media on tablets, because the tablets will get better and better and better and better and faster and so forth and there will be new monetization sources.

“So what to really worry about?” Schmidt said.

“What you really want to worry about is that there was kind of an interesting bargain that we grew up with, which is that the newspapers had enough cash flow from classifieds and subscriptions and so forth that they could fund long-term investigative research. It is much harder to do that now.

“And I think that there is a loss to democracy of losing that, and there are a number of people – ProPublica was formed – a number of other people who have tried to address this. I don’t think it is fully solved and I think it is important,” Schmidt said.

“Do you think Google has a role to solve it?” Goldberg asked.

“We’ve debated how to do it,” Schmidt replied. The problem is we don’t want to cross the content line.”

“Why not?”

“Because if we cross the content line and we started to own companies like The Atlantic we would always be accused of bias in our rankings, our own versus somebody elses.

“Plus, as you know, content is very difficult. And we’re not necessarily good at that,” Schmidt said.
 

By Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism
Saturday, June 30 2012

Joe Klein of TIME caught some ears last night during a discussion of the presidency at the Hotel Jerome. The subject had turned to the growth of minority voters in America when Klein made the following comments.

“There is a fear out there,” Klein said. “When I talk to Tea Party groups out in the middle of the country, the subtext is this: ‘You know, we can deal with white-black stuff, we understood that, and we know that blacks are inferior. But all of a sudden we got all these other people coming in. Where do these South Asians, who are running all the convenience stores come from? And we got all these Mexicans who don’t even want to learn English. And my granddaughter just announced she’s a lesbian and my grandson is dating this black girl and the president of the United States doesn’t have the good sense to be either white or black and his middle name is Hussein. What happened to my country?’ It is very legitimate and tremendous fear.”

Andrea Mitchell of NBC followed up and talked about a subject that seems both over-covered and under-covered: the president’s race and people’s response to it.

“You hear it when you go out,” Mitchell said. “And Joe, you’ve touched on it. Some of it is race. Let’s face it. The White House doesn’t want to acknowledge that, certainly, but some of it is race.”

At an earlier session on politics this week, it was pointed out by E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post that President Obama did the worst in the 2008 election among white voters in the South. And Ron Brownstein on the National Journal pointed out that President Obama got the lowest percentage of votes by white voters in history, at 43 percent.

Former Senator George Mitchell then got the biggest applause of the evening when he addressed the idea that progress among minorities is somehow a “zero-sum” game.

“This is the last gasp of people who remember things better than they were and want to hold on to things and feel that is a zero-sum game and a fixed pie,” Mitchell said.

“And if those blacks and those Hispanics get something, it means I get less,” Mitchell said, paraphrasing the atitude of the people he was referencing.

“The challenge of leadership is for a president, black or white, to make clear that America was built on the opposite premise,” Mitchell said. “It isn’t a zero-sum game. Let’s expand the pie and everybody benefits. And I benefit when black children are educated. And you benefit when Hispanic children get to go to school, and everybody is better off. And that’s the real challenge of leadership in this country.”

Earlier in the panel discussion, which was entitled, “What does it take to be an effective president?” Joe Klein summed up what he has learned in covering different presidents.

“With Jimmy Carter I learned that an essential quality is that you got to respect the town,” Klein said. “You got to respect Washington and deal with it.

“With Ronald Reagen I learned that you got respect the details. You just couldn’t let the staff do it for you.

“With George. H.W. Bush, I learned that you had to have a vision.

“With Bill Clinton, I learned you that you had to have discipline,” Klein said, to laughter.

“With George W. Bush, I learned that you had to have an intellectual curiosity that invovled incovenient thoughts for yourself.

“And with Barack Obama, I’ve learned that you got to love the game,” Klein said.

“There’s a sense … that I’ve gotten from him that he finds the hugger-mugger, you know the gritty dirty dealing of politics, somehow demeaning and something that he wants to rise above, Klein said. “And if you don’t love the game, it’s gonna hurt you.”

The Aspen Ideas Festival 2012 has opened. Aspen Journalism will be in attendance.

Yes, I have a press pass. Which means I am slightly beholden to the Aspen Institute and its board members, at least indirectly.

I’ll try and ignore that uncomfortable fact and be both frank and revealing in order to earn the access.

And I’ll try do it in multi-media fashion, using the iPad to feed the blog, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook. In short, I’ll geek out on the Fest in the hopes of discovering something useful for Aspen.

But, I’ll try and justify my being here this week (just had my first free Pepsi, which is a sponsor) and try and glean things that will not only be of interest to Aspenites but perhaps be of use to them. Why not try and extract what we can from what’s happening in the backyard?

Walter Isaacson, head of the Institute, opened the Festival with a few thoughts about balance and a recollection of when he first came to the Institute in 2003 and launched the Ideas Festival. He has certainly become an intellectual rock star, and he is currently the best-selling nonfiction writer in the world today, according to David Bradley of The Atlantic.

A few drops of rain are falling on the tent at Greenwald Pavilion and a cool breeze is blowing through the big tent. How rare. And relieving. Maybe it will be the Aspen Rain Fest. And not the Aspen Fire Fest. Now the sun is out and the aspen leaves are rustling. It’s already delightful and the event is 15 minutes in.

David Bradley of The Atlantic. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

Bradley, the driest of wits, is working the opening crowd and warning them about bears. He asked how many of the attendees will be sleeping in tents this week. No hands were raised, although there was a round of self-conscious chuckling. This crowd knows it is well-heeled. And they are being given a long shaggy-bear story.

The opening ceremony is actually not the first event of the Festival. There was a panel on natural gas at 3 p.m. on Wednesday. And it got a lot of firsts out of the way.

We had the first person on stage – actually three – in a blue blazer without a tie. We had the first question about China. We had the first long-winded question from the audience. And we had the first use of the phrase “pivot-point.”

So, we’re under way on what is going to be a long journey. Not exactly hard duty, though.

The opening session includes 15 short presentations of big and small ideas in two minutes, or more.

First idea, developing our moral imagination through art. Second idea, ways to improve public discourse in China, which I could not adequately explain to you.

And so on.

Risk as a political virtue. A way to aggregate ideas through media. A new machine for the soul. The Anthropocene as a source for a climate horror film projected on Manhattan.

The end of tipping and a boost in service-sector wages from James Fallows, as well as other sensible ideas from Down Under and a way to remove road blocks in the U.S. Senate.

The head of PepsiCo with an idea about how to generate light in dark huts with water, bleach, sunlight and Pepsi bottles. And about how to turn its 300,000 employees into inventors.

From an anchor at CNN International, the idea of making a Journalism 101 class mandatory for high school seniors in the U.S. Both so they learn how to consume media and so they have the desire to become truth-seeking journalists producing valuable information.

From an Apple designer, keep in mind that humans put together your iPhone and it took a lot of work. So look at a product and try and figure out its story. Maybe you’ll buy less stuff.

Jeffrey Goldburg from The Atlantic – usually the true wit of the Festival – told a joke about a talking dog born in a CIA lab. No, not really, the dog was never with the CIA.

Goldburg’s really big idea is for everyone to try and lighten up and that moderators should open the sessions with a joke. Now that’s the best idea yet for Aspen.

Kitty Boone, the Institute’s mastermind behind the daily sessions, gave her usual warm welcome and encouraged people to attend sessions on topics they know nothing about.

Should be a piece of cake for this correspondent.

Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism
Thursday, June 28, 2012

The images of shrinking glaciers presented last night by David Breashears of GlacierWorks could well be one bookend to this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival, especially for Aspenites and others familiar with and passionate about mountain landscapes.

Breashears, who has climbed Everest five times, showed historical photos of glaciers in the Himalayas that were then wiped off the screen with recent color photos of the same frozen rivers of ice.

The glaciers have clearly shrunk in size in the last 100 years.

For Aspen, it means that the community truly should begin to embrace the idea that the snow patterns on the local mountains are likely to also begin to shrink.

Highland Bowl will continue to play a larger role in local skiing and Little Nell on Aspen Mountain will continue to be an arena dominated by machine-made snow.

Breashears warmly recognized local mountaineers Dick Jackson and Neil Beidleman who were in the audience at Doerr-Hosier last night.

He said that Beidleman did “a wonderful job of leading people out of the huddle” on Everest as recounted in “Into Thin Air” and noted he had climbed with Jackson in the Himalaya.

The old and new photos of the shrinking glaciers provided “two very clear data points,” Breashears said.

He’s been working for the last seven years on the project and proudly pointed to a popular exhibit of the glacier photos at the MIT Museum.

He was thrilled that young people were seeing the stark evidence of climate change.

“My feeling is that the status quo has failed,” said Breashears, who has enthusiastically been working with sixth-graders and teachers to help them understand the meaning of the disappearing glaciers.

Breashears said the glaicers, and the snowpack, in the Himalaya, fed a huge spiderweb of rivers in India and Asia. Less ice means less water and “water shortages will cause social stress” and could lead to war.

Take note, global risk managers.

Idea for Aspen? It’s time for a detailed analysis of our snowpack and how it has been changing. We know that strawberries can now be grown in Aspen as the number of warm-enough days has increased.

Aspen may need to make some adjustments regarding its skiing assets, including dealing with a consistently lower-quality snowpack at the current base areas.

By Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism
Thursday, June 28, 2012

Rolled out of bed Thursday morning to listen to Keith Banks, the president of U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, talk with Bill Mayer of Park Avenue Equity Partners.

The two men, in the official Aspen-casual uniform of blue blazer and tan pants, presented a fairly upbeat picture of the economy.

Banks, whose clients have to have at least $3 million in net assets to invest, said many people are concerned about leaving their money to unprepared children in their 20s and 30s.

“We’ve developed a program to work with the children,” Banks said, noting that inheriting money can either be a blessing or a burden and that many of his clients did not think their kids were remotely ready to successfully manage newfound wealth.

(It’s not clear how many of his clients have happy-go-lucky adult children in Aspen, which at least can inform one how to live the good life, if not invest wisely.)

In discussing the larger economic trends, Banks said companies are sitting on lots of cash but are not hiring or making capital investments.

“In the United States, profits are still very good,” Banks said. In fact, he said, many companies are experiencing record levels of profits and record levels of cash flows.

But many of the executives Banks talks to on a regular basis say there is too much uncertainity in the marketplace to hire or spend the cash, especially with the “fiscal cliff” looming at the end of the year.

Banks was bullish, however, on some aspects of the economy.

He said the inventory of single-family homes on the market is at an all time low, yet prices remain low. At some point, he said, the demand for new homes will surge and the resulting new construction will have a positive ripple effect throughout the economy.

He also said the auto industry should also see a surge as many people are overdue to replace their aging automobiles.

In terms of places to invest, Banks said, “We don’t like Europe, for obvious reasons. And we still don’t like Japan.”

Bill Mayer observed that he is seeing more companies decide to move jobs back to the U.S. from China as labor costs increase there. He said he knew of one company that just decided to move 40 jobs back to the U.S. It’s not many jobs, he noted, but it was indicative of a trend.

One audience member asked Banks if he could recommend a “safe haven” for money, now that gold and Swiss francs and other previously good bets didn’t look so good.

“It also used to be Aspen, Colorado, real estate,” Mayer quipped.

Banks said U.S. Trust doesn’t embrace the concept of “safe haven,” other than cash, and said a “broad-based strategy” is best.

Idea for Aspen: consider that many part-time Aspen residents are likely getting older and staying wealthy. In addition to seeking the best in life, they’ll be looking for long-term health care options. The expansion of Aspen Valley Hospital might be coming at just the right time.

Plenty of sage advice available this week on the Aspen Institute campus. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

The talent roster at the Aspen Ideas Festival was in evidence this morning when a hastily assembled panel was put together to discuss the Supreme Court’s decision on the health care law.

CNN’s Suzanne Malvaux moderated the panel, which included David Brooks of The New York Times, Joe Klein of TIME, former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle and former Congressman Vin Weber.

“Roberts proved himself today to be a modest minimalist, someone who believes in restraint,” Brooks said of Chief Justice John Roberts, who was seen as guiding the court’s 5-to-4 decision to uphold the health insurance mandate in “Obamacare.”

“The first thing he did I think was restrain the power of the court, not to use the potential power to overule the democratic process, not to, frankly, create an institutional crisis in the court,” Brooks said. “And so I think that was an act of minimalist restraint.”

Joe Klein of TIME said he was “really pleased that ‘Romneycare’ was sustained today.”

That drew cheers from what seemed to be a pro-Obama crowd in Paepcke Auditorium who apparently agree with Klein that Romney is in no position to criticize President Obama’s plan, which closely resembles the plan put in place in Massachusetts when Romney was governor.

“It would have been a very tough argument for Romney to make … if his plan had been shown to be unconstitional,” Klein said.

Vin Weber, a Republican, pointed out that the court’s decision positioned the health insurance mandate as a tax, which the court said Congress had the power to pass.

“This is not a mandate, this is a tax,” Weber said.

Former Senator Daschle, a Democrat, said the court’s decision provides “an extraordinary green light to go forward with implementation on three levels,” including insurance reform, payment reform, and delivery reform.

“What it doesn’t do is to end the debate about health reform and health care in America, and that debate is largely one involving the role of government,” Daschle said.

Idea for Aspen: Being required to buy health insurance, or being able to easily stay on their parents’ health insurance, will likely save a number of young twenty-somethings from big bills from ski-related injuries. So, go big!

By Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism
Book review for Aspen Daily News, Time Out
June 22, 2012

In between a brilliantly precise prologue and an inspirational last chapter, Douglas Brinkley gives you everything you need to know about the CBS newsman Walter Cronkite in the new bio titled “Cronkite.”

And if you don’t get enough in its pages, Brinkley cites a raft of other books about CBS News along the way.

But “Cronkite” will likely first send you running to the Internet to see archived clips of the man himself.

They will either refresh your memory of big moments in modern American history or show you for the first time why Walter Cronkite’s name is synonymous with trustworthy journalism.

You Tube search results for Walter Cronkite. Image: Brent Gardner-Smith

I was three when news of President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 was broadcast on TV.

I don’t remember watching Cronkite then, but it was the first time I sensed something had truly gone wrong in the household.

Today, Cronkite’s on-air reporting of the news of Kennedy’s death is considered the epitome of reporting horrible news with dignity, grace and humanity.

And because I was consistently plopped before the TV in the ‘60s, I ended up spending lots of time with Walter Cronkite.

I didn’t think he was God. But I came to think God might be like a combo of Walter Cronkite and Captain Kangaroo.

Like so many other Americans, I was with Cronkite through the Apollo voyages to outer space and the moon.

And it was from Cronkite that I absorbed what he called “the bloody experience of Vietnam” from the family television set, which only aired CBS, NBC and ABC.

Cronkite took over what is now the CBS Evening News in 1962 and defined the role of national anchorman until 1981.

No one may ever again garner such a large and unified TV news audience.

As an aspiring journalist — something I still am — I became an admiring student of CBS News.

In 1986 I worked as a radio news director at WMVY-FM on Martha’s Vineyard.

Cronkite, an avid sailor, had a house on the island. So did Mike Wallace, another great CBS newsman.

I contacted Wallace and he graciously agreed to an interview at his Vineyard home.

But I couldn’t work up the nerve to approach the legendary Cronkite, who died in 2009 at 92.

I should have, though, as Brinkley makes clear that Cronkite was a willing interview subject and always at least polite to his legion of fans.

“Cronkite” offers up many little-known facets of the man, including that he got to be tight with Jimmy Buffett and came out for the decriminalization of marijuana.

The book also offers a litany of good advice for journalists, although it is not overtly presented as such.

Brinkley can be assured his book, or e-book, will long be on journalism school reading lists.

Here’s ten journalism lessons that can be gleaned from “Cronkite.”

Lesson One: work hard and practically live in the newsroom. As a young wire reporter for UP in 1939 Cronkite got noticed for a story that first broke on the night desk and was his to run with.

Lesson Two: Be relentlessly curious, read widely, make small talk with everybody and develop sources over drinks and dinner. Those habits paid off for Cronkite many times.

Lesson Three: Double-source your facts. And do more research. Cronkite compiled huge notebooks of material to prepare for a space launch. And he was legendary for his wire-service obsession with getting it first, but first getting it right.

Lesson Four: Go to where the news is. Cronkite rode in bombers in World War II as a correspondent. And when he shared his thoughts in 1968 about what he had personally seen in Vietnam, it changed the course of the war.

Lesson Five: Be competitive. Cronkite worked hard for scoops and big interviews.

Lesson Six: Say “yes” to assignments. Cronkite needed airtime like oxygen but he was also a willing solider for the network.

Lesson Seven: Embrace new mediums and platforms and be flexible. Cronkite wrote for the wires and for newspapers and then reported for radio, broadcast television and cable television.

Lesson Eight: Follow your inspiration. Cronkite basically created the environmental beat in 1970 after being inspired by an early photo of the earth from space.

Lesson Nine: Don’t let the bastards get you down. Cronkite was not afraid to rail back against the intimidation tactics of the Nixon White House.

Lesson Ten: Don’t be a jerk. Cronkite managed to be an aggressive journalist without alienating people. It’s not always easy.

“Cronkite” is full of such lessons for journalists. And for anyone seeking to lead a well-lived life.

Brinkley has added an excellent book to the long CBS News bookshelf.

And he’ll be speaking about it at the Aspen Institute on August 14.

By Brent Gardner-Smith, Aspen Journalism
Monday, June 4, 2012

Aspen City Manager Steve Barwick remembers warning members of the Aspen City Council in an executive session on Feb. 9, 2010 about what would happen if they repurposed a 42-inch pipeline between Thomas Reservoir and a proposed hydropower site on lower Castle Creek as an emergency drainline first and a penstock second.

“What we said to City Council was, ‘In making your decision here we understand there is going to public controversy about this, because now you are moving from a penstock to an emergency drainline,’” Barwick said. “’Some people are going to be confused and you’re probably going to get some accusations related to this.’”

Barwick was right.

After the city began installing the pipeline in mid-2010 and then filed for a “small conduit exemption” from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), based on the pipe primarily serving as an emergency drainline, it was accused by citizens and environmental organizations of manipulating a federal process in the name of public safety.

“Pretending that the pipe or penstock that [the city] built to bring water from the city’s Thomas Reservoir to the new hydro plant is actually an ‘emergency drain’ in reality implies a less than honest assessment,” Karen Ryman, who lives in the Twin Ridge neighborhood directly below the reservoir, told the city in a letter in January 2011.

It was a sentiment echoed in many other letters sent to the city.

City officials deny the accusations and still say they built the pipeline for safety reasons based on the advice they received from their consulting engineers. And they say they would have built the drainline even in the absence of a hydropower project.

The 10.3 acre-foot Thomas Reservoir. The new outtake structure is in rear of photo on the north side of the reservoir. Photo: Chris Council/Aspen Daily News

Today the pipeline is in the ground but not yet operational. And the city has abandoned its attempt to secure a conduit exemption from FERC. Instead it is pursuing what FERC calls the “Traditional Licensing Process” which, unlike the conduit exemption process, requires review under the National Environmental Policy Act and comes with full FERC oversight.

Aspen wants to build a 1.17-megawatt hydropower facility it has been planning since 2006. The power station would use up to 52 cubic feet per second of water taken from Castle and Maroon creeks. The water would be piped from the creeks to the small Thomas Reservoir, which the city also uses as part of its municipal water system. Then the water is to be sent down the 4,000-foot-long new pipe to the proposed powerhouse. If built, the plant would generate about 8 percent of the municipal utility’s power load.

The project now has a $10.5 million budget, up from a 2007 estimate of $6.2 million. The city attributes most of the overruns to unforeseen obstacles in construction of the pipeline and a more complex regulatory process than originally envisioned. A referendum on the council’s decision to rezone the powerhouse property will likely be on the ballot in November.

As election day approaches, there is still a lingering question in the community of how the pipeline, positioned in city documents as strictly a “penstock” beginning in 2006, morphed by 2010 into primarily an “emergency drain line.” At issue is whether that was done for primarily safety reasons, as the city maintains, or to qualify for an expedited review by FERC, as opponents claim, or both.

And sure to add to the debate is the view of the chief of dam safety in Colorado, who says that while the city’s emergency drain line would be effective at draining the reservoir, it is not something that the state required when it recently reviewed the safety of the reservoir. Instead, the state required the city to install a relatively modest new spillway.

In response to the state’s view, city officials contend that the pipeline’s safety features are evident and that the city has an interest in exceeding minimum state requirements when it comes to public safety.

The downhill side of the new outtake structure, and new north dam, at the Thomas Reservoir. Photo: Chris Council/Aspen Daily news

The executive session

Both Ireland and Barwick said they were told by Phil Overeynder, the city’s then utilities director, during the Feb. 9, 2010 executive session that the emergency drain line was needed as a safety measure. Other City Council members were present at the executive session, including Torre, Steve Skadron and Derek Johnson.

“What I understood was that it was going to be expensive to build a drainline, but the recommendation was that the drainline would be a safety feature that would be recommended to you even in the absence of building hydro,” Ireland said. “That’s what was told to us. We make decisions relying on the good faith of our staff, and our staff was saying ‘You ought to do this.’”

Barwick’s account of the executive session is similar.

“We said ‘Imagine it this way. Forget the hydroelectric for awhile. Assume that you’ve put that project off or you’re never going to do it. Now you just have this report that says you need a drainline and you don’t meet modern safety standards,’” Barwick said.

There was, however, no report. At least no written report.

Overeynder gave his advice verbally.

There was not a written hazards analysis that showed how and where the water might spill out of the reservoir in an emergency. Nor was there a written range of options with a range of costs to mitigate the safety hazard of the reservoir, which holds 10.3 acre feet.

Also at the executive session was Karl Kumli, an attorney from Boulder who specializes in FERC and hydropower law and who had been retained by the city in April 2008. Cindy Covell, the city’s attorney on water rights issues, was also there.

Barwick said the executive session was necessary because “this is related to lawsuits and a FERC application.”

During a May 23 interview in Barwick’s office, Ireland was asked about the charge by critics that the city should have applied for a full FERC license in the first place, and not pursued a conduit exemption.

“Would the public be served by that?” Ireland said. “The public is best served by getting the penstock or the drainline done as soon as possible and then processing the hydro application in the most expeditious means at hand.

“When I was asked to make the decision to go for a conduit exemption – I was asked to do that, and did do that – I did not know that there was a traditional licensing process that would provide more stuff. I knew that we could save money, and I knew that the public wanted us to do this, and we could apply for this but we wouldn’t necessarily get it.

“So we did that. Could we, should we, have done the traditional licensing process? Maybe. It’s a good argument. Would that have changed anything? No,” Ireland said.

During the May 23 interview, Ireland made the same point again using similar language.

“The essential point is that it would just be bad government to have somebody come in and say you should do a drainline, but ignore the possibility that using that drainline would expedite things and save the taxpayers hundreds of thousand of dollars,” Ireland said. “If you just do a drainline, you are going to add to the expense and the delay and that is something government is accused of all the time.”

In a follow-up email exchange to confirm his remarks, Ireland said his comments during the interview “were focused on expediting the project, not the process,” which seemed to contradict his remarks in the interview.

But, Ireland also wrote, “We were asked whether we should apply for a conduit exemption as a means of saving money. We were also told that we might not be allowed to apply under that provision. We assumed that under either process we would have a public process and would be criticized for either a) choosing an expedited process which would be seen as too fast or b) choosing a prolonged process for which we would be accused of wasting money.”

A month later on March 8, 2010, council approved a construction contract for $2.3 million with Western Summit Constructors to build the pipeline that summer. There was no public discussion of how the pipeline might relate to FERC’s small conduit process. And the contract itself stated the project was for a “penstock.”

The city’s 42-inch pipeline runs out of Thomas Reservoir, down to the Marolt Open Space through a city utility easement, and on to Power Plant Road below the Castle Creek bridge. It was installed in 2010. This photo was taken in May 2012. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

The engineer’s advice

The city continues to position the emergency drain line as a safety feature it would have installed even without the hydro project, and says it has done so based on the advice its engineer first gave in 2008.

But a review of the public record related to the hydro project turns up nothing in writing from an engineer to the city on this issue in 2008.

When asked if it could flesh out the public record, city officials on May 23 produced a letter written on May 22 from Ron McLaughlin of McLaughlin Water Engineers.

In the letter, McLaughlin said that in early 2008 he pointed out to Overeynder that the two pipelines that brought water to Thomas Reservoir could deliver 52 cubic feet per second of water, as a pipeline from Castle Creek could deliver 25 cfs and a pipeline from Maroon Creek could deliver 27 cfs.

However, the existing drainline at the reservoir could only empty 25 cfs of water, which presented a safety concern should the two pipelines to the reservoir ever be stuck open with no quick way to turn them off.

If that problem was compounded by the dam failing at the same time, there would be no way to effectively handle the incoming water and also quickly drain the reservoir.

With the new pipeline, the reservoir could be drained in a relatively quick manner, even if the city had lost the ability to shut off the intake structures on the creeks and water was rushing into the reservoir at full speed, according to McLaughlin’s letter and the city staffers he conferred with on the issue.

“I also told Phil that due to development now existing below the Thomas Reservoir, this was a safety concern, but that the proposed penstock could easily serve both functions — a penstock to carry water to the hydroelectric plant and an emergency drainline to promptly evacuate Thomas Reservoir if necessary,” McLaughlin wrote in his May 22 letter. “It was our recommendation that the pipeline and intake facilities be designed to serve this dual function. This would mitigate the safety concern.”

Overeynder said it wasn’t a “great jump” to see how the proposed 42-inch penstock could also function as a drainline or how the drainline was needed for safety reasons in any event.

“It was more like an additional reason to go forward with the project,” he said. “And so it would have made sense for McLaughlin to present this verbally and not require extensive documentation during that time period.”

But if the advice from McLaughlin was for an “emergency drainline” to be the primary reason to build the new pipeline, those words are hard to find in public documents related to the project between 2008 and 2010.

This is a 2010 or 2011 document prepared by McLaughlin Water Engineers for the city of Aspen as required by the Colorado Division of Water Resources and on file in Glenwood Springs. It shows the new outtake structure for the pipeline on the north side of the reservoir, the new spillway on the east side of the reservoir, and the two intake structures for pipelines from Castle and Maroon Creeks. This document was produced well after the city council voted to install the pipeline. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

A dual purpose conduit

What is in the public record, however, are references as far back as 2006 to the option of pursuing a conduit exemption from FERC. City officials long knew that might be an option for the project.

And then, increasingly after spring 2008, there are references in staff documents to the concept of a “dual purpose” or a “joint utility function” for the penstock in the context of FERC regulations.

A June 16, 2008 email from utilities engineer John Hines discusses the concept of a “joint utility function” for the penstock, possibly as a thermal heat exchange.

A Feb. 9, 2009 public meeting agenda, with staff notes, states that “if for some reason the FERC authorization for the project is denied, Aspen would use the conduit for discharges from its existing regulating reservoir at the water treatment facility to Castle Creek.”

And a June 23, 2009 letter to a FERC official from Kumli states that “the city intends to install a pipeline to allow for evacuation of the contents of the reservoir in the event that there is a breach in the earthen embankment or other structural problem. Evacuation of the water in Thomas Reservoir could also be required in the event that a major maintenance event arises, including unscheduled maintenance.” In the letter, Kumli refers to the pipeline as a “reservoir discharge pipeline,” but not an “emergency drainline.”

But it was apparently not until March 1, 2010 that city officials put the words “emergency drainline” into a memo to City Council, when the utilities department’s Rob Convington wrote that the “first purpose” of the pipe was its safety function.

“The first purpose for the penstock and intake is to supply an emergency drainline for the Leonard Thomas Reservoir at the city’s water treatment plant,” the memo reads. “The second function of the drainline/penstock is to supply water to the planned Castle Creek Energy Center, for the operations of a hydroelectric facility.”

The memo was in support of council approving the construction contract for the pipeline, which it did.

In mid-2010, as construction was underway, the city got its first taste of the opposition that would come in response to its new emergency drain line.

“The city is attempting to justify this pre-permit project construction under a specious argument that it is a dual-purpose pipeline needed to drain Thomas Reservoir safely,” wrote attorney Paul Noto in a letter to the head of FERC. “The city bases this right on a crafty, but ultimately baseless argument: that the pipeline is necessary because Thomas Reservoir dam poses a safety risk.”

Noto, of the Aspen law firm of Patrick Miller & Kropf, represents a group of property owners on Castle and Maroon creeks who have sued the city over its water rights in an effort to block the hydropower plant from going forward.

But Noto’s letter ended up giving the city one of its few wins so far in the hydro project process. On July 1, 2010 a FERC official sent Noto a response.

“We have investigated your concerns and have determined the construction being done by the city of Aspen is associated with the city’s water supply system and is not under [FERC’s] jurisdiction,” the letter stated.

Today, city officials still point to this letter as vindication of its actions regarding the pipeline.

In October 2010, Kumli crafted the city’s draft small conduit application to FERC. And the emergency drainline was front and center.

“In order to safely evacuate Thomas Reservoir, the city is constructing the Castle Creek drainline and penstock. The drainline and penstock is the conduit for which authorization for this project is sought,” the city told the federal government. “The conduit would exist as a component of the municipal water system even in the absence of power generation for the purposes of safely and efficiently draining Thomas Reservoir, and for regulating the amount of water diverted into the city of Aspen water supply system.”

A city-lead tour of Thomas Reservoir in April, 2012. The tour included journalists, FERC officials, citizens, city staff and consultants, and yes, opponents of the project. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

The opposition

The letters of opposition about the drain line and the conduit exemption started flowing into Aspen City Hall in January 2011.

“It is clear that the scale of the penstocks installed last summer were for the hydro plant rather than an essential safety feature for the low-volume Thomas Reservoir,” wrote Andre Wille, a science teacher in Aspen, in January 2011. “By using the conduit exemption loophole, the city not only avoids determining the real ecological cost of the project, but it sets a terrible precedent for other hydro projects in the future to use this type of exemption.”

And there was more.

The Pitkin County Healthy Rivers and Streams board encouraged the city to “revisit the appropriateness of the conduit exemption in their application to FERC.”

Amelia Whiting, the legal counsel for Trout Unlimited, accused the city of an “effort to avoid the licensing process” and called on the city to abandon “its attempts to circumvent federal law.”

Matt Rice, the director of conservation in Colorado for American Rivers, said “Aspen is engaged in a deliberate and disingenuous effort” to avoid FERC’s licensing requirements that would “open a new extremely dangerous loophole” by “claiming that the penstock for the project is intended for some other purpose.”

But not all of the letters were negative.

Kurt Johnson of Telluride Energy was hired by Pitkin County to review the city’s approach to its hydropower plant.

“Applying for a conduit exemption is a reasonable decision because it provides a potentially shorter time to obtain FERC approval than pursuing a FERC license,” Johnson wrote. “It does not mean the city bypasses a substantial environmental review process.”

The Colorado Governor’s Energy Office and Auden Schendler, the vice president in charge of environmental affairs at Aspen Skiing Co., also sent in letters in support of the project.

In all, there were 62 comment letters sent to the city about its conduit exemption application, and 55 were negative.

And given that the City Council would go on to abandon its pursuit of a small conduit exemption, it would appear that the nays had it.

It’s been a long road for the city’s hydro project.

In November 2007, Aspen voters approved spending $5.5 million on a hydro plant.

In January 2008, the city sought a full waiver from FERC regulations, based on hopes the agency might view it as a restoration of the historic hydro plant the city operated on Power Plant Road from the 1890s to 1958.

But FERC rejected that idea on March 25, 2008.

Federal officials told Aspen its new plant would have to get a FERC license, primarily because the city intended to build a new powerhouse next to the old one.

So the city next chose to pursue the small conduit exemption, which Mayor Ireland still defends today.

“We didn’t do anything in secret,” Ireland said. “A conduit exemption is a public process. It is not a secret process. It may not be as robust as some people say they want to have for a process, but it was not secret.”

In 2006 when the city started designing the project, there were optimistic plans for the plant to open as early as 2009. Now, it’s not likely to open until 2015.

Today the delay, the opposition, the criticism, and some vitriolic denouncements of the character of certain city officials have left Ireland frustrated.

“I think it has been unfair,” he said. “I think it is scurrilous. I think it smacks of Swiftboatism. I think it is obstructionist, to say the least. It’s all of those things.”

But the city’s role in the saga did catch the attention of Ann Miles, the director of hydropower licensing at FERC.

In a Feb. 10, 2012 letter to Kumli, she tells the attorney that FERC’s review of the comments filed about Aspen’s conduit exemption “suggest that the level of controversy in this proceeding does not stem solely from the resource issues, but rather, the city’s conduct with regard to previous public engagement.”

She also noted that FERC staffers do not consider Aspen’s recent application for a full FERC license for its hydro project to be “complex.’

The new spillway on the east dam at Thomas Reservoir, which would direct water down an existing drainage route, under Castle Creek Road, and down a steep hillside to the creek. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

The state weighs in

But the hurdles and obstacles to getting its project up and running have also come from the Colorado Division of Water Resources, which is in charge of dam safety in the state.

Engineers there don’t seem to have an opinion about hydropower, or about the FERC process, but they now hold sway over the physical aspects of managing the Thomas Reservoir.

That was not the case when the city started started planning the hydro project, or when it approved the emergency drainline and penstock.

On May 6, 2010, the city got an email form John Blair, a dam safety engineer with the Colorado Division of Water Resources, saying that the state needed to be brought back into the loop on plans for the dam.

This surprised the city, as the state had taken the facility off its inspection list in 1989, classifying it as having no public hazard. But the state but became interested again in 2010 when its inspectors learned of the city’s pipeline plans.

Blair said he had asked for a copy of the city’s construction plans, and based on his review of them, told the city that “We still retain jurisdiction over this dam in accordance with state statue.”

The city initially disputed the state’s assertion of jurisdiction, but eventually complied and submitted its plans to the state.

During the process the state changed the classification of the Thomas Reservoir dam from “No Public Hazard” to “Significant Hazard,” primarily because the Twin Ridge and Water Place deed-restricted housing projects have been built below the reservoir.

The state also required the city to install a new spillway to prevent the dam from overtopping and concluded that the city’s existing 24-inch drainline was adequate to drain the reservoir.

The state does not view the city’s 42-inch emergency drainline as being necessary to protect the public.

“It is not a safety feature that we required,” said Bill McCormick, the chief of dam safety at the Colorado Division of Water Resources. “Depending on how the city utilizes that facility, it may have the opportunity to use that pipeline as a safety feature, but it is not something that we required.”

City officials say the state has its own minimum requirements, but the city’s obligations go further.

“Every letter we have from the state says that it is the city’s ultimate responsibility to avoid liability through proper design and operation of the reservoir,” Overeynder said. “It is the city’s ultimate liability. It can’t step away from its responsibilities to operate a safe water system and reservoir.”

When asked if the state’s requirements were not adequate, Mayor Ireland said it’s the city’s prerogative to go above and beyond minimum requirements.

“I think it is clear that the city is entitled to operate the dam at a safer level than the state judges to be adequate or in compliance,” Ireland said. “It is often the case that the city of Aspen exceeds state safety or environmental requirements. We owe our citizens more than mere compliance or just getting by.”

When asked if the reservoir was safe today, given that the city’s emergency drainline and penstock still needs a tailrace installed before it is operable, Barwick replied, “It’s not as safe as we’d like it to be.”

An inundation map prepared by McLaughlin Water Engineeers for the Thomas Reservoir. The red lines mark the boundaries of the flow of water from the reservoir in the event of dam failure on the east and north sides of the reservoir.

The hazards analysis

The state also required the city to prepare an updated hazards analysis for Thomas Reservoir, which McLaughlin Water Engineers conducted in late 2011.

Ironically, the hazards analysis — done by the city’s own consulting engineers — downplays the hazards of the reservoir.

“Given the small volume of the flood wave, shallow depths of flooding and the minimal time that roads and buildings will be subject to flooding, it is my opinion that it is unlikely that buildings or roads would receive extensive damage as a result of a dam breach at Leonard Thomas Reservoir,” wrote Aaron Asquith, an engineer with McLaughlin Water Engineers who prepared the report on behalf of the city. “Due to the small volume, shallow depths of flooding and minimal duration of peak flow, it is my opinion that loss of life is not expected as a result of dam failure.”

A graphic in the report shows that water from a dam overcome by uncontrolled pipelines bringing water from Castle and Maroon creeks would not touch homes in the Twin Ridge or Water Place neighborhoods below the reservoir, which are often held up by city officials as being in harm’s way.

Instead, the report concludes that water from the reservoir would likely reach the Mountain Oaks housing building, a corner of one of the Castle Ridge apartment buildings, and the back of one of the buildings at the Marolt housing complex.

None of the buildings that could be impacted would be expected to suffer major damage.

Still, city officials and their consultants defend their decision to install the emergency drainline, and to tell FERC it was an integral part of the city’s water system.

“While the design of the new pipeline/drainline may have been different if the use as a penstock was not a design parameter, the drainline project would have been similar in overall scope, cost and location,” McLaughlin wrote in the May 22 letter to the city. “While the reservoir deficiency was discovered because of the CCEC (Castle Creek Energy Center), I believe that it would have been discovered eventually, hopefully not as a result of a failure.”

The city’s pipeline ends just on the other side of Power Plant Road, at the location of the proposed hydropower plant under the Castle Creek bridge. Photo: Brent Gardner-Smith

Editor’s note: This article was developed, written and edited in collaboration with Curtis Wackerle, the managing editor of the Aspen Daily News. It was published by the newspaper on Monday, June 4, 2012.