The Temperature | The importance of documentary during climate disasters

Hello Temperature readers! Hope you’re all bundled up and warm this week.

I’m staying cozy, writing you this newsletter from my very, very clean house this morning. Why is my house so clean, you ask? It’s because this past weekend I went on a scrubbing, tidying, vacuuming, laundry-ing, back-of-the-fridge-digging rampage thinking that some out-of-state friends were arriving Friday. And there’s no better incentive to really take care of things than the threat of someone else seeing your townhouse-turned-hovel.

It was only after the rubber gloves had come off one final time that I thought to check my calendar. That’s when I realized: their visit is next week.

So, now I’ve got a nice clean house and a bonus weekend to mess it all up.

In this week’s Temp, we’ll look at some of the ways the state is prepping for a new energy future, with legislators angling for bigger, badder solar and geothermal industries. We’ll also look at what happens when wildfire hits and you don’t have time to prepare, as was the case with Heather Szucs and the Marshall fire. More on both below.

FILM FESTIVAL

A documentary about one family’s Marshall fire journey plays this weekend in Golden

From left, Zoe Szucs, Heather Szucs and Savana Szucs sit for a portrait in their home Feb. 5, in Louisville. The Szucses are the subjects of a short documentary playing this weekend at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival. (Jeremy Sparig, Special to The Colorado Sun)

After the fire, there were the lists: What does it take to refill a home? Which cleaning supplies were tucked in the cupboard? What counts as a pantry staple? Which list should the scissors go on? The safety pins?

After Heather Szucs lost her home in the Marshall fire the lists began to weigh on her. It was hard to calibrate the way that time collapsed and then unfolded, accordioning back and forth at an unnatural rhythm — a lifetime of accumulation, gone in minutes, had to be built back in mere months.

“Your life stops,” Szucs said. “Everything that you were doing with your life stops. Now you have to do this,” she said, referring to the process of recovery. “And it is absolutely nonstop.”

That process is documented in a new short film, “Way the Wind Blows,” which plays at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival in Golden this weekend.

About a month after the flames ripped across Marshall Mesa, local filmmaker Megan Sweeney started putting out feelers, trying to decide whether to pick up the camera. It had to be organic, she said. Nothing forced. She decided to send out an email to a few friends, and if nothing came back, then she’d drop it.

Szucs, a self-described “yes person,” caught wind of the project. She was interested.

Sweeney describes filmmaking as her “true north,” but even so, the process of showing up and turning on the camera during some of the family’s darkest times was tough. Their first day shooting was when Szucs returned to the site to sift through ashes.

“I felt horrible, just standing there with my camera,” Sweeney said.

Ultimately Sweeney settled into the role through a little reframing. She started to understand that what she was doing was adding some humanity to the statistics that pour out of disasters, putting a face to the numbers.

“You know how in films the camera will swirl around a person? That’s exactly what it feels like,” Szucs said. “Everything is going on so fast around you and you’re just standing still. You’re seeing these things happen, people are out laughing, acting normal.”

Three years later, she is finally getting back to that.

“I can go meet friends now, I can start inviting friends over, but I wasn’t able to do that,” she said. “I was always, always working on recovering our lives. Always.”

Click over to The Colorado Sun tomorrow to learn more about the fire and the film.

LEGISLATION

Two bills in the legislature could open the door for clean energy, but they arrive with baggage

The site of a proposed geothermal plant surrounding Rodeo Road and County Road 323 on Aug. 28, 2023, outside Buena Vista. There are 366 wells belonging to private homes within 2 miles of the proposed site. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)

Two renewable energy sources — nuclear and geothermal — are the subjects of separate bills making their way through the Colorado legislature. While both hold potential to diversify the state’s renewable energy options, they also come loaded with baggage that, so far, developers haven’t been able to overcome in Colorado.

House Bill 1040 would add nuclear to the list of designated clean energy sources, opening it up to more funding options.

Sen. Larry Liston, a Colorado Springs Republican and one of the bill’s sponsors, proposed a similar bill last year, and the year before that, in an annual dance to get nuclear energy on the same level as other clean energy sources, like solar and wind power.

Liston’s bill is back, this time with bipartisan support. This year, he is joined by Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Democrat from Dillon, as well as Rep. Alex Valdez from Denver and Rep. Ty Winter from Las Animas County in the House as sponsors.

It’s not necessarily partisanship that Liston has been up against, as much as the legacy of nuclear disasters like the meltdowns at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Closer to home, the lingering effects of radioactive contamination, like in Cañon City, which is still dealing with the fallout of uranium processing decades ago, and Rocky Flats, a Superfund site between Golden and Boulder where nuclear weapons were built between from the 1950s until the 1990s, still looms over nuclear energy projects.

In Pueblo a nuclear energy facility has been proposed, shot down and reintroduced as the city’s coal-fired Comanche power plant enters its final days.

Despite its tenuous reputation, nuclear power is also one of the largest sources of clean energy in the nation, making up about 20% of the U.S.’s total energy production. And the senators, along with economic development groups in parts of Colorado, see it as a viable option to address both the economic and energetic shortfalls of transitioning away from fossil fuels.

Liston is also sponsoring Senate Bill 120, which would create nuclear workforce training through the department of higher education, while Roberts has voiced his support for constructing a nuclear waste facility in his region.

The other renewable source, geothermal energy, has a much cleaner reputation. It’s a major power source for renewable energy hotspots like Iceland and New Zealand, but the upfront costs, lack of adequate equipment, and risk to investors has kept its use small scale or stalled out for decades.

But efforts to expand geothermal energy in Colorado have picked up steam over the past few years. Bipartisan bills in 2022 and 2023 paved the way for more aggressive research and development, by creating a state grant program, an investment tax credit, and a mandate for more studies about all “advanced energy solutions,” including geothermal.

Gov. Jared Polis chose geothermal energy as the focus of his tenure as chair of the Western Governors Association, a coalition of governors from 19 states and 3 U.S. territories.

One of the things that this year’s House Bill 1165 does is clarify which departments will be responsible for geothermal energy projects.

In 2023 the state’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission was rebranded as the Energy and Carbon Management Commission and, among other things, given a broader mandate that included geothermal drilling.

Right now, extracting water for geothermal uses — like heating and cooling homes, melting snow on sidewalks, or generating electricity — is overseen by the Energy and Carbon Management Commission. Otherwise, those wells (anything shallower than 2,500 feet) are overseen by the Department of Water Resources.

As more geothermal activity is expected in the state, legislators wanted to preemptively sort out what happens when those two uses overlap, and how they can stay out of each others’ way.

This would ostensibly relieve the headaches that developers in Chaffee County told The Colorado Sun their test wells would require — essentially a ping-ponging back and forth between the Dept. of Water and the Energy and Carbon Commission.

Rep. Amy Paschal of Colorado Springs, one of the bill’s sponsors, said that it’s just about “tightening up” the statues so that a geothermal industry can make its way in Colorado.

MORE ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH NEWS

A hiring freeze put federal firefighters in limbo. Here’s what that could mean for wildfire in Colorado. An executive order says no new federal civilian positions can be created and no vacant positions can be filled, except in limited circumstances. Local fire chiefs are worried that could leave the state’s firefighting force understaffed and ill-prepared. Olivia Prentzel has more.
— The Colorado Sun
The feds promised Colorado $339 million for health insurance. The money hasn’t arrived yet. The funding, which is used on various programs to make health insurance more affordable, was awarded to the state by the Biden administration Jan. 15. But the money never arrived, and now it’s caught up in the federal-state funding limbo. John Ingold has the details.
— The Colorado Sun
FEMA doubles down on its decision to not test soil as part of wildfire cleanup. As many people in Colorado unfortunately know, soil testing is an essential part of the fire recovery process, as it lets landowners know about toxin levels where they may eventually rebuild. But FEMA’s region 9, which covers disaster response in the southwest (which does not include Colorado) has decided to stop digging and rely on the top 6-inches of soil.
— Los Angeles Times
More than 150 Forest Service workers managing public land in Colorado lose jobs as part of Trump cuts. About two-thirds of Colorado’s land is managed by the federal government through various public lands agencies. On Valentine’s Day, thousands of jobs in those agencies were slashed by the Trump administration. Jason Blevins looks at what that could mean for Colorado.
— The Colorado Sun
Colorado company can’t avoid $1.9M fine for oil and gas violations. The Denver-based oil and gas operator K.P. Kauffman has been plagued with violations on its low-producing oil and gas wells, racking up 148 notices since 2020. The company took the state’s regulatory commission to court with a long list of arguments, including invoking the Eighth Amendment, which shields against excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment. Mark Jaffe has the story.
— The Colorado Sun
Interstate power lines threaten farmers’ land in southeastern Colorado. A Biden administration plan to accelerate transmission projects is meeting resistance in southeastern Colorado, where farmers and ranchers are worried the federal government could take over their land. Parker Yamasaki reports.
— The Colorado Sun

Since we’re talking about preparation, poll results released this morning indicate that only 10% of Coloradans surveyed feel that their neighborhood is “very prepared” for an extreme weather event, such as a wildfire or flooding.

The annual Conservation in the West poll by Colorado College’s State of the Rockies project surveys voters in eight Western states to understand attitudes toward water pollution, air pollution, wildlife habitats and climate change, among other things, then tries to slot those attitudes alongside topics like government intervention, public land management, housing crises and the cost of living.

When presented with 10 issues facing the state, Coloradans showed the most concern about the cost of living, with 87% of respondents answering that it’s “extremely or very serious” in the state. They also showed the highest level of concern among all eight states — Idaho came in second, with 84% of those surveyed showing extreme concern for cost of living, and Montana ranked third. Participants in New Mexico and Wyoming showed the least concern, at 76% and 72% respectively. Might be time to move south.

I’ll let you know how impressed my friends are with my vacuumed stairs. But before then, wishing you either a hyper-productive weekend or a totally restful one, whichever you need.

— Parker & John

Corrections & Clarifications

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