Regulatory Capture and Colorado's Unelected Boards. Following up on "And now the landfills". Thornton's scheme to take water from Larimer County.

Regulatory Capture and Colorado's Unelected Boards

I wrote a bit back (see the first link below) about how our state is increasingly turfing what ought to be legislative control to a series of unelected boards, how legislative laziness has effectively handed over control of our state to them.

Rulemaking and regulation might make things more efficient, it might enable higher policy output with less time, but it is not without cost. It's one of those costs I want to cover today: policy by unelected board opens us up to control, not by the people, but by industry and (increasingly in Colorado) advocates.

This is due to cronyism in board appointments and also what might loosely be termed a form of "regulatory capture" (if you will allow the expansion of the definition to not just include industry but also well-funded advocacy groups).

Regulatory capture is when a political entity is co-opted to serve the needs of some minority political interest. One example is when an industry group (or group of major players in that industry) gains so much influence as to essentially control the board which regulates them. Another is when some advocacy group gains that influence in an area which they're keen on.

In addition to making it so we the people are not running things via our accountable elected officials, per the Wikipedia explainer on the topic linked second below: "When regulatory capture occurs, a special interest is prioritized over the general interests of the public, leading to a net loss for society."

A commonly-cited example of this dynamic is when large players in an industry befriend a regulatory board and sway policy in such a way as to squeeze out the smaller players. They use the government as their cudgel in the game of survival that is business.

It's not quite a canonical example, but I can give you a Colorado case that's close. Back in 2024, Governor Polis, a group of big oil companies, and environmentalists got together behind closed doors to come to a compromise to avoid other ballot issue fights and rulemaking. The compromise they came up with is summarized in screenshot 1 attached, taken from the Sun article linked third below.

Know who didn't get a seat at the table? Smaller producers. I'm not an expert on the oil business, but I'd bet you my lunch that the big producers who got to meet with the governor can manage to meet the requirements they agreed to a lot more easily and cheaply than the smaller ones.

Shifting to look at how advocacy groups and special interests have co-opted the regulatory process in Colorado paints, in some sense, a worse picture than industry capture. I say this because when you look at advocacy groups interacting with rulemaking boards, especially in the era of Governor Jared Polis, you see the advocates operating on both sides of the table.

CPW is the easiest and most obvious example. The Center for Biological Diversity recently submitted a request for rulemaking to CPW in an attempt to end-run around what voters (at least in Denver) have expressly rejected. The fact that the Center went to CPW's board (stuffed with known animal rights activists and having more strings tying them to the Center than strands in a spider web) is exactly what I mean about working both sides of the table.

The activists on the board are sympathetic to and associated with the cause of the advocate on the other side trying to take institute policy via the board. If you want more context on that and another example, check out an op ed I wrote on this topic linked fourth below.

Another more recent example comes from the CPR article linked fifth below. Skipping the subject of the article (which is not too germane to the subject here), I pulled a quote:

"Other advocates want to see the state take decisive action. Elise Jones, the executive director of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, an environmental advocacy group, recently left her appointment on the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission, where she pushed for more aggressive regulations to limit pollution from lawn equipment."

Guess who frequently speaks at rulemaking hearings about energy and/or air quality trying to guide policy? If you guessed Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, you guessed right.

One of Governor Polis' canned responses to criticisms about board appointments has been that a Colorado for all means a Colorado for all. I don't know that I have a problem with that. In theory, in the absence of legislative action on issues, I would rather have the rulemaking and regulatory boards across this state reflect the diversity of this state than not.

But lost in Polis' grand rhetoric, and lost in the political theory of the legislature delegating to rulemaking bodies, is the reality that a Colorado for all means boards made up of Polis' cronies and friends. Rather than true diversity of thought and location in this state, we have people who move in and out of the very advocacy groups that sit in front of the board at hearings to influence policy.

As I mentioned in my earlier post on the topic of regulatory boards (link 1 below), this is not how things ought to run in this state.

I again urge you to speak up about this. Contact your state senator and representative. Testify in front of these boards and call things like this out. Share information with your friends so that they can also get a sense of just how little influence over policy they now have in their own state.


https://open.substack.com/pub/coloradoaccountabilityproject/p/colorados-bloated-regulatory-state?r=15ij6n&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

https://coloradosun.com/2024/04/29/colorado-oil-and-gas-deal-2024/

https://www.coloradopolitics.com/opinion/bypassing-voters-will-via-unelected-boards-isnt-democracy-podium/article_50afffb1-ce97-4420-ad12-032a6c0ad29c.html

https://www.cpr.org/2025/07/08/gas-powered-lawn-tools-colorado-law-enforcement/

Related:

The article below lists out the most recent Polis appointees to various boards around the state.

https://kiowacountypress.net/content/governor-polis-announces-new-boards-and-commissions-appointments-0#google_vignette

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Following up on "And now the landfills"

Back earlier in the month, I posted about regulatory actions taken on landfills in Colorado. That newsletter is linked first below if you need a refresher or to get the context.

After posting that, State Senator Byron Pelton (SD1, my district) contacted me and wanted to share some of the behind the scenes stuff, as well as connect me to Morgan County Commissioner Jon Becker for his perspective. I thought both would make a good, quick update to that earlier post.

Senator Pelton shared an email he received from CDPHE's legislative liaison re. their new rules. Let's start there so you can get CDPHE's perspective.

Screenshot 1 is taken from the email shared with me. It lists the criteria (by the new rules) under which a landfill would need to monitor its emissions and/or install some sort of methane mitigation measures.

Screenshot 2 is from that same email and gives specifics regarding landfills that happen to fall in Senate District 1. I do not have information on statewide landfills. If you are curious, the best thing I could recommend would be to contact your state senator/rep and as him or her to follow up with CDPHE for the landfills in your area.

From the bottom two paragraphs in the screenshot, it's clear that some of the smaller municipal landfills in SD1 are exempt from most of the regulation for now, while Morgan and Logan are not. It's clear from the tone of the liaison's writing that they will be subject to regulation.

Cost is, as you might imagine, a concern. This is especially the case in rural areas where budgets are tighter than they tend to be in wealthier Front Range counties; the tax base for these things tends to be smaller and lower-income. I took the parts of the email where the CDPHE liaison addressed these concerns, put them together and attached it as screenshot 3. Since pictures don't have live links, I put the link to the Colorado Energy Office Grant program second below.

I was curious to learn some more about the grants they're touting, so I found the application a landfill would have to fill out for the grant and included it third. To give a sense of grants the Office has paid out in the past, I put their 2024 report fourth below.

What about a local perspective? To get that, I spoke on the phone with Morgan County Commissioner Jon Becker. He offered a bit of counterpoint to the things the legislative liaison wrote.

Commissioner Becker noted that this new rulemaking makes Colorado's rules regarding both methane monitoring and mitigation stronger than existing Federal rules.** Even at that, as I wrote in my earlier post on the topic, the amount of methane emissions reductions our state would realize if all the landfills required to update their facilities is small. It would amount to an approximately 1% reduction.

To achieve that, the cost would be quite high. According to Becker, referencing comments made to him by his county's Landfill Director and a consultant the county hired, implementing just the methane monitoring system would take up to $3 million dollars to install and cost between $50K and $90K a year.

I want to emphasize that these are the costs solely to monitor methane. Any mitigation would come at (likely a substantially) higher cost.

The fact that the state is not offering to fund these improvements (see screenshot 3 for the state's acknowledgement of no direct financial assistance while mentioning a few grants), puts Morgan County in a bit of a bind.

Becker told me that costs like those outlined above, if implemented on the timeline the state wants, would eat the entirety of the county's reserve funds for trash removal, soaking up money that was to be put to opening a new cell in their landfill.

It would also effectively double the cost of trash service in Morgan County.

I am reminded of what happened to me living in Logan County (another target of the rule per CDPHE's email in screenshot 2). When I first moved up here, I was worried about water usage and costs. I went to great pains to lower the water usage in my house and yard.

It turns out I guessed wrong. Over time, with EPA (and/or CDPHE) mandated changes to wastewater treatment in town, the costs for that line item on my bill have soared and water costs are now a minor part of each monthly bill. I can't remember exact numbers, but the increase was between a 50% increase and a doubling.

Some of the reasons for the upgrades to our water treatment were sound. It made the system more robust against floods, in the hope that during the next flood sewage won't contaminate other water supplies. That's something I can get behind.

I want you to contrast that to the landfill rule here.

I could easily see Commissioner Becker being right, not just for Morgan but for my trash payments too. If not a doubling perhaps a 50% increase in the trash part of my city utilities bill. This is, I remind you, on top of another unfunded mandate increase for wastewater.

What will the trash increase bring me or the residents of MorganCo? It will bring a quite minor reduction in methane emissions.

I don't know about you, but this isn't worth the cost to me. There are better ways to spend my money.

**60% stronger is the number Commissioner Becker put to it, but I didn't ask for a source on that and can't find any numbers either way. I was able to find plenty of references on the new rules being stronger than Federal rules, however.

https://coloradoaccountabilityproject.substack.com/p/and-now-the-landfills-ag-next-cos?r=15ij6n

https://energyoffice.colorado.gov/cap-grants

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aQQFzGyRDgv8k81GLoyzlq-ubiPMvEtI/edit?tab=t.0

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mt3GzzBCbeVDQDmpP_STpu6IOEDcLb7BYuQEKrwgWnA/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.grub4aacdl46

Related:

In reading through the Colorado Energy Office's grant application for methane reduction I mentioned above, I came across what you see in the screenshot attached here.

I wonder how much weighting this has in the final grant approval process. Further, I wonder if my local community would qualify for a scoring boost due to being subject to "environmental racism". I wonder why they want demographic information if it has no bearing on the grant's score.

All of this puts me in mind of a common construction trick. Many businesses that seek government contracts figured out ways to become "disadvantaged" to boost their chances of getting the government work. A contractor husbands putting the business in his wife's name was a common one I have heard of. Wife doesn't do any work for the business mind you, they just need it to be "woman owned".

When you push racial and other criteria as an advantage, all sorts of game playing goes on and some worthy people lose because they don't play the game as well.

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Thornton's scheme to take water from up in Larimer County is approved.

I've been watching the case of Thornton sticking a straw up into Larimer County to pull water down out of the corner of my eye. Long time readers will recognize the story.

The Sun article updates that effort. Thornton now has the go ahead.

Quoting the article:

"A state court judge has ruled Larimer County properly approved Thornton’s bid to construct a portion of a key water pipeline across county land, rejecting environmental activists’ effort to overturn the permit."

It's funny to me to note the similarities here with water in the Lower Arkansas River.

As in that case, Thornton here wants their straw in the upper parts of the river so as to save them treatment costs.

Advocates Save The Poudre (again, long time readers ought to recognize that name from my post about water and the Poudre/Platte) want to keep the water in the river for longer.

Quoting again:

"Save the Poudre and some neighbors of the pipeline route in Larimer County had argued Thornton should use the Poudre itself to deliver its water downstream closer to Adams County, instead of building a disruptive new pipeline. The nonprofit said leaving the water in the river for those miles would promote wildlife habitat and more consistent flows for the river. Thornton has responded that it can’t afford to let the water in the Poudre be contaminated by runoff from Fort Collins, industrial uses and farmland along the way to an eastern pipeline connection. The city argued cleaning up the water to drinkable standards after running it through the riverbed would require hundreds of millions of dollars in additional treatment systems."**

Same tune, different lyrics. Let the suction begin!

**As I have written about the Lower Arkansas River, the Springs takes their water from up in Pueblo Reservoir, runs it through the city and returns it to the farmers in a state that is pretty dirty and salty.

https://coloradosun.com/2025/07/07/thornton-water-pipeline-larimer-county-permit-approved/