Many people have written about this “Iceberg of Ignorance” concept, and some have suggested that the situation is unavoidable…
Category: Opinion/Letters
EDITORIAL: Can Rural America Be Saved? Part Five
I will go out on a limb and suggest that our Pagosa Springs leadership has been paddling frantically in the same direction for the past 20 years…
EDITORIAL: Can Rural America Be Saved? Part Four
Archuleta County certainly qualifies as a rural county with fewer than 50,000 residents, and last time I looked, we were not adjacent to a metro area…
EDITORIAL: Can Rural America Be Saved? Part Three
Our poverty rate in Archuleta County is near the national average: 12 percent. That’s substantially lower than the average poverty rate for all rural counties…
EDITORIAL: Can Rural America Be Saved? Part Two
Pirsig didn’t know it at the time — none of us knew it at the time — but the nation was just beginning its own journey into a new economic landscape…
EDITORIAL: Can Rural America Be Saved? Part One
What if an overarching economic mission of growth isn’t actually what rural places want, or need?
EDITORIAL: The Old Swimming Hole, Part Three
The River Walk is, in some ways, the prize jewel of the Town’s Parks Department — the proof that our little rural town is pedestrian-friendly and walkable…
EDITORIAL: The Old Swimming Hole, Part Two
Thankfully, our Town Council is composed of non-engineers, so we sometimes hear a different perspective…
EDITORIAL: The Old Swimming Hole, Part One
When we first arrived, in late June, the water was still chilly, and not much more that chest high on an adult…
EDITORIAL: The Murder and Resurrection of the Colorado River, Part Six
Here in Archuleta County, where most of our water still flows like… well, like water… agricultural users don’t have to pay for water at all…
EDITORIAL: The Murder and Resurrection of the Colorado River, Part Five
“Then we got plastered by My Weekly Reader,” explained Reclamation staffer Dan Dreyfus. “You’re in deep shit when you catch it from them…”
EDITORIAL: The Murder and Resurrection of the Colorado River, Part Four
Agriculture uses 94 percent of Archuleta County’s water. And our farmers and ranchers have to keep using it — even if they are losing money — if they want to hold on to their water rights…
EDITORIAL: The Murder and Resurrection of the Colorado River, Part Three
USGS calculates that non-agricultural water consumption — residential, commercial, industrial — at about 2.44 million gallons per day…
EDITORIAL: The Murder and Resurrection of the Colorado River, Part Two
As noted at the beginning of this article, in 1987 electricity customers finished paying off the principal and interest for the Hoover Dam, completed in 1936…
EDITORIAL: The Murder and Resurrection of the Colorado River, Part One
“Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles…”
EDITORIAL: Fake News and Misinformation, Part Three
One of the most obvious tools of misinformation is the sharing an opinion, or a prediction, or an estimate, as if it were a “fact”…
EDITORIAL: Fake News and Misinformation, Part Two
Essentially, the developers are proposing to create a $180 million expansion of the Springs Resort… and arrange it so that the expansion pays zero taxes for 25 years… no taxes of any kind…
EDITORIAL: Fake News and Misinformation, Part One
We don’t have a clear understanding of certain government matters that might have a significant bearing on the long-range future of our community….
EDITORIAL: The Case For and Against Proposition CC, Part Three
This pattern of government expansion is not unique to Colorado, of course. Yes, we’re the only state with a “Taxpayers Bill of Rights”…