Hello, Colorado Sunday friends!
I hope, high winds not withstanding, that you all have enjoyed these first few days of spring. There is plenty of fresh, green evidence of the new season emerging in my yard, but also proof that this has been a disturbingly dry winter for many of us. It’s dusty out there and the trees seem to be holding back, as if they are waiting for March to prove up as the snowiest month. A gloriously large cluster of oyster mushrooms that sprouted from a soggy cottonwood stump last fall has dried into a hard piece of garden sculpture that sounds hollow when I knock on it.
I’m lucky. If the owed snow and rain do not fall, I live in a town and know that I can solve my drought problem by dragging a hose out into the garden. Water will flow when I open the spigot. Water always pours from my faucets indoors.
Until last week, this was not the reality of the people living in Westwater, Utah, the community featured in Shannon Mullane’s cover story today. You may recall that town from an earlier story Shannon wrote for Colorado Sunday, when 21 homes in the Navajo enclave finally got electricity. Turning on the power was supposed to speed up delivery of water service. The final hookups took much longer than expected — so long that when the water finally flowed inside their homes, people in Westwater could hardly believe what was happening.
Dana Coffield
Editor
The Cover Story
It’s a great feeling to have water
Thomas Chee watches the sunset while filling a 350-gallon water tank at a filling station in Blanding, Utah. Until March 18, he had to haul water to fill the 1,000-gallon cistern at his house a mile away in Westwater to keep water running for his family. (Shannon Mullane, The Colorado Sun)Sometimes, I’ve noticed, the stories that I report on take a long time to let me go. That’s the case with this story, about Westwater, a small Navajo community just outside of Blanding in southeastern Utah.
Westwater has been a part of my life since 2021. For eight months in 2022, I followed the residents’ effort to finally get electricity. I have over two years of text messages from key organizer Ryan Barton — sometimes about his cat, Lettie, but mostly about progress on a new water project meant to connect the residents to running water for the first time. Starting in July, I started making 250-mile trips from Durango through Utah’s big sky country to talk to Westwater residents about what this new utility will mean for them.
On March 13, the first home was connected to water.
It’s hard to do justice to the sheer number of barriers the residents had to get through to make this happen. For years, residents and their Navajo Nation partners have been wrangling support from city, county and state governments — while raising kids, working jobs and working through health issues. Without electricity in their homes. And without running water.
Thomas Chee, the community’s president, said their experiences have made them tough. Resilient. Conservation-minded. But they wanted their children to have basic services — and they made it happen. Other communities around the Navajo Nation are working on the same thing.
A 2,400-word article just scrapes the surface of their journey. But when words aren’t enough, listen to Chee tell his own story, or browse through snapshots of daily life as the water project comes to a close. Then think about Westwater the next time you turn on your tap. I know I have been.
As Chee said: “It’s a great feeling to have water.”
READ THIS WEEK’S COLORADO SUNDAY FEATURE
Shannon Mullane | Water Reporter
The Colorado Lens
People showed up to express themselves this past week. And how! Wearing red, carrying signs, standing in long lines in service to encouraging our elected officials to move in a certain direction or to express their political frustrations. Here are a few of our favorite images.
David Seligman, executive director of the liberal nonprofit Towards Justice, speaks at a pro-union rally Wednesday on the west steps of the Colorado Capitol. Lawmakers have been contemplating a measure that would make it easier for workers to unionize. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun) Skip Miller, the former president of Colorado WINS, the state employees union, attends a pro-labor rally at the Capitol on Wednesday. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun) A man holds a “FIRE ELON MUSK” poster during a labor rally Wednesday at the state Capitol in Denver. Musk, who has a long history of conflict with labor unions, has been blamed for President Donald Trump’s decision to fire a National Labor Relations Board member, making the panel powerless because it cannot convene a quorum. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun) Thousands of teachers and supporters of public education attend a rally outside of the Colorado Capitol on Thursday, urging the legislature not to cut school funding. Classes were canceled in some Colorado districts because so many educators called out to attend the demonstration. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun) Young students parade in front of the Capitol waving signs of protest Thursday as lawmakers contemplate cutting K-12 school funding as they attempt to close a $1.2 billion budget hole. Demonstrators wore red clothing signaling a relationship with the grassroots Red for Ed campaign that advocates for higher teacher pay and better public education funding. (Erica Breunlin, The Colorado Sun) Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders high-fives fans Friday as he enters the Bank of Colorado Arena on the University of Northern Colorado Campus in Greeley. Sanders and U.S. Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez stopped in Greeley and Denver on their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, an attempt to build populist opposition to President Donald Trump, billionaire Elon Musk and the Trump administration’s policies. (Kevin Beaty, Denverite via the Colorado Capitol News Alliance)Dana Coffield | Editor
Flavor of the Week
A Mancos motel just kitschy enough
Room 13 at the Mesa Verde Motel in Mancos. The old motel was purchased and refurbished in 2021 by two Durango-based couples without any hospitality experience, but with a combined set of business skills that have won the motel a number of awards. (Marquel Patton, courtesy of Mesa Verde Motel)A woman in a wide-brimmed rancher hat and a snake coiled on her arm greets us from behind the bed. She’s one of the many motif-heavy murals at the Mesa Verde Motel in Mancos, designed by artist Saint No and painted by Durango-based muralist Monica Louise Vick.
On the walls opposite our personal Rattlesnake Kate: a sunrise, a scorpion and a teeny tiny cowboy riding a horse into the corner of the room. There are similarly deserty details all over this 1980s property with a 1950s vibe, from the color palette (cream, teal and blood orange) to the smell of the soaps (a locally sourced fragrance made just for the motel).
There’s also lots of talk of aliens — the room key is fixed to a drawing of a three-eyed extraterrestrial in a cowboy hat, and there’s the galaxy-themed Room 13, with a mysterious black entrance and the word “GREETINGS” written upside down on the door.
The motel stops short of gimmicky, though, and is instead wholeheartedly charming.
It’s got the type of retro hipness that would fit right in on a street in Palm Springs, with enough small-town weird to keep it grounded firmly in the Four Corners. A welcome note lets visitors know that the roads in Mancos are made of dirt, so your car will get dirty, and that “it’s pronounced Main-Kiss.”
The property also has an old maintenance garage that’s been converted into a coffee shop/evening lounge, where they serve grab-and-go breakfast burritos (made with locally raised eggs), soft pretzels and coffee beans roasted down the road in Durango.
Main Street Mancos is just a couple blocks away, which meant pastries from Moondog Cafe and a (second) coffee from Fahrenheit Roasters fueled multiple slow walks through town during my weekend stay, during which I’d longingly gaze through the windows of the town’s galleries, bookshop and community printing press. Almost everything but the cafes was closed while I was there — most shops open at 11 a.m. and I’d planned to spend the daylight hours skiing Purgatory, about an hour away.
If you’re looking for a resting spot that’s a little bit outlaw and a little bit alien on your next road trip, keep an eye (or three) out for the blinking Mesa Verde Motel sign, just a few steps off Highway 160, where the asphalt turns to dirt.
Parker Yamasaki | Reporter
SunLit: Sneak Peek
“Hunting the Truth” pits a K-9 crimefighting team against a brutal killer
“Juniper had been working well for the most part — it was more at home that she was testing Maya by jumping at windows and barking. Maybe Maya had relaxed too much on the at-home dog rules.”
— From “Hunting the Truth”
EXCERPT: In this excerpt from the second installment of her National Forest K-9 series, author Kathleen Donnelly describes in detail the way a new dog and its handler work at a fresh crime scene to get a line on the perpetrator. Protagonist Maya Thompson, a law enforcement officer for the Forest Service, cultivates her relationship with the pup alongside the mystery narrative that was a finalist for a Colorado Authors League award.
READ THE SUNLIT EXCERPT
THE SUNLIT INTERVIEW: Donnelly explains Thompson’s tragic backstory from the first book in the series, and how the Marine veteran struggles to adapt after her overseas tour and the loss of a previous K-9 partner. Here’s a slice of her Q&A:
SunLit: What’s the most important thing — a theme, lesson, emotion or realization — that readers should take from this book?
Donnelly: I feel that my main character, Maya, learns to further trust herself and her abilities in “Hunting The Truth.” She is a Marine veteran who deals with PTSD from losing her military K-9 in Afghanistan. She blames herself for his death. In the series, Maya’s character arc is learning to manage her PTSD and trust not only herself, but others around her.
READ THE INTERVIEW WITH KATHLEEN DONNELLY
Kevin Simpson | Writer
Sunday Reading List
A curated list of what you may have missed from The Colorado Sun this week.
Pippin, state Rep. Karen McCormick’s golden retriever, poses in the Longmont Democrat’s office at the statehouse on Tuesday. This good dog is one of several profiled in our look at the Dogs of the Capitol. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun)? Colorado’s Joint Budget Committee called it quits for the weekend without reaching a budget agreement, but Brian Eason has been keeping track of what’s been cut so far in service to closing the $1.2 billion budget gap.
? In other statehouse news, money generated by upselling retro license plates might be swept from taking care of people with disabilities and redirected to help the solve the budget crisis; lawmakers contemplate a bill that would save the state money by covering abortion care for state workers and people covered by Medicaid; an underused property tax deferral program could be ended; and elected officials are trying to close a loophole that diverts death benefits owed to orphans to cover their foster care.
? Restaurants open, restaurants close. But how many, really, are coming and going? Tamara Chuang dug into a bunch of different data and learned the picture isn’t exactly clear.
? A Mountain Village Town Council meeting boiled over as the panel voted to begin condemning a parcel of land near the gondola base because its owner, Telluride Ski Resort owner Chuck Horning, has put up many barriers to continuing a long-standing summer concert series. But as Jason Blevins reports, the ire was about much more than the concerts.
? Most people have a good sense of the impact of slashed federal funding for research, but the story took a poignant turn at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, where people with terminal illnesses told John Ingold they feared the data collected from their experiences with diseases such as ALS might be lost.
? When Colorado’s National Women’s Soccer League team was announced last month, it came along with the promise to build a neighborhood-transforming stadium. Plans for the complex were announced and David Krause reports on plans for the long-languishing Santa Fe Yards property.
? One of the 15 wolves transplanted to Colorado from British Columbia in January was killed in north-central Wyoming by wildlife officials responding to the depredation of at least five sheep. Tracy Ross reports on what happened. If you missed her conversation with Colorado wolf experts, you can catch up on our YouTube channel.
? You read it here first: Winter squash emerged the winner in CSU Extension’s annual Veggie Madness competition Friday. Oh, and also, CSU beat Memphis 78-70 Friday afternoon in the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and will try to keep their 11-game winning streak (and my bracket) alive today against Maryland in Seattle.
Dana Coffield | Editor
Thanks for spending time with us today. We’d like to see more of you. Check out the early plans for our annual Colorado SunFest, in May this year, with special pricing for loyal members, like you: coloradosun.com/colorado-sunfest
— Dana & the whole staff of The Sun
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