On Wednesday, the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission will consider two proposals — including a potential ban on the sale of new gas-powered lawn equipment along the Front Range — as part of its efforts to clean the air. One proposal was created by a state agency, the Air Pollution Control Division, and the other was written by a nonprofit whose board is appointed by the governor: the Regional Air Quality Council.

Gas-powered lawn and garden equipment contributes to the poor air quality along the Front Range because those tools release tons of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides — two key ingredients in the ground-level ozone pollution that is particularly bad on hot summer days, when that equipment is most likely to be in use.

The air quality council’s plan would essentially phase out gas-powered equipment usage along the Front Range, while the state’s proposal would impose minor statewide limitations but largely allow landscaping companies and homeowners to continue working with gas-powered equipment.

The Air Quality Control Commission could pick either plan or adopt a combination of the two.

Environmentalists are pushing for the more stringent restrictions, saying the Front Range’s air quality is so poor the commission cannot afford to take small steps. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency designated a nine-county area along the northern Front Range as being in severe non-attainment of federal air quality standards, leading to more governmental regulations in the region.

“Ultimately we shouldn’t have the dirtiest, most polluting equipment on store shelves,” said Kirsten Schatz, clean air advocate for the Colorado Public Interest Research Group. “That equipment for sale now could last 10 or 12 years. It’s important we get the dirtiest equipment off of the store shelves as quickly as possible.”

The Regional Air Quality Council’s proposal would impose the most restrictions.

Under that plan, a prohibition on the sale of gas-powered equipment would begin in 2025 in the nine-county region that stretches from Douglas County in the south to Larimer and Weld counties in the north. The plan also would restrict government agencies, school districts, colleges and universities, and other special districts from using small, gas-powered equipment starting in 2025.

A restriction on usage by commercial operators and homeowners’ associations would go into effect in 2026, according to an outline of the plan provided by the air quality council.

Private residents would not be banned from owning or using gas lawnmowers and other equipment. But over time, as sales became limited, that equipment would be phased out, said David Sabados, a Regional Air Quality Council spokesman.

“We aren’t going around to round up gas mowers out of people’s garages,” he said.

Under the proposal written by the state’s Air Pollution Control Division, there would be no sales prohibition anywhere in Colorado. But it would ban state government agencies from using the equipment during the summer starting in 2025, and it would ban city and county governments along the Front Range from using the gas-powered lawn equipment beginning in 2026.

That plan would have a limited impact on increasing the use of electric equipment in Colorado because government restrictions on gas-powered equipment already are coming.

In September, Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order that requires state-owned facilities to phase out gas-powered equipment such as push mowers, leaf blowers, weed whackers and other small equipment.

The governor wrote in the executive order that those things create high levels of hazardous air pollutants.

“These ‘nonroad’ emissions significantly contribute to air pollution, raising concerns about the impacts on public health,” the order stated. “Gasoline-powered lawn and garden equipment is also exceedingly loud contributing to noise pollution as well as air pollution.”

So far, Colorado has targeted the transportation sector and the oil and gas industry for reductions in greenhouse gasses and other air pollution. Limiting gas-powered lawn and garden equipment is a new strategy that could result in quick improvements in air quality, Sabados said.

A recent report from the Colorado Public Interest Research Group estimated that gas-powered lawnmowers, string trimmers, leaf blowers, chainsaws and other garden tools generated 671 tons of fine particulate matter pollution in 2020, which is equivalent to the amount produced by 7 million cars in a year.

The machines also contributed an estimated 9,811 tons of volatile organic compounds and 1,969 tons of nitrogen oxides — the same amount emitted by 880,554 cars — into the air in a single year, according to the report, which used EPA data.

“When it comes to lawn and garden equipment, these tools emit an astonishing amount of harmful pollution,” Schatz said. “We can cut a significant amount in a short period of time.”

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But a group working to expose the cult’s falsehoods and rescue those trapped in it says the documentary fell short in debunking the myths and explaining how dangerous cults truly are.

Amanda Ray, whose brother escaped Love Has Won after becoming entangled in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, said there were missed opportunities to show how abusive Amy Carlson, who led Love Has Won and called herself Mother God, was toward her followers.

“It really was a documentary that shared the stories of the current followers just a few weeks after Amy passed,” Ray said. “They were victims of mind control. We felt there was a big missed opportunity.”

“There were a lot of people whose lives were destroyed by Amy.”

Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God is a three-part series that premiered Nov. 13 on Max and is available on the streaming service.

Love Has Won operated in relative obscurity until April 28, 2021, when Carlson’s mummified remains were discovered inside a house in Moffat where her followers were waiting for their leader to ascend to another dimension to save humanity. The body was covered in Christmas lights and her eye sockets were decorated with glitter makeup when Saguache County sheriff’s deputies arrived.

The sensationalistic reports captured headlines around the world and the attention of the documentary filmmakers.

The documentarians caught up with the cult members within weeks of Mother God’s death, and the series tells the cult’s story primarily through their voices. The story explains how Carlson evolved into Mother God and how her followers were drawn into her circles.

While Love Has Won’s leader and members bounced from place to place over the years, the group’s headquarters were a house in a large residential area known as Baca Grande — a place believed to be sacred grounds by some — in Saguache County. The group also rented a large cabin in Salida where new recruits were taken when they decided to live with the cult.

The series includes interviews with two people who left the cult but mostly follows the true believers who continue to spread Carlson’s teachings through online videos and social media pages.

Today there are two splinter groups – one called 5D Full Disclosure, which is run by two women who were part of Carlson’s inner circle and one called Love Has 1 Joy Rains 2, which is run by a man who was known as Father God during Carlson’s final years. Neither group operates out of Colorado.

A postscript in the documentary says some of Carlson’s most devout followers remain in Colorado, including a woman who works as a healer and a man who continues the cult’s teachings via an Instagram account with thousands of followers.

Love Has Won has an estimated 20 devout followers, who continue Carlson’s teachings, said Ray, who works with a group called Rising Above Love Has Won, which works to debunk the beliefs and rescue and deprogram its followers.

The documentarians had plenty of footage to work with as Carlson and her followers posted hours of videos daily where they rambled about their beliefs that Carlson was on earth to ascend and save mankind by leading people into a Fifth Dimension where they would live in a peaceful world. They were convinced the late actor and comedian Robin Williams served as a galactic intermediary.

The group also ran a website where they sold various services such as “etheric surgery” and homemade tinctures and other so-called healing products, including colloidal silver. The members earned money through those websites and also convinced followers to empty their savings accounts to donate to the cause.

After Carlson’s body was discovered in the Love Has Won compound in Moffat, seven followers were arrested on charges of abuse of a corpse and child abuse.

At the time, family members and law enforcement said a small group of followers had driven Carlson’s dead body from Mount Shasta, California, to Colorado as they awaited the ascension. However, in the documentary, Carlson’s followers say she died in a hotel in Oregon, and they drove the corpse to Colorado 12 days later after camping with it in a national forest.

The criminal charges were dropped by the district attorney, and those followers, along with a handful who were not charged, scattered to various parts of the country.

As Carlson was dying, her followers kept giving her colloidal silver to drink because they believed it would cure her. In an autopsy report about her death, the Saguache County coroner said the colloidal silver contributed to her death. Anorexia and alcohol abuse were other causes.

The documentary shows disturbing pictures of Carlson’s final days where her emaciated body had turned purple from the colloidal silver and she was too weak to sit up or stand.

Linda Haythorne, Carlson’s mother, said she had not seen the pictures of Carlson in her final days and they were shocking. There have been a lot of tears since Haythorne watched a private screening, she said.

Haythorne is interviewed throughout the documentary to add context to Carlson’s life before she evolved into Mother God. Haythorne said she wanted the audience to see her daughter as a real person.

“She wasn’t just Mother God,” Haythorne said. “Like I said in the documentary, Amy wanted to go somewhere. Amy was smart. Amy knew how to talk to people.”

Haythorne said she has received mixed messages from people since the documentary aired. Some say she failed her daughter, especially when she did not try to visit her in the final days. Others have thanked her for shedding light on how people get ensnared into cults.

“All in all, I hope it will help someone,” Haythorne said. “I hope they can look at it as this could happen to me. When you’re missing something in your life you could go in that direction.”

Ray, whose brother was in the cult during 2020, said she feels bad for Carlson’s mother, who she knows through her work with Rising Above Love Has Won. The group sent an ambulance to a house in California where Carlson was believed to be with her followers as she was dying, but they denied the help, she said.

Still Ray thinks the documentary was too empathetic toward Carlson.

Rick Alan Ross, founder and executive director of the Cult Education Institute, followed Carlson’s journey for years and has worked with people to leave the cult. He also joined Carlson, her mother and sister on an episode of the Dr. Phil show as her family attempted to convince Carlson to come home.

“In the case of Amy Carlson, it was very extreme,” Ross, who has not watched the TV series, said. “This was one of the most extreme cults that I’ve encountered in my work in the past 40 years.”

Carlson controlled every facet of her followers’ lives, dictating where they slept, what they ate and how they spent their time. She took their money and isolated them from family, he said.

“To not understand how totalistic and how destructive Amy was is to miss what the essence of this group was all about,” Ross said.

Ray wishes the filmmakers had interviewed an expert on cults to provide context to what the viewers are watching. Love Has Won’s teachings are so outrageous it will be hard for most viewers to understand how someone could get wrapped up in it, Ray said.

She fears curious people will find the websites, blogs and social media pages of Carlson’s remaining followers and get hooked on their products and teachings.

A social media influencer with more than 57,000 followers on Instagram is selling merchandise connected to the show. Ray finds that hurtful to the cult’s survivors to see people mock their experience and cash in on the show’s popularity.

“A lot of former members have suffered negative effects from the group,” Ray said. “We just feel strongly when the dangerous sides of this group are left out of this story it can lead to negative effects to those who were in it.”

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However, 6 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions is just a bite-sized chunk of the air pollution Colorado wants to reduce. The state’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Roadmap calls for a reduction of 12.7 million tons in annual transportation emissions by 2030.

People who chose to ride RTD’s buses and trains in July and August likely reduced the number of vehicle miles traveled by 145,393 a day, or 9 million miles over the course of two months, according to the Zero Fare for Better Air 2023 Evaluation report released Thursday.

By not traveling all those miles, drivers did not contribute to the pollutants that combine on hot summer days to create ground-level ozone.

The Regional Air Quality Council, which is tasked with finding ways to cut air pollution, helped RTD officials figure out how much was reduced during the two-month program. The air council used the modeling formula that federal officials use to measure greenhouse gas and other emissions created by transportation.

The air council’s study concluded that 2,583 pounds of volatile organic compounds and 2,235 pounds of nitrous oxide were reduced during the two months, according to the report.

Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions is crucial in the nine-county region surrounding Denver because the area is not in compliance with federal air quality standards. Metro Denver and the northern Front Range are listed in serious violation of ozone standards by the Environmental Protection Agency and are under pressure to improve conditions.

Poor air quality is dangerous for humans, especially children, the elderly and people who suffer from chronic lung conditions such as asthma. The pollution from cars, trucks and other gas-powered vehicles also creates a brown haze that blankets the area, and transportation-related pollution is one of the largest contributors to climate change and global warming.

Mike Silverstein, the air council’s executive director, said in a news release that increased use of public transportation reduces fuel production by the oil and gas industry, which also contributes to air pollution.

“RTD’s Zero Fare for Better Air initiative helps reduce both our fossil fuel use and the demand for its production, making a positive impact on our local air quality during peak ozone season,” Silverstein said.

The Zero Fare for Better Air evaluation also included statistics on how increased ridership impacted crime, including drug use, vandalism and assaults, on RTD property. Train operators and bus drivers feared security problems would undercut the program and they complained to RTD’s elected board just before the program launched.

There were fewer arrests and narcotics usage decreased during the Zero Fare period when compared to the average number of incidents during the rest of the year, the evaluation said. However, there were increases in criminal mischief/property damage reports, assaults, trespassing and biohazard incidents.

RTD also reported a jump in security incidents —  interactions with people fighting or otherwise disorderly, sick or impaired — during the two-month free fare period. In June, RTD recorded 601 security incidents but that number rose to 750 in July and 914 in August. In September, 737 security incidents were reported.

The transit district noted that it is difficult to make year-to-year comparisons on crime during the Zero Fare program because it recently changed how it accounts for crime on its buses and trains.

This year, the free ridership program expanded to two months rather than one and that longer period resulted in a 10% increase in ridership, with more than 6 million people taking advantage of the free transportation.

The program cost RTD $15.2 million in lost fares and other expenses such as marketing and surveys that help understand how the program impacts employees and customers. The Colorado Energy Office reimbursed RTD $13.9 million to help offset the lost fares, the report said.

This story was updated to correct the name of the Regional Air Quality Council executive director.

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Jurors will be asked to decide whether two Aurora paramedics violated the law when they injected Elijah McClain with a maximum dose of the sedative ketamine in a trial that’s being watched by first responders across the country — a rare case in which medical personnel face criminal prosecution over a fatal police encounter.

Opening statements on Wednesday in the trial of Lt. Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper focused on what role paramedics have at the scene when police call them for help, whether the two paramedics had a legitimate reason to inject McClain with ketamine in the first place, and whether they followed protocol once they decided to administer the sedative.

Defense attorneys for Cichuniec and Cooper attempted to direct blame toward the Aurora police officers who stopped McClain — a 23-year-old unarmed Black man who was walking home — that night in August 2019.

Shana Beggan, who represents Cooper, said the paramedics were not in control of McClain’s care until he was placed on a gurney and handcuffs were removed.

The police officers slammed McClain to the ground, used pressure points, including a carotid hold, and pushed their body weight onto McClain to hold him to the ground, Beggan told the jury. The paramedics did not participate in doing those things and were left waiting for police to release McClain to them for medical care.

They also relied on police to tell them what had happened prior to their arrival and to describe McClain’s behavior during the struggle as they made their decisions on how to treat him.

“You don’t get to tap in,” Beggan said of the paramedics. “Evidence will show they don’t get to take the cuffs off.”

Cooper and Cichuniec are charged with reckless manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and two counts of assault, including one count for excessive drugging. Opening statements began Wednesday morning in Adams County District Court before Judge Mark D. Warner, and the trial — the third of three in the McClain case — is expected to last for several weeks.

The prosecution of the two parademics is receiving national attention and is being closely watched by first responders and those who train them. On Wednesday, firefighters, EMTs and paramedics filled four benches in the courtroom to listen as prosecutors presented their case for proving the two paramedics killed McClain with a dose ketamine that would have been appropriate for a 200-pound man, not for the 140-pound McClain.

Dr. Stephen Cina, a forensic pathologist contracted by Adams County, will testify that ketamine caused McClain to die after he had choked on his own vomit.

The Adams County coroner’s original autopsy report said both the cause and manner of McClain’s death were undetermined. The office last year released an amended autopsy report that found the manner of death remained undetermined, meaning no ruling was made as to whether McClain’s death was a homicide, accident or occurred naturally. But his cause of death had been changed to “complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint.”

Shannon Stevenson, the state solicitor general in the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, walked the jury through Aurora Fire Rescue’s protocol for deciding when to give a person ketamine and said the state will prove that Cichuniec and Cooper failed to follow their training.

“The defendants were called to the scene to help Elijah McClain, to treat him as their patient,” Stevenson said. “Instead he’s dead. He would have been better off if they never came.”

“Not about whether mistakes were made”

McClain was walking home from a convenience store on Aug. 24, 2019, when an unidentified person called 911 to report him for acting strange. McClain was wearing a hat, face mask, a jacket and long pants and waving his hands in the air.

The first police officer on the scene, Nathan Woodyard, went hands-on within eight seconds of exiting his patrol car as McClain told the officer he was walking home. Two other officers, Jason Rosenblatt and Randy Roedema, soon joined Woodyard as they wrestled McClain to the ground.

Woodyard put McClain into a carotid hold after Roedema said that McClain had reached for the officer’s gun. Paramedics injected McClain with ketamine and he went into cardiac arrest during the ambulance ride to a hospital. He died on Aug. 30 after he was removed from life support.

Roedema was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault in October. Rosenblatt, who was fired from the Aurora Police Department before he was indicted, was acquitted of criminal charges during the same trial.

A jury found Woodyard not guilty of criminal charges on Nov. 6, and this week he returned to work at the police department, where he is going through a mandatory reintegration process.

During those trials, the officers’ defense attorneys directed blame toward the paramedics for using ketamine. Now, those paramedics will use the officers’ actions to boost their defense.

Michael Lowe, the lawyer for Cichuniec, told jurors they will repeatedly see the body camera footage from that night, and he asked them to pay attention to the details and to ask themselves about what is not seen on video.

When the paramedics arrived on scene in an Aurora Fire Rescue engine they could not park close to where McClain was being held because police cars were clogging the street. They had to walk more than a block and then waited nearly 11 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, Lowe said.

At the scene, Cichuniec had safety and administrative control while Cooper was in charge of the medical response, Lowe said. They had distinct roles from each other and from the police.

Cooper was the paramedic who asked for ketamine from the ambulance and video showed him injecting McClain in the neck while police officers held McClain down. Cooper then told others to wait a minute to make sure McClain calmed down before police lifted him onto a stretcher.

Lowe showed videos and played audio clips that he said were evidence that Cichuniec and Cooper were discussing treatment and following their roles at the scene. Jurors must consider what the two men knew within minutes of arriving and what their training and protocol said they should do.

“This case is not about whether mistakes were made,” Lowe said. “This case is not about whether protocols were missed. This is a case is about whether, when trying to help Mr. McClain, these two gentlemen committed a crime. They did not.”

“They overdosed Elijah”

But Stevenson, during her presentation, said the two paramedics failed McClain.

They did not conduct a proper assessment of his condition, including checking his vital signs. They did not try to speak to him. They did not touch him until Cooper injected the ketamine, Stevenson said.

“At every single step they acted with total disregard for Elijah McClain as their patient,” she said.

McClain never needed ketamine, Stevenson said, as she showed jurors the guidance Aurora paramedics are given to determine whether someone is experiencing excited delirium, a condition that describes someone exhibiting extreme agitation to the point where they are a danger to themselves and others.

Video shows McClain lying mostly still and occasionally moaning when he is injected, not combative like someone with excited delirium, Stevenson said.

“They overdosed Elijah with a sedative he did not need,” she said. “They left him completely vulnerable and stood there and watched him die. It was cruel.”

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Nathan Woodyard, one of three police officers indicted in connection with the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, returned to work at the Aurora Police Department and will receive more than $212,546 in back pay after he was acquitted earlier this month of all charges.

Woodyard asked to be reintegrated into the police department, which is allowed under the city charter, and he is undergoing training on policies and practices that have changed since he was suspended without pay in September 2021, Aurora spokesman Ryan Luby wrote in an email.

Woodyard, for now, is not wearing a uniform, will not have public contact and will not be allowed to enforce laws until he has finished the reintegration process, Luby said.

“The length of a reintegration period varies depending on the employee, the length of their extended absence and any other circumstances that may arise before or during that process,” Luby wrote. “Consequently, Mr. Woodyard would need to undergo reintegration for a period of time as numerous policies and practices at the Aurora Police Department have changed since he was placed on administrative leave without pay.”

Once Woodyard has completed reintegration he will be eligible for reassignment to a rank and duty position at the Chief Art Acevedo’s discretion. Woodyard was a patrol officer prior to his suspension.

Acevedo told Sentinel Colorado that it was “premature” to discuss any future assignment for Woodyard within the department. “I don’t think it’ll happen while I’m here,” he said. “He won’t be on patrol.”

Woodyard was on patrol on the night of Aug. 24, 2019, when someone called police to report McClain as a suspicious person. Woodyard was the first officer to make contact with McClain, who was walking home from a convenience store after buying iced tea.

Woodyard took McClain to the ground within eight seconds of getting out of his car and did not introduce himself or explain why he was stopping McClain. Two other officers, Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt, joined Woodyard in tackling McClain and violently restraining him.

Woodyard used a carotid neck hold on McClain after Roedema claimed the 23-year-old was reaching for an officer’s gun.

Roedema and Rosenblatt went to trial in October, with jurors delivering a split verdict. Roedema was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and third-degree assault. Rosenblatt was found not guilty on all charges.

Roedema has not been sentenced. Rosenblatt was fired from the police department in July 2020 over photos of police officers mocking the carotid hold used on McClain. He has sued the city over his termination.

At Woodyard’s trial, prosecutors argued that the officer needlessly escalated the situation as they tried to convince a jury to convict him of manslaughter.

Woodyard, who testified in his own defense, said he put McClain in the neck hold because he feared for his life after he heard McClain say, “I intend to take my power back,” and another officer say, “He just grabbed your gun, dude.”

Prosecutors refuted that McClain ever tried to grab an officer’s gun, and that move cannot be seen in body camera footage played in court.

Defense attorneys also argued that McClain died because paramedics injected him with a lethal dose of the sedative ketamine to calm him down.

Opening statements in the trial for the two paramedics who administered the ketamine are scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Adams County courthouse.

The graphic body camera footage of officers restraining McClain led to police protests in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

During those protests, people often repeated McClain’s final words: “I can’t breathe,” and “My name is Elijah McClain. I’m just different.”

McClain died on Aug. 30, 2019, after he was taken off life support. His parents received $15 million from Aurora to settle a lawsuit over his death.

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The vapor was released from a pump that was not functional and had not been used or properly inspected in seven years, according to the report detailing the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration‘s investigation into the accident. The fire burned for six hours.

The report, obtained by The Denver Post through a federal Freedom of Information Act request, said the likelihood of injury had been higher because “employees were exposed to the hazards for nearly 7 years without the equipment being inspected properly.”

Suncor was fined $15,625 — the maximum allowed — in June for a serious violation of federal safety standards in connection with the fire at Colorado’s only oil refinery.

Most of the 1,090-page report was redacted, but it still revealed some new information about the circumstances surrounding the Dec. 24 fire that burned one person’s face so badly that he was hospitalized. A second worker was injured but did not need hospitalization, according to the report.

OSHA officials could not be reached to explain why so much of the investigative report was withheld from the public.

In response to a Denver Post inquiry about the investigation, Leithan Slade, a Suncor spokesman, wrote in an email, “Suncor has repaired and replaced the equipment related to the fire and is identifying, inspecting and testing all dead legs in the unit where the December 24, 2022 fire occurred. That work will be complete by the end of the year.”

The OSHA investigation raises questions about how Suncor manages its inspection of “dead legs,” an industry term for pipes that are no longer used and are shut off from liquids and vapors.

The explosion took place after a cold front rolled into the region, causing an extreme and fast temperature drop, on the afternoon of Dec. 21. The deep freeze caused extensive problems, and Suncor officials over the course of about a week shut down the refinery.

The Commerce City facility remained closed until early April while it was being repaired, fueling a more than 50% jump in gas prices in Colorado.

The cause of the shutdown was shrouded in secrecy with Suncor revealing little information about what had happened. Since then, details have been emerging in bits and pieces.

At a Nov. 16 meeting of the Air Quality Control Commission, state air regulators gave a briefing on Suncor’s operations and their efforts to enforce environmental regulations at the refinery. That briefing included an update on the December shutdown, which remains under investigation by the state’s Air Pollution Control Division.

The extreme weather caused instruments to freeze and the refinery was unable to make steam, said Shannon McMillan, who manages the air division’s compliance and enforcement program. Other equipment also needed to be shut off because of freezing and thawing issues.

“There were also two people that were injured during the initial days of the shutdown, which obviously further elevated the concerns about what was going on,” McMillan said.

However, her division does not investigate injury accidents. Instead, the air division is looking into air pollution violations that occurred during the shutdown. The refinery exceeded the amount of hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and visible emissions allowed under its air permits and exceeded the benzene limits allowed in its water permit. That investigation is ongoing, McMillan said.

The Suncor refinery has more than 200,000 flanges and valves that require inspection, according to the air division’s briefing.

Suncor gave OSHA a copy of its dead leg inspection program but it was redacted in the copy of the report provided to The Post.

John Jechura, a Colorado School of Mines professor in the chemical and biological engineering department, described a dead leg as being like a garden hose that is turned off at the spigot and has the valve closed on the nozzle.

“If it gets water in it and there’s a deep freeze, it freezes and expands,” Jechura said. “You don’t really know it until it thaws out.”

The report shows the pump that exploded was a backup and rarely used, Jechura said. It would make sense for the refinery to have a system of backups in place so that operations would not be interrupted if one failed.

Jechura, who reviewed the OSHA report for The Post, said too much information was blacked out to determine whether there were oversights that led to the explosion or what Suncor could have done to prevent the accident.

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The hospital ordered a backup boiler from Texas and planned to run its heat and hot water systems off the second 50-year-old unit in the meantime. But 18 days later, on the morning of Oct. 30, that second boiler failed — and the backup was not yet in Denver.

The broken boilers forced Porter officials to evacuate more than 100 patients and to close the entire hospital for 10 days, state officials said. But in their public communication about the hospital shutdown, AdventHealth Porter officials never disclosed that one of the facility’s boilers had been taken offline because it failed an inspection weeks before the second unit broke.

The Denver Post discovered the report detailing the Porter boiler’s inspection during a review of records in Colorado’s state boiler database.

Hospital closures can complicate the care of sick people and they’re costly to hospitals’ bottom lines. They are a rare occurrence and lead to involvement from multiple local, state and federal agencies, including the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the state Department of Fire Prevention and Control.

Rachel Robinson, an AdventHealth spokeswoman, said in a written statement that the hospital’s operations team diligently administers regular maintenance checks of the building’s boiler operating system, but the string of boiler breaks was “a confluence of events” that led to the need to close the facility.

“We are now operating with triple boiler redundancy,” she said in a statement.

Colorado’s chief boiler inspector Bob Becker said the crisis likely was “a run of real bad luck.”

However, one health care economist told The Post that it would be fair to question AdventHealth Porter’s risk-management strategy and its financial well-being after the closure.

Hospital closures due to failed equipment are rare and avoidable, said Ge Bai, a professor of health and policy management at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

“As hospital management, it’s your job to make sure risks are mitigated,” Bai said. “It’s fair to blame management.”

Porter is a private, nonprofit hospital and is not required to disclose its financial statements. Robinson declined to share them when asked by The Post.

“Not safe to operate”

On Oct. 12, a boiler inspector working for a company that insures the hospital discovered serious problems with one of Porter’s boilers during a routine inspection.

“This boiler is not safe to operate,” the inspector wrote in a report on file in the online boiler database maintained by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s Division of Oil and Public Safety.

The state issued a deficiency notice to Porter the day after the Oct. 12 inspection that said the boiler was in violation of state regulatory laws and the hospital had 60 days to fix it. Failure to repair boilers can carry criminal charges or result in fines of up to $1,000 for every day the boiler remains broken.

Tubes on Porter’s boiler had failed and those broken tubes were clogged with cement, according to the inspector’s report. Another part that provides insulation for the boiler had broken and had not been properly repaired, causing a hot spot to develop on a piece that insulates the boiler, the report said.

The boiler also had undergone three major repairs between June 2016 and August 2022 that would have involved welding, the inspection report said. Welding work on a boiler requires workers to have a special certification and those repairs must be signed off on by state inspectors, Becker said. The report did not specify what those prior repairs entailed and further information was not immediately available online.

The new problems discovered in the Oct. 12 inspection would not have required the state to approve any repair work because welding would not have been involved, Becker said. Once Porter made the repairs, hospital staff could turn the boiler back on and the hospital would be in compliance with state law.

At no point was the damaged boiler a public safety hazard, Becker said.

“From what I understand, these conditions were found during the internal inspection and that’s the purpose of the internal inspection: to identify anything that needs correction,” he said.

The second boiler broke on the morning of Oct. 30.

Robinson’s statement said the unit “unexpectedly failed due to extreme temperatures.” Becker said a tube split, causing a leak.

Required boiler inspections

The 45,000 boilers registered in Colorado are inspected twice a year — once for external problems and once for internal problems. Internal inspections require facilities to shut off the boiler so inspectors can look inside, Becker said.

About 40% of the inspections are performed by state employees and the rest are conducted by insurance companies. But those insurance inspectors have the same credentials as the state inspectors and are approved to work within the state’s system, Becker said.

Porter’s second boiler had been inspected on Sept. 19 and no deficiencies were found. A certificate to operate was granted, according to Colorado’s boiler database.

Both boilers were built in 1973, according to state records. It’s not unusual for 50-year-old boilers to still be in operation because they are built to operate for a long time, provided they are properly maintained, Becker said.

When Porter officials realized one of the hospital’s boilers would be out of commission for repairs, they ordered a rental boiler to serve as a backup, Becker said. But it did not arrive before the second boiler broke.

“In order to retain redundancy, they had ordered the temporary boiler,” Becker said. “It just hadn’t made it there yet.”

Porter officials ordered an emergency backup from American Steam Incorporated in Wylie, Texas. That company loaded a boiler onto a flatbed trailer and drove it to Denver.

It arrived by 4 a.m. Nov. 1, and engineers from American Steam flew into town to start it, according to a news release from the company. By Nov. 3, the hospital had the heat, hot water, steam and sterilization capabilities that are necessary for its operations, the news release said.

Porter plans to permanently operate with three boilers, Robinson said. A third permanent boiler eventually will replace the temporary unit.

Porter had to undergo inspections from multiple state agencies before the hospital could reopen. The facility resumed clinical services on Nov. 9 and elective surgeries restarted Nov. 13, according to an email from Gabi Johnston, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Hospital closures are very rare

It is exceedingly rare for a hospital to evacuate patients and temporarily close, said Scott Bookman, the state health department’s senior director for public health readiness and response.

The last time a Colorado hospital evacuated all of its patients was Dec. 30, 2021, when Centura-Avista Adventist Hospital in Louisville was threatened by the raging Marshall fire. But that was an external crisis.

In 2010, Rose Medical Center in Denver evacuated patients after its backup generator failed during a power outage caused by a transformer blowout in the neighborhood.

“These happen a couple of times a decade at the most because of an issue internal at the facility,” Bookman said.

The patient evacuation went smoothly, said Elaine McManus, director of the state health department’s Health Facilities and Emergency Medical Services Division. State records show 125 patients were at the hospital for various services at the time.

Porter needed to transfer 77 patients to other facilities and found space for 70% of those patients at other AdventHealth hospitals in the region, Robinson said. Another 74 were discharged.

At no point were any lives at risk, McManus said.

“We had an awful lot of lessons learned over COVID and we set up systems that enhanced what our emergency response would have been prior to the pandemic,” McManus said. “I’ll sort of brag that we’ve gotten pretty darn efficient.”

Porter also was inspected by the Colorado Department of Fire Prevention and Control before it reopened, said Chris Brunette, chief of the agency’s fire and life safety section.

In 2018, Porter suspended surgeries for nearly a week after state inspectors learned it was not properly sterilizing surgical equipment, increasing the risk of infections for thousands of patients. The investigation was launched after a doctor found a bone fragment on an instrument during spinal surgery. That incident resulted in a lawsuit filed by more than 60 former patients.

The controversy surrounding the dirty surgical instruments followed by the broken boilers was alarming to Bai, the Johns Hopkins health policy and management professor.

Risk management at hospitals is imperative, she said. Executives need to run scenarios of what can go wrong and address problems before they emerge.

“It’s a wake-up call for them to improve risk management. It’s a warning for other hospitals,” Bai said. “It can blow up into a big event and you can have a big financial hit.”

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Spirit will no longer fly in and out of Denver as of Jan. 9, DIA spokeswoman Stephanie Figueroa told The Denver Post in an email. Spirit, which started flying out of Denver in May 2012, operated out of just one gate on Concourse C, she said.

In an emailed statement, Spirit spokesman Thomas Fletcher said the airline was forced to make some tough choices as it continued to learn more about how Pratt & Whitney’s GTF engine availability impacts its fleet and operations.

“After considering those constraints and the underperformance of our routes through Denver International Airport (DEN), we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue service at the airport, effective Jan. 9, 2024,” Fletcher wrote in the email.

Spirit will refund customers who have ticket reservations after Jan. 9, the email said.

Pratt & Whitney notified Spirit of a manufacturing issue in its engines in July and advised the airline to accelerate inspections on its jets and switch out engines as necessary, according to the company’s third-quarter financial report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Those necessary inspections resulted in canceled flights in October, according to the Associated Press.

But Spirit is a small player at the busy Denver airport.

Spirit’s passenger traffic at DIA this year has amounted to just 0.8% of the airport’s market share, reflecting declining traffic for the airline in recent years, according to DIA reports. In 2019, Spirit’s market share was 2.1% at the airport.

Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 30 of this year, 386,142 passengers boarded Spirit airplanes in Denver, a 2.1% decline in passenger loads during the same period in 2022, the airport’s latest traffic reports show.

Last week, the airline reported a net loss of $157.6 million for the third quarter of 2023 with its chief executive officer admitting the airline has struggled to regain customers since the pandemic.

“Softer demand for our product and discounted fares in our markets led to a disappointing outcome for the third quarter 2023. We continue to see discounted fares for travel booked through the pre-Thanksgiving period. And, unfortunately, we have not seen the anticipated return to a normal demand and pricing environment for the peak holiday periods. Given these continued trends, we are evaluating our growth profile and our competitive position,” CEO Ted Christie said in a news release about the airline’s quarterly earnings.

In 2022, Spirit became the target of a bidding war among budget airlines, including Denver-based Frontier Airlines. But JetBlue emerged as the winner and announced it planned to buy Spirit for $3.8 billion in July 2022.

However, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit earlier this year, arguing that the merger would be hard on consumers by increasing fares and reducing flight options. That trial is underway this week in U.S. District Court in Boston.

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“The finding that we can minimize costs to consumers by moving on a trajectory that will not only get us to near-zero emissions for greenhouse gases, but also other pollutants like nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides, over the next decade and a half, that’s very good news for Colorado utility customers,” said Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.

The office commissioned Boulder-based Ascend Analytics to study various scenarios for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. Already, state law requires Colorado’s eight power-generating companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2030, based on 2005 levels. But it was unclear whether new policies were needed or whether the utility companies would need to plan to invest in more technology to bring down their emissions even further by 2040, Toor said.

Now, the state believes the sector is on the right track to meet its goals even with a need for more electricity because of a growing population and an increasing demand to fuel electric cars and trucks. That was a pleasant surprise, Toor said.

Colorado’s utility companies are shuttering coal-fired power plants and developing plans to increase wind and solar power production to meet those state-mandated goals. But there had been a question about whether wind and solar power would be enough or whether utilities would need to invest in more expensive or unproven technologies such as nuclear, hydrogen and geothermal.

In September, Xcel Energy filed a new clean energy plan that would make 80% of its system run on wind, solar and biomass energy by 2030 and would add 6,500 megawatts of renewable energy to the grid as it closes its last coal-fired power plant.

On Wednesday, an Xcel spokesman said the company was encouraged by the energy office’s findings.

“We agree there is a need for new 24/7 carbon-free technology to achieve deep carbon reductions,” Tyler Bryant, an Xcel spokesman, wrote in an emailed statement. “The state’s policies will enable us to reduce carbon emissions greater than 80% by 2030 and will inform our future investments into the local infrastructure necessary to move clean energy reliably into our customers’ homes — while keeping bills low.”

Gov. Jared Polis wants Colorado to be using 100% renewable energy by 2040, and in 2019 he introduced a road map to get there. Electricity and transportation are the largest sources of greenhouse gas pollution in the state, and the governor’s administration has said it’s important to cut those emissions to slow climate change, prevent catastrophic wildfires, floods and other natural disasters, and to protect the state’s ski industry.

Environmentalists agreed the report is good news for Colorado.

Justin Brant, utility program director for the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, said he had not dug into the nitty gritty details of the modeling but found the preliminary results encouraging.

“We don’t have to get into some of these novel and more complicated technologies that have challenges,” Brant said. “For the vast majority of the reductions, we can count on wind and solar and things that are already proven.”

Ean Thomas Tafoya, executive director of GreenLatinos Colorado, said the state should be more bold in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now.

“We could do this way before 2040, I think,” he said. “Wind and solar is a no-brainer in Colorado. What this tells me is we’re on the path. Let’s be bold.”

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Nearly a year later, there are no air monitors set up in the community to take samples of ground-level ozone pollution, fine particulate matter or methane. And the organization is nowhere close to getting started, said Nikie “NikieDay” Wells, director of Black Parents United’s environmental justice program.

“Equipment costs a lot. Scientists cost a lot. Research costs a lot,” Wells said. “It’s a lot and the support is not there.”

Last November, the EPA announced seven local governments and nonprofit agencies across Colorado would receive $2.9 million to conduct air pollution monitoring, including in metro Denver and the northern Front Range — areas that are in severe violation of national air quality standards. The grants were part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and were among 132 projects in 37 states receiving a total of $53.4 million.

The EPA wanted to help communities figure out just how much pollution people are breathing, with a focus on disproportionately impacted communities where residents inhale noxious fumes in neighborhoods near industrial zones and interstates. But nonprofits listed to receive the grants are learning that air monitoring is expensive and complicated, and they are struggling to roll it out — if they choose to do it at all.

“The goal of these grants is to improve air quality monitoring in and near underserved communities, and to support local leaders who have developed plans to monitor their own air quality,” said KC Becker, director of the EPA’s Region 8, which includes Colorado.

Cultivando, a Latinx nonprofit based in Adams County, was listed as a grant recipient when the EPA announced the new programs in November. But the organization turned down $500,000.

Cultivando already spent nearly two years monitoring the pollution around the Suncor Energy refinery in Commerce City and decided that the EPA’s rules were too burdensome to make collecting more data worth the organization’s time and effort, said Guadalupe Solis, the organization’s director of environmental justice programs.

Plus, the organization’s leaders felt like the data they already had collected was ignored by policymakers and did not lead to meaningful change.

“It’s really time for us to come back to our community organizing and advocacy and doing what we need to do for our community rather than this treadmill of data collection,” Solis said.

Others, however, are pleased with the increased air monitoring as Colorado tries to reduce air pollution, making its residents more healthy and doing its part to slow climate change.

On Wednesday, representatives from Adams and Jefferson counties joined Becker and Michael Ogletree, director of the Air Pollution Control Division at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, to roll out their air monitoring programs, which also were funded by the EPA.

Those monitors will feed a public data dashboard at clean.lovemyair.com, where people can go to learn in real-time just how dirty the air is.

“In the city of Northglenn, we recognize that air quality impacts everyone’s quality of life,” Mayor Meredith Leighty said. “Through this partnership, the city will be able to leverage the EPA funding for air quality sensors and public access to the data dashboards to help inform, educate and create changes to improve our air in the city and region.”

Ean Thomas Tafoya, director of GreenLatinos Colorado, cheered those air monitoring programs.

“We need local governments to jump in,” Tafoya said. “Use their local resources to protect the community,”

In Adams and Jefferson counties, county health and environmental departments will run the air monitoring programs. They have bigger budgets and experts on staff who are equipped to do it, said Steve O’Dorisio, chairman of the Adams County’s Board of County Commissioners.

But O’Dorisio said it’s not the responsibility of local nonprofits to hold polluters accountable and do the government’s work — although he said there is value in allowing community groups, who lack trust in corporations and government, to run their own programs as part of an overall system of checks and balances.

“Placing more burden on the backs of local nonprofits to do the work that government and industry should be doing is not acceptable,” O’Dorisio said. “We need to leverage their strengths and not have them in the business of what others should be doing and that is monitoring and enforcement.”

When the EPA announced grant recipients in Colorado in November 2022 there were three nonprofits on the list.

The third nonprofit, 350 Colorado, received $498,537 to monitor volatile organic compounds, ozone, methane and particulate matter near two public schools in Greeley that are close to oil and gas operations. That program also has not started.

“Deeply disappointed by the response”

Cultivando was the first nonprofit in Colorado to run an air pollution monitoring program. The organization was awarded the money in 2020 through a settlement between the EPA and Suncor after that company was penalized for continuous air pollution violations. That program ended in July.

Cultivando contracted Boulder Air to set up a monitoring station about 1.3 miles northeast of the refinery and began taking air samples to detect multiple toxic compounds.

In March, Cultivando hosted a meeting at the University of Denver to present its findings from a year’s worth of data. No one from the EPA or the state health department attended, which offended Cultivando’s team.

After the nonprofit reported that it had found more harmful pollutants in the air than people realized, state officials said Cultivando looked at short-term spikes of benzene and particulate matter and that those readings were snapshots of air quality conditions and did not comply with established standards for measuring air quality.

“We are deeply disappointed by the response from government organizations like CDPHE and the EPA and the corporate partners like Suncor,” Solis said. “When we came out with our data, it ranged from inaction to dismissal.”

Still, Cultivando applied for the round of EPA air monitoring grants in 2022 and its application was accepted. Then the nonprofit started learning about all the rules that come with a federal grant and decided not to take the money.

“Overall, it’s an overly complicated and antiquated process that does not align with nonprofits. It places unnecessary burdens on us to create systems that are more relevant to large institutions and government agencies,” said Olga Gonzalez, Cultivando’s executive director.

Of the $500,000, Cultivando would have kept just $40,000 with the rest going to the company that provided the expertise to monitor the air.

The EPA wanted Cultivando to create a complex accounting system to track the money, Gonzalez said. The nonprofit had an established relationship with Boulder Air, but the EPA wanted a competitive, national bidding process to choose a company.

The grant was not worth all the work that was required, Gonzalez said.

“The $40,000 was spent before any funds were even received,” she said.

Becker, who leads the EPA’s region that includes Colorado, told The Denver Post that she understood federal grants are complicated, especially for nonprofits that haven’t received them before. But her agency has to follow the law.

“Getting a half a million dollars is amazing, but it doesn’t come without strings,” Becker said. “You still have to comply with federal government laws. That means developing a quality assurance program.”

The EPA is focusing on environmental justice under the Biden administration, Becker said.

“One of the biggest priorities of the EPA is finding ways to connect directly with the people we serve,” she said.

The grants “reflect a determination to do more than just work behind the scenes, invisible and over the heads of the people we aim to protect,” Becker said. “At the core of this approach is the idea that we do better when we inform, engage with and share our work with the people we serve.”

“Air monitoring is not cheap”

The Black Parents United Foundation wanted to test the air in Aurora to inform residents whose children suffer from asthma, Wells said. She and her children have asthma and their breathing problems are exacerbated on hot summer days when ozone pollution is high, she said.

“It’s affecting our communities and they deserve to know the information,” she said.

But starting a program is proving more challenging than expected even with $472,656 coming from the EPA.

The companies that are in the air monitoring business are expensive and almost all of the money Black Parents United received will go to them, Wells said. When the money runs out, her foundation won’t own any equipment to keep testing the air.

“I’m sure in those scientists’ warehouses somewhere there’s an air monitor sitting and collecting dust,” she said.

The budget from the EPA only goes so far, she said.

Black Parents United’s members have talked to Cultivando to learn from that organization’s experience. And the work to stand up a program continues, albeit slowly, Wells said.

“It’s hard. Air monitoring is not cheap at all,” she said. “It’s discouraging. It makes you want to give up. It’s not fair to those who put in all the work or to the community who needs to see the work.”

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