By Ilana Newman for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

Recycling may be a given in metropolitan areas, but in many rural communities, it is more complicated. Without the infrastructure and funding to reach isolated homes outside of city centers, it falls on individuals to try and dispose of their waste responsibly. 

In Montezuma County, Colorado (population 26,248), the main issue with recycling is the remote location. Located in the far southwest corner of the state, the Four Corners region sits nearly 400 miles from Denver and Salt Lake City, and 250 miles from Albuquerque. 

The isolation means that there is no backhaul trucking to the region — which is when a commercial truck can bring a load on the return trip — which would cut costs dramatically for recycling in the area. 

However a new law signed into law in 2022 is supposed to increase access to recycling infrastructure in rural communities of Colorado in the coming years. The law wants to promote circular economies that cut down on waste and support recycling in rural parts of the state. A circular economy looks at the end of life of a product and helps it to be revitalized, recycled or reused instead of trashed. 

The Producer Responsibility Program for Statewide Recycling Act was signed into law in 2022 and a needs assessment was published in early 2023 to assess the current state of recycling services in Colorado. Currently, Circular Action Alliance, Colorado’s Producer Responsibility Organization is working to create a program plan which is due by February 1, 2025.

But many people have already been working on the ground before to manage trash and recycling for their communities. Take Colby Earley, superintendent of refuse and recycling for the City of Cortez, Colorado, as an example. “There’s no magical place called ‘away,’” he said. Once your waste leaves your home, it has to go somewhere. Many people are doing their best to make sure that waste is disposed of responsibly.

Recycling in Montezuma County happens in a few different ways. The City of Cortez (population 8,909) has a curbside pickup program, which is free for residents. But for the rest of the county, recycling is much trickier. 

In 2009, the nonprofit Four Corners Recycling Initiative stepped up to fill the gaps in recycling infrastructure for Montezuma County, with three dropoff bins around the county that, when full, get brought to the Montezuma County Landfill for processing. 

Casey Simpson, president of the board for Four Corners Recycling Initiative, said that the nonprofit was not designed to exist forever. It was created to get the grant to pay for the bins because the small towns of Dolores and Mancos did not have the funding to support municipal recycling programs. 

The Producer Responsibility program in Colorado will require companies to pay for the eventual recycling of their packaging which will fund recycling around the state. Other states like California, Oregon, Minnesota, and Maine are beginning to implement similar extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs. 

Now, Simpson is working in collaboration with the circular economy work that is happening on a state level because of the Producer Responsibility Program. One of the ways that recycling could be increased in rural areas would be to incentivize businesses that use recycled material. 

“If there was a plastic company that was taking plastic and turning it into rain gutters in Montezuma County, you would have a high demand for recycled plastics, and it would be really cheap because it would be more lucrative. You wouldn’t have to transport that plastic anywhere,” Simpson said. 

Transportation is currently a big factor for Montezuma County recycling. According to landfill manager Mel Jarmon, number one plastics are currently sent to Georgia to make carpet backing. He sends out a semi-load of these every year. Number two plastics he can only send out every 15-16 months, to California. He sends cardboard and electronic waste to Oklahoma. The landfill can only recycle what they can make money off of. 

“We’re a business just like anybody else in town. We’re not taxpayer-funded. We make our money on what we do here. If it’s so contaminated that we can’t at least break even or make a little bit, then we can’t do it,” Jarmon said.

For one load of e-waste sent to Oklahoma, Jarmon said it costs the landfill over ten thousand dollars. 

Glass is one thing that currently does not make financial sense to recycle. Jarmon said there’s no market for it close by. But Earley at the City of Cortez continues to collect it because he hopes there will someday be a market closer to the Four Corners. For now, Earley crushes the glass himself, mixes it with street sweepings, and sells it to the landfill to create cover for the landfill itself.

Earley said that it remains to be seen what impact the Producer Responsibility program will have on Montezuma County and Cortez, but he hopes it will make it easier and cheaper to recycle in the area.

Simpson has personal reasons to continue to fight for increased recycling in his rural community. “I love where I live and I don’t want to see it all turn into a landfill. I would much prefer seeing the wild and open spaces that we have and keep the landfills as small as possible.”


Ilana Newman wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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This week, four tribal nations and environmental groups urged the Michigan Court of Appeals to overturn the state's approval of Enbridge's Line 5 tunnel project.

Attorneys for the groups argued the pipeline expansion threatens the Great Lakes and disregards tribal and ecological concerns. They are asking the state to consider a wider range of alternatives to the dual pipelines that carry crude oil and natural gas liquids beneath the Straits of Mackinac.

Carrie La Seur, legal director of the group For Love of Water in Traverse City, said the aging pipelines pose a real spill risk to lakes Michigan and Huron, citing Michigan's Environmental Protection Act for support.

"We argued that Michigan's Environmental Protection Act requires a really comprehensive look at feasible and prudent alternatives to any action that would create environmental damage," La Seur explained.

Enbridge released a statement saying in part the state's decision to approve the application for the Great Lakes Tunnel Project came after a tremendous investment of time and deliberation by the Michigan Public Service Commission and staff. For nearly four years they carefully examined the complex issue and considered many viewpoints, questions, concerns and ideas.

La Seur said the pipeline project is massive and unprecedented, involving drilling more than 300 feet beneath the land and extending more than four miles. She warned it could create even greater risks and complications.

"It would be transporting flammable product. It would require a lot of very challenging maintenance if there were ever a problem. Any type of spill cleanup would be extremely challenging," La Seur outlined. "There are all kinds of reasons why this tunnel presents some unique challenges."

The court has yet to make a decision in the case. Enbridge also needs a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which delayed its review of the project in 2023. The Corps plans to release its draft environmental report this spring.


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The U.S. Forest Service is facing a lawsuit from Montana conservation groups for authorizing a major logging project in a critical wildlife habitat. The Round Star logging project, located 13 miles west of Whitefish, would cover over 9,000 acres of forest land in an area inhabited by Canada lynx and grizzly bears. Both are federally protected under the Endangered Species Act, which means they should take priority in logging plans.

Steve Kelly, president of the Council of Wildlife and Fish, is one of the plaintiffs.

"It's already been logged heavily, so we're really talking about some of the last places that lynx can even survive locally, never mind connectivity from one place to another," he said.

According to Alliance for the Wild Rockies, the Round Star project doesn't properly take into account the cumulative effects of nearby projects, which total about 42,000 acres of logging and burning and 100 miles of new roads.

A federal court judge in 2023 ruled against the Forest Service on a project in the Kootenai National Forest that similarly threatened grizzly bear habitats. Kelly wonders why the agency continues to attempt passing projects without adequate analysis of their effects.

"The court now is quite adept at figuring out who's doing what and why and applying the law. So there's really not much wiggle room anymore for the agencies to slide one by," he continued.

Canada lynx require habitat with dense forests and deep snow that also support populations of snowshoe hare, which make up about 75% of the lynx diet.


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By Yessenia Funes for Next City and Yale Climate Connections.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

In Atlanta's Cascade neighborhood, a Black church has operated a community center next door for decades. The recently renovated space is simple inside - white walls and gray carpet - but that's where the magic happens. There, the congregation runs a weekly food pantry where they feed up to 400 predominantly Black families a week. Now, with financial help from the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate law passed by Democrats during the Biden administration, the church is offering even more services - by making the center the first community-owned resiliency hub in the city.

The Vicars Community Center, which held its ribbon-cutting ceremony in July, is outfitted with solar panels and battery storage that can provide enough energy to power the building for three days should there be a blackout and no sunlight. The center is prepared to serve as an emergency shelter for locals in the face of a power outage. In the era of fossil fuel-powered hurricanes and heat waves, frontline community members need a safe place to turn when the lights go out.

"It really fit into what we're already trying to do," says Pastor Kevin Earley of Community Church Atlanta, which worked with the clean energy nonprofit Groundswell to develop the resiliency hub in its community center. "We want to be the place that people turn to in the good times and the bad."

From 2000 to 2023, extreme weather caused 80% of power outages, according to the research and communications group Climate Central. Just last month, Hurricane Helene knocked out power for some 5.5 million people in the Southeast and Midwest. Some families were left in the dark for three weeks. Thanks to federal tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, people in this neighborhood will now have a place to charge their phones, refrigerate their medicines, and plug in life-saving medical devices if an extreme weather event cuts electricity off to their homes. What's more, the center's solar panels reduce planet-warming emissions - and save them $6,000 a year in energy costs.

Despite President-elect Donald Trump's promise to slash the law that helped make the resiliency hub possible, developers don't expect the new administration's plans to affect them. Even if Trump kills the extremely popular direct-pay tax credits program, where the federal government issues payouts to entities that have built qualified clean energy projects, the team in Atlanta will be filing for the IRA credits by May 2025 for the 2024 tax year.

It would be an unlikely logistical nightmare for the president-elect's administration to attempt a tax restructuring that would repeal credits retroactively, explains Friends of the Earth climate and energy justice deputy director Lukas Shankar-Ross. However, other communities of color hoping to tap into IRA dollars to fund similar safety nets in their hometowns may have limited time to take advantage of the law's full benefits before Trump and his allies in Congress cut them.

"It is now our responsibility to shout from the mountaintops how good and impactful these tax credits are for local community and economic development," says Matthew Wesley Williams, senior vice president of community development at Groundswell. The organization partnered with the church to raise money for the solar panels and find the capital needed to own the setup without additional debt. "Organizations that support community resilience like churches, small municipalities, and rural utilities need these resources to stand firm and sustain their local impact."

The effort to create the resiliency hub came together in 2023 when Groundswell reached out to Pastor Earley after activists identified Community Church Atlanta as a key resource during local info-gathering meetings. At the height of the pandemic, Vicars Community Center offered COVID-19 tests and vaccines. It hosts meetings for local groups, as well as blood drives and low-cost health checks.

Groundswell connected the organization to $225,000 in donated philanthropic funding to upgrade the center with solar panels and batteries. The nonprofit will also soon help church leaders tap into those IRA tax credits. The nonprofit sees Vicars as a demonstration that can build support for other community-owned, small-scale solar projects, Williams says. Groundswell has been seeding similar resilience hubs elsewhere in Atlanta and Baltimore.

A majority of the residents who live within a half-mile radius of Vicars are Black, according to data from an Environmental Protection Agency mapping tool. Over half are low-income. They also suffer higher rates of asthma, heart disease, and lower life expectancy than the national and state averages. Nearly a quarter lack access to health care or the internet.

"Folks in our neighborhood who can't drive away or get away now have a place just to even charge their cell phones or get information to be picked up or to receive help," Pastor Earley says.

Churches are a perfect way to introduce Black residents to clean energy initiatives, says Markeya Thomas, the Black engagement senior adviser at Climate Power, a communications group focused on clean energy.

"All throughout history, Black people have had to rely on the church to be able to survive the world that we are existing in," Thomas says.

Pastor Earley is planning ahead to ensure the center's fridges are stocked with food and water for the day an emergency arises. He's exploring options to protect the building during high winds to make it structurally stronger. The solar panels can provide energy, but that's only if the building itself remains out of harm's way. Questions remain over how to make the space a safe overnight facility with cots and security, but the church is starting to map that all out.

Community Church Atlanta has a mission to serve the community, including those who are not of faith. Now, their food pantry can expand to feed more families with the money saved from the reduced energy bills. They fed some 32,000 people last year. In the coming years, the plan is to feed even more.


Yessenia Funes wrote this article for Next City and Yale Climate Connections.


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