FAMILY RESTORES HAHN’S PEAK SCHOOLHOUSE | ROUTT C OUNTY 1D $1.00 COW PIE CHAMPS BUILDING Steamboat rugby team wins title PERMITS OFF SPORTS 1C
1st half sees 80 percent decline REAL ESTATE 1B
SUNDAY, JULY 12, 2009
VOLUME 122, NUMBER 52 • STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, COLORADO • www.steamboatpilot.com
Art fair veggie races a hit Children make bedazzled spuds at park; event continues today Blythe Terrell
PILOT & TODAY STAFF
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS
Kiddos turned taters into pieces of art and sent them down a ramp Saturday, pipe cleaners waving and googly eyes awhirl. Ten-year-old Sam Troller was among the participants in the “Veggie 500” race at Art in the Park. He jammed four wheels into the sides of his potato, jazzing it up with orange pipe clean-
ers looped back like wings and a yellow feather in front. He adjusted the wheels after the potato racer spun on its first ramp run. “I just wanted it to be small and fast,” Sam said about his strategy. “I wanted to make it look like a samurai.” He also gave it a personal touch. “I named it after me,” Sam said. Diane Davis, who owns the Steamboat Arts & Crafts
Gym, guided children into the KidSpot. There, they made potato cars, painted rocks and decorated tiaras. Suggested donations for each activity went to the Steamboat Springs Arts Council, which organizes the annual Art in the Park. It continues today, as does the annual Hot Air Balloon Rodeo. Davis said she came up with the vegetable race idea last year with Rachel Radetsky, the council’s events and facilities coordinator. They used corn and zuc-
chini last year and switched to potatoes this year. The feature seemed to be a hit. Children crowded the tent at West Lincoln Park. Nine-yearold Amber Elliott stuck two pipe cleaners of each color into her potato. She curled the tops of each of the 20 bright, pliable sticks. Her favorite part was “probMATT STENSLAND/STAFF ably making all the curlies,” Steamboat Springs teens, from left, Jackson Perry, Ben Wharton, Nick Sear and Karel Klos, of Florida, let go of their potato cars after Arts & Crafts Gym owner Diane Amber said.
Davis waved the starting flag. “My strategy was that I made the little kids make it for me,” Nick said.
See Art, page 11A
Fighting out front Cancer prevention study comes to Steamboat Relay
F
or the past 50 years, the American Cancer Society has conducted long-term cancer prevention studies, tracking participants throughout decades to pick out factors that might cause cancer. STORY BY The studMARGARET HAIR ies provide a startRelay tales ing point for more In the weeks leadin-depth ing up to the 2009 research and Steamboat Springs give cancer Relay For Life, survivors the Steamboat Pilot & Today will such as profile some of the Steamboat people who have Springs participated in or schoolteachbeen touched by er Kerry the event. Kerrigan hope that as they go on, the studies will help answer questions she’s had for much of her life. “I’m a two-time cancer survivor,” Kerrigan said. “I lost my leg to bone cancer when I was 17, and then I had breast cancer at age 31. … I’m one of five
SUNDAY FOCUS
See Relay, page 10A
Brandon Gee
PILOT & TODAY STAFF
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS
that homeowners in the county have been using rainwater, she said, because enforcement of the rainwater usage ban has not been a priority for Light’s office. “It was illegal, and I use that term loosely,” she said. Staffing and time constraints have meant that the office has not been out searching for the units, unlike more water-strapped areas such as Durango, where engineers have to mind water usage more carefully.
Nomination petitions can’t be picked up for three more weeks, but make no mistake, the race for four open Steamboat Springs City Council seats has begun. Incumbents Cari Hermacinski and Walter Magill, as well as Steamboat businessman Kenny Reisman, said they will vie Hermacinski for seats this fall. Hermacinski and Magill joined the council in 2007 after a contentious election — centered on growth issues — saw four incumbents defeated and five new faces join Magill the City Council. Hermacinski holds the council’s two-year at-large seat. Magill holds a four-year District 3 seat. His win in 2007 allowed him to finish a term left open when Kevin Kaminski moved out of the southern Steamboat Springs district in September 2006. “I think the city’s moving in the right direction, and I’d like to keep working on the city’s budget in tough economic times,” said Magill, the owner of Four Points Surveying & Engineering. Magill said he wants to continue to bring a business perspective to the council and represent working-class residents. Hermacinski, an attorney and president of Telecomm Acquisition Group, previously said she would not run for City Council again. She said she changed her
See Rainwater, page 10A
See Election, page 10A
MATT STENSLAND/STAFF
Two-time cancer survivor Kerry Kerrigan, right, and Jodi Bringuel are teaming up to enroll participants in CPS-3, a new long-term study by the American Cancer Society that during the next 20 to 30 years will track people ages 30 to 65 who have no personal cancer history.
Rain bill has little local impact Collection legal for homes not connected to municipal water Zach Fridell
PILOT & TODAY STAFF
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS
MATT STENSLAND/FILE PHOTO
Although new legislation made collecting rainwater legal at some Colorado homes and ranches as of July 1, local water experts say the Yampa Valley’s plentiful water supply gives the bill little local use. The valley has seen plenty of rainfall this year from storms like this one, shown building over Mount Werner in July 2008.
PAGE DESIGNED BY NICOLE MILLER
Race to fill City Council seats begins
Yampa Valley rain, in no short supply this year, can be harvested legally for personal use since July 1, after the Colorado Senate approved a measure to legalize collection units in rural areas. The bill allows homes with certain well permits — not connected to a municipal water supply — to use rainwater in homes, to irrigate as much as 1 acre of garden and to water some
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Partly sunny. An evening storm. High of 82. Page 2A
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livestock. Local water experts, however, say homeowners have little reason to install collection units in Routt County, where water from other sources is not yet exhausted. Erin Light, Division 6 water engineer for the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, said that in her eight years of working with water in the Yampa Valley, she remembers only two people ever asking about rainwater collection, and she has not seen any collection units in operation. It is possible
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