News

• Floating Solar on Reservoir Number 2
• Lawmakers Tackle the Budget

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Floating Solar on Reservoir Number 2

It’s blustery and warm on Wright’s Mesa.

Siobhan Montoya Lavender stands outside the Norwood Water Commission’s Reservoir No. 2.

“Last year, the Norwood Water Commission reached out to EcoAction Partners to say, ‘Hey, we’re having all these evaporation issues. We’re having algae blooms that are expensive to treat. We have really high electric bills. We’ve looked into this very shallowly and we’ve said maybe floating solar is an option. Could you research more and tell us more?’” Lavender said.

Lavender, the climate action development director for EcoAction — a regional climate solutions nonprofit — said it was an immediate yes. She began researching grant opportunities for a feasibility study to determine whether floating solar, or floatovoltaics, would be possible on the reservoir.

There was one problem.

“All the grants that I would normally go after for this dried up,” she said.

EcoAction got creative and reached out to the Colorado School of Mines and its senior capstone program.

That is how seven graduating seniors from Golden ended up in Norwood to conduct the feasibility study under the guidance of their professors.

“They will be doing all these wonderful studies and engineering specifications for us basically pro bono,” Lavender said. “This is something that would normally cost the town $40,000 to $50,000.”

Grace Flanagan, one of the students, is studying environmental engineering.

“It’s basically an experience for us to get hands-on, real-world experience that you wouldn’t get in the classroom,” Flanagan said.

The students dispersed around the reservoir. Some collected measurements of the pond while Flanagan slid down the bank to test the water.

“We’re doing a bit of field measurements and simulations on the computer to see how much electricity we could generate from the solar panels, try and estimate how much reduction in evaporation we could get,” Flanagan said. “Also, we’re taking some baseline water quality data so we can make sure there isn’t going to be leaching, because we know one of the community concerns was metal leaching. So we’re testing for metals. The team over there is doing site analysis to make sure we can model the site to get a good idea of the dimensions and sizing, because each panel gets a float. We also have to design an anchor system so the solar panels won’t move around.”

Walter Sharp, a technical adviser on the project, said there are two primary benefits of the solar panels.

The first is reducing algae blooms on the water.

“It’s blocking the sunlight,” Sharp said. “Algae grows on photosynthesis, which is based on sunlight. So if there’s no sunlight, there’s no growth.”

The second benefit is reducing evaporation from the reservoir.

“The panels are only about two feet off the water,” Sharp said. “Any humidity that occurs is going to keep the water temperature cooler in that region. Evaporation is based on heat and wind, so if you lower the temperature and you lower the wind, you lower the evaporation.”

While the project uses solar panels, the panels themselves are at a low slope and are not ideal for energy production. Lavender said the project is primarily a water conservation effort, with the added benefit of energy generation.

For Sara Ownes, Norwood’s town manager, anything that offsets water loss using proactive measures is a win.

“We’re in a 50-year drought, and we’re going into an even worse drought season this year,” Ownes said. “So as proactive as we can be, from the town side of things, to set ourselves up for safety, to be able to continue to offer water to everybody, as well as be able to mitigate fires, is priority No. 1, quite honestly.”

Back by the water, Flanagan checked measurements. As her senior capstone project, she was drawn to the science, but the work is also personal. Flanagan grew up in a small town in Maryland where the water was contaminated, and her family has relied on bottled water for years.

“It was really cool how I could give back to a community in the sense of making the water better and more treatable for the community,” Flanagan said. “Especially as there’s a lot of water scarcity, it’s nice to see that I could do something to reduce that impact.”

The feasibility study is just the first step toward potentially bringing floatovoltaics to the Norwood reservoir. But it is an important step as the town looks ahead, takes its future into its own hands and continues to adapt to a changing water landscape.

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Lawmakers Tackle the Budget

Lawmakers in Denver are working through a key part of their job description: creating the state budget.

The budget has passed the House and Senate, with amendments, and is now back before the Joint Budget Committee for finalization before heading to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk for signature, likely next week.

In this installment of Capitol Conversation, statehouse reporter Rae Solomon outlines what is being funded and what is being cut in this year’s budget.

Julia Caulfield (JC): We wanted to do a deep dive on the budget this week. Lawmakers are working through the document, but they had to fill a big funding hole at the beginning of the session, or as they were creating this document. Can you first share a little bit about the starting place that lawmakers started out with and how they’ve been working to manage that deficit?

Rae Solomon (RS): This year, lawmakers had a $1.5 billion shortfall in the budget that they had to account for. They made up for that with two basic big moves. They made some very significant cuts to the budget, so taking money out of the budget. Then they also did some what I would call financial maneuvering, so not necessarily cutting money out, but finding creative ways to move money around or account for things differently.

Let’s start with the cuts. The biggest cuts came from Medicaid. That’s where a lot of the biggest growth in the budget came from, so that’s where a lot of cuts came from. The Joint Budget Committee, which sort of worked through the budget and made all the proposals, decided to cut provider rates for Medicaid by 2% pretty much across the board, which will save very significant amounts of money, tens of millions of dollars for the state. But there are concerns that when you start cutting provider reimbursements, some providers might pull out of Medicaid altogether if they can’t make enough money.

There were also votes to do some pretty deep cuts for services and benefits for people with disabilities and their families. Another big cut came from a program called Cover All Coloradans, which was basically it was like Medicaid-like coverage for people who are undocumented, pregnant women and children who are undocumented immigrants, so they’re not eligible for Medicaid, but this extended in Colorado Medicaid-like coverage to them. That’s not going away, but it was significantly limited and some of the benefits will be rolled back.

Those are some of the biggest cuts. There are other little cuts from, you know, really across the board across government agencies, lots of very small cuts from, you know, everywhere from just a few tens of thousands of dollars up to maybe a couple million. But all together those tons of little cuts made up a lot more of the savings that the lawmakers had to find.

Then there’s also some financial maneuvering, and the biggest moves there came from lawmakers deciding to change the amount of money that they’re required by law to keep in reserve from 15% of the budget. They lowered that to 13% of the budget, which will free up hundreds of millions of dollars.

JC: You mentioned those as some of the ways that they’re trying to save money, but obviously lawmakers are still putting a lot of money toward programs across the state. What are some of the key priorities that lawmakers are funding and spending money on through this budget?

RS: Lawmakers made it clear they wanted to maintain what they described as key services for Coloradans. They really did their best to preserve education funding, for instance. In spite of those Medicaid cuts, a lot of core Medicaid services will still be going forward.

Then a big chunk of money — this was what Democrats described as one of the hardest decisions to make — is that a lot of money will be going to fund the Department of Corrections. The state needs a lot more prison space, beds for inmates. The inmate population in Colorado is ballooning. The prisons we have are overcrowded, so lawmakers really had no choice but to throw a lot of money in that direction.

JC: You are deep in the weeds of this document, you’ve been following along. For a lot of folks in the state, it is such a big document, it’s such a nuts-and-bolts kind of thing that they might not have a huge overarching framework of what’s going on. If you think of the average everyday Coloradan and what they know about this budget, what do you think is the most important thing that they may know or are aware of when it comes to the Colorado budget for this year?

RS: I think the big theme is that the budget is very tight. Lawmakers really had to spend a lot of time balancing out every single priority, everything that their constituents think is important, and balance that out against other priorities that other constituents think are important. They had to make some really difficult decisions.

As I was watching lawmakers go through this process, I saw tears. I saw a lot of emotion. I think the thing that Coloradans should know is that there are cuts coming. There are cuts that could affect them. It’s a lot of difficult balancing of priorities. It’s a difficult year. It’s a difficult year for the Colorado budget.

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Telluride Asks for Input with Community Survey

Telluride is asking residents to weigh in on what it’s like to live, raise children and retire in the mountain town.

The 2026 Community Survey poses questions about the town’s economic health, public safety and availability of affordable, quality housing.

Town officials recently launched the survey to gather feedback on government services and overall quality of life, while also identifying priorities for the future.

The survey covers topics including the economy, mobility, community design, utilities, safety, the natural environment and overall livability.

Officials say the results will help inform town goals, objectives and budget allocations.

The survey is open through May 21 and is available at bit.ly/totsurvey26.

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Holding Space for Grief

Grief takes many forms, sometimes sharp and sometimes arriving in waves.

The Wilkinson Public Library will host a four-week series exploring grief through art.

Daniel Kanow, a certified grief educator and artist, will facilitate the “Holding Space” series, using guided, low-pressure creative activities to support reflection, grounding and self-expression.

Library officials say the program is not therapy, but will be conducted with care, respect and an understanding that grief and trauma affect people differently.

No art experience is required. All materials will be provided, and participants are encouraged to attend all sessions.

The series begins Sunday, April 25, from 1 to 3 p.m. and will run weekly through May 17. Registration is available at telluridelibrary.org.

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CPW Considers Bag Limit for Beaver Hunting

CColorado Parks and Wildlife has a new plan focused on supporting beaver populations.

But as Aspen Public Radio’s Michael Fanelli reports for Rocky Mountain Community Radio, it could, in some cases, involve killing more beavers.

The goal of CPW’s management strategy is to sustain and increase the presence of beavers to maximize their ecosystem benefits.

Beavers can make landscapes more resilient to dry years like this one.

But CPW communications officer Joey Livingston said the new plan does not mean more beavers everywhere.

“The goal isn’t just to make sure there’s more beavers out there. It’s to use wise conservation and management. And that could mean reducing the population in some areas where they’re causing, you know, damage,” Livingston said.

Livingston said a key part of the plan is to collect data about the most suitable areas of the state for beaver habitat.

CPW will likely then limit how many beavers can be hunted in those priority areas and focus hunting in places where they are in conflict with humans.

The plan also aims to increase nonlethal deterrence and relocate problematic beavers to priority habitats.