Scott Franz
Water and Environment ReporterEmail: scott.franz@kunc.org
Scott Franz is the water and environment reporter from Steamboat Springs. He spent the last seven years covering politics and government for the Steamboat Pilot & Today, a daily newspaper in northwest Colorado.
His reporting in Steamboat stopped a police station from being built in a city park, saved a historic barn from being destroyed and helped a small town pastor quickly find a kidney donor. His favorite workday in Steamboat was Tuesday, when he could spend many of his mornings skiing untracked powder and his evenings covering city council meetings.
Scott received his journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is an outdoorsman who spends at least 20 nights a year in a tent. He spoke his first word, 'outside', as a toddler in Edmonds, Washington. Scott visits the Great Sand Dunes, his favorite Colorado backpacking destination, twice a year.
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The vote clears the way for Erie to sell about 182 acres of its underground mineral rights to SM Energy, an oil and gas company pursuing the Draco Pad project, which will drill horizontal wells underneath homes in Erie. -
A KUNC News investigation on funeral home misconduct discovered last year that lawmakers had quietly removed the public’s access to funeral home inspection reports in a 2024 bill that was meant to restore trust in the funeral home industry. -
Water negotiators, river enthusiasts, Native tribes and lots of lawyers convened at the University of Colorado Law School on Thursday to take stock of the future of the dwindling Colorado River. -
The pollutants that plague the Front Range in the summer months can trigger asthma symptoms. -
Chimney Hollow will eventually pull water from the Colorado River near its headwaters in Grand County to serve a dozen fast growing cities on the Front Range from Broomfield to Greeley. -
Water users around the west seek billions in federal drought help as Colorado River forecast worsensIt’s not clear yet how the money would be distributed among several states in a river basin where political fights and an impasse over how to share water long term have persisted even during historic drought. -
Earning a spot on the Colorado School of Mines microplastics sampling team on the South Platte River requires careful balancing in waist-deep water and occasionally dodging some very inquisitive Canada Geese. -
Weld County commissioner Scott James said last month bringing data centers to his region would mean more tax dollars, wider roads and maybe even more investments into buildings just like the massive ballroom he was speaking in at Aims Community College in Greeley. -
A federal hydrologist appeared to be momentarily at a loss for words Thursday as he described how dire the latest forecast has gotten for how much water will flow through the Colorado River Basin this summer. -
Widespread drought and fears of a power crisis is forcing the Interior Department to start sending billions of gallons of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir downstream to prop up Lake Powell.
