ADAMS COUNTY FAIR GUIDE • INSIDE THIS ISSUE
WEEK OF JULY 25, 2024
VOLUME 36 | ISSUE 30
Colorado River officials explore water conservation credit
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Study shows ‘churn’ hurts classrooms Mobile students have lower third grade reading scores BY MELANIE ASMAR CHALKBEAT COLORADO
cade megadrought. Officials from each of the seven states in the basin are weighing who might have to cut their use and how to manage the basin’s reservoirs in high-stakes negotiations over the river’s future after the current rules expire in 2026. The Upper Basin released a proposal in March that outlined its plan to manage the river after 2026 as part of these negotiations. That proposal includes a commitment to pursue voluntary, temporary and compensated conservation programs. The June vote of the Upper Colorado River Commission aimed to take that commitment one step forward. The state and federal representatives on the commission want to design a conservation-for-credit program in advance so it’s set up and ready to go if needed.
Classroom “churn” — when students leave a classroom midyear or new students join — can have a negative effect on third grade reading scores, according to a new study that examined Colorado census and state standardized test data. The study, by researchers at the Colorado Futures Center at Colorado State University, found that higher classroom churn was correlated with lower third grade reading scores, based on data from 2019. It’s a trend that the center’s executive director and lead economist, Phyllis Resnick, suspects has ramped up since that year, as schools experience higher levels of chronic absenteeism after the pandemic and struggle to make up for lost learning. After the study revealed that finding, Resnick said she spoke to one teacher who had 40 different students cycle in and out of 20 seats in her classroom in a single year. “Every time you have a new student, you have to take a step back and assess where that student is and then integrate them into the classroom,” Resnick said. “It’s not easy to be a kid who’s bouncing in and out of schools,” she said, “but it’s also a challenge for the kids who are consistently in the classroom.”
SEE CONSERVATION, P8
SEE SCORES, P5
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BUSINESS LOCAL
The Colorado River flows between Interstate 70 and the Government Highline Canal, July 12, 2024, inside De Beque Canyon near PHOTO BY HUGH CAREY/THE COLORADO SUN Palisade. BY SHANNON MULLANE THE COLORADO SUN
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LOCAL OBITUARIES LEGALS CLASSIFIED
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Four states in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin, including Colorado, want credit for conserving water, but water users and officials have big questions about how to make it happen. Last year, taxpayers paid farmers and ranchers $16 million to cut their water use in the Colorado River Basin, but the water saved on one farm simply reentered streams, where it could be used by anyone downstream. For years, officials in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have been considering ways to get credit for that conserved water — to track it, store it in a reservoir, and save it to help the states in the future. Representatives from the four states voted in June to develop a proposal exploring the idea by mid-August.
But building a long-term program to track and store conserved water raises questions about equity, funding, economic impacts and whether the idea is feasible at all. People are concerned about the bigger picture, said Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River District in Colorado. “If we’re going to conserve water up here, and if the federal government is going to pay for that conservation with taxpayer dollars, it seems to us that storing it and using it for important public purposes makes sense, rather than sending it downstream to just encourage continued consumption of water (by downstream states),” Mueller said. Cutting back on water use is a big topic of conversation in the Colorado River Basin, which supplies water to 40 million people and is enduring warmer temperatures and a two-de-
OBITUARIES: PAGE 5 | CLASSIFIEDS: PAGE 19 | LEGAL: PAGE 21
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