2023 CCA Science Fair

by Madison Richmann

On December 8th and 9th, Cardinal Community Academy middle school students competed in the annual science fair. All 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students presented a science fair presentation to a panel of judges. Middle school science teacher, Mrs. Sarah Johnson organizes and prepares students for the fair every year. When asked about the importance of science fair for middle school students, Mrs Johnson says, “It is one of the best ways for students to apply the scientific method in its entirety. They get to explore what they are curious about, and be a part of each step within one project. It teaches them problem solving, planning, communication, inquiry, and how to present their findings. They have to research, make predictions, plan an experiment, collect and analyze the data, as well as prepare a presentation that communicates their project to someone else. The experience gives them a taste of what professional scientists have to do, while also demonstrating that you do not need to be a scientist to test out an idea. The scientific method is something that can be used by anyone to explore our curiosities and ideas; That is what I want my students to take away from my science classroom.”

The students presented a slideshow to the judges who scored them by grade. Minus a few exceptions, 6th graders worked in groups of three, 7th graders worked in pairs, and 8th graders worked individually. The projects were judged from complexity, data, presentation, clarity, and how well the students understood their project and the scientific method. The judges were impressed with all of the projects, and the scores were tight making the final decisions very difficult. For the first time in CCA science fair history, two projects were named Grand Champion because the judges could not choose between both impressive projects.

2023 CCA Science Fair Results

6th grade

1st place: Eli Houston and Reagan Sporney

2nd place: Morgan Simpson, James Klausner, and Cooper Peake

3rd place: Maddy Pralle, Trey Neill, and Colt Sekich

7th grade

1st place: Rylan Richmann and Russell Fehr

2nd place: Brooklyn Labonte

3rd place: Vincent Rossi and Hugh Thoene

4th place: Marin Cantrell and Tegan Huwa

Honorable Mention: Avery Simpson

8th grade

1st place: Connor Rosling

2nd place: Nathan Dinges

3rd place: Dawson Dever

4th place: Mae Baker

5th place: Jeremiah Huck

Honorable Mention: Addison Powers, Makayla Milligan, and Cody Howard

Overall

Overall Reserve Grand Champion: Nathan Dinges

Grand Champion(s): Rylan Richmann and Russell Fehr, and Connor Rosling

Reserve Grand Champion, Nathan Dinges tested the accuracy of different prices of ammo for bb guns. He found that the more expensive ammo is, the more accurate it is; he says the extra money is worth it!

Grand Champion Connor Rosling tested the strength of zip ties in different conditions; cold, weathered, and room temperature. Connor found that room temperature zip ties can hold the most weight.

Grand Champions Rylan Richmann and Russell Fehr tested which material of saddle pads kept a horse the coolest in a ten minute workout: fleece, needle punched wool, or wool. They found that the needle punched wool kept the horse the coolest.

Mrs. Johnson is proud of all of her students regardless of the outcome of their projects. She says, “Seeing the interactions between the students and the judges is always rewarding each year. You can see the pride the students have in their work; both with what went well and what they would change if they did it again. They learn that even though the project wasn’t perfect, they can still share their experience and what they discovered with others.” Cardinal Community Academy is very proud of their science fair and as always, can’t wait to see what the middle school science students come up with next year.

Congratulations to all of the 2023 CCA Science Fair Winners.

Murrey: Governor Polis has Voter Mandate to Protect TABOR refunds

by Ben Murrey, Complete Colorado Page 2

Last week, Democratic state legislators announced plans for a bill aimed at taking away taxpayer refunds granted under the state Constitution. Governor Polis has a clear mandate from Colorado voters to oppose the effort.

The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights—commonly known as TABOR—requires the state to return tax revenue surpluses to taxpayers in a manner determined by the state legislature. Surpluses totaled nearly $4 billion last year.

In April, Polis stood on the steps of the state capitol and announced legislation to give back about $2.7 billion of the surplus via $750 checks to every Colorado taxpayer. Each check came accompanied by a letter in which the governor appeared to take personal credit for the refunds, calling them “Colorado Cash Back.”

Consequently—the deceptive political tactic notwithstanding—Coloradans stepped into the voting booth last November believing a vote for Polis was a vote for TABOR refunds.

They likely believed their legislators supported TABOR also. Lawmakers from both parties stood behind Polis when he announced the mechanism for issuing the constitutionally mandated refunds, joining him in praising them.

With last week’s bill announcement, Democratic legislators have already proved themselves two-faced on the issue. Polis’s reputation, however, remains thus far intact.

Astute observers might object, pointing out that the governor supported Proposition CC in 2019. The measure, referred to the ballot by the legislature, asked voters to give up their TABOR refunds forever. Voters rejected the idea.

After hearing what voters had to say, the governor rightly changed his position and became a supporter of TABOR refunds, choosing to stand with the people of Colorado on the issue. He continued this support on the campaign trail last year where he touted the rebate checks at every televised gubernatorial debate.

Because he ran as a champion of TABOR refunds, his electoral victory in November comes with a mandate from the people of Colorado to defend their refunds.

Polis won his reelection bid by nearly 20 points—a larger margin than any other statewide elected official. Fortunately, his popularity gives him enormous influence during his second and final term as governor. It’s time for him to use it.

Though the prime sponsors of the forthcoming legislation to abolish taxpayer rebates, Rep. Cathy Kipp (D) and Sen. Rachel Zenzinger (D), have not yet made the bill text public, they say surpluses would fund public schools instead of going back to taxpayers. Their proposal is entirely out of step with what voters have repeatedly said on this issue. Polis ought to remind them of that before they create a lose-lose-lose situation for everyone involved.

Once legislators introduce the bill, they leave Polis with the option of joining their effort, making himself a hypocrite, or opposing them and dividing his party. If in either case the legislature passes the bill, taxpayers become the next possible losers.

The governor would be wise to work behind the scenes right now and dissuade legislators from proceeding down this misguided path.

If legislators nonetheless proceed with the bill and pass it through the General Assembly, it will go to the ballot for voter approval. At that point, it would be incumbent on Polis to stand with the people of Colorado over his party by publicly opposing the measure. While the governor cannot veto the bill, his word holds authority and sway with voters.

The abolition of refunds would mean more taxpayer money in state coffers—effectively, a tax increase. Yet, when lawmakers tried to end the refunds in 2019, the language they put on the ballot for voters to see began, “WITHOUT RAISING TAXES AND TO BETTER FUND PUBLIC SCHOOLS…” No doubt they will attempt the same deception this time around.

Thanks to his rhetoric and actions on the campaign trail, voters see Polis as a defender of their TABOR refunds. The governor’s articulate public opposition to this Democratic effort could clarify for voters that the measure would indeed raise taxes by raiding taxpayers’ refunds.

As a word of caution, Polis tried to split the baby on this issue in 2019, and he may attempt that again this year. During the debate over Proposition CC, the governor at one point proposed a compromise that would have stripped taxpayers of their refunds in exchange for a minuscule and temporary 0.04% income tax rate reduction.

Such a trade would leave taxpayers with the short end of the stick, trading about $100 million in annual tax cuts for billions of dollars in lost refunds. Moreover, in 2022 Polis campaigned in favor of both TABOR refunds and income tax reductions, not either or. That legislators now aim to take away TABOR refunds after lauding them just last year betrays the public trust. Polis still has that trust. Whether he keeps it will depend on what he does next. Political integrity demands that he unequivocally oppose taking TABOR refund dollars from taxpayers.

Why the Ground Under Colorado Solar Panels is Ripe for Growing Food

A Republican lawmaker has joined the previously Democrat-only push for solar agriculture, or agrivoltaics, priming Colorado to become a national leader

By Gabe Allen and Tyler Hickman, The Colorado Sun

At sites around the country, once-verdant fields, farms and forests are reduced to gravel lots to make way for utility-scale solar plants. At some, carefully trimmed Kentucky bluegrass is permitted to grow beneath the panels.

Just off Hover Road south of Longmont, one solar project breaks this mold. Savory herbs, berry bushes, veggies and hay flourish between rows of elevated photovoltaic panels. Jack’s Solar Garden is the largest commercially active research facility in the United States for “agrivoltaics,” a land-use model that combines agriculture with solar power. In just a few acres, the site grows produce for a local farm, produces enough electricity to power 300 homes and hosts researchers from three separate institutions. The project preserves the tradition of the land, which is a third-generation hay operation. At the same time, it is well-positioned for a future in which Colorado’s energy needs are increasingly met by renewable sources.

The idea behind agrivoltaics is simple: use the “empty” space beneath solar panels to grow stuff. However, the concept is still young. Agrivoltaic farms and research sites are owned and operated by a select few advocates around the country. During this legislative session, two Colorado senators plan to introduce a bill that could position the state as a leader in agrivoltaics research.

It’s not the first time the topic has been brought to the statehouse. In 2021, Senate Democrats passed Senate Bill 235, providing $3 million of funding for Advancing Colorado’s Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency program. Of this, a small portion was allocated to purchasing equipment for agrivoltaic operations.

“We’re not the first state to recognize agrivoltaics, but we’re the first state to establish agrivoltaics in statute, and also funding from state funds,” said Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, the bill’s prime sponsor.

Jaquez Lewis credits Jack’s Solar Garden for her interest in agrivoltaics. After touring the facility, located within her district and just a 10-minute drive from her home, she was hooked.

A year later, agrivoltaics appeared at the Capitol once again. Senate Bill 22-138, sponsored by Denver Democrat Chris Hansen, did not fare as well as its predecessor. Five years of funding for agrivoltaics research was proposed with a hodgepodge of policies intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado. House Republicans mounted a last-second filibuster, killing the legislation.

Up until now, every bill concerning funding for agrivoltaics has been primarily sponsored by Democrats. In 2023, a Republican lawmaker from Alamosa intends to change that. Sen. Cleave Simpson first became interested in agrivoltaics as a potential solution to the issues that his family faced on their 800-acre alfalfa farm. Years of water scarcity had made the operation financially tenuous.

“I was trying to figure out how to make my farm self-sufficient in a lot of respects — energy, soil health and water,” Simpson said. “All of these things kind of come together in this conversation around agrivoltaics.”

Simpson predicts that his constituents will share his interest in the new technology. Over the past two decades, he has seen neighboring farms and ranches struggle to stay afloat.

“If the next 20 years look like the last 20 years from a water supply perspective, there’s probably 100,000 acres in the valley that doesn’t have an adequate water supply,” he said. “The entire community’s economy, culture and community is built around irrigated agriculture and I just see this freight train coming down the track at it. I’m routinely looking for solutions.”

At its core, agrivoltaics is a marriage of traditional land use with forward-looking infrastructure. Instead of razing crops to make way for power production, landowners may be able to adapt time-honored agriculturale operations to incorporate a second revenue source.

“Economics is certainly the biggest driving factor,” Simpson said. “I wouldn’t want to risk the economic viability of my family farm and my son’s future and my grandson’s future.”

On Tuesday, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis reiterated his goal for Colorado to generate 100% of its electricity through renewables by 2040 in his fifth annual State of the State address. The goal is part of a broader effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado. Last year, major utilities, including Xcel Energy, submitted clean energy plans to the state that detailed how they would contribute to the transition.

Though Simpson is not an outspoken climate advocate, he sees the writing on the wall. Renewables are expanding in Colorado, and he wants them to benefit farmers when they do.

“If I can be in a space to help drive the conversation and protect ag, I’d much rather be in that space than trying to reverse policy,” Simpson said. “In this position, I have a little more control over what it ends up looking like.”

In the coming legislative session, Simpson plans to introduce a stand-alone bill that creates a grant program for agrivoltaic projects overseen by the newly formed Agriculture Drought and Climate Resilience office. According to a draft, the grants will be available to “new or ongoing demonstration(s) or research project(s) as a means to study the use of agrivoltaics in the state.” It will be the first state law in the country to provide funding for agrivoltaics research, though Massachusetts passed a law funding agrivoltaic generation projects in 2018.

Hansen will co-sponsor the legislation, and some of the language will be reused from Senate Bill 22-138. This time around, they are optimistic the bill will pass.

“Sometimes, with new concepts, people can have some reservations and hesitation,” Simpson said. “If Senator Hansen and I are working on it together, it’ll alleviate potential apprehensions on both sides of the aisle.”

Microclimates

For a farmer, the potential value of an agrivoltaic project is twofold. First, there is solar power itself, which the farm can use to power its operations or generate revenue through a lease agreement from a solar developer. The second potential benefit is harder to quantify.

As the sun moves across the sky, the panels at Jack’s Solar Garden track its course along a single axis. Below them, a shadow moves across the earth and rainwater is deposited along each panel’s downward edge. Before the farm became a solar garden, every square foot received approximately the same amount of sunlight and moisture. Now, the field is broken up into an array of “microclimates.”

This concept is central to the purported benefits of agrivoltaics. Diverse conditions within the same plot of land increase the opportunities to grow diverse crops. In pasture land, agrivoltaic installations might promote more diverse plants, insect pollinators and soil microbiota — essential elements for long-term sustainability.

“For landowners out here, if you can increase productivity at all — great. If you can keep productivity the same — great, because you’re creating energy too,” Colorado State University doctoral student and agrivoltaics researcher Matt Sturchio said. “If you can slightly reduce productivity, but increase biodiversity and also resilience to climate extremes like drought and heat waves — win-win again, right?”The idea that solar panels might help crops survive drought is a seductive concept in the arid farmlands throughout Colorado and the desert Southwest. Water is always in short supply, and the evidence is mounting that agrivoltaic operations might help. A 2019 study led by University of Arizona researcher Greg Barron-Gafford found that jalapeños and tomatoes used irrigation water more efficiently under the protective shade of photovoltaic panels at a field site outside of Tucson. At Jack’s solar garden, partner organization Sprout City Farms grows vegetables, herbs and berries under the shade of panels.

Researchers like Sturchio hope that similar benefits could play out in native grasslands, hay fields and pastures. In addition to shading plants, the panels could provide livestock refuge from the midday sun.

Soon, a private-sector project will put the theory to the test. In August, Delta County commissioners approved the Garnet Mesa Solar Project, which will pair 80 megawatts of solar capacity with 1,000 local sheep. When completed, it will be more than 60 times bigger than Jack’s Solar Garden, taking over the title of the state’s largest agrivolatic facility.

Scaling up

Alexis Pascaris, the founding director of AgriSolar Consulting, has spent countless hours interviewing farmers about their opinions on agrivoltaics. In general, they fall into two camps.

“It’s either ‘stay off my farmland’ or ‘that’s awesome, how can I leverage those benefits to support my farm and my production?’” she said. The farmers who are interested want to know one thing. “They value social and environmental attributes, but, at the end of the day, it’s got to pencil financially.”

This rationale was at the heart of the impetus for Jack’s Solar Garden. In 2016, Byron Kominek moved onto the family farm after a five-year stint as a U.S. diplomat in southern Africa. At the time, the farm produced hay. But the margins on the crop were scant compared to when Kominek’s grandfather, Jack, ran the operation in the 1970s and ’80s.

“Haying was interesting, but it didn’t make anything for money,” Kominek said. “And we were getting less and less water every year for irrigating that really thirsty bromegrass.”

When Kominek went to the Boulder County Land Use Department to ask if he could build a solar array on the property, they shot him down. He could run a Christmas tree farm or an equestrian center, but they would not permit him solar panels. No matter what was growing underneath the panels, the project was seen as a power plant.

Kominek is an unusually persistent person. Over the course of three years, he convinced county officials to let him build Jack’s Solar Garden and sold shares of the operation to local homeowners. Now, the revenue from the electricity produced on the farm slowly chips away at the bank loan that funded construction, and Kominek has become a prominent advocate on the issue.

To many, Jack’s Solar Garden is a model for what is possible with agrivoltaics. Kominek hopes it is a catalyst for something larger. “Are we just going to keep dinking around with projects the size of mine, or are we actually going to start installing 10 megawatt, 50 megawatt, 100 plus megawatt systems that are aimed at agrivoltaics?” he said.

Other agrivoltaic advocates agree. For Sturchio, a large-scale project paired with state funding could underwrite his research on an unprecedented scale.

“How many sites are built for agrivoltaics, and how many have kept the land intact? Not many,” he said. “More money is important for building larger designs.”

Simpson hopes that large-scale agrivoltaics projects might provide an example for farmers like his constituents in the San Luis Valley. “I toured Jack’s Solar Garden last summer and spent time with Byron. It’s pretty impressive to see what he’s accomplished on, from my perspective, a small scale,” he said. “I need to be able to do it on 120 or 160 acres at a time and, you know, do it 50 times, or 100 times.”

Two things stand in the way of grand visions for large-scale agrivoltaic projects. The first is physical. Large-scale renewable energy projects require high-capacity transmission lines. Xcel’s Power Pathway project will bring this type of infrastructure to much of Eastern Colorado over the next few years, but places like the San Luis Valley lag behind.

“The entire supply for the San Luis Valley comes from two lines that generate north of the valley and come over Poncha Pass,” Simpson said.

Valley lawmakers have long discussed a second line into the valley from the east, but no concrete plans are in place to expand transmission infrastructure. For now, new renewable projects are limited by capacity.

The second obstacle is financial. Colorado’s general fund will be stretched thin over the next year as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) limit on state revenue lags behind inflation. Even if Simpson and Hansen’s bill passes, it may not be funded for another year.

“It’s really challenging this year to try to appropriate any dollars for it,” Simpson said. “We can at least get the statutory authority.”

Meanwhile, six Department of Energy-funded projects in other states will test the viability of utility-scale agrivoltaics in various climates and land-use categories. As of now, Jack’s Solar Garden has established Colorado as a leader in the field. If the state wants to maintain that status, it will need to scale up.