Letters – June 5, 2025

MVDS gratitude
Many thanks to the generous members of our community who supported Mountain Valley Developmental Services (MVDS) at our Greenhouse Open House & Picnic on May 17. We had the best first day of sales since the Mountain Valley Greenhouse opened in 1984 as a year-round commercial greenhouse selling annual and perennial bedding plants, house plants, herbs and vegetables to retail and business customers. It was great fun, too, to have many of our intellectually and developmentally disabled participants at the sale and picnic. Because of our adult job-training program, Greenhouse staff members are also participants who engage in meaningful work in a nurturing environment while earning a respectable wage. The plants our supporters hold in their hands today literally germinated from seeds to hardy plants thanks to the skill and loving care provided by our MVDS employees and volunteers, and now they will flourish in your summer gardens!
We are open for business Monday through Friday, 9am to 3pm, at 700 Mt. Sopris Drive in Glenwood Springs.
Sara Sims
MVDS

Protect libraries and children
I’m writing to voice concern over the exclusively conservative board appointments and decisions recently made by the Garfield Board of County Commissioners concerning our public libraries.
The history of libraries is long, beginning with the Ebla Library, located in present day Syria between 2500 – 2250 BC. This library had stone tablets containing written documents. Libraries have grown and changed since then, with Benjamin Franklin, who founded the first library in America in 1731, being quoted as having said, “Libraries improved the general conversation of the Americans and made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries.”
After centuries of evolution and change, libraries in the 21st century offer the public a place to access computers and to read, write, study and learn. The scope of humanity today is broad, containing a full spectrum of thoughts and behaviors. Freedom of speech allows almost anything to be written, which presents the challenge of managing that right in a country as divided as America is in 2025.
It’s imperative that library boards in America represent our full, diverse spectrum. Also, libraries must protect children from books inappropriate for their level of maturity. They do this NOT by banning or blocking books with perspectives that don’t match theirs, but rather by sorting and cataloging books. A library board that dictates books that may or may not be offered violates the First Amendment of the Constitution. For the protection of children, what matters is not which books are there, but how they are accessed.
The Carbondale Public Library has careful control over the children’s section. It is physically and spatially removed from access to adult books. Visit the library to see. And please, encourage our county commissioners to appoint a board that represents our entire, diverse community and not stack it strongly towards the conservative dimension, as is now the case.
Nancy and Wolf Gensch
Carbondale

Nutrient Farm PUD
Efforts to protect Canyon Creek from the Nutrient Farm PUD proposal, and to seek answers to many questions from the recent planning commission meeting are ongoing. It takes incredible diligence, enormous resources and focused time and commitment to participate in our democratic process; unfortunately, without this, many decisions that will permanently affect all of us can happen without prior awareness. Our power to uphold a sustainable quality of life here in our valley will require building relationships, establishing trust and working together with transparency and commitment.
Countless neighbors have been embedded in this community for generations and are aware of its history. The commissioners’ questions included many concerns that have yet to be addressed. These questions and others remain unanswered, partially because of the applicant’s lack of communication and collaboration, even when promised.
Many neighbors have requested assurance that the water would be used for an authentic organic farm, not bottled or made into a branded beverage. Many have asked that animal processing plans be further defined and that the presented land-use tables be addressed through a thorough review.
“Agreeing to” conditions without providing a plan caused many neighbors to speak about trust and an assurance that there would be follow-through. By agreeing to water conditions 4, 5 and 6, the applicant also “agreed” to potentially force our community into an expensive and ongoing court battle, while claiming to be able to proceed under current zoning conditions and uncertain water rights.
When water truly is life, you know it, you interact with it, you understand it and you tend it. We value this living creek and we protect it. We can testify to its movement because we know when and why and how it flowed, and when and why and how it didn’t.
The old Vulcan Ditch North hasn’t been maintained for decades. A new draw from Canyon Creek is not only unnecessary, but it would also harm other water-rights users, the fragile ecosystem and homeowners throughout the watershed.
A simple agreement to use alternative diversion points on the Colorado and through alternate wells in perpetuity would have reassured the community that the intention to build an organic farm benefiting private owners would not harm an existing protected ecosystem that many of us depend upon in an already vulnerable watershed.
If we truly love and cherish our water, we will work to become good neighbors. I hope we will take the slow approach to a long game and work to secure the details that reassure our community that we indeed will work together.
In the meantime, I hope we will honor the sustainability of our most precious resources; not just irreplaceable land, water and air, but the deep historic roots of the people who lived here for generations and those who lived lightly upon the land before. We need each other now, and we will certainly need each other in the future.
Sonja Linman
Friend of Canyon Creek

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