Carbondale Could Be A Green Model

(Post Independent, July 24, 2009) CARBONDALE, Colorado — The town of Carbondale could become a “green” model for other communities around the country to follow, through a new federal grant program.

The intergovernmental Clean Energy Economy for the Region (CLEER) applied this week for a $300,000 EPA Climate Showcase Communities Grant on behalf of the town.

The grant would help further some of the town's already extensive efforts to cut down on its carbon footprint through the Carbondale Energy and Climate Protection Plan.

“Carbondale is well-positioned for this program due to a wide variety of policies, projects and actions already in place,” Alice Laird, executive director of CLEER, wrote in a memo to the Carbondale Board of Trustees explaining the grant program.

“If selected, it would add a valuable and inspiring rural model to the EPA's portfolio of examples,” she said.

The goal of the program is to create models of community programs, projects and other approaches that produce measurable reductions in emissions that can be replicated in other communities.

For the rest of the story please click here.

Summer Programming Wrapping Up

(Posted by Courtney - CRMS class of 2010) - It's my last week with the HS2 kids! I'm so sad! But, it's going to be a great week. Today, we took the climbing kids (both from HS2 and ACE, and Andover summer program) up to Redstone to boulder on the riverside boulders. For some of a kids, it was their second time bouldering outside. For others, it was their first. One of the traverses that we did was very technical, and only a few completed the whole way. I dropped down instead of going around a corner; I'm still afraid of heights, evidently. When I left, there was a group of four still working on one problem that we'd been working on for a good 20 minutes. I hope they got it!

Today was a great day in the classroom too. Yesterday, we ran a transformation lab with the biology kids. We attempted to insert some DNA from a jellyfish into e.coli bacteria so that they glow. Today, we were able to view the glowing colonies. They were awesome under the black light, but the smell was not that great. The chemistry kids came today with the most amusing commercials. They made soap last week and tested its efficiency Monday, so their final assignment was to sell their soap to a manufacturing company. We had to watch them all twice, everyone was laughing so hard. I guess we're all getting Slurpees!

Summer Classes For Visiting Students

(Posted by Courtney, CRMS class of 2010) - And I thought I spent too much time at school during the year! For the second year, I'm spending five weeks of my summer with the coolest kids I've ever met. They're in a program called HS2, and are inner city kids at the top of their class. And they came to LEARN! In summer! It's great to be around such motivated kids.

I'm lucky enough to help Kayo, Michael, and Gretchen in the classroom with biology and chemistry classes. We just wrapped up a week-long unit on water ecology. In conjunction with the Roaring Fork Conservancy, HS2 students and CRMS students have been monitoring Cattle Creek. The biology students looked at macro-invertebrates (bugs!) and the chemistry class looked at hardness, alkalinity, dissolved oxygen, pH, and flow. It was so funny to see everyone wearily eye the water, until they finally were jumping in by the last testing site. The biology class caught a snake and kept it as a pet, too. It was too bad we had to let him go. They finished up the unit on Tuesday night by giving very solid PowerPoint presentations to each other about their results and conclusions about the health of the Creek.

I'm excited for the week to come. Hopefully, the biology class will have some eggs to raise tomorrow. We're breeding Zebrafish to illustrate Mendelain genetics. The chemistry kids are going to make some soap. We'll see how it goes!