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Denver’s airport turned off filter status lights at all water bottle filling stations. Here’s why — and what’s changing.

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Denver’s airport turned off filter status lights at all water bottle filling stations. Here’s why — and what’s changing.


Denver International Airport officials confirmed what some hawk-eyed H2O fans had already noticed — the filter status indicators on more than 100 water bottle-filling stations across DIA don’t work.

That’s because DIA shut off the indicators about a year ago. The airport’s senior maintenance official said this week that the decision was made because the indicators were throwing off maintenance cycles.

The filter indicator light is disabled on a water bottle filling station on Denver International Airport’s Concourse C on May 9, 2024, in Denver. (Photo by Jon Murray/The Denver Post)

The lights went dark about a year ago, meaning passengers had no more green, amber or red indicators to inform their drinking decisions.

But Kyle Lester, DIA’s senior vice president for maintenance, says the airport has a plan to make sure it stays on top of filter changes on the filling stations — and to ensure users can check on their status. Filters are still being changed regularly, he said, and new sensors and software now being installed will help keep them on track.

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In the meantime, the dark indicator lights have prompted concerns among some travelers, including Ted Van Anne.

The retiree and frequent flyer estimates he has visited 50 airports in the last five years. One of his most frequent stops is Denver, where he flies in before driving to visit his mother in Nebraska.

“DIA is the only airport where they consistently don’t have their lights on,” Van Anne, 63, told The Denver Post. “I have walked all over the airport looking for a green light at DIA and end up never finding one.”

Lester said the new tech-heavy system will enable DIA to more closely monitor the lifespans of the facility’s water filters The upgrades, now in progress, are intended to give hydration-minded travelers more reliable information and streamline the airport’s replacement schedule at 114 filling stations spread across the airport’s terminal and three concourses.

“I am pretty excited about the transparency of it and the efficiency it will create for us,” Lester said.

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The rationale for the big shutoff was that the indicator lights no longer matched up with the airport’s preventative maintenance schedule for filter replacements, he said.

“There were some glitches in there. I would hear that from technicians: ‘It doesn’t need replacement. We just replaced it,’ ” Lester said. “But it was more that we were responding to public comments because we were off cycle essentially.”

Once installed, the sensors should cut down on service calls that pull technicians away from other work.

Enter RTI Aquantix. The tech company produced the gear and software that tracks how many gallons of water have passed through a filter. The software then zeroes in on an anticipated filter replacement date. Lester said DIA has paid about $6,900 for the system.

As of Wednesday, maintenance staffers had installed sensors at 31 filling stations, Lester said. By the end of the month, Lester is hopeful installation will be completed airportwide.

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Signs bearing QR codes are being added at updated stations. Users can scan a code with their phone’s camera to see real-time information about the lifespan of the filters, which are good for up to 3,000 gallons each, Lester said.

The scale of the airport’s filter replacement needs is the result of Lester and his team replacing drinking fountains with more filling stations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and shifting consumer demands.

“This is important to us,” he said. “Maybe we were caught off guard by the workload of changing out filters. Once we realized that’s not working for us, we quickly pivoted to go find a better solution.”

Van Anne is encouraged, but he’s skeptical of the new system.

“The light seems so much easier, and almost every other airport uses the light,” he said. “I guess we’ll see how it works.”

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Denver, CO

Over 400 flights delayed Tuesday amid high winds at Denver International Airport

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Over 400 flights delayed Tuesday amid high winds at Denver International Airport


More than 400 flights were delayed Tuesday afternoon at Denver International Airport as high winds blew across the area, according to flight tracking data from FlightAware.

There were 406 flights delayed and five canceled as of 5:20 p.m. as wind gusts at the airport hit 43 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., 70 flights were delayed and one was canceled, according to live flight tracking by FlightAware’s Misery Map.

United, Alaska Airlines, Southwest, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Key Lime Air, SkyWest, WestJet, American Airlines and Air Canada all had delayed or canceled flights.

Southwest had nearly half of the delayed flights, with 168 delays and one cancellation. United delayed 128 flights, according to FlightAware.

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Did you know: Almost $1 million in coins pass through the Denver Mint every day

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Did you know: Almost $1 million in coins pass through the Denver Mint every day


DENVER (KDVR) – From the outside, the Denver Mint may be just another two-story government office across from Civic Center Park. But inside the Cherokee Street building, staff and machinery are busy pressing metal coils into millions of coins per day.

According to the Mint, it’s one of two facilities responsible for making circulating coins in the United States – making it a huge part of the nation’s coin flow.

According to Tom Fesing with the Denver Mint, the facility produces roughly 4.5 million coins every 24 hours. Fesing estimates that about $750,000 to $1 million has gone through the facility each day this year.

That said, the Mint can’t exactly predict how much is going to be produced throughout the year as the number of coins depends on the orders the Mint receives monthly from the central bank, the Federal Reserve System, Fesing said.

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Despite the millions of dollars in coins passing through, Fesing said the coin with the lowest value, the penny, has historically had the most production.

Those numbers depend on how many coins are needed for cash transactions in the economy, according to Fesing.

“When someone gets back a cent in change, what happens to them? They usually end up in piggy banks, or in a jar, and they’re not introduced into circulation as fast as, let’s say, a quarter or a dime,” Fesing said.

While the Mint can’t predict the numbers for the end of this year, it has produced almost 1.3 billion coins this year, with almost 800 million being pennies. In 2023, the Mint produced around 5.65 billion coins for the entire year.

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US ambassador visits conflict-ridden Mexican state to expedite avocado inspections

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US ambassador visits conflict-ridden Mexican state to expedite avocado inspections


MORELIA, Mexico (AP) — United States Ambassador Ken Salazar praised Mexico’s effort protect American agricultural inspectors in the conflict-ridden state of Michoacan on Monday, a week after the U.S. suspended avocado and mango inspections following an attack on inspectors.

Salazar traveled to the state, plagued by violence linked to organized crime, to meet with state and federal officials.

Earlier this month, two employees of the U.S. Agriculture Department were assaulted and temporarily held by assailants in Mexico’s biggest avocado-producing state, prompting the U.S. government to suspend inspections.

The diplomat told the press that last Friday that Michoacan authorities had agreed to a security plan to restart avocado exports. “We are going to continue working on this,” he added.

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The U.S. said that inspections in Michoacan would resume gradually.

Mexico played down the attacks, but President Andrés Manuel López Obrador agreed to work with the United States to guarantee the safety of inspectors.

Many avocado growers in Michoacan say drug gangs threaten them or their family members with kidnapping or death unless they pay protection money, sometimes amounting to thousands of dollars per acre.

There have also been reports of criminal groups trying to sneak avocados grown in other states that are not approved for export through U.S. inspections.

In February 2022, the U.S. government suspended inspections of Mexican avocados for about a week after a U.S. plant safety inspector in Michoacan received a threatening message.

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Later that year, Jalisco became the second Mexican state authorized to export avocados to the U.S.

The latest pause won’t stop Michoacan avocados that are already in transit from reaching the U.S.



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