Pages of the Past: Art, snow and natural gas

Feb. 2, 1978
Although newly enacted “Per cent for Art” legislation wasn’t slated to take effect until summer, the Carbondale Council on Arts and Humanities advocated for applying it to the new town hall when it began construction earlier in the year. In essence, they planned to request that the Town earmark at least 1 percent of the $150,000 project cost toward original art. (Incidentally, the building, which now houses KDNK, received a mural last year, so that legacy is being honored.)
In other news… Some Basalt and Roaring Fork High School students were getting up early four days a week to participate in a special lab course on the natural history of the desert.

Feb. 4, 1988
Snowpack was below average but above the previous year, with 9.3 inches of snow water equivalent on McClure Pass compared to 7 in 1984 (and under 4 as of last week). Ivanhoe was registering 10.1 inches SWE compared to a then-average of 11.1 (and 8.5 today — which is actually 120 percent of the current rolling average). The cover featured a Rebecca Young photo which the editor recognizes as the view from an upper window of his childhood home (but with significantly more snow on the ground and on Sopris than today).
In other news… A proposal to build a dedicated asphalt plant along Willits Lane to assist in the construction of the planned Highway 82 bypass of Basalt drew criticism from neighbors.

Feb. 5, 1998
The Roaring Crystal Alliance, a group originally formed to oppose a proposed coal-fired power plant near Carbondale and later expressed concerns about the implications of allowing a gated community like Aspen Glen, was resurrected in an effort to combat several new land-use proposals. Specifically, spokesman and former GarCo planning commissioner Calvin Lee addressed the Sanders Ranch property near Cattle Creek, which was slated for 502 residential units and a more than 700,000 square foot commercial retail center.”
In other news… Chris Tribble of Versatile Productions was chosen to participate in CBS’s coverage of the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

Jan. 31, 2008
A trio of contested natural gas leases near Thompson Creek was sent back to the drawing board after a coalition of environmental groups and local governments filed an appeal. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management had caused an uproar by putting the leases, which impacted 2,000 roadless acres, up for auction in 2004. The Interior Board of Land Appeals later ruled that the agencies had violated the Roadless Area Conservation Rule and Endangered Species Act in doing so. It was far from the end of the story, with the potential to rework terms on those specific leases but plenty of others unaffected by the ruling. “We don’t challenge every lease,” noted Sloan Shoemaker of Wilderness Workshop. “it’s the ones with extraordinary values that are at stake, and it’s those we generally prevail on.”
In other news… The Carbondale Food Co-Op opened.

From the archives of the Roaring Fork Valley Journal