Daily Digest
Ty's Take The city council moved fast on this one, and they had to. Once word got out that tech companies were sniffing around the valley for places to park their server farms and battery operations, people started doing the math on power consumption and water use, and
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The Rio Grande commissioners made the right call this week, at least for now, telling the data center people no thanks. You can understand the pitch, sure: jobs, tax base, promise of progress in a valley that's seen plenty of hard times. But this
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The fact that we've got a 5K fun run scheduled right alongside a xeriscaping workshop says something true about living at 7,500 feet in a high desert. We're a people who move, who show up, who care about our fitness and
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Record heat in August isn't new for the San Luis Valley, but when you're sitting at 10,000 feet and the thermometer keeps climbing past what anybody can remember, it changes how you think about water and cattle and whether the wells
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Bob Steffens made it to 82 in a place that doesn't give up its years easy, which says something about the man. He was here through the dry cycles and the wet ones, through the university's ups and downs, through all the
Daily Digest
Ty's Take There's something about the high altitude up here that sorts people quick. Your lungs know it the first time you step off the plane, and if you've got any sense, you figure out fast whether you're staying or heading back
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The week's good news runs straight through the heart of what makes this valley work: somebody's doing the job right, somebody's remembering the history that got us here, somebody's ready when things go sideways. The heat wave that
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The county commissioners are putting term limits on the DA ballot this fall, which means come November, voters here get to weigh in on how long one person should hold that office. It's the kind of local governance question that doesn't make
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The farmers market coming back to town this week is about more than tomatoes and squash, though Lord knows we need both after this dry stretch. It's the first real signal that summer's actually here in the valley, the one weekend morning
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The mural going up downtown isn't just paint on a wall, which anybody who's spent five minutes in the San Luis Valley knows matters plenty around here. Water's been the argument and the lifeline both, the thing we fight over
Daily Digest
Ty's Take When a U.S. Senator shows up in farm country, folks tend to keep their expectations measured, but Hickenlooper walking into conversations with actual growers instead of just making speeches says something about how tight things have gotten out here. Water fights never really end in
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The La Sierra fence study finally landed on the table, and anybody who's watched this valley for five minutes knows what that means: another round of hard talk between landowners and the folks worried about wildlife corridors. These aren't abstract arguments up