A private development company is investing $150 million in an ambitious plan to harvest groundwater beneath sprawling northern Colorado ranches to serve fast-growing towns along the Interstate 25 corridor.

FrontRange H2O, backed by a Texas oil and real estate company, is behind the venture. The firm has been operating in Colorado for more than 20 years, treating and delivering wastewater from oil wells for industry reuse on the Western Slope, and overseeing extensive real estate holdings in Denver and elsewhere, according to Brent Waller, who is president of the Loveland-based company.

“We were recycling produced water before it was cool,” Waller said. Produced water describes wastewater that is generated through oil production.

Experts say the large-scale, private urban water development is the first of its kind in Colorado and could help thirsty towns like Fort Collins and Loveland shore up their water systems.

But others worry that the privatization of water in the state could lead to price hikes and might also deplete aquifers that are critical to the state’s future water security.

Still, FrontRange H2O believes its system will deliver water at less cost and sooner than other government-backed projects.

Pressure to tap underground aquifers is rising

Until now, Colorado communities have relied on water that is captured, stored and treated by public, nonprofit water utilities, such as Denver Water. The agency is an independent entity governed by commissioners who are appointed by the Denver mayor. In other cases, cities operate their own water systems. Public entities such as these are required by law to regulate water rates, to issue bonds to finance their work, and they are subject to oversight by elected or appointed bodies.

But FrontRange H2O is a private company that is using millions of dollars in private financing to secure the water rights, obtain state permission to drill the groundwater wells and to build a water treatment system and pipeline to carry the water. Although it must obtain state permission to drill the wells and build the water treatment plant, it is not subject to the same public oversight as a public government system would be.

“This kind of thing is common in Texas and Arizona, particularly with groundwater, but it is unique in Colorado,” said Adam Jokerst, Rocky Mountain regional director for WestWater Research, based in Fort Collins. Jokerst is a groundwater expert who has consulted with Front Range H2O on its northern Colorado plans.

FrontRange H2O refers to its current project as VitaH2O. Nine wells drilled into the aquifer are expected to generate up to 5,000 acre-feet of water initially, Waller said. It will be treated at a new plant north of Nunn and then delivered down to Cobb Lake, a reservoir owned by the Fort Collins-Loveland Water District. An acre-foot equals nearly 326,000 gallons of water, enough to serve two to four urban households a year.

The district was in the news earlier this year when it opted out of a large-scale water and reservoir project run by Northern Water known as NISP, the Northern Integrated Supply Project. It will instead partner with VitaH2O.

As the project moves forward, Waller said the Fort Collins-Loveland district will contribute an additional $150 million to help complete the new water supply project. Chris Pletcher, general manager of the district, declined an interview request. The water district was NISP’s largest customer and was on track to pay $400 million to help build the giant system.

Most water consumed in Colorado derives from melting snows that fill its streams and rivers, but large swaths of the state, including Douglas County, rely heavily on wells drilled deep into aquifers, many of which are not recharged through rain and snow.

As the state grows, the pressure to tap these nonrenewable waters is growing as well.

The development is occurring in the northern end of the Denver Basin near the Wyoming border, tapping an area included in the Laramie-Fox Hills formation.

According to the Colorado Division of Water Resources, interest in drilling high-producing groundwater wells in northern Colorado is growing.

“There has been more activity in this area in the last 10 years,” said Tracy Kosloff, deputy state engineer at Colorado’s Division of Water Resources.

Major players in the area include Front Range H2O and the city of Greeley, among others.

Some cities are already trying to wean from nonrenewable groundwater

The interest in nonrenewable groundwater worries people like Steve Boand, a former Douglas County commissioner and water consultant who has watched his region’s nonrenewable groundwater supplies shrink as they are used by fast-growing towns like Parker and Castle Rock.

Any project that relies on nonrenewable groundwater is problematic, Boand said.

“In general, sustainable water supplies are the preferred source,” Boand said, noting that Douglas County water providers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to recycle water and tap rivers and streams to wean themselves off nonrenewable groundwater. Their hope is, eventually, to use their aquifers only in drought years when surface supplies are scarce.

And that is part of the plan with VitaH2O, Waller said. The project will use surface supplies that the Fort Collins-Loveland district already owns to recharge the aquifers they plan to withdraw water from, in hopes that the treated water being pumped back into the ground in wet years will extend the life of the nonrenewable aquifers.

Under Colorado water law, groundwater can be drilled by whomever owns the land above the aquifer, but they must demonstrate that they are extracting water gradually and must prove it will last at least 100 years.

Waller said he believes the surface water that VitaH2O will inject back into the aquifers in wet years will extend the life of the system beyond 100 years, to 300 years or more.

Just east of Waller’s development, the city of Greeley has already invested $85 million in developing an aquifer system under the Terry Ranch that will supply water in drought years and will also store treated water, according to Sean Chambers, Greeley’s director of water and sewer utilities.

“What you are seeing now is a new approach to diversifying surface water supplies with this deep aquifer, nonrenewable groundwater … and there is a rush on that,” Chambers said.

Looming in the background is Northern Water’s NISP project. It was originally designed to serve 15 entities, but three have already pulled out, including the largest, the Fort Collins-Loveland district. Waller said he is in talks with several other communities, including Wellington and Eaton, who are looking for an alternative to the costly $2.7 billion NISP, which will rely on renewable water supplies from the Poudre and South Platte rivers.

Brad Wind, general manager of Northern Water, said NISP’s growing cost is prompting long-time supporters to rethink their participation and that some will inevitably go with other providers, such as VitaH2O.

“People have some hard choices to make,” Wind said.

How much water is available to be drawn from these aquifers isn’t clear yet, though developers such as Waller and Greeley have invested heavily in doing the hydrological analysis that gives them an estimate of what is available.

But overuse is a major concern and Chambers says that is a key issue Greeley is addressing as it develops its system.

“Collectively we will have to find ways over time to make sure that northern Colorado and other communities that rely on this water don’t just mine it to extinction. … Greeley goes into this effort with our eyes very wide open about that,” Chambers said.

“This is a resource that should last for 10 generations or longer and provide a runway for public officials to figure out how to build resilience into all of our sources of supply,” he said.

A handful of Colorado communities, such as Highlands Ranch, are already doing aquifer recharge. But Boand isn’t convinced that the recharge technologies and state rules designed to make the water last longer are going to be enough to protect the aquifers.

“Recharge has been somewhat successful, but everybody has talked about it as if it is the great salvation, even though it is very much in the testing phase,” Boand said. “And it takes the same attention to detail that running a nuclear power plant takes … lots of engineers and lots of scientists.”

Another concern with having a private company develop a major public water supply is the stability of the company and the water system if the company should fail.

Waller says his company’s contracts provide protection for that possibility.

“If we go belly up, five years or 10 years down the road, the water districts and participants have the right to step in and take over the system. There are controls in place,” Waller said. They expect to deliver water in the first quarter of 2029.

As with most new water projects, developers go through a special court review where they must prove their water estimates are accurate and that their water use won’t harm others. Waller said his company’s water court application was filed in October.

And it is being closely watched.

Chambers, with the city of Greeley, is concerned that the VitaH2O project may impact the Terry Ranch wells, which are nearby. How the new project may impact existing wells and the overall health of the aquifer isn’t clear yet. But Chambers said he expects to fight to defend Greeley’s water rights and will object to anything he sees as threatening.

“We intend to be an objector in the water court process to protect our decree and our investments,” he said.

While Colorado ranks near the middle of U.S. states for carbon emissions per capita, it still produces enough CO2 per person to rival countries on the World Bank’s list of top emitters internationally.

In 2023, Colorado produced 13.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita. If it had been ranked by the World Bank during the same year, Colorado would have placed 14th among the more than 200 countries on the list, just behind Canada, at 14.1, and just ahead of the U.S. as a whole, at 13.7. 

Among U.S. states, Colorado ranked 26th in carbon emissions per capita. Wyoming had the highest per capita emissions in the country, at 92.9 metric tons, while Maryland had the lowest, at 7.8. 

Most of Colorado’s emissions come from energy production and consumption, primarily natural gas and oil production and electric power production and consumption. 

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The Trump administration has renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, now calling it the National Laboratory of the Rockies, marking an identity shift for the Colorado institution that has been a global leader in wind, solar and other renewable energy research.

“The new name reflects the Trump administration’s broader vision for the lab’s applied energy research, which historically emphasized alternative and renewable sources of generation, and honors the natural splendor of the lab’s surroundings in Golden, Colorado,” said Jud Virden, laboratory director, in a statement.

He did not specify what this “broader vision” would mean for the lab’s programs or its staff of about 4,000.

The renaming is the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to deemphasize or cut the parts of the federal government that support renewable energy, while also expanding federal support for fossil fuels.

Asked for details, the Department of Energy said in an email that the renaming  “reflects the Department’s renewed focus on ‘energy addition’ rather than the prioritization of specific energy resources.”

A lab spokesman had no additional information about whether there will be changes to programs or headcount at the lab.

Bill Ritter, a Democrat who was governor of Colorado from 2007 to 2011, said it’s reasonable to assume that the name change signals that the federal government is abandoning the lab’s status as a world leader in energy research.

“It’s an iconic research facility,” he said.

Underscoring this point, he recalled a trip to Israel while he was governor.

“The head of their renewable energy laboratory said, ‘I have nothing to tell you because you come from the place that has the best renewable energy laboratory in the world,’” Ritter said.

After leaving office, he founded the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University, which specializes in energy policy research and is now a consultant on energy business and policy.

Based on this experience, he thinks that anything the Trump administration does to divert from the lab’s mission is harmful to the United States’ ability to remain a major player in the energy economy of the near future.

“We’ll no longer be competitive in renewables research with China or India or other countries that are still heading toward the renewable energy transition at a very fast pace,” he said.

People with close ties to the lab were not surprised by the name change, given the administration’s broader goals.

“In the early days of DOGE, people there were whispering about a name change to avoid the ire of MAGAs,” said Matt Henry, a Montana-based social scientist who worked at the lab from February 2024 to August 2025, in a post on Bluesky. “It pissed me off—prioritizing the preservation of the institution at the expense of its [stated] mission? So disappointing.”

He was referring to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which sought to cut federal spending in the early months of the Trump administration. The term MAGA refers to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and movement.

Dustin Mulvaney, a San Jose State University environmental studies professor, said if the name change is a sign of a significant change in the lab’s work, it would be “like losing several major land grant research universities all at once.”

Mulvaney has done projects in partnership with people at the lab. An important part of the institution’s work, he said, is that its research is free and accessible to the public, helping businesses and universities that may not be able to afford the work of private research firms.

The lab’s mission has included consulting to help communities benefit from new energy technologies and ensure smooth transitions away from fossil fuels.

This work meant that the lab was out of step with an administration that has said it disagrees with the idea of a transition away from fossil fuels and has sought to impede funding and development of renewable energy.

The lab was established in 1974 as the Solar Energy Research Institute, part of a law signed by President Gerald Ford to facilitate alternatives to importing oil from the Middle East, according to a history on the lab’s website. The US was suffering through high gasoline prices amid tensions with oil-producing nations such as Saudi Arabia.

“The energy crisis we face today is unlike the crisis that gave rise to NREL,” said Audrey Robertson, assistant secretary of energy, in a statement. “We are no longer picking and choosing energy sources. Our highest priority is to invest in the scientific capabilities that will restore American manufacturing, drive down costs, and help this country meet its soaring energy demand.”

In 1977, the federal government selected Golden, Colorado, as the location for the lab. In 1991, the Solar Energy Research Institute became the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, part of a change by the administration of President George H. W. Bush that also elevated the institution to become part of the country’s national lab system.

But the lab’s history has also included budget cuts and periods when its work fell out of favor with presidential administrations, including layoffs and funding cuts under President Ronald Reagan. President Donald Trump proposed substantial cuts during his first term, but Congress retained much of the funding.

The Trump administration’s budget proposal, issued in May, calls for cuts across non-defense discretionary spending, including on energy research, but the budget process is still underway.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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Understand and improve on LLM-generated code

You’re about to commit a chunk of LLM-generated code into your product’s codebase. Before you do, however, pause to consider and act on these questions:

1. Does it work? A lot of generated code can ‘feel’ right but be either subtly or grossly incorrect. If you don’t already have an automated testing habit, it’s never too late. Vibes are not enough.
2. Do you understand the generated code? Could you explain it if asked? Don’t accept the code until you’ve learned from it and you know what it does. Don’t outsource your understanding.
3. What’s different between the generated code and what you might otherwise have done? Are the differences something you can learn from or something you should reject? Don’t accept code that is worse than what you would have written.
4. Can you think of at least one way to improve the generated code? Make it so.

In software development, one of the (non-swear) words we use to describe things we don’t understand or feel empowered to improve is legacy. We should be careful both to avoid ‘optimising’ and accelerating the creation of legacy code and to mistake such pessimisation as productivity — especially if we’re doing so at the expense of joy, time and skill.

In using Gen AI, many developers have unintentionally taken a back seat with both their knowledge and their destiny. By skimming past the friction necessary for learning, the pursuit of convenience ends up deskilling them rather than enhancing their skills. Many have confused meaningful productivity with the movement of a single metric or a subjective feeling.

It is easy — and common — to conflate progress through Jira tickets with actual progress in software development, or lines of code with needed functionality, or fixing defects with adding value to a product. Busyness is not the same as business. Getting better at getting through issues is not a benefit if you are creating disproportionately more issues over time, playing Whac-A-Mole with failure demand.

Use AI as augmentation. Treat AI as a power tool, not a replacement for craftsmanship.

— Russ Miles

AI coding assistants offer many opportunities for improvement of both our codebases and our knowledge. But just because the offer exists doesn’t mean it will be taken up. Without conscious effort and engagement not only is this opportunity lost, but the outcome could be worse in the long run. Being the human in the loop needs to be understood as an active not a passive role.

Don’t just turn the handle; listen to the music. Understand it. Feel it. Join in. It’s yours.

A person infectious with measles traveled through Denver International Airport earlier this month, a reminder to holiday travelers to be aware of the risk of infection as they journey to and fro.

The traveler, who lives out of state, landed at DIA at 7:24 p.m. on Dec. 12 at gate B45. The traveler departed from gate B84 at 9:41 p.m. the same night, state and local health officials say.

Authorities did not identify where those flights originated or where they were headed and said passengers who shared a flight with the infected person will be notified directly. But other travelers or workers who were at the airport from when the traveler arrived until about midnight that night should monitor themselves for symptoms of measles and call ahead before seeking medical attention if they believe they have been infected.

People exposed could come down with symptoms up until Jan. 2. However, authorities said the infected traveler was fully vaccinated against measles and had mild symptoms, meaning the risk of the traveler spreading the disease to others is lower.

Colorado has seen 36 cases of measles so far this year, the second most in a year since cases started being tracked in 1993, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has said. But other states have been hit far harder.

There are currently two large outbreaks in the United States, one in South Carolina and another along the Utah-Arizona border. Both outbreaks have seen well over 100 cases reported.

Following the widespread introduction of vaccines, measles was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000. But the country will likely lose that status early next year. Facing even higher infection numbers, Canada lost its elimination status last month.

CBS cannot contain the online spread of a "60 Minutes" segment that its editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, tried to block from airing.

The episode, "Inside CECOT," featured testimonies from US deportees who were tortured or suffered physical or sexual abuse at a notorious Salvadoran prison, the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism. "Welcome to hell," one former inmate was told upon arriving, the segment reported, while also highlighting a clip of Donald Trump praising CECOT and its leadership for “great facilities, very strong facilities, and they don’t play games."

Weiss controversially pulled the segment on Monday, claiming it could not air in the US because it lacked critical voices, as no Trump officials were interviewed. She claimed that the segment "did not advance the ball" and merely echoed others' reporting, NBC News reported. Her plan was to air the segment when it was "ready," insisting that holding stories "for whatever reason" happens "every day in every newsroom."

But Weiss apparently did not realize that the "Inside CECOT" would still stream in Canada, giving the public a chance to view the segment as reporters had intended.

Critics accusing CBS of censoring the story quickly shared the segment online Monday after discovering that it was available on the Global TV app. Using a VPN to connect to the app with a Canadian IP address was all it took to override Weiss' block in the US, as 404 Media reported the segment was uploaded to "to a variety of file sharing sites and services, including iCloud, Mega, and as a torrent," including on the recently revived file-sharing service LimeWire. It's currently also available to stream on the Internet Archive, where one reviewer largely summed up the public's response so far, writing, "cannot believe this was pulled, not a dang thing wrong with this segment except it shows truth."

CBS did not immediately respond to Ars' request to comment. The network faces criticism from both outside and within its studios, as reporters and CBS viewers question the integrity of Weiss' decision now that the segment has aired. Recently appointed CBS editor-in-chief, Weiss' prior experience as a contrarian opinion writer helming her own right-leaning platform, The Free Press, prompted early concerns that she might water down CBS's critical coverage of the Trump administration. And the seeming censorship of the "60 Minutes" episode was perceived by some as a canary in a coal mine, confirming critics' fears.

CBS correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who anchored the segment, noted that the Trump administration had repeatedly declined to comment as the story came together. By delaying the segment solely because of Trump officials' silence, Weiss appeared to be giving the Trump administration a "kill switch" to block any story they don't want aired, Alfonsi suggested.

"Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices," Alfonsi wrote in a note to CBS colleagues that was widely shared online. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”

Tim Richardson, journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, told NBC News that Weiss risked damaging CBS's credibility by making a seemingly hasty decision to postpone a report that may have upset the Trump administration.

"CBS journalists, among the best in this country, appropriately made an outreach effort to get the government to weigh in on a deeply reported story out of El Salvador," Richardson said. "Pulling it back at the last minute because the government chose not to respond is an insult not only to the integrity of the journalists but to core principles of independent news gathering."

Early 2000s tool LimeWire used to pirate episode

As Americans scrambled to share the "Inside CECOT" story, assuming that CBS would be working in the background to pull down uploads, a once-blacklisted tool from the early 2000s became a reliable way to keep the broadcast online.

On Reddit, users shared links to a LimeWire torrent, prompting chuckles from people surprised to see the peer-to-peer service best known for infecting parents' computers with viruses in the 2000s suddenly revived in 2025 to skirt feared US government censorship.

"Yo what," one user joked, highlighting only the word "LimeWire." Another user, ironically using the LimeWire logo as a profile picture, responded, "man, who knew my nostalgia prof pic would become relevant again, WTF."

LimeWire was created in 2000 and quickly became one of the Internet's favorite services for pirating music until record labels won a 2010 injunction that blocked all file-sharing functionality. As the Reddit thread noted, some LimeWire users were personally targeted in lawsuits.

For a while after the injunction, a fraction of users kept the service alive by running older versions of the software that weren't immediately disabled. New owners took over LimeWire in 2022, officially relaunching the service. The service's about page currently notes that "millions of individuals and businesses" use the global file-sharing service today, but for some early Internet users, the name remains a blast from the past.

"Bringing back LimeWire to illegally rip copies of reporting suppressed by the government is definitely some cyberpunk shit," a Bluesky user wrote.

"We need a champion against the darkness," a Reddit commenter echoed. "I side with LimeWire."

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