Dear Editor,

Recently, Boulder Reporting Lab published an article, detailing the City of Boulder's concerns about outages. With recognition of geographic-specific matters, we are all impacted by Xcel Energy's policies, and we'd like to submit the following response as native and long-term mountain residents deeply concerned about wildfires and their correlation to downed powerlines.

For more than 30 years this country has ignored an avalanche of scientific warnings about disasters coming down the tracks with climate change. Massive, prolonged climate change-induced wind storms start wildfires when power lines arc and/or come down, and there is no way to prevent all arcing without de-energizing overhead lines. This has already happened in Marshall and a dozen other places across America.

The Boulder City Council needs to stop whining, get with the times, recognize that from now on there WILL be necessarily extended power outages, and support the hardening of facilities like medical units with retrofits including backup generators.

Expensive? Difficult? Yes. But this is the REAL price of burning fossil fuels while acting as if God’s in His Place and All’s Well With the World, Inside the Boulder Bubble. Having ignored three decades of warnings, we need to stop acting like crybabies on the deck of the Titanic who aren’t getting our evening caviar, and start looking for things at hand that can act as flotation devices. 

Sincerely, 

Denise Boehler and Frank Sanders

Boulder County