Assessment needed

What the Distel and Tull property switch requires is a phase two environmental assessment. That is a prudent move by City Council before ever considering any such land swap. … Boulder County, as you know, as we all know, is very environmentally conscious, so they want to shove off this composting facility onto Longmont city land, which is limited, and this is an incorrect method of establishing a compost system. But, we’re being pushed by those composters who determined that we have to have composting in Longmont, pushed us into it and then pulled back all the good things that we thought we were going to be able to compost. Please be very wary, Council. You got to do the appropriate, responsible thing, and give it some more thought and investigation, please.

Coal-fired plant

Requiring a coal fired power plant to remain available to run and running it are two different things. A good analogy is that the SUV you leave in your driveway while you bike to work isn’t adding to air emissions that day. Power plants run based on the moment by moment marginal cost of operation. Available wind and solar generation will always speed out coal generation on that basis, and when natural gas is cheap, it also beats out coal fired generation, so that still open coal plant may just sit around simply as a rarely run maintenance cost burden on ratepayers.