The Crestone Eagle, June 2004: Wetlands at Lago de Oro being restored by Mary Lowers If you are a Crestone/Baca resident, you can’t help but have noticed that the Lago Del Oro wetlands restoration project, just past White Eagle...
Read MoreIn speaking of such feats as storing the sun, we are also discussing methods to bottle wind, yoke water, or cruciblize earth. Accessing the sun’s energy when it is not shining is a matter of modern alchemy—of tapping into the other living and elemental facets of nature. We all owe our existence to the irradiant grace of our nearby star; some of us inherently utilize it more directly than others. Biomass, for instance, is really but a stored, solar-energy depository within a continuum of broad biological and atmospheric cycles. Air can also be pressurized in caverns, and water pumped to elevation or electrolyzed into hydrogen, all with the energy from the sun. As the classical axiom says: energy is neither created nor destroyed; only transformed.
Read MoreOn Saturday January 17, 2009 the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council (SLVEC) and Water Protection Coalition (SLVWPC) co-sponsored a standing-room only presentation and panel discussion in Alamosa regarding the coming boom of solar energy in the Valley. Concerns about mega-scale concentrated solar power (CSP) and what impacts that may have on agricultural water seemed to be the impetus for the well-attended meeting. The national push for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions were also considered as a driver for large solar development. While it was apparent the multinational solar industry is coming to the Valley, it was presented as a mixed blessing and something to keep an eye on.
Read MoreJust when it was beginning to look like another two or three years before the Sand Dunes would become a national park, suddenly it was a done deal in just six days in mid-September. The Baca Ranch changed ownership on Friday, September 10 from Farallon’s Vaca Partners to The Nature Conservancy, the interim owner for the Federal Government. And on September 13, the national monument was declared the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.
Read MoreThe Crestone Eagle, January 2008: Wastes to profits, problems to solutions Sustainable business park planned for the San Luis Valley by Nicholas Chambers One year exactly from a landmark symposium on Renewable Energy in the SLV,...
Read MoreAs part of ongoing litigation, the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council, Lexam Exploration, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached an agreement to “cease all construction activities on the Lexam Road,” “not begin...
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