Steve Pomerance

To better understand how the city of Boulder should fund our transportation budget shortfall, it’s helpful to look at how we pay for water here in Colorado. Water systems are funded through tap fees paid by new development, and user fees (water rates) paid by all system users. Tap fees pay for water rights, reservoirs, treatment plants, etc. needed to serve new development to prevent lowering of the level of service (LOS). Water rates pay for the electricity, chemicals, personnel, etc. needed to deliver water. Water rates can also correct for the inevitable inaccuracies in tap fees, which are set based on expected use rather than actual consumption. We accept paying for our own water, and indirectly paying for the water that we use at restaurants, golf courses, etc., because we understand that these fees pay for the costs of a limited commodity in a reasonable and equitable way. We treat public transportation facilities in a completely different manner. Only about 20-25 percent of ...

An estimated 2.4 million pounds of CO2 are spewed into our planet’s atmosphere every  second , a billion tons more than last year. Worldwide emission levels are over 50 percent higher than in 1990, per the report from the Global Carbon Project. If we don’t do something radical very soon, we could be faced with runaway global warming, as methane, also a potent greenhouse gas (GHG) escapes from melting arctic permafrost. Even without that, global warming above tolerable levels and frequent extreme weather events could make the Dust Bowl of the ’30s and Hurricane Sandy into regularly occurring disasters. We need to commit to addressing this issue, which is far more important in the long run than the U.S. budget-and-debt crisis. Colorado’s current rules are far too weak. The “30 percent by 2020” renewable energy requirement is actually closer to 26 percent, because in-state renewables get a 1.25 multiplier. And the target for rural electric co-ops and municipal utilities is only ...