December 2015

The Bureau of Land Management is hosting three public meetings to provide information and accept public comments on a Draft Environmental Impact Statement that analyzes 65 existing oil and gas leases on the White River National Forest (including leases in the Thompson Divide area), according to a BLM press release.
The meetings will run from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. They begin with a 45-minute open house in which BLM specialists will be available to answer questions with the public one-on-one. A brief BLM presentation will begin at 4:45 p.m., followed by a question-and-answer session. The BLM will begin taking oral comments at about 5:15 p.m.
The meetings will be held at the following dates and locations:
• Dec. 14, Glenwood Springs Community Center, 100 Wulfson Rd, Glenwood Springs;
• Dec. 15, DeBeque Elementary School, 730 Minter Ave, DeBeque;
• Dec. 16, Roaring Fork High School, 2270 Highway 133, Carbondale.

The Forest Service has implemented its annual winter season closure in the Avalanche Creek area located nine miles south of Carbondale in the Crystal River Valley, according to a press release.
Forest Service Road 310 (the Avalanche Creek Road) is closed to vehicles. The area north of Road 310 is closed to human occupancy and the entire area is closed to dogs.
The closures to human occupancy and dogs are in effect from until May 1. The road remains closed until June 21, under the White River National Forest winter travel restrictions. Snowshoeing and cross-country skiing is allowed on the road, but dog walking is prohibited.

The Kroger national grocery store chain, owner of the King Soopers and City Market chains in Colorado, has submitted a development plan to build a new grocery store on the central portion of the property known as the Crystal River Market Place (CRMP), located along the west side of Highway 133 and the north side of West Main Street in Carbondale.
The proposal was received at Town Hall last week, and the development application documents are available for public inspection at the front reception desk. Town Hall is located at 511 Colorado Ave.
The site of the proposed development currently is owned by Crystal River Marketplace LLC, a development group that tried to develop the CRMP project over the course of about a decade. Those plans were twice shot down by Carbondale voters, once in a 2003 vote about the CRMP, and again in 2012 concerning a second development plan called the Village at Crystal River.
The present City Market proposal, known as the Carbondale Marketplace, has been in the works for about a year and calls for development on three distinct lots, which are to be purchased by Kroger from CRMP LLC at some undetermined point. The remainder of the 24-acre property, or roughly 14 acres, is labeled as “reserved for future development.”

Carbondale’s Board of Trustees overrode objections from the town’s top police official at a meeting on Nov. 24, and by a vote of 4-1 approved a new law providing stricter oversight of domestic cats in town than the previous town code.
But the new law is not as strict as some wanted it to be, in that it does not require that cat owners have their pet cats spayed or neutered, licensed and vaccinated for certain known feline diseases.
Instead, cat owners are “encouraged” under the new law to arrange to have the cats fixed, licensed and vaccinated.
The sole dissenting vote at the trustee meeting came from Trustee Pam Zentmyer, who at one point argued that the fees linked to the new ordinance might result in cats being abandoned if they are picked up by police on some infraction.
Zentmyer was agreeing with sentiments expressed by local real-estate agent Cindy Sadlowski, who has run a volunteer organization known as the Street Cats Coalition for the past 15 years, trapping and treating feral cats in Carbondale and other communities.