Colorado
Colorado landfill emission rules could force mountain counties to hike trash fees. Lawmakers are seeking a solution.
Local officials in Colorado’s mountain counties are warning that new state emission regulations for landfills could force them to raise residents’ trash collection fees.
The rules, which were passed last year by the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission, require public and private landfills that meet certain thresholds for methane emissions to install new pollutant control and monitoring systems, end open flare burning of methane and be equipped with biofilters.
Those rules go into effect in 2029, but certain landfills have up to three years after that to install the emission capture and monitoring technology.
Rural counties with publicly-owned landfills say the measure, while well-intentioned, will be expensive to implement, and could force officials to hike trash collection, commonly called tipping fees, to help cover the costs.
“Several of these counties would be looking at many millions of dollars to buy this equipment in order to be compliant,” said Kelly Flenniken, executive director for Colorado Counties, Inc., which represents all 64 of the state’s counties. “While compliance is something we do want to do, we are really struggling with how we best do that and how we balance that requirement with all of the rest of the requirements that counties have to deliver.”
In Garfield County, officials estimated last year that the regulations could cost $2 million to $2.5 million in upfront costs, with upwards of $100,000 in annual operating costs, though they will now need to reexamine the cost impacts since the rules have been finalized. The county’s landfill director, Deb Fiscus, said in an email that those costs will mean an increase in tipping fees, though the county doesn’t yet know how much.
The same could be true in Pitkin County, home to Aspen, where infrastructure costs could be around $3.5 million, with an additional $200,000 to $400,000 in yearly operating expenses, and Summit County, where officials are projecting $3 million in upfront costs, with an additional $200,000 to $500,000 each year for compliance.
Summit County Commissioner Tamara Pogue said the county’s landfill is already operating at a roughly $3 million deficit, and officials are now looking to borrow money from one of its enterprise funds to help cover the landfill’s costs.
Pogue said even without the new state regulations, “We have been concerned that we will already have to do a tipping fee increase.”
“As someone who has worked so hard in every way possible to try and create some fiscal relief for Summit County residents, and believes deeply that affordability is incredibly difficult for so many Summit County residents, that is not something that I feel comfortable doing,” she said.
Bill seeks to help with counties’ costs
State lawmakers are racing to pass a funding solution this legislative session.
Senate Bill 101 would allow landfill owners to tap money in the state’s community impact cash fund to help pay for new methane capture and monitoring infrastructure. The cash fund, created by lawmakers in 2022, is generated by fines on air polluters and primarily goes toward environmental projects in communities affected by air pollution. The bill would prioritize publicly-owned landfills for the dollars over private ones.
The bipartisan measure is sponsored by Sens. Byron Pelton, R-Sterling, and Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco, as well as Rep. Chris Richardson, R-Elbert County. It passed the Senate unanimously on April 20 and is now being considered in the House.
“I think we have a responsibility as a state to control methane and keep our air clean and do what we can to combat climate change,” Roberts said during the bill’s first committee hearing on April 13. “But the reality on the ground is that counties have to grapple with the costs of that.”
The bill represents a heavily watered-down version of its original self. Initially, the legislation included a provision requiring the Air Quality Control Commission to create a waiver process for operators to request more time for compliance. It also would have shielded operators from penalties for noncompliance if they could show that the reason was purely due to financial inability.
Those provisions were stripped after facing pushback from environmental groups, who felt the original bill would allow landfill owners to skirt the state’s clean air rules and could jeopardize climate goals.
Landfills are the third-largest emitter of methane in Colorado, according to state data, and the greenhouse gas is the second-largest driver of climate change after carbon dioxide. While methane has a shorter lifespan than carbon dioxide, it is also more potent, with a warming effect that is 86 times stronger than carbon dioxide over a 20–year-period, according to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.
Some of the bill’s environmental opponents were groups that had advocated for the new methane rules last year, which they said had already been negotiated with local governments and landfill operators to reach a compromise.
“The final rule is the most cost-effective means to achieve the necessary and desired results in reduction in air pollution,” said Megan Kemp, Colorado policy representative for Earthjustice, during the bill’s April 13 committee hearing.
Mounting pressures
Local officials say they’re hopeful the bill, in its current state, will unlock desperately needed funding opportunities for landfills that can help mitigate the cost impacts on residents.
Still, some are disappointed that key elements were dropped from the legislation.
“I absolutely understand and appreciate the concern of the environmental community and their advocacy,” Pogue said, “but a little more flexibility would have been fair given the budget constraints that local governments have right now.”
Pogue added that counties like hers have already invested heavily in programs meant to make their landfills cleaner. Several Western Slope communities were lauded in a report last year by environmental advocates that highlighted recycling and waste diversion programs, which it said help lower emissions and reduce pollution.
“Most of the landfills out here in western Colorado want to do the right thing,” Tyler Carvell, Pitkin County’s landfill director, said of the state’s new methane regulations. “No one wants to expose their population to more methane than they need to. But they just need time to make it happen.”
Carvell said he wishes lawmakers had provided a pathway in their bill to give local governments more time to comply as they scramble to identify funding.
While lawmakers’ bill gives landfill operators another avenue to receive state dollars through the community impact cash fund, it does not inject any new funding into that account, and counties will have to compete with other entities and projects to receive the money.
Like most publicly-owned waste facilities, Pitkin County’s landfill is funded through enterprise dollars, which usually means fees for services, rather than general tax revenue. Carvell said that will almost certainly mean raising trash fees for residents to help pay for the new costs.
“I’m not really sure without some additional funding sources that there’s a way around it,” he said.
Carvell said that while the county projects that infrastructure costs will be around $3.5 million, those estimates are in today’s dollars, and inflation will likely push those figures even higher by the time counties actually have to implement the new systems.
Another concern for Carvell is ensuring the county has the personnel to maintain the new landfill systems, given the staffing pressures already facing high-cost-of-living resort areas. With those new systems also come rules for how quickly landfill operators must respond to issues.
“Most of my staff don’t even live within an hour of the landfill,” he said, adding, “It’s going to be really hard to find qualified people and have the budget to pay them enough in a certain range where they can actually deal with these problems.”
Colorado
Colorado wildfires: Evacuations ordered for 13,000-acre wildfire burning on Colorado-Oklahoma border
Southeastern Colorado residents were ordered to evacuate Sunday afternoon as the rapidly growing Sharpe fire in Oklahoma spread across the state line, according to emergency officials.
As of Sunday afternoon, the mandatory evacuation zone included the town of Campo in Baca County and an area bordered to the north by County Road J, to the east by County Road 36, to the west by County Road 24 and to the south by the Colorado-Oklahoma border, according to Baca County Emergency Management officials.
Emergency officials announced the fire had crossed into Colorado from Oklahoma at 12:47 p.m. Sunday and first issued mandatory evacuations at 2:06 p.m.
The Sharpe fire sparked Friday evening in Oklahoma’s Cimarron County and was estimated to have consumed roughly 3,500 acres as of Sunday morning, according to a daily incident report from the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture.
By Sunday afternoon, the burn area had exploded in size to an estimated 13,198 acres, according to maps from the National Interagency Fire Center. It’s unknown how many of those acres are in Colorado.
A roughly 70-mile stretch of U.S. 287 was closed between Lamar and the Oklahoma-Colorado border for the fire, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.
Heavy smoke from the fire created low visibility and unsafe conditions on the highway, state transportation officials said.
“Oklahomans in the Panhandle are facing active wildfires, and our state is mobilizing resources to respond,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said in a statement on social media. That includes sending air support to fight the Sharpe fire, he said.
Southern Colorado was under red flag warnings for critical fire danger on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. The warnings included parts of Baca, Crowley, Fremont, Huerfano, Kiowa and Otero counties . Another round of red flag warnings was forecast for the southern state on Monday .
“Elevated fire danger is expected,” the warnings stated. “Fires will catch and spread rapidly and erratically.”
Videos posted by Denver7 of the fire showed walls of smoke stretching up into the sky from a dirt road as trucks from the volunteer-based Springfield Fire Department responded.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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Kurt Clay, assistant superintendent in the Delta County school district, was alarmed last year to learn that 138 students had left his western Colorado district for public online schools. With them went $1.6 million in state education dollars.
“That’s just funding that goes somewhere else,” Clay said. “It’s not staying here local.”
It wasn’t just about the money though. Clay and other district leaders believed they could offer something better: The flexible online classes students wanted with the added benefit of keeping them connected to district staff, school clubs, and special events like prom. That’s how the district’s online program — Empower Online — came to be last fall.
Delta County is among the dozens of Colorado districts that have recently started their own online programs or plan to soon, competing for students at a time when enrollment is declining statewide. Such school districts, which are contending with budget cuts and even school closures, are particularly wary of multi-district online schools, which they say draw students and state funding to districts hundreds of miles away.
Colorado has 44 multi-district online schools serving more than 30,000 students statewide. About half the schools get 90% or more of their students from outside their authorizing district, according to data from the Colorado Department of Education. Just a few entities authorize many of the schools.
More multi-district online schools could be on the way. While the State Board of Education unanimously rejected one in March, it will consider three more proposals on Thursday.
This group helps districts with online programs
Over the past year, a state-supported nonprofit called Colorado Digital Learning Solutions has helped many districts launch or plan new online programs. The group is not an online school. Rather, it provides asynchronous online classes taught by Colorado-licensed teachers to school districts and charter schools. Some of its teachers still teach in-person classes, and others are retired from Colorado classrooms.
The Weld RE-5J district in northern Colorado has used Colorado Digital Learning Solutions courses for years in its online program. Emma, a junior in the district, is taking algebra, English, and world history online through the group, plus four in-person classes at her high school in Johnstown.
Emma, who hopes to graduate a semester early, said she found all in-person classes a struggle because she has ADHD.
“I just have a really hard time focusing in class and being my whole present self,” she said.
“I chose hybrid because it still gives me a social aspect, but it also gives me that flexible aspect.”
Colorado Digital Learning Solutions was selected to provide online classes to Colorado schools after the passage of a 2016 state law that required increased investment in supplemental online courses. The law sought to ensure digital equity by providing assistance to school districts and charter schools that didn’t have the capacity to build their own online offerings.
Colorado Digital Learning Solutions receives about 20% of its budget from the state. Generally, school districts pay the group $250 per student per semester-long class.
About half of Colorado’s 180 school districts use the nonprofit to offer online classes — sometimes a full menu and sometimes a single course. For example, the small Lamar district on the Eastern Plains contracts with the group to provide a Latin class, taught by a Boulder teacher, to one student.
As more school districts seek to win students back from multi-district online schools — or prevent students from leaving in the first place — things have become contentious at times. Some multi-district online schools are pushing back against Colorado Digital Learning Solutions.
In a February letter on behalf of some multi-district online schools, attorney Brad Miller accused the group of causing “reputational harm” to the schools. He said the group’s promotional materials highlight the online schools’ low graduation rates without noting that their students tend to be highly mobile and behind academically.
Dan Morris, co-executive director of Colorado Digital Learning Solutions, said his group was reporting publicly available data.
Miller, who’s been involved in several high-profile lawsuits on behalf of conservative-leaning school districts, did not respond to requests for comment or to clarify which online schools he represents.
The online program pitch
Seventeen Colorado districts, most of them small and rural, started online programs in 2025. Colorado Digital Learning Solutions is working with 25-30 additional districts that want to start online programs next school year, Morris said.
Unlike multi-district online schools, online programs must have fewer than 100 full-time online students and no more than 10 from outside the district.
A key part of Morris’ pitch to districts is data. It’s in the presentation he’s given at state conferences: “Stop the Enrollment Drain: Build a Local Online Program that keeps students in-district.” He also shares detailed spreadsheets his team has compiled showing how many students school districts are losing to multi-district online schools.
That’s what convinced officials in the Durango district in southwestern Colorado to start an online program next year. They learned they’d lost more than 400 students — and about $5 million in state funding — to multi-district online schools.
Robert Aspen, Durango High School’s intervention coordinator, said they’ll start with up to 50 students, with plans to grow long term. The goal is to attract students who enrolled in multi-district online schools back to their home school.
While there are 44 multi-district onlines in Colorado, state data shows that most students are leaving their local districts for a few big names, authorized by just a few entities and often run by for-profit companies located out of state.
Byers Superintendent Tom Turrell, whose district authorizes eight multi-district online charter schools, said it’s no surprise that more districts are starting online options.
“We don’t view district on-line programs as competition,” he said by email. “Like Byers, other districts are innovating to better serve students and that’s great, that’s their job.”
Online learning is popular, not all options created equal
Educators say families seek online options for many reasons, including because students suffer from anxiety, have medical challenges, have experienced bullying, or have jobs or household responsibilities that conflict with a traditional school schedule. Competitive athletes also like the flexibility of online courses.
“I have a rodeo girl,” said Delaine Hudson, a former principal who runs the new online program in Delta County. “She spends her morning doing school work and then she’s either practicing or … she’s somewhere in the state doing rodeo.”
Forty students, mostly high schoolers, are enrolled in Delta County’s online program this semester, taking courses through Colorado Digital Learning Solutions with other students around the state. They take core classes, like English and science, and less common offerings like “History of the Holocaust.”
Hudson likes that there’s a real teacher available to message when students hit roadblocks. She checks in with students weekly, too, by phone, email, or text.
Most students are thrilled with the online program so far, she said. “And it’s rigorous. I don’t feel like we’re just pushing them through.”
Critics of some multi-district online schools question their quality. At 20 of the schools, so few students take state tests that state officials can’t calculate ratings, leaving the public in the dark about how they’re doing.
In addition, some of the biggest multi-district online schools routinely post low graduation rates. For example, the 2,600-student Astravo Academy Online High School, which is authorized by the Byers district, has a four-year graduation rate of 44%. At District 49’s GOAL High School, it’s 49%. The state average is about 86%, according to state data.
Supporters say the some multi-district online schools are helping at-risk students who’ve faced educational and personal challenges.
“We’ve taken on all of the kids who needed second and third and fourth and fifth chances in GOAL from the entire state,” said District 49 school board member Marie LaVere-Wright at a board meeting last June.
While GOAL is classified by the state as an “alternative education campus” — schools designed to serve high-risk students — more than 90 other Colorado schools, including many bricks and mortar schools, have the same designation.
District 49 officials declined to comment for this story.
This story was made available via the Colorado News Collaborative. Learn more at:
Colorado
Keeler: Colorado’s best prep distance runner? Niwot’s Addison Ritzenhein makes case with 4A record
LAKEWOOD — Her gold was in the bag.
They all were, technically. The night before she rewrote Colorado’s record book, Addison Ritzenhein, the Niwot senior who’s run like almost no teen distance runner ever has, went into her closet and pulled out a dozen state medals. As she laid them out side-by-side, all the miles started talking back.
Addy and her dad had found themselves waxing about the moments and the memories during a Friday night drive. It was the eve of her final CHSAA state track meet. The last ride.
“I want you to bring them (Saturday) morning,” Dathan Ritzenhein, head coach at On Athletics Club in Boulder, told his daughter when he saw the medals. He suggested putting all of them in a big bag and bringing it to Jeffco Stadium on Saturday.
“And then we’ll take them out at the end (of the meet). And we’re going to line them all up. I want to take a picture of you with all of them.”
Dad had a hunch.
Company was coming.
At a record pace, too.
“I wanted to have a perfect ending to my entire high school career,” Addy said after setting a state mark in the 4A girls 1600 meters in her final CHSAA event. “And I just had to remind myself that I’d done everything I could up to this moment.”
Move over, Wendy Koenig. Make some room, Melody Fairchild. The Kaltenbachs? Scooch over. Emma Coburn, Katie Rainsberger and Elise Cranny? You, too. If Ritzenhein isn’t the greatest girls prep distance runner in Colorado history, her closing kick made one heck of a case.
The resume? Ten track titles in four years. Seven as an individual. Two this weekend. Three more golds in cross-country. Mom and dad were two of the best to ever run at CU, and she’s darn near already lapped where they were at her age.
Her last race set another state-meet bar — 4:44.47 in the 1600. A final push in the last 100 meters shot her past Air Academy’s Jordan Banta (4:50.28) and bested Rainsberger’s old 4A state mark of 4:45.27, set in 2016.
“I’m lost for words,” Addy said.
Unrivaled?
Unsurpassed?
Unmatched?
“Feels like a huge wall of relief, honestly,” Ritzenhein told me as the gold around her neck sparkled in Lakewood’s mid-morning sun. “It’s just so many (emotions). A wall of emotions.”
She ran through them, anyway, just as she ran through everything else during her senior season. Addy might’ve been born on first base with mom and dad’s genetics, but she slid into third base on her own hustle, will and want-to. Ritzenhein’s favorite quote is also her mantra: Pain is temporary. Glory is forever.
Which sums up why she’d run at the NXN Nike Cross Nationals this past December with a 104-degree fever and flu-like symptoms. Yet when the Cougars needed her to post up in order to finish second in the nation, Addy saddled up and dragged herself to the end.
“She felt like the team would have won (if she didn’t have) the flu, and she ran with a fever,” Dathan recalled. “She didn’t dwell on it … ‘I have to look forward and I can’t sit here in this moment … you gotta move on.’”
She moves. She proves. She grooves. In a family of elite runners, Addy might be the most competitive in the bunch. And the most cutthroat. Little brother Jude cracked that there’s a video the family took of him, at age 5, being moved to tears when a then-8-year-old Addison kicked his tail in “Monopoly.”
She also knows when to make the grind fun. When to take a title team’s blood pressure down a few notches.
“They’d come in from where it was muddy running, and she’ll wipe the mud off her shoe and she’ll take it and put it underneath the stall of the person next to her,” Dad recalled. “Just funny little harmless things like that.”
Before she ran with a fast crowd, her dad ran with the fastest in the world. Dathan is a three-time Olympian and the American record-holder in the 5K from 2009-10. Her mother, Kalin, was a cross-country All-American at CU. When Addy wasn’t watching dad at London’s 2012 Summer Games, she was watching episodes of “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” on her mom’s lap.
Now she wants to chase those big dogs down.
“I like to dream big, and being an Olympian would be my big goal,” said Addy, who’s headed to Northern Arizona University. Then she shrugged. “And if I fall short, it’s OK. But yeah, that’s my big goal.”
Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity-dog.
“You have to dream about that if you want to accomplish it and you have to see yourself do it a 1000 times before you actually do it,” Dathan said. “And so for her to know that she’s coming away from here with probably the best career in high school that I could think of … she’s just been consistent, and that makes me feel like she’s in a really good spot of development.”
Addy’s medals normally reside in her closet. Although, because of all the awards, including three Gatorade Colorado Girls Cross Country Player of the Year trophies, it’s not so much of a walk-in type as it is a crawl-in.
“It’s almost impossible to walk in there,” Jude laughed. “There’s a shelf in there just full of clothes, packed with clothes, and there’s a shelf behind it full of trophies.”
Best make room for one more. Somehow.
“I knew (Saturday’s) game plan, and I thought that she was going to take it right away a little bit faster,” Dathan said of Addy’s final lap. “I then kind of realized (there) was about 200 to go. I was like, ‘Oh, she might run the record.’ And I was like, ‘This is gonna be a sweet way to end.’ And she seemed fully focused, still, with 100 to go. I don’t know at what point she realized it and got to really enjoy it. But I hope she did.”
A collapse into the grass after a run for the ages eventually gave way to a grin for the ages.
“Everyone wants a perfect ending,” Addy said. “But I think I accomplished it.”
With that, Ritzenhein turned west on a white heel, rounded third and headed for home, riding a smile 5,551 feet high and a shadow twice as long.
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