Kirk Siegler reports for NPR, based out of NPR West in California.
Siegler grew up near Missoula, MT, and received a B.A. in journalism from the University of Colorado. He’s an avid skier and traveler in his spare time.
Education leaders from around the country are in Colorado debating ways to boost student achievement at a time when states are slashing millions of dollars from their education budgets.
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet says he favors a long-term solution on trimming the federal deficit rather than a short-term compromise on raising the debt-ceiling, a move that mirrors calls by President Obama ahead of a planned White House meeting Thursday.
Fire managers in Colorado are worried that resources will be stretched thin should large blazes spark along the rapidly drying Front Range over the holiday weekend. This as several small fires have already been keeping fire crews busy in places such as Boulder County.
As a headwaters state, Colorado provides much of the water that allows cities and farms in the desert southwest to bloom. But the state’s own population is projected to soar, and now water managers are starting to discuss ways to pipe water back into the state. One of highest profile and most controversial ideas right now is a proposal to build a 550 mile pipeline between the Flaming Gorge Reservoir in southwestern Wyoming and the Colorado Front Range.
Colorado’s Yampa River is one of the last-free flowing rivers in the West and its water has long been eyed by the oil shale industry and by water agencies looking for new sources to tap to feed communities and farms hundreds of miles away. But recently Shell Oil shelved an application to divert water from the Yampa for mining, and a powerful Front Range water utility has put its interest in the Yampa on hold. This has environmentalists looking to seize the moment and drum up support to protect the river.
