Community Editorial Board: The Blue Line
Mar. 25—Members of our Community Editorial Board, a group of community residents who are engaged with and passionate about local issues, respond to the following question: The recent downsizing of a private water supplier left some Boulder residents who are not tapped into the city's water service scrambling to find a replacement. It has prompted some to question the city's water service area limitations, including the Blue Line. Your take?
CU physics Professor Albert Bartlett, along with a colleague, was the driving force behind Boulder's Blue Line, whose intent was to limit building in the foothills above Boulder. The Blue Line restricted water delivery to elevations below 5750 feet. It was later specifically defined around property lines, but the spirit remained intact. The idea was/is to keep the peaks above Boulder from being covered in houses. This, coupled with open space purchases, created a green belt around the city of Boulder and set the culture of slow growth, neighborhood retention and preserving open spaces.
Professor Bartlett taught me physics as a freshman engineering student and he was perhaps the best teacher I ever had. He was most famous for his talk on exponential growth, which centered around energy usage and population. He was a Malthusian to be sure and I disagree with his implication that growth continues at a constant rate until a disaster occurs. Growth will never continue without end. The question is when and how it is abated.
Using the Blue Line was a cost-effective method of limiting growth. Boulder didn't control all the land in question, but it wasn't going to subsidize its own destruction. That's eminently reasonable. Boulder coupled this with a massive open-space-purchasing program (the first of its kind in the nation) to limit development more concretely and in areas below the Blue Line, specifically to the east, south and north.
The old guard wanted a smaller town with very slow growth. That has been Boulder's history and its culture. But the future will be determined by the current residents. I understand the desire for higher density, as it reduces pressure on housing prices, but I prefer less density. I recognize that it is easy for me to say that. I already own a house in Boulder County. The problem is, and it's one of our own making, that we've created an incredible place to live.
Boulder will never be "affordable", at least in its current state. Most of the great places on earth are not affordable. We'll never be able to fit all the people that would like to live here at an affordable cost. It's the same thing with Hawaii. There are way more people that want to live on the beach in Maui than will ever be able to afford it. Maui could solve that problem by building massive apartment buildings around the entire coastline. It would be affordable then. But only because people would no longer want to live there. For better or worse, we're making that same decision in Boulder.
Bill Wright, bill@wwwright.com
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Arguments regarding expanding the Blue Line, which limits city services, such as water delivery, to a restricted area to discourage further development of the natural landscape around Boulder, must acknowledge what such expansion will not achieve. Indeed, one argument for expanding the perimeter of the Blue Line concerns the lack of affordable housing. However, the area currently outside the perimeter for city services is generally considered inappropriate for denser, more affordable development projects due, in part, to the need for expensive engineering and construction modifications suitable for the terrain. Thus, environmental issues aside, modification of the Blue Line to allow private development of mountain properties would hardly be a solution for those seeking reasonably priced housing. On the other hand, such a plan would present an opportunity for those with less limited budgets to privatize the natural beauty that we now all enjoy.
In the absence of a reasonable affordable-housing argument for expanding the Blue Line, we are no longer faced with an apparent choice between two "goods": affordable housing versus environmental protection. Instead, the choice is between a commitment to the global need for environmental protection and a commitment to private property and individualism. This has become an especially hot topic given widespread misunderstandings about American capitalism. For example, most testimonials to capitalism ignore the ways even the most capitalist of capitalists benefit from government programs and tax-funded common goods and resources.
If expanding the perimeter of the Blue Line will neither increase affordable housing nor protect the purity of the American form of capitalism, what will it do? I suspect it will exacerbate the socio-economic differences that already plague Boulder (and the U.S. more generally) by further privileging those with economic means. It will also perpetuate a class-based system of access to portions of the environmental resources that make Boulder a desirable place to live in the first place.
However, our existing neighbors outside the current Blue Line face a dilemma over access to water. Boulder city and county governments should work with residents to develop ad hoc solutions to this problem without committing Boulder to further privatization. Indeed, it may be time to show our commitment to protecting the greenbelt by enacting policies that directly limit development rather than by regulating access to an essential resource to do so indirectly.
Elyse Morgan, emorgan2975@gmail.com
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Most of us appreciate Boulder's Blue Line even if we don't know its history. If it weren't for the Blue Line campaign, leading to the founding of PLAN-Boulder and the first open space tax in the '60s, there would've been tons more development along our foothills. Instead, we created a boundary for our westward growth and purchased the open space we all enjoy every day.
Above the Blue Line, property owners don't receive some city services (they also pay lower taxes). They have septic systems and arrange for their own water delivery — which can be a hassle when a service company dumps you with little notice. I contacted the Gehrings who were featured in the Camera's March 17 water service story; fortunately they were able to line up a new water provider. In general, John Gehring says he's "comfortable with the water service situation" though city water would be more reliable.
As I understand it, if the Blue Line is altered to bring an area into service, more development and density could result. Which brings us to the broader issue of Boulder's growth and causes me to wonder: Who gets to decide what happens next? In 2016, citizens voted to reaffirm and clarify the Blue Line but it sounds like the city and county can make annexation decisions on their own. For decades, we've spent open space tax money to acquire important parcels of land, and it may feel like we've done everything needed to protect the foothills as well as our agricultural heritage. But in reality, Boulder County is a complex patchwork that includes unprotected areas and potentially vulnerable conservation easements. I support keeping the Blue Line because in my opinion preservation is essential and the more safeguards we have the better, especially when we see what's happening with the proposed termination of a 40-year-old conservation easement near Airport Road and the Diagonal.
If it's time to provide better services to property owners outside the Blue Line, first let's find out if they actually want this, and then let's see if we can make it happen without jeopardizing our western urban growth boundary. Hiking up Sunshine Canyon yesterday with my dog, I was grateful as always for this peaceful trail so close to town. I can't wait until my toddler grandson is big enough to hike it with me.
Diane Schwemm, parksidediane@gmail.com
