2013 flood dominates top ten stories of the decade in Boulder County

Dec. 29--The Boulder area saw fire and rain in the decade that is drawing to a close, with the profound power of nature grabbing some of the biggest headlines over a 10-year span that also spawned continued growth, carrying benefits as well as challenges for those who live here.

1. 2013 flood

Starting as a light drizzle the afternoon of Sept. 9, 2013, a week-long storm set up over Colorado's northern Front Range and unloaded what was in some parts of Boulder County termed a 1,000-year-rain and 100-year flood, ravaging several mountain communities, flooding basements, altering the course of some river drainages, and largely paralyzing sections of the community long after the skies finally cleared.

Four people in Boulder County were killed in the storm, that unleashed more than 9 inches of rain in one 24-hour period and 17 inches in some spots, before the clouds were wrung dry. Beyond the loss of life, damage to property also was catastrophic, with 345 homes lost in the county and 557 damaged.

An analysis of the far-ranging impacts of the flood to Boulder, Longmont, Lyons, Jamestown, Salina and more by the Camera at the five-year anniversary of the flood put the costs of recovery to that point at $500 million, with another $500.5 million needed to strengthen infrastructure hit by the flood and still vulnerable to disasters.

Recovery continues to this day, with a $31 million repair and improvement project necessitated by the flood continuing on Colo. 119 through Boulder Canyon, which is not expected to wrap up until late in the new year.

2. Fourmile fire

Before the flood, there was the calamity of the Fourmile Fire, which erupted in the mountains west of Boulder on Labor Day in 2000. With temperatures climbing into the 80s and Chinook winds pouring through the canyons west of Boulder, the blaze broke out in Emerson Gulch at 10 a.m. that day. That location, a steep, rugged and heavily forested ravine leading into Fourmile Creek, was known by firefighters as a bad spot to defend.

The fire grew to 300 acres within two hours, and by 11 p.m. that night, as dark columns of smoke drifted across Boulder County, a total of 6,000 acres were on fire, 3,000 people had been evacuated and most of the 169 homes that would be lost to the fire had gone up in the inferno. Over the week that followed, the fire grew by another 200 acres as hundreds of firefighters from across the area battled to subdue it.

Countless lives were upended by the fire, and the disaster also would help shape public policy and individual lifestyle choices going forward, as concerns over global warming boosted fears of additional so-called mega-fires, such as the Black Forest Fire near Colorado Springs in June 2013, and the Waldo Canyon Fire a year before that, as well as the devastating fires that have become commonplace in recent years for California.

3. Recreational marijuana

Burning something else became a major story that had legs throughout the second half of the decade, as Colorado legalized recreational marijuana by passing Amendment 64 in November 2012, although commercial sales did not go online until Jan. 1, 2014.

More than three dozen retail pot shops opened across the state that day, but it would be another month and a half before retail marijuana came to Boulder city limits. Longmont was slower to embrace the trend, but in October 2017 the Longmont City Council in a 4-3 vote lifted a ban on commercial weed retailers to allow up to four commercial retailers.

Statistics from the Colorado Department of Revenue showed that retail marijuana sales in Boulder County in May of this year were $1.4 million over sales during May of 2018. From 2015 to 2018, marijuana sales in the county increased by $1 million for the month of May. The increase this year brought Boulder County's total to $8.7 million, slightly ahead of Adams County.

And, because lighting a fatty was no longer something to get busted for, providing it's done within parameters set out in state law, the annual 4/20 smoke-in at the University of Colorado Boulder, which at its height drew as many as 10,000 tokers, became a thing of the past.

4. Housing crisis

Sparking up might have been appealing as one means to take the edge off dealing with a problem that has come to affect increasingly greater numbers of county residents, as home prices continued to soar throughout the decade, with many now seeing the area as being in the grips of a housing crisis.

Statistics from 2017 provided in the 2019 Boulder Community Foundation Trends report showed the median home value in Boulder was just under $920,000, while Longmont came in at $440,000 and Lafayette sat just below $600,000.

While median home values still vary greatly through the county, they are far above the national averages. The average for the state is more than $285,000, while nationally the median value is about $193,000, according to the foundation's Trends report.

As more and more people are pushed farther from their workplaces in order to find a home they can afford to live in, further down the economic scale, those experiencing homelessness in the county continue to be challenged for their very survival. When Bridge House, which provides services to the homeless in the Boulder area, held its memorial for those who had died in 2019 after experiencing homelessness at some point in the their lives, the county toll was 48 people -- twice the previous high for a year.

5. Boulder's municipalization efforts

Boulder officials kept busy on another front in 2019, one that had been a central focus for them much of the decade -- their drive toward separating from Xcel Energy and creating a locally owned municipal utility that would allow Boulder to move away from fossil fuel consumption, with a target of 100% renewable energy by 2030.

The campaign has not been inexpensive, with Boulder spending $23.16 million on the municipalization project since 2012, between actual costs and indirect staffing resources, with the 2020 budget for municipalization set at $2.47 million.

And still, its fate is no sure thing.

After efforts to obtain total infrastructure acquisition costs from Xcel Energy were blocked in court earlier this year, Boulder officials now want City Council to push back a final municipal electric utility vote to 2021.

Originally planned for 2020 until a Boulder District Court judge tossed out city litigation this fall, a ballot question in 2021 will include a dollar amount Boulder would pay for the investor-owned utility to acquire its distribution assets and three substations, along with the costs of the city building three new substations to support its own utility.

As recently as Dec. 19, Boulder refiled litigation to condemn Xcel Energy's assets within the city limits.

6. Ramsey grand jury

Municipalization was not the only story to span the entire decade.

The grand jury in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case was disbanded in October 1999 with no word as to what conclusions it had reached after hearing evidence for 13 months in the investigation into the December 1996 murder of the 6-year-old Boulder girl.

But in 2013, a Daily Camera reporter filed a lawsuit against then-Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett, seeking to uncover records of whatever action had been taken by the grand jury. That lawsuit prevailed, and in October 2013, a judge unsealed those records, revealing that both of the girls' parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, had been indicted for child abuse resulting in death and accessory to first-degree murder. However, Alex Hunter, the district attorney at the time of those indictments, elected not to prosecute the indictments, judging that he lacked sufficient evidence to secure convictions.

John and Patsy Ramsey never wavered in their declarations of innocence in the case. Patsy Ramsey lost a long battle with cancer in June 2006.

7. Elkgate

Perhaps one of the most bizarre stories of the decade is one that kicked off 2013, when residents of Boulder's Mapleton Hill neighborhood woke up to find that "Big Boy," a trophy elk that had taken to grazing their yards -- and had even briefly trapped a mailman on one residents' porch -- was dead by gunfire.

People in the neighborhood told the Camera police had killed the elk in the early hours of New Year's Day; the Boulder Police Department, however, had no reports of an elk having been killed, or even an officer having discharged a weapon.

That is because, as an investigation quickly revealed, the trigger on Big Boy had been pulled by on-duty officer, Sam Carter, who then claimed after the fact the animal had been injured and needed to be put down. He had not reported any of that to his department, although he infamously had posed for a picture with his kill.

Text messages revealed Carter and fellow officer Brent Curnowplanned the shooting, with one of Carter's messages to Curnow reading, "He's gonna die."

Carter and Curnow would both resign before the month was over. Carter was subsequently convicted of nine counts for planning and carrying out Big Boy's demise, and was sentenced to four years of probation and 200 hours of community service. He also had to serve 30 days on a work crew, pay $10,200 in state wildlife fines and is barred from working as a police officer again.

8. Dynel Lane

Crime made its imprint in Longmont as well, as many were gripped by the shocking story of Dynel Lane, who was convicted in February 2016 of attempted first-degree murder for luring Michelle Wilkins to her Longmont home the previous March, on the pretense of looking at baby clothes, only to cut an unborn baby from Wilkins' stomach, resulting in the death of the fetus and leaving Wilkins fighting for her life.

After deliberating for two days at the end of a week-long trial, Lane was convicted also on two counts each of first- and second-degree assault, an unlawful termination of a pregnancy.

Wilkins would fully recover, and the case also sparked debate over the question of whether Lane should or even could have been charged in the death of the seven-month-old fetus. Then-Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett said issues involving an unborn child are complicated under Colorado law, but in most circumstances, if a child is not actually born alive, then homicide charges are not possible. Wilkins, in interviews after the case was resolved, said she had planned to name her baby girl Aurora.

9. Firestone home explosion fans fracking fracking friction

Death converged with public policy in another top story of the decade, with a tragic house explosion in Firestone in April 2017 that killed Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin and left Erin Martinez, Mark Martinez's wife and Irwin's sister, badly burned. Mark Martinez and Irwin were replacing a hot water heater in the Weld County home's basement at the time.

The incident immediately upped the ante in already hot debate over the future of oil and gas exploration in Weld and Boulder counties, as well as the state as a whole, with calls for greater regulation of the industry and protection of those living in close proximity to new or ongoing projects.

Most notably, the state Legislature in its 2019 session, with Democrats in control of the governor's office and both sides of the aisle at the state Capitol, passed Senate Bill 19-181, which gives local governments land use authority over extraction proposals, changes the mission of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to protecting health and public safety, and raises the burden on oil and gas companies before they can force the pooling of mineral rights.

A report on the Firestone incident released in October 2019 by the National Transportation Safety Board attributed the explosion's likely cause to a natural gas leak through an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. pipeline that had been severed during construction at the home two years earlier.

The report also faulted the government of Firestone for allowing development on former oil and gas fields without full knowledge of where pipelines remained buried underground.

10. All-Boulder government at state level

Passage of SB 181 was one of the more high-profile consequences of a strong Boulder influence on state politics resulting from the 2018 midterm election. Putting the lie to the truism in state politics that a "Boulder liberal" can't win at the state level, Boulder's Jared Polis claimed the governor's seat. He was the first Jewish person and the first openly gay person to do so in Colorado.

Polis, riding his record of five consecutive terms representing Colorado's 2nd Congressional District and spending freely of his millions, was buoyed by a tide of progressive pushback against the Trump administration. His election ensures Boulder's interests are unlikely to be overlooked at the state Capitol for the next three years.

Dianne Primavera, the lieutenant-governor-elect, is from Broomfield. State Rep. KC Becker of Boulder was voted in as Speaker of the House, while Boulder's Steve Fenberg was elected majority leader in the state Senate.

Alec Garnett, a Fairview High School graduate and son of the former Boulder County DA, claimed his third consecutive term in the Legislature representing Colorado's House District 2 in Denver and also was elected as House majority leader.

In addition, Louisville resident Jena Griswold was elected secretary of state. Lesley Smith of Boulder came out on top in a four-person race for the at-large seat on the University of Colorado Board of Regents. Phil Weiser a Denver resident who led the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder as its dean from 2011 to 2016, was elected Colorado Attorney General.

Democrats can only hope to do so well in the looming 2020 election.

___

(c)2019 the Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.)

Visit the Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.) at www.dailycamera.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.