About 30 people attended the Montezuma County Commissioners’ quarterly town hall meeting in Lewis on Tuesday night, and the meeting had only a few tense moments.
One moment came when Lana Waters, an applicant for a high-impact permit to build a hot-mix asphalt plant north of Cortez, admonished Commissioner Larry Don Suckla for voicing his opposition to the plant before its public hearing on May 8th. Other moments ocurred when some county residents urged the commissioners to support more solar and renewable energy to replace fossil fuel extraction in the county. Commission chair Larry Don Suckla said solar panels can’t be built without using oil, and Commissioner Keenan Ertel said he did not see evidence that methane pollution comes from leaking wells. But Suckla also said he saw a tax revenue opportunity for solar installations, and that Colorado has less regulation and more sun than the state California, where solar energy is popular. General questions about county governance and funding composed most of the rest of the meeting, and board and audience strongly agreed about the risks of invasive mussels. The commissioners said they hope to increase education efforts to boaters to prevent a mussel infestation in any of the county’s waterways. Their next town hall meeting is expected in July.
