Nitrogen and ammonia, largely generated by heavy traffic along the Front Range and by agriculture in Larimer and Weld counties, are carried by air currents to the highest elevations of the treasured national park and deposited by rain and snow onto sensitive alpine tundra, where thin soil and delicate plants struggle to buffer the pollution.

If the contamination worsens, wildflowers could disappear and algae could bloom in alpine lakes, changing the waters’ look and endangering fish, scientists told The Denver Post.

“This issue gets worse as you go up in elevation as the sensitivity gets higher,” Jim Cheatham, an environmental protection specialist with the National Park Service’s air resource division, said during a recent meeting with Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission.

Over time, the excess nitrogen — largely from vehicle exhaust — acts as a fertilizer to plants and changes the ecosystem, said Jill Baron, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and senior research scientist at Colorado State University.

“You’re fertilizing Rocky Mountain National Park,” Baron said. “But you don’t really want to fertilize a national park.”

Baron, who has spent her career studying excess nitrogen’s effect on the park, said she has seen the beginnings of algae growing in mountain lakes because they are getting nutrients from increased nitrogen in the air.

“It’s a change from pristine conditions,” she said. “We are not at the bright green and stinky stage yet, but we are at the beginning.”

The point of creating national parks was to preserve pristine land across the United States, so scientists want to protect Rocky Mountain’s natural beauty and prevent as much human-caused change as possible, Cheatham said.

“The tundra is the primary resource the park was created to protect,” he said.

Over the years, state and federal air quality regulators have managed to reduce the amount of wet nitrogen — how the main pollutant is identified once it becomes trapped in rain or snow — that drifts into the park. But the amount of wet nitrogen falling in the park is 0.6 kilograms short of a 2022 goal of 2.2 kilograms per hectare per year, according to an Aug. 15 milestone report presented to the Air Quality Control Commission.

Ammonia pollution exceeds nitrogen

One component of wet nitrogen — nitrogen oxides — has been reduced since the project began nearly 20 years ago.

However, ammonia — which is also a form of nitrogen — has increased, according to the Rocky Mountain National Park Initiative’s 2022 Nitrogen Deposition Milestone Report. In fact, ammonia is now a bigger pollutant in the park, exceeding nitrogen deposits since 2013.

The push to clean the air in the Rocky Mountain National Park began in 2004 when the Environmental Defense Fund and Trout Unlimited petitioned the federal government for improvement. Over the years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment have created plans to reduce air pollution that damages the park’s ecosystem.

This project is different than another effort to reduce the haze that is visible from Rocky Mountain National Park and other federally protected areas. That haze is created by severe ozone pollution in the region. And Rocky Mountain National Park isn’t the only Colorado park impacted by the haze.

Every five years, scientists from the National Park Service and the state health department present a report to the Air Quality Control Commission, which establishes rules to regulate air pollution in the state. The most recent report was presented in August, and the next one is due in 2029. The latest Rocky Mountain National Park Initiative report is open to public comment until Sept. 23.

In between reports, scientists monitor the park’s air quality and work with various partners, including the Colorado Livestock Association and Colorado Dairy Farmers, to figure out ways to reduce pollutants flowing into the park.

The bulk of the nitrogen pollution comes from the nitrogen oxides produced by burning fossil fuels through driving gasoline-powered cars and trucks, as well as oil and gas production.

Rocky Mountain suffers from the same severe ozone pollution seen in metro Denver and the northern Front Range, Cheatham said. So any attempts to improve air quality through emissions reductions in lower elevations will help the park.

Scientists have recorded a 15% reduction in nitrogen pollution in the past five years, Cheatham said.

However, ammonia pollution has increased, with the highest recorded levels occurring in 2021, according to the presentation given to the air commission.

That pollution is generated by agriculture, primarily in Weld and Larimer counties. Cattle waste, particularly from feed lots, contains ammonia and fertilizer poured onto crops contains nitrogen. Overall, the number of beef cattle in the region increased between 2018 and 2022, which was the period studied, and the number of dairy cattle reached maximum capacity in 2021, according to the latest report.

In the spring and fall when upslope weather patterns carry air from the south and southeast into the park, the ammonia from the cows is swept into the mountains, said Jeffrey Collett Jr., a CSU professor of atmospheric science.

“All of these things get pushed up the slope of the mountains,” Collett said. “As that happens, the air is expanding and cooling and you often form clouds, and that results in heavy precipitation.”

Agriculture in Larimer and Weld counties generates more than $2.5 billion annually for Colorado’s economy, according to an Aug. 15 presentation by Bonnie Laws of the Colorado Livestock Association.

Preserving “icons of pristine national beauty”

Beef producers and dairy farmers want to do their part in reducing emissions and protecting the national park, but it’s a tricky balance, Laws said during her presentation.

“Sometimes when you control air emissions you could end up creating a water quality problem or you could end up with practices that increase greenhouse gasses,” she said.

Farmers and ranchers try to reduce pollutants by being more efficient with food or fertilizer that contains nitrogen. The more difficult challenge is finding ways to minimize it on the back end.

One of the tools available is an early warning system for agriculture producers that notifies them when an upslope storm is in the forecast. The producers receive emails and text messages days ahead of the predicted storm so they can change how they manage their livestock.

For example, a feedlot manager could hold off on cleaning big manure piles, which kicks up ammonia, or change their pen cleaning schedules until the storm passes, Collett said.

Some are testing whether wetting a pen’s surface ahead of a storm reduces the amount of pollutants lifted into the air. Others are looking at whether changing the nitrogen and protein in animal feed would make a difference.

“There are people working on trying to test these different practices to find ways to reduce these ammonia emissions without impacting their ability to produce beef or milk or whatever their goal is in the operation,” Collett said.

Megan McCarthy, a senior air quality planner with the state health department, said the combined efforts are slowing the potential damage to the park and the various agencies and organizations involved are a one-of-a-kind effort in the country.

Baron, the ecologist, said there are some things, such as large-scale global warming, that cannot be controlled by people in Colorado. But efforts to reduce nitrogen oxides emissions statewide not only help the park but also people who suffer from respiratory ailments.

“Catching it early rather than waiting until it’s a crisis has been very helpful,” she said. “These parks are important to the American people as well as all over the world. The lakes themselves are icons of pristine national beauty. It’s one of the few places on Earth where things are protected.

“Those things are fixable if we have the social and political willpower to do so.”

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Right-wing social media influencers and citizen journalists seized on video shared by Denver’s Fox31 television station showing armed men at an Aurora apartment complex, often adding their own captions and commentary, as it made the rounds on TikTok, X and Facebook.

Even former President Donald Trump weighed in during a podcast interview, repeating unverified claims that gangs were taking over big buildings with “big rifles” in the city.

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman appeared on national TV and posted about the Venezuelan gang on his Facebook page, contradicting his police chief about the severity of the situation, and saying the city was preparing to go to court to get a judge’s order to clear out the apartment complexes where the Tren de Aragua gang operates. However, city staff on Tuesday said that is not the immediate plan.

Aurora and Denver police have publicly acknowledged there are Tren de Aragua gang members in their cities, but they say the gang’s numbers are not large and they operate in isolated areas. Others say the Tren de Aragua presence in Aurora, a city of nearly 400,000 people, has been overhyped.

“Those stories are really overblown. If you didn’t live here, you would swear we were being taken over by a gang and Aurora was under siege,” Aurora City Councilwoman Stephanie Hancock said Tuesday. “That’s simply not true.”

Aurora officials over the Labor Day weekend contradicted each other on the scope of the problem and the city’s responses to it.

Coffman claimed on Facebook that five apartment buildings along Dallas Street are “associated with gang activity,” and told Fox News that “several buildings” under the same ownership “have fallen to these Venezuelan gangs,” repeating claims made by property management company CBZ Management that the apartments fell into disarray because of gang activity.

Coffman did not return a request for comment Tuesday.

Aurora Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky, who has been most outspoken about the gang’s presence in the city, also did not return a call from The Denver Post seeking comment Tuesday.

The mayor’s claim of a gang takeover is disputed by other city officials, who say the longstanding disarray and poor conditions at the apartment buildings were the fault of poor oversight by CBZ Management — not because of criminal acts by Tren de Aragua members.

“There’s this hysteria that we apparently have a gang problem, but what we have is a slumlord problem in the city of Aurora,” City Councilwoman Alison Coombs said.

Aurora interim police Chief Heather Morris said in a video Friday that residents are not paying rent to gang members.

“I’m not saying there’s not gang members that live in this community,” she said in the video, taken at the Edge at Lowry apartments at Dallas Street and 12th Avenue, where officers were talking with residents.

“We’ve really made an effort these last few days to ask the specific questions and direct questions in terms of the gang activity and… making sure that people aren’t paying rent to gang leaders, gang members. That’s not happening. And we’ve discovered here today and yesterday, talking with so many residents, that that is not the case.” she said. “…We’re standing out here, and I can tell you that gang members have not taken over this apartment complex.”

“We don’t feel threatened by gangs”

Dozens of residents who gathered in the courtyard at the Edge at Lowry apartments Tuesday afternoon said they have not been threatened by — or even interacted with — gang members.

“They say there are gangs and criminals, but the only criminal here is the owner,” resident Moises Didenot told a crowd of reporters.

The residents demanded city leaders hold the “slumlord” building owners accountable for untenable living conditions, including rodents and bedbugs. Didenot held up adhesive mouse traps with three dead mice stuck to them.

Aurora officials have disputed the property manager’s claims that issues at the apartment buildings are due to gangs, instead citing poor upkeep that has resulted in repeated code violations.

Tenants on Tuesday said they were more afraid of the hatred sparked by news coverage.

“We don’t feel threatened by gangs,” said resident Gladis Tovar.

Multiple people interviewed by The Post, including the two City Council members, specifically referenced the Fox31 report about gangs at the Edge at Lowry complex — featuring the video of armed men in the building — as elevating the national attention on the story.

On Aug. 28, Fox31 reporter Vicente Arenas, who had been reporting on problems at the complex, posted to social media a video that shows six men, one of whom was holding a rifle and four of whom were carrying pistols, knock on a door and go inside an apartment.

Since the footage was first posted on the news station’s website and X accounts, Fox31 says its network partners have confirmed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that the men were affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang. Efforts to reach the Fox31 news director Sean McNamara were unsuccessful Tuesday.

On Friday, Coffman wrote in a Facebook post that the city was preparing to seek an emergency court order declaring additional buildings a criminal nuisance — a tactic the city used before evicting 85 families from a building at 1568 Nome St. earlier this year. But city officials denied that Tuesday.

Aurora representatives are planning to meet with the property managers and owners before taking any official action in court, and an emergency court order is “one of several considerations at this time,” city spokesman Michael Brannen said.

“The state law is clear when it comes to a property owner’s responsibility when it comes to addressing health hazards and code violations at the apartment buildings they own,” he said in a statement. “We will continue to aggressively pursue a resolution in order to address the poor conditions impacting residents.”

A decrease in crime in Aurora this year

Venezuelan migrants have been arriving in metro Denver as they flee political upheaval, a poor economy and a humanitarian crisis. So far, an estimated 42,700 migrants have come through Denver since January 2023, according to a tracker on the city’s website, although many have moved to other parts of the country to be closer to family and friends.

While some claim the Venezuelan gang is bringing danger to the city, crime in Aurora has declined in 2024 compared to 2023, statistics published by the city show. Overall reported crime dropped 20% in the first eight months of the year when compared to the first eight months of 2023, the statistics show. The city saw declines in homicides, robberies and aggravated assaults.

Aurora police did not answer questions Tuesday about whether they have identified any instances of Tren de Aragua members collecting rent from Aurora residents, how many people have been identified as Tren de Aragua members in the city, or how many criminal acts have been connected to the gang.

Aurora city officials have publicly tied just one crime this summer to the Tren de Aragua gang: a July 28 shooting in which two men were shot and a third broke his ankle at the apartment building at 1568 Nome St.

One of the suspects in that shooting, Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirinos, 22, is a known Tren de Aragua member, police said in a statement Thursday. Pacheco-Chirinos, who uses the alias “Galleta,”  was charged with assault with a deadly weapon in connection to that attack.

Pacheco-Chirinos was also charged with aggravated assault after an incident at the apartment complex in November, Aurora police said.

Across the metro area, Tren de Aragua gang members have been arrested in two other incidents this summer: a jewelry store robbery in Denver and an enforcement action by the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff’s office on Aug. 21 arrested six people during a routine policing effort near South Quebec Street and High Line Smith Way — a slice of county land sandwiched between Aurora and Denver, spokesman John Bartmann said. Four of those arrestees were later found to be Tren de Aragua members, he said.

“We weren’t looking for them,” Bartmann said, adding that deputies found some drugs and recovered a stolen vehicle during the “proactive” policing effort. He was not able to identify the four arrestees or say Tuesday what charges they faced.

Denver police spokesman Doug Schepman said many people on social media were conflating Denver and Aurora in a “misleading” way. He said officers have no evidence that Tren de Aragua members are targeting Denver apartment complexes for “takeovers.”

Jon Ewing, a spokesman for Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, said the national attention was “fanning ugly rhetoric” during an election year. The mayor’s office is concerned that immigrants who moved to Colorado to start a better life will be harmed. But the city is also working to stop the spread of Tren de Aragua.

“We can walk and chew gum at the same time and be concerned about both of those things,” Ewing said.

Hancock, the Ward 4 Aurora City Council member, said the city is working to build trust among new arrivals so they will report crime to police.

“Our immigrant population is being targeted by gangsters from their own communities,” she said. “They often don’t report for fear of retaliation.”

“The hardest thing is getting people to tell us these things are happening. We need to develop trust with our agencies and we need APD to develop a relationship with people who came here to seek a better life.”

Aurora leaders also are worried about how the national reports reflect upon the city’s reputation.

“It definitely makes it seem like our city is not safe, that it’s not a good place to live, not a good place to do business,” City Council member Coombs said. “It also makes it seem like our city staff and our police department are not trying to serve the public.”

Denver Post reporter Katie Langford contributed to this report. 

This story was updated at 10 a.m., Wednesday, Sept. 4 to correct the Aurora ward represented by Stephanie Hancock.

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At the same time, parents whose children attend Dupont Elementary School are organizing to fight the construction of five additional storage tanks at the Magellan Pipeline Company’s terminal at 8160 Krameria St., which is across the street from the school in the Dupont neighborhood.

The additional tanks would increase the amount of volatile organic compounds, benzene and other hazardous chemicals emitted into the air.

And Cultivando, a nonprofit that focuses on community health and clean air in Commerce City and north Denver, is joining Adams 14 officials at 10 a.m. Saturday to rally resistance during an event at Adams City High School.

About 40 people gathered last week at the elementary school to learn about Magellan’s expansion plans, their environmental impact on the neighborhood and how parents and nearby residents might push back against the new storage tanks.

Parents and neighbors are concerned about how increased pollutants would impact people’s health, especially school children who play outside, and about more truck traffic in the neighborhood — another pollution source.

“Let’s do it! Vamos!” one father shouted as Wednesday night’s meeting concluded.

Magellan applied in the fall of 2023 to build the five additional gasoline storage tanks at the site. Twenty already are there, and those tanks store fuel delivered via a pipeline that is then trucked around Colorado to fuel vehicles. The company wants to expand, in part, to store reformulated gasoline, which is a special blend required from June to September along the Front Range to reduce ozone pollution.

But people in the neighborhood, including the school principal and residents who live next to the storage facility, were unaware of the project until The Denver Post reported on it in July.

School officials, environmental activists and neighbors are furious about the lack of communication from the company or from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Air Pollution Control Division, which has the authority to approve, amend or deny the expansion application.

In their application to build the new tanks, Magellan officials wrote that they would notify the neighborhood of the plans by posting signs on the front gate. When Guadalupe Solis, Cultivando’s environmental justice programs director, mentioned the signs at the Wednesday meeting and asked the crowd whether anyone had seen them, multiple people scoffed and laughed.

“That’s what we thought. That’s why we are here,” Solis said. “They are doing this because we are people of color. We are immigrants, and they are sure we are not going to say anything, that we are going to be silent.”

Annelle Morrow, a spokeswoman for ONEOK, Magellan’s parent company, said the Dupont terminal expansion was in the works when the two companies merged in September 2023.

“Whether the proposed project is ultimately approved or denied, ONEOK intends to be a good neighbor to the school and surrounding community for years to come,” she said. “We have already reached out to the school district, and it is our genuine hope that — over time — we can demonstrate ONEOK’s commitment to engaging meaningfully with the communities in which we operate.”

Determining the environmental impacts

As part of its permit application, Magellan was required to submit an environmental justice impact analysis, to determine whether the work would take place in a disproportionately impacted community.

That analysis determined nearly 45% of the residents in the neighborhood surrounding the terminal qualify as low income, 79% are people of color, 31% are burdened by the cost of housing and 12% speak limited English. The environmental impact on the surrounding community is supposed to be taken into consideration by state regulators when they review the permit application.

The parents, school board and neighbors have an uphill battle.

Magellan filed for a construction permit, which doesn’t require the same level of scrutiny as other permits, and the Air Pollution Control Division already has given it preliminary approval.

Michael Ogletree, the division director, said his staff’s work is defined by the law and they must follow it when making decisions on permit applications.

“We must approve permits that comply with the law,” he said.

In the wake of the complaints over the permit’s secrecy, the Air Pollution Control Division extended the public comment period to 60 days, instead of the usual 30.

Ogletree also said the state health department plans to install air monitors near the school to detect emissions. He told The Post that plan was in the works before the newspaper published its July 22 story about the project, but people at the school and neighborhood residents said they had not heard about air monitors until they started complaining about the expansion project.

When asked about that discrepancy, a division spokeswoman, Leah Schleifer, sent an email to The Post saying Ogletree meant monitors were in place “in the area of the school district,” and he directed his staff to explore the possibility of adding monitors near the school.

Ogletree said his agency will listen to community feedback and offer support.

To that end, the health department is planning a community listening session from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 17 at Eagle Pointe Recreation Center in Commerce City. Schleifer said attendees must register in advance at bit.ly/APCDPublicSession. If not enough people sign up, the meeting will be moved to online-only, she said. She also noted that the meeting was not about any specific permit application.

“This is not fair”

Joe Salazar, chief legal counsel for Adams 14, said “the cake has been baked,” but he still believes there is a chance organized opposition could halt the permit. The school board voted unanimously last month to allow Salazar to fight the project on behalf of the district. He said it was unusual for a school board to take that step.

The Center for Biological Diversity will join the parents’ group, Cultivando and the school district in resisting the project, Salazar said.

“We’re up against it right now and we’re going to have to fight really hard to get the Air Pollution Control Division to change their minds,” he said.

Parents who attended last week’s meeting were worried about their children playing outside, but Dupont Elementary Principal Amanda Waller said she hoped to allow outdoor playtime as long as she feels it is safe.

“I pray we are not going to have to go that far,” Waller said. “It’s not fair to our kids.”

Waller broke down in tears as she talked about the gasoline storage expansion, saying she had been caught off guard when she learned about it. She also called it “a big deal” for the school.

“I just want you to know that I love and care for this community so much that this is really painful to me and I’m going to do everything I can to encourage all of us to join together because it’s about the kids,” she said. “This is not fair. This doesn’t happen in Cherry Creek.”

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A 36-year-old man approached the security guard from behind and pointed a gun at his head at the convenience store in the 12000 block of East Colfax Avenue just after 9 p.m. Saturday, according to an Aurora Police Department news release. The two men fought over the gun, and the security guard drew his firearm and fired one shot at the attacker.

Aurora police officers treated the man who was shot when they arrived on scene but he later died at a hospital, the news release said.

The 38-year-old security guard was questioned at Aurora police headquarters, and investigators determined the shooting appeared to be in self-defense. However, the investigation is ongoing, the police news release stated.

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Searchers using dog teams found the missing 67-year-old man’s body in a scree field near the trailhead, according to a Boulder County Sheriff’s Office news release. A team from the Rocky Mountain Rescue Group recovered the body.

The man’s identity will be released by the Boulder County coroner.

The man was hiking, climbing and camping in the area of the Middle St. Vrain trailhead, near the Camp Dick Campground in the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area north of Nederland. He was supposed to return on Thursday but when he did not come home his family called the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office initiated a search after deputies found the man’s vehicle in the trailhead parking lot, the news release stated.

The sheriff’s office does not suspect foul play.

The man is the second missing hiker found dead in Boulder County in a week. A 36-year-old man was found dead after he failed to return from a camping trip in the Indian Peaks Wilderness near Brainard Lake.

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That’s the weather forecast for today and Monday across Denver and the Front Range.

The National Weather Service Boulder expects temperatures to be above normal with temperatures ranging between 85 and 90 degrees in the urban corridor and the plains. Temperatures in the mountains will be 63 to 78 degrees, according to the forecast.

The mountains could see isolated thunderstorms.

Similar weather conditions are expected for the holiday on Monday with highs hovering near 90 in the Front Range and plains.

Skies will be hazy today with smoke from out-of-state wildfires that drifted into Colorado on Friday, according to the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division’s Smoke Blog. The smoke is lingering but atmospheric conditions should help the smoke disperse, beginning this afternoon, when light winds pick up.

High ozone warnings were lifted at midnight Saturday, but the smoke blog said many air quality monitors were detecting moderate particulate matter in the air, which could affect breathing for unusually sensitive people.

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The family of Brent Allan Thompson sued the sheriff’s office in April, saying Deputy Lorenzo Lujan should have been aware of his surroundings when he chased Thompson onto the interstate and fired the Taser as cars were fast approaching.

Although the 18th Judicial District Attorney cleared Lujan of any criminal wrongdoing, Ciara Anderson, the Thompson family attorney, called the death unconstitutional during a Friday morning news conference to announce the settlement.

She criticized Larimer County officials’ handling of the death and said they created more distrust of law enforcement in the county. Lujan continues to work as sheriff’s deputy on patrol.

“Larimer County leadership from the sheriff to the district attorney were more concerned with smearing the name of Brent Thompson than holding their deputy accountable,” Anderson said. “Blaming Brent for his death was callous and dishonest.”

Lujan’s actions were against the sheriff’s office policy for using a Taser but the deputy was never disciplined for it, she said.

“Training alone will never fix a culture of bad policing,” Anderson said.

On the night of Feb. 18, 2023, Lujan pulled Thompson over in a traffic stop outside a motel for driving with an expired license tag, and Thompson gave the deputy a fake name when asked for identification. When the deputy informed Thompson that he was under arrest, Thompson fled toward the interstate.

Lujan pursued Thompson in the dark as Thompson jumped over a guardrail and ran onto I-25. Lujan followed and fired his Taser while Thompson was running in a northbound lane. Thompson collapsed as speeding cars were bearing down on him. The entire incident was recorded on Lujan’s body camera.

Lujan yelled expletives when he saw headlights speeding toward him and ran for safety on the other side of the interstate. A man driving a Ford Explorer ran over Thompson, who was wearing a camouflage sweatshirt and black pants and lying on the ground. The driver’s wife and three children also were in the SUV.

Thompson was only suspected of a misdemeanor and was unarmed, Anderson said. He posed no threat to Lujan and before the foot chase the deputy had learned Thompson’s true identity and knew where he could find him later.

Michelle Bird, a Larimer County Board of Commissioners spokeswoman, said the county settled after receiving guidance from its insurers, who will pay the majority of the $5 million.

“It seemed the best path forward at this point for everyone involved,” she said.

Larimer County Sheriff John Feyen issued a statement Friday saying, he was saddened by the Thompson family’s loss and that multiple lives were changed forever because of his death.

“Every incident provides an opportunity to reflect and grow as an agency, and the events of February 18, 2023 are no exception,” Feyen’s statement said. “Deputies are routinely faced with making split-second decisions in rapidly changing environments. We will continue to use this incident as a case study for internal discussions about complex decision-making, dynamic situations, safety priorities, and the consequences of action or inaction.”

Karen Kay Thompson on Friday described her son as loving and kind.

“Our hearts are shattered,” she said.

Thompson’s family said the settlement brought some accountability, but does not solve problems within the sheriff’s department.

“Money does not bring Brent back,” his grandmother, Karen Thompson, said. “Justice was not served. Money is not the answer. Larimer county residents, you are still paying for this deputy who did wrong.”

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“We literally are a fire station building a fire station next to a fire station between a river and a highway,” Durango Fire Chief Randy Black said. “It’s 10 feet from the existing one and they turned us down because of the wildlfire risk. It’s just ludicrous.”

After months of searching for a policy, Durango Fire found an insurance company in May that would write an affordable policy to cover the construction of its new building. But the fire department’s predicament is indicative of the struggles many Coloradans face as they try to buy property insurance for their homes and businesses.

For some, the looming crisis over the escalating costs of property insurance — if you can get it at all — is causing as much financial concern for residents and business owners as the property tax issue at the center of this week’s legislative special session.

“The availability of homeowners insurance and business insurance is more significant than the discussion we’re having at the Capitol about property taxes,” said Garry Briese, executive director of the Colorado State Fire Chiefs. “It’s going to impact every single homeowner.”

More and more Colorado property owners report that their insurance policies are becoming unaffordable or being dropped because of the risks. A 2023 Colorado Division of Insurance report that looked at rates between 2018 and 2022 found the state’s homeowners have seen their insurance costs escalate faster than the rest of the country because of wildfires and hailstorms, which are growing more severe as the planet’s climate changes.

An estimated 321,294 homes across Colorado valued at $141 billion are at risk of being destroyed by wildfires, according to CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment.

But the rising costs are impacting every property owner in Colorado as insurance companies increase rates to cover their risk when a catastrophe happens anywhere in the state. That makes people’s monthly mortgage payments go up as most homeowner insurance is paid by their banks through escrow accounts. It also increases rents as landlords charge more to cover their expenses.

The Durango Fire Protection District is building a $12 million, 15,000-square-foot fire station at 1235 Camino del Rio, next to the Animas River. It will replace an existing building that has served as the city’s downtown fire station since 1983 — a building that was supposed to be a temporary home, Black said.

“They temporarily — and the joke here is temporary — put us in the building that had been the electrical suppliers’ annex shop,” he said. “It’s outdated. It’s unsafe. It doesn’t have near the space we need.”

After years of searching, the fire agency learned the property next to the existing building was available and drafted construction plans. But buildings under construction must be insured by a builder’s policy, which covers materials, equipment and unfinished structures. It’s separate from the policies that cover existing structures.

Three insurance companies — Travelers, Liberty Mutual and Hartford — refused to sell builder’s insurance policies to the fire department, citing the wildfire risk, Black said. Others offered insurance policies that cost five times more than what the fire department had in its budget, Black said.

Representatives of the three insurers either couldn’t be reached or weren’t able to comment.

The fire protection district finally found an agent in Grand Junction who landed a policy through Central Insurance for $20,000 for a year, Black said.

Homeowners in Durango are finding themselves in the same situation as companies see the local ZIP code and deny coverage, citing the fire risk, Black said. Almost the entire city is within what is considered the wildland urban interface, meaning it is close to the high desert to the south or the mountains to the north with open space, parks and trails all over the city.

Some residents call the fire district to ask if there was something the fire department could be doing to help lower insurance prices. Others are just simply looking for help, he said.

“The big thing for us is we use that story to tell people we sympathize with you,” Black said. “It’s crisis stage for our community and the people that are trying to insure buildings. I tell people we are in the same boat you are.”

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CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment comes as insurance companies increasingly rely on technology to help them determine how big the wildfire risk is across the United States and, in turn, how much they need to charge homeowners to cover those risks while still turning a profit.

The problem, according to consumer advocates and industry regulators, is these modeling systems do not account for all of the mitigation work being done to protect properties from fires. It’s a problem Colorado Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway is trying to solve.

“What the majority of them don’t do at all is incorporate state-level or community mitigation,” Conway said. “They have been telling homeowners they have to mitigate to keep insurance affordable and available. But if they’re not going to take that into account, that’s a very big problem.”

Colorado homeowners have seen their insurance costs escalate faster than the rest of the country because of wildfires and hailstorms, according to a 2023 Colorado Department of Insurance report that looked at rates between 2018 and 2022. At least one analysis found home insurance rates increased in the state by 19.8% between 2021 and 2023.

The increasing costs are not just impacting those whose homes are at risk of burning in a wildfire. Every property owner in Colorado will pay more so insurance companies can cover their risk when a catastrophe happens elsewhere in the state. That makes people’s monthly mortgage payments go up as most homeowner insurance is paid by their banks through escrow accounts.

The increase also affects renters as landlords will charge tenants more to pay for their expenses.

Those rising rates are being driven by increased wildfire risk — a result of a warming climate — and inflation, said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, an advocacy group for consumers. But new technology that provides insurers with maps, graphics and piles of data also are contributing to enormous increases, she said.

The latest wildfire risk assessment was produced by CoreLogic, a tech company that creates risk assessments for wildfires and other natural disasters. But CoreLogic is just one of a handful of companies producing such assessments by using artificial intelligence, drones and mapping, Bach said.

For example, Verisk Analytics’ most recent analysis on the cost of home reconstruction after a disaster, which also is used by insurance underwriters, reported that Colorado had the second-highest increase in post-disaster reconstruction costs in the country, behind only New Hampshire. The cost to rebuild a house rose 9.05% in Colorado between July 2023 and July 2024, the analysis found. Colorado also had the second-highest jump — 11.57% — in rebuilding commercial properties.

“In the beginning, I thought it was climate change driven,” Bach said of rising homeowners insurance costs. “But now I believe it’s the tech factor that is equally causing a dramatic shift in the market.”

Wildland urban interface

CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment estimated that 2.6 million homes in the western United States are at least at moderate risk of burning in a wildfire, and the cost to rebuild those homes would exceed $1.2 trillion. Colorado ranked second with the most homes at risk while California was first and Texas was third, the assessment stated.

In Colorado, 68,928 properties in metro Denver are at risk along with 50,298 in the Colorado Springs area. Most of the homes in the state that are threatened by wildfire are in what insurance companies and firefighters call the wildland urban interface — in other words, houses built near open spaces or on the outskirts of mountain towns such as those that burned last month in the Stone Canyon fire near Lyons and the Alexander Mountain fire west of Loveland.

That growth around the wildland urban interface is contributing to rising insurance costs in Colorado.

Insurify, a digital insurance agent that compares quotes from more than 100 agencies, found that Colorado’s average annual home insurance rate is expected to increase by 7% to $4,367 in 2024 from $4,072 in 2023. In 2023, Colorado’s average home insurance rate was $1,695 higher than the national average.

Colorado’s continuing popularity and people’s desire to live near the mountains and foothills contribute to the state’s high ranking in the CoreLogic report, said Jamie Knippen, a senior product manager for the company. Since 2010, the number of homes built in Colorado in the wildland urban interface has increased 45%, she said.

“So as people have moved and development has increased within these areas, risk has also grown just due to the number of homes and the value of those homes,” Knippen said.

CoreLogic started producing the wildfire risk assessment in 2019 to help insurance companies figure out the risk they would take on when selling policies to homeowners in different areas of the country, Knippen said. The company also writes risk assessments for hurricanes and floods in other parts of the U.S.

The company wants to report accurate data so insurance companies and the general public understand risks, Knippen said. The risk assessment should start conversations about the perils homeowners face and how they can be taken into consideration when it comes to decisions such as buying a new house or protecting the ones people already have.

Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Association, said the various data reports generated by tech companies are really reflecting what insurance companies already know — hot, dry weather in Colorado is increasing the chances of wildfires and still people are building expensive homes in the mountains.

She disputed arguments that the various analyses cause rates to go up.

“What it really does is provide accuracy, first and foremost, for what your risk is,” Walker said.

Modeling isn’t new

Computer modeling for wildfire risk is fairly new to the industry, Walker said.

It is much more sophisticated than years ago when a homeowner would talk with their insurance agent about how far they lived from the nearest fire station and where fire hydrants were located in neighborhoods. Now, drones, satellite imagery and other data points can help analyze the slope on which a home is built, the vegetation around the house, construction materials and, yes, the distance to the closest fire station.

Those models also are helping with the science of mitigation, which is an increasingly big part of reducing wildfire risk, she said.

That means homeowners do as much as they can to reduce the chances their houses will burn in a wildfire. It involves everything from upgrading roofs to moving wooden fences farther from houses to clear-cutting dense brush around the perimeters of homes.

But that’s where the fight is centered. If insurance companies are going to ask homeowners to mitigate risk, then the homeowners should receive discounts for that work, Conway said.

So far, the risk analyses and modeling programs that insurance companies rely on are not taking into account all that work, he said.

For example, Colorado deployed a Firehawk helicopter for the first time to fight blazes that sparked this summer in Boulder, Jefferson and Larimer counties. The state’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control also has airplanes to map fires and carry water and retardants to extinguish them. Those aviation assets saved valuable property.

But the state and its homeowners do not get credit in risk assessments for those airplanes and the helicopter, Conway said.

The models also don’t take into account all the work that communities such as Boulder County have done to help reduce the level of destruction a wildfire can cause. For example, Boulder County collected $8.9 million last year through a sales tax dedicated to wildfire mitigation that funds projects such as using goats to graze on open space in Superior.

The same fight is happening in California, Bach said. It’s impossible to put the “tech genie back in the bottle,” so it is up to regulators like Conway to push the tech companies to change their models and predictions so mitigation efforts are included in the assessments, she said.

“That is the fight,” Bach said. “From my perspective as a consumer advocate, if you’re charging someone who has mitigated the same rate as someone who hasn’t, then you’re overcharging.”

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It would be the first time in nearly 50 years that Colorado would not be under federal oversight for carbon monoxide emissions that largely were caused by heavy rush hour traffic and cars made without catalytic converters. On Thursday the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission voted to remove federal oversight and repeal monitoring requirements. The Environmental Protection Agency must approve the plan.

“Colorado experienced high levels of carbon monoxide pollution in the 1970s and 1980s, and this milestone shows how far we’ve come in protecting and improving air quality for all Coloradans,” commission chairman Patrick Cummins said.

In the 1970s, Colorado Springs, Denver, Greeley, Longmont and Fort Collins were plagued by high carbon monoxide emissions, mostly from automobile exhaust. Throughout the decade the region exceeded federal standards for carbon monoxide more than 100 times with most of those violations happening during daily rush hours.

Those cities were placed under Environmental Protection Agency oversight to reduce carbon monoxide, an odorless, tasteless gas that can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea and chest pain, and can exacerbate pre-existing conditions such as heart diseases.

Colorado was able to reduce carbon monoxide in the air as more automakers installed catalytic converters in cars and trucks and by using gasoline that burned cleaner. The state also started requiring auto emissions inspections.

In 1999, the state hit the federal standard for carbon monoxide emissions but it was required to stay in compliance for 20 years. It is now 80% lower than the federal standard and has stayed that way, allowing the federal oversight to be relaxed.

But that doesn’t mean the Denver Metro area and northern Front Range are in the clear. Nor will it stop finding ways to reduce carbon monoxide pollution, which also is created by oil and gas production.

The region still is considered in severe violation of National Ambient Air Quality standards for ground-level ozone pollution and measures continue to be in place to reduce nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds — the two ingredients that form smog on hot summer days.

Still, commissioners found the success in reducing carbon monoxide encouraging.

“Hopefully, it will inspire us to tackle the outstanding challenges that we have,” Commissioner Elise Jones said. “We can see that it is possible to achieve them.”

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