The Lower Basin is doing our part for the Colorado River
Re: “California and Arizona’s water negotiators wrong to target Colorado,” Oct. 12 editorial
The editorial misrepresented both facts and intent.
In a perfect encapsulation of the us-vs-them mentality pervading the Colorado River Basin, my recent quote in the Los Angeles Times calling for all of the Basin States to abandon legal hardlines for a compromise solution was reinterpreted by the Post’s Editorial Board as “over-the-top hyperbole” and “accus[ing] the upper basin states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico of clinging to ‘their most aggressive and rigid dreamland legal positions.’”
As tempting as it is to look outward rather than inward for the solution to dwindling runoff and storage in the Colorado River Basin, that approach leads only to failure.
California, Arizona, and Nevada (the Lower Basin States) have not been sitting idly by in the face of this historic drought. Over the past two decades, collective Lower Basin actions have raised the elevation of Lake Mead by nearly 190 feet. From 2023 through the end of 2026, we are projected to cut water use by a staggering 7.5 million acre-feet, more than double the Upper Basin’s annual use.
Going forward, we have proposed annual cuts to the Lower Basin that dwarf current commitments, with those reductions expanding to the Upper Basin only if hydrology worsens. In all the proposals discussed so far, the Lower Basin has offered to take on 85% or more of the needed cuts.
Lower Basin representatives are also acting to protect the farms and families we represent, who make up three-quarters of the Basin’s residents. We cannot accept a solution in which the Upper Basin does not meaningfully participate.
We are running out of time. New Colorado River rules must be adopted before 2026. The key issue is how all seven Basin States will share in the cuts necessary to live with less water.
Scapegoating downstream may feel satisfying, but it solves nothing. The only way forward is through compromise and cooperation — not falsehoods and finger-pointing.
JB Hamby, El Centro, Calif.
Editor’s note: Hamby is Chairman of the Colorado River Board of California.
Supreme Court hearing is another case of Colorado targeting Christians
Re: “Fighting Colorado for the free speech I need and my clients deserve in my office,” Oct. 12 commentary
In her commentary, Christian counselor Kaley Chiles wrote, “My calling is simple: to listen with compassion to my clients and to walk with them through their struggles.” But, as she rightly contends, the State of Colorado has passed a law legally forbidding her to help her clients.
There was a time when Chiles would have been commended for her service. To its credit, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear her case.
In Colorado, Christian proprietors have been repeatedly targeted for exercising their free exercise of religion. Why then should it be surprising that Chiles has been targeted for refusing to “parrot a government-approved viewpoint” that inveighs against her religious beliefs? Isn’t it the Christian faith, after all, that is under siege in Colorado?
Brian Stuckey, Denver
Re: “Conversion therapy: Justices seem skeptical of ban in Colorado case,” Oct. 8 news story
The Supreme Court oral arguments focused a lot on the free speech of the therapist versus the harm done to the youth client. I am an 83-year-old gay man, who got married and had two children before I came out at 43 to overcome my severe depression. I had been programmed by my Catholic priest confessor to deny my sexuality so that I even believed it myself.
The free speech argument supposes that it is a friendly conversation between two more or less equal people, not the situation of a confused, afraid adolescent and a trained, verbally adroit adult. That is on top of a social context that is strongly biased — or the parents wouldn’t be bringing their child to the therapist in the first place. The free speech argument stinks.
John D. Ferguson, Denver
Political appointees are to blame for EPA slide away from science
Re: “EPA’s roll back of greenhouse gas finding will only endanger communities like mine in Adams County,” Oct. 12 commentary
Your urging to the Environmental Protection Aagency is no better than standing at the grave of your favorite scientist and urging them to awake! Science began falling prey to political appointees in the early 2000’s, when the division between the two political parties began to heat up to the melting point we see today.
The science that protects us from the cancer we may get 30 years later is fragile and easily upended by political appointees’ non-caring decisions. Ignoring simple science leaves us asking when will the next major waterborne disease outbreaks occur like in Gideon, Missouri, and Alamosa, Colorado? People died in both cases.
Ignoring more complex science leaves us with hundreds of years of neurologic damage to our children by leaving lead pipe in the ground. The EPA is aggressively ignoring the apex of scientific complexity: climate change, which involves all fields of science and is an existential threat to people we will never meet. Political appointees are actively quashing and eliminating these experts. Putting this in perspective, political appointees are performing the last body slam to an almost dead body of science at EPA. We might as well be asking Sauron (Lord of the Rings) for peace. They have abandoned empathy for power.
Robert Clement, Littleton
Thank you for volunteering for medical studies
Re: “Man is a scientific unicorn who’s dodging Alzheimer’s,” Oct. 12 news story
Thank you to Doug Whitney and others like him who volunteer to be studied for years and submit to physical tests. He is helping and giving and I thank God that he is willing. He is also a Naval veteran. A hero in so many areas.
Deanna R Walworth, Brighton
Where is Trump’s outrage for violence in Mississippi?
Re: “Homecoming celebrations turn deadly; eight are killed in separate shootings,” Oct. 12 news story
Trump claims to be the president who advocates for law and order. But an article published in The Denver Post: “Homecoming celebrations turn deadly, eight are killed in separate shootings” covered that in Mississippi, on separate sides of the state, high school homecoming celebrations ended in gunfire with at least eight people dead, including one pregnant woman, twenty more wounded and four in critical condition being flown to hospitals.
Sure sounds like a situation for Trump to call in the National Guard and maybe the military to quell the violence. But wait, this is Mississippi, a state that supported him and everyone knows violence and lawlessness only occur in cities like Chicago, Washington D.C. and Portland, Oregon, cities that did not support him. Apparently, when Trump took his oath of office, he did not understand it included all Americans and all states. He seems to feel he has right to seek revenge on all who did not support him, even though they are probably the majority.
Steve Nash, Centennial
Build the Burnham Yards stadium, and hurry
Re: “Penner talks early stages of stadium design,” Oct. 11 sports story
In October of 1964, I caught my first live Bronco game sitting in the temporary east stands at the old Bears Stadium. It was my first and coach Jack Faulkner’s last – the fans rolled out a large ‘Hit the Road, Jack’ sign in the second half as we were losing again – and I fell in love with the team. Been through a couple stadium moves since and hope to see the first game at Burnham Yards before I wing it. My request to ownership is don’t dawdle. I’ll be 91 in 2031, and I fear my beer is going flat.
Harry Puncec, Lakewood
Office of the Independent Monitor is doing good work for Denver
Re: “Audit: Police oversight office does too much work in secret,” Sept. 23 news story
The role of the Office of the Independent Monitor is difficult and often misunderstood. Unfortunately, headlines and articles like the Denver Post’s, “Denver’s police oversight office does too much work in secret, audit finds,” do little to improve public understanding of the complex legal environment the OIM operates in or the challenges they have already overcome in building a nationally recognized oversight model.
The Citizen Oversight Board was established to serve as an independent body charged with evaluating the effectiveness of the Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM). With access to the confidential materials the OIM handles, we conduct rigorous assessments and publish our findings in annual reports. We take this responsibility seriously and consistently urge the OIM to leverage every available resource to deliver updates that are accessible, relevant, and informative to the public.
Over the past two decades, the ordinances guiding the Office of the Independent Monitor (OIM) have been revised multiple times to strengthen its capacity to serve the public effectively. We welcome the opportunity this audit report presents to evaluate whether additional changes to the ordinance are warranted.
However, sensationalized headlines do little to advance meaningful reform. They undermine the progress Denver has made in building a robust oversight framework and fail to foster a deeper public understanding of the complex environment in which the OIM operates.
Julia Richman, Denver
Editor’s note: Richman is chairman of Denver’s Citizen Oversight Board, which oversees the Office of the Independent Monitor.
Why are we chasing the mythical Antifa again?
Right-wing sources claimed that members of “Antifa” were in the crowd that stormed the Capitol on January 6. Since then, over 1,200 people have been arrested and charged for their part in the insurrection including The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers but no one identified as “Antifa” was arrested. Was this because it was a left-wing conspiracy, or were MAGA folks looking for a Yeti?
Over the past 4+ years, no “Antifa” sightings have occurred – no FBI or ICE arrests, no word about their leaders; their organization, their funding, their internal communications, their secret handshake, etc.
Now the babble about them is back.
Like a Yeti, when the first Antifa member is caught and confesses, let’s have a press event and expose the “entire” structure of the organization.
Until then, common sense says we are chasing a Yeti …
Curt Anderson, Broomfield
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