OSCAR: Amplifying the Power of Nature for a Sustainable, Just, and Resilient Boulder County Transcript

Sustainability, climate action, and resilience. Those are three terms that pack a lot of meaning and guide the work that we do here at Parks and Open Space. In fact, two of our seven guiding values are sustainability and resilience. These values help guide our mission to conserve natural, cultural, and agricultural resources and provide public uses that reflect sound resource management and community values. But beyond the work that we do here at Parks and Open Space, there is an entire county that believes firmly that the actions we take today form the possibilities of our future, that we can make small changes now that will create a more sustainable, resilient environment in the days and years to come. Boulder County felt so strongly about this that in 2020, it created the Office of Sustainability, Climate Action, and Resilience, affectionately called OSCR for short, whose mission is to advance policies and programs that conserve resources, protect the environment, and safeguard our climate in order to build a sustainable, just, and resilient community. I'm Melissa Arnold, your host of today's episode of Voices of Open Space, and I'm joined by our guest, Tim Broderick, Senior Sustainability Strategist with OSCAR, the Office of Sustainability, Climate Action and Resilience. Tim and I will be taking a look at how his office helps to implement sustainability, climate action and resilience in our day-to-day lives, our department, our county and our community. Welcome, Tim. Thanks for joining me.

Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

What I'd like to start with is a little bit of your story. How did you come to this work and why is it important to you?

That's a great question. My foray into the world of environmental studies prior to the invention of what is now sustainability really came from a place of curiosity and passion for the sciences and anthropology and really just kind of what makes us tick in some ways as a society. As a kid, I didn't grow up. It was funny. I listened to the first podcast and got through that. And there was this reference that there's places in the nation where suburban sprawl goes as far as the eye can see. And that's where I grew up. I grew up in the greater Philadelphia area. My parents are from North Philadelphia in a row home, so very much urban. But they were a part of that sort of white flight into the suburbs. And I had, I think, about an acre and a half of the classic 1960s split level suburban home. So scattered around me were sort of these broken fingers of forest and areas. And I remember as a kid finding the little creek and kind of disappearing in between homes. And I get to a point where I couldn't see any home anywhere and had this sort of surreal feeling for me that I now as an adult, right, I can sort of look back upon and recognize that it was nature, right? It was the feeling that comes from being in these wild open places. I think it was maybe eighth grade was the first time my family did the classic three-week road trip in the van across the United States of America. We actually went as far as Boulder County. I went to Celestial Seasonings back in the day. And I remember it distinctly. And I remember seeing the Flatirons and getting up to Rocky Mountain National Park and those places and being stunned that there are still giant open spaces like what you see at scale here. So there was something I think that resonated with me, at least in terms of that touch point to what does nature mean and how do we as humans and then all the other layers that come beneath that interact within that relationship of nature. And I think that's the place where I spent a lot of my time and energy in terms of education and obviously professional career growth and sort of my relationship with climate action and sustainability.

It's amazing to hear the stories of how it really only takes a little crack in the sidewalk with the grasses and flowers growing through to grab a child's imagination and realization that there's so much more and that nature is vast and they're part of it. And how neat that your path did bring you here to Boulder County. We're thankful for that. And to the Oscar, as I'll just call it from now on. It's much easier to say, too. Let's fill in the picture of this office we're so lucky to have. Perhaps you can elaborate on what it is that your office does at Boulder County.

Similar to open space, our office is funded by a sales tax, which was a ballot initiative in 2016 that sort of created the department that is now Oscar, which really launched in 2020 when that revenue stream started to come in. It established formally the arms of what we now see as Boulder County's climate action work. Climate action and more so even sustainability, you can somewhat slice and dice it a million different ways, depending on your community and the citizens and elected officials and, you know, state, federal, local of where value sets and how you're going to apply resources. For Boulder County, we sort of focus on three primary bubbles of climate action and climate resiliency specifically. We look at building decarbonization, which represents roughly 40-ish percent of our greenhouse gas emissions as a county. We look at electrification of transportation, and that represents about another 40-ish percent. And then there's 20% that's kind of very hard to unpack because there's so many layers of what it all may be. But within that world, there's also a thread over to this notion of carbon dioxide removal, or how are you going to account for that 10% to 20%? There's an interesting path, and that's where I'll speak today in depth about natural climate solutions. The original avenue over for sort of the creation of the natural climate solutions among most conversations in the United States of America was in the world of carbon sequestration. It was, it can account for this 10% of our greenhouse gas emissions, such as jet fuel, right? Where there is no alternative. We talk about algae all the time, but it's really not viable at this point. So we're going to have to come up with other solutions in order to mitigate those carbon emissions. So natural climate solutions was thought of as one of the pathways of how we could do that. And that's where myself and my team really got formulated about three years ago and the work that we do around natural climate solutions.

When you're talking about decarbonization and what you would work with these nature-based solutions, you're talking about taking the carbon out of the atmosphere.

Yes. In regards to carbon dioxide removal and sequestration, that sort of 10 to 20% would be more in reference to actually removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That other 80% that I was referencing is what is called mitigation formally, right? You're essentially mitigating those emissions from ever existing by choosing alternative sources of energy ultimately, right? Non-fossil fuel based.

This sounds really incredible and like a really big project to take on and that you obviously need community and more broadly, of course, beyond Boulder County. We need the nation and the world to be on board with this. But let's stay where we are here in Boulder County and let's look at some examples of what you're doing to be able to actually see a lot of this come to fruition. One of the ways in which I know your office has worked on some of these nature-based solutions is with our own department, Parks and Open Space. As we've mentioned in previous episodes, we manage about a little over 60,000 acres of open space land and about 26,000 acres of those are in agricultural use. Your office has worked with our department in managing these agricultural lands and creating regenerative farming practices and all that. Can you tell me a little bit more to give an example of how your office has worked with us to implement some of this really impressive ideas that your office has?

Start with the history of how I, as my position, engaged with agriculture. And it's interesting. I originally was hired on in our office in 2019 as the zero waste sustainability specialist. And in my job description, there was like a single little bubble that said working with agricultural producers. Oh, interesting. And I went to Susie, our director, and I said, you know, well, what is it? She's like, do what you want to do. And, you know, in the sustainability ballot initiative tax, there was actually a call out of support for local agricultural producers. So we had this window to try and think about and launch what are the resources and what are the support that agricultural producers need in order to be more sustainable, to reduce carbon impacts, right? And that involved a ton of conversations across who were the previous county commissioners at that point in time, a lot of the major stakeholders in the agricultural communities, farmers and ranchers, CSU Extension. obviously parks and open space, conservation districts, et cetera, to try and formulate an idea of what would a grant program potentially look like to address some of the needs for farmers and ranchers to take a step forward to be more sustainable, more carbon neutral, however you want to describe it. And with that, we launched the Sustainable Food and Ag Fund. That launched in 2020 and ran and still technically running, but in a smaller version up until 2023. In 2023, we had a collaboration with Parks and Open Space where we sat down together with the Division Agricultural Management. manager, staff who were over there working on healthy soils already, and other parts of ag and Commissioner Stolzmann at the time. And we were really challenged with thinking about how do we envision agriculture in the next 20 years, 30 years? What does that look like? And specifically, obviously coming from our lens of climate action and resiliency. And we put a lot of things on the board, as you can imagine. Everything from how do we grow every piece of food item for here in Boulder County, right? Which has many challenges with it. Everything talking about petrochemicals and the layers that are involved with that of efficiencies and being fossil fuel based, et cetera. But the one that really jumped off the board that I think most people in the room could resonate with in terms of applying resources and trying to move the needle was the concept of healthy soils. Healthy soils is not new by any means. The USDA and NRCS from the 1930s onward with the Dust Bowl really started launching these sort of technical assistance programs to help farmers and ranchers understand the practices that improve soil health. We now know as time has passed, soil health also is directly tied to resiliency of the crops and all of the production value that comes through a farmer or ranch, right? And so... We looked at those USDA five soil health principles that we referenced when we were with Andy and Graham and Grass out there in the field.

Which will fast forward, we will be taking a field trip to see a farmer in action, a rancher in action out there.

We really looked at how can we provide capital to implement those five practices with farmers and ranchers. Uniquely and joint and between Oscar and Parks and Open Space, we launched the Healthy Soils Initiative, which was to the tune of $1 million, $500,000 going to private lands, which was what Oscar provided, $500,000 going towards public lands, which was the Parks and Open Space provided. I won't spend too much time, but we actually had an extra 100,000 matching fund with a program that we launched called Restore Colorado, which was in partnership with an organization called Zero Foodprint, which maybe you've heard of, maybe you haven't. Zero Foodprint started in California. They now work with like, gosh, well, probably over 50, if not a hundred different organizations across the United States. They work with restaurants here in Boulder County. So they work with Black Cat and they work with Black Belly. Yeah, which

is a farm here in Boulder County.

And what they do is they essentially put a 1% surcharge on your bill. And that surcharge goes directly back to funding these practices with farmers and ranchers. That's a smart idea. Yeah. So we were able to create this parks and open space collaboration with private collaboration at the same time and really create capital to help decrease the risk for farmers and ranchers to transform their practices to improve soil health.

Yeah, because I can imagine that that is a big risk for a lot of farmers and ranchers to make where it's not necessarily the most lucrative job out there. It's something we all desperately need is food and healthy choices. That's a really great way that you found to support that group to be able to try different things. That was also a lot that you listed there. That's so amazing that you were able to do so much and reach so far. Specifically with Parks and Open Space, did you work directly on some of the agricultural lands that they have with tenant farmers?

Parks and open space took on the application pool that would have come from leases on open space primarily.

Leases, the people who are leasing the open space.

Yes. Yeah. We absolutely did have, and even leading up to that with the Food and Ag Fund, several grants that were folks operating on private land and also the public land that they were leasing adjacent. So we have had crossover between those as well, but really Oscar's focus has been on the private landowners and kind of target that. So we have a comprehensive landscape, right, of agriculture in boulder county and that's where i think we were trying to take the puzzle pieces off the board in some ways and address sort of the various spaces so

Well, you and I had the opportunity to visit with one of the recipients of Boulder County Soils Health Initiative Grant, Andy Breiter from Grama Grass & Livestock. And we heard from him directly about how the grant has allowed him to create educational videos and purchase equipment necessary to operate his rotational grazing business in a sustainable way. And so we're just going to take a minute and listen to that conversation that we had with him on that beautiful fall day. And we'll be right back. So Andy, thank you so much for welcoming me out here onto your land so we could talk a little bit about how you've worked with the county to implement some sustainability practices in Boulder County. Let's ground ourselves in the land first and just talk about where we are. This is a property that's actually owned by Keith Owen, who was featured in our fifth podcast episode on conservation easements. So people could always go back and listen to that if they want some history on how conservation easements help to support open space in Boulder County. So this conservation easement property Keith and his late wife Jan bought in 1977. And they ran a tree nursery, a commercial tree nursery for over 30 years. And then they decided they wanted to restore this landscape to as native a grassland as they could. They worked with multiple professionals to try to make that happen. And when they realized they weren't getting the results they wanted, they decided upon some advice to seek somebody who could help introduce some rotational grazing. and see if perhaps the problem they were having was they needed to bring back some soil health, specifically with the grazing of livestock, sort of like how the buffalo used to roam on the North American landscape. And I know that's how he connected with you. This is Andy Breiter with Grama Grass & Livestock, and I would love to have you just give us a little overview of your business and how it is you connected with Keith. Just a little bit about what your business does would be great.

Yeah. So while Keith was looking for help about his grass, I was looking for land and talking to the same people. I'm always indebted to Sylvia Hickenlooper, who works with USDA's NRCS. And she played a little bit of matchmaker to us and came out here one July day and came with my, I call him a little bit of my farm dad, Carl Stark, who runs the Golden Hoof. And Carl, I remember him looking at me like, this is the land that you've been looking for. This is how your business begins. So we are Grama Grass & Livestock. We're named for the state grass of Colorado, Blue Grandma Grass. And what we do is utilize livestock to bring about native resilience. So we graze on, I think, 20 different parcels around Boulder County, constantly moving the animals, mimicking how bison would have roamed these same plains.

Maybe you could give us some physical detail of like what it is that the movement of these animals does to the soil to help improve the soil health and how that helped to restore Keith's property to what now has become quite a nice native grassland.

For me, it's actually what it does to the grass and how the grass interacts with the soil, relies upon the synergy between a ruminant animal and a grass where in this arid environment, the grass can't break down as well and turn back into soil as it could maybe say in the Amazon rainforest. So you need a warm, wet, location like a cow's stomach to actually decompose the grass and make it more bioavailable for the soil. And as a cow eats grass, that grass sloughs off its roots into the soil and then it starts to regrow. And the key thing with the movement, it allows the grass to rest and fully regrow, fully go through the respiration photosynthetic process by which grass plant sequesters carbon, meaning it takes CO2 from the atmosphere, the grass does, It turns it into leafy material and roots, which is carbon, breathes back out oxygen, and then is saying, I need a ruminant animal, a cow, to come back and eat me so I can store that carbon into the soil and reset that process.

A lot of great information there that we've just touched the surface of. That's fascinating. I know that to do this work is not that simple. You've worked here for how long on this property?

June of 2020 was when we signed our first lease, so a little more than five years.

In working hard, I know one of the things you do is you look at partnerships and grant opportunities. And one of those partnerships that you've leveraged is with Oscar Group at Boulder County. And br Grant for the purchase of equipment to support your practice. I would love to invite Tim Broderick into this conversation now to talk with you about how you've implemented some of the aspects of that grant.

The grant program itself really focuses on the five soil health principles as set by the USDA. And let's see if I can remember them all and you may have to jump in here. Minimize soil disturbances, maximize plant biodiversity, diversity as general, keep a living root in the ground, integration of livestock, And there's one more blanking on it right now. I knew I could- Is it cover the land? Cover the land, keep the ground covered. You got it, yes. So those five principles are really at the core of what the Healthy Soils Initiative is. We recognize that healthy soils are a direct tie to climate resiliency. and that is where our office has sort of stepped in and said we're going to take some of the sustainability tax and we're going to incentivize that work we want to see additionality of acreage implementing these practices to help make our land specifically agriculture more climate resilient integration of livestock and you go through the rest of that list and everything that Andy just talked about here you almost see all five of those soil health principles at play with the use of cattle specifically rotational grazing in the way that Andy does it And that's really what our equipment does. Our grant program itself, as we come in, we meet the farmer and the rancher where they're at. So we don't have limitations of saying, okay, you submit now for 20 acres of rotational grazing, we'll give you this in exchange for it. If you need a piece of equipment to go then expand that acreage and do it, we'll fund that equipment. And so that's where our grant program, I think, really is unique in terms of the layers of local government, higher federal government, et cetera, in that we're a little more flexible in where we can meet farmers and ranchers and what they need. So

Andy, tell us specifically how this grant met you where you are. What have you been able to do upon receiving this grant?

So really there were three main phases to the grant and how we wrote it. One was finding a way to share. So we're making a video about what we did. We also created multiple soil health plans for a couple of the properties that we work on. And the last is we purchased a thousand gallon water trailer to be able to water our cows. we don't own an acre of land and one of the major issues that we find as we get animals on land is is there livestock water available for the cows to drink for us to perform the prescriptive grazing regenerative grazing that we do so we were able to purchase that thousand gallon trailer and we went from grazing something like 450 acres in 2023 to 775 acres in 2024 to 1200 acres in 2025 because of the use of this livestock trailer while also taking the soil health plants to improve some of those other properties as well. I think we use the livestock trailer on something like 70% of our overall properties. We're constantly hauling that cow water around and it allows us to create flexible plans to listen to the property and say this is the type of prescription that it needs.

So I'm curious with the water trailer, specifically about this piece of equipment, how does it sort of allow you to do your prescribed grazings in the regenerative manner that you do?

It creates efficiency on what we previously had. So we did have a 450 gallon water trailer. And as our herd increased, it was very difficult to get the animals the water that they needed. Many of the properties that we were on don't have water at all. So cows wouldn't be able to go to that property. if it wasn't for us hauling water a piece of that is because we're first generation farmers we're getting access to the lands that others didn't want or didn't fit their farms so usually doesn't have water just allows access period the other piece is cattle can be lazy So if there was one watering point, the cows would kind of stay around that watering point, potentially damaging the riparian area because they're consistently going to the same watering point, not grazing, not utilizing the land as a whole, overgrazing, meaning repetitive grazing in the same spot over and over near the water, not allowing the grass to regrow its roots to sequester carbon. And this allows us to put water troughs throughout a property, even if there is water there to say, we want you to concentrate here so that we could then move you to the next spot so that that previous spot can get rest. This is it. It's getting a little dusty these days. We could use some rain to at least settle the dust. So this is the front of it. This pump has a two inch hose that can come. This is fully attached to the trailer. It's just a classic water pump that cycles water. And we actually have also used this to spread compost tea with as well. Compost tea. Yes, compost tea. That was one of the soil health plans that we created from the grant was saying part of this property needed some more biological life. So made a tea in there and got the tea to be living, kind of a probiotic, we'll say. Because this has pretty big hoses, the thicker filaments that are in a compost tea didn't get clogged and didn't create issues. One of us stood on the back of this while another drove it in the field and just sprayed it across the field to try to increase that biology. We're in areas like we graze on City of Louisville's north open space parcel where we are literally driving a water trailer across a bridge to this area that the City of Louisville deemed high risk for fire potential because it's right in the middle of a subdivision. They feel it's very important to lower the fuel load, the grass load, while also creating healthy soil to increase the resilience, the water retention, et cetera, on that property. Without a tool like this, there's no way you're getting cows over there in an efficient manner that can actually help protect and help firefighters in case of a fire to slow that down and prevent it getting into the built environment. Yeah, the other thing I love about the program besides just being able to implement the soil health practices is understanding the economic challenges to farming and that it's very difficult for first generation farmers or for legacy producers to be able to afford new equipment that could just advance their businesses. And the grant program, the Soil Health Initiative grant really allowed us to catalyze the movement that we've been doing. with our animals, with our business as a whole, and it has reaped many economic benefits.

One of my follow-up questions is with your grant program, right? We talked about the water trailer, but I think something that you do that's really unique is you lean into the education outreach and the storytelling of what it is that you're trying to develop in your business model. I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about how the grant funded some of that work.

Yeah, we love interacting with the community and creating transparency about where our food comes from. So we hired a couple of videographers, came out to the farm several times. While we're implementing these practices, we had an education event on the farm that they filmed us talking to the community where we had about 80 or so people out here and they're turning that into a video that is really approachable for either citizens of Boulder County or across the nation or even farmers to say, here's an example. Here's how one farm did it. Can we replicate that? And hopefully they can learn from that education outreach video to be able to do that themselves or just to educate themselves about where food comes from.

Amazing. I feel like I say it all the time, but the Healthy Soils Initiative and the work that we're trying to do in regenerative agriculture doesn't exist without the farmers and ranchers. So truly, thank you for all the time and energy that you put in. It really would not be getting anywhere without the involvement of what you've all been able to build here. So thank you.

My feelings are mutual. Yeah.

That was really just so remarkable joining Andy that day on the property to see the things that he's been able to accomplish with that grant funding, to also see the true care and interest he has in his work and the passion and how, as he stated, this is not something that he would have been able to do without this support. So you're really helping to really affect a difference here. This grant obviously had a very positive impact on his business. Do you see something like that and the impact it had on Andy's business? Do you see that creating a ripple effect? I do. You know,

to what extent could be up for debate? From my opinion, you know, since 2020, we have actively invested almost $3 million of sustainability tax into regenerative agriculture here in Boulder County. I believe that investment in our farming and ranching community has to have ripple effects, right? We are putting dollars into businesses that are integrating operations of soil health principles, right? And that makes it easier to scale and share and learn across the landscape of agriculture in Boulder County. To date, we've had 70 projects. I have walked... Wow. Over 50 individual farmer and rancher properties looking at the equipment purchase and the land where it's been applied. I've gotten to learn through that process that there is absolutely a community and a belief and a support in this work here in Boulder County. And I believe the resources of the sustainability tax are simply helping to just grow the strength of an already existing wave.

Yeah, this sustainability tax is remarkable what we've been able to do with it. Again, just thanking our residents here for continually supporting taxes that improve our environment and efforts like this. So thanks to everybody who votes. Perhaps you can share an example of other resources that your team has provided to the community to implement sustainable efforts.

I would like to say too, I am just a part of the organism that is Oscar. Yeah, please. Like there's 30 some plus over there in the department of Oscar. And I am just one wedge lucky enough here to kind of represent them today and speak to their projects. And I'm sure if one of the team members was here from transportation or building electrification, they could go down those rabbit holes and give you a whole, you know, two hours worth of content on those.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. to talk about the work that I do and our natural climate solutions team, which is still relatively new.

Natural climate solutions team. Yes.

Some people will call it nature-based solutions, natural climate solutions. You'll hear a variety of terminology out there. But really what it does is it looks at amplifying the power of nature. in order to create greater resiliency and co-benefits. I think it's almost like an environmentalism 2.0 in some ways. I do think we're going to solve climate change. Yes, Tim. I do. I stay positive that I do. We've made a ton of progress in terms of renewable energies on the grid and et cetera. You see more electric cars out on the road all the time. I have hope in that. I think there's this layer underneath of it of what is our long-term relationship to nature? I think that is still up for debate or in the conversation of how are we designing and creating societies and their relationship to nature? And that's where I think the history of open space in Boulder County is so fascinating. Like we are the first, right, who passed open space legislation and tax and sort of the blue zone that we had in Boulder and all those incredible things. And that was, I think, a part of that relationship to nature, right? It came from the place of, hey, sprawl has some real negative impacts on what it eats up in terms of biodiversity. Let's try and box that or think about how we're going to layer within that. So we have this DNA and fabric here in Boulder County, and that's the lens that I utilize to think about natural climate solutions. That's incredible, right? Most communities don't have what we have here today. to lean into and amplify for natural solutions. We talked about agriculture, right? That is one of those layers, 25,000 acres of open space, right? You could argue the county itself is the largest farmer and rancher in Boulder County. And so there's a lot of leverage there that could be had. The other layers of it are forestry and grasslands, right? I think somewhere upwards of 107,000 of open space in total, right? And so forestry and grasslands is another piece of this puzzle in terms of how are we amplifying the benefits and protecting our forests and grasslands? Obviously, the fire ballot initiative is probably going to be interwoven, but that's one of our biggest spaces where there's capital to do treatment. And so we work closely with the fire shed community via my colleague, Kevin Peterson, in terms of thinking about similar to regenerative agriculture, like what are the treatment tools that we have available to us? That not only mitigate future forest fires, but also amplify the benefits and biodiversity and the health of those forests.

I love that term you're using, amplifying the powers and benefits of nature and using what's already in front of us. Give us some examples of what that looks

like. My colleague, Kevin, is going to be working very closely with Parks and Open Space on beaver reintroduction and beaver habitat restoration. And that is an incredible opportunity of taking sort of keystone species that have all of these co-benefits that come along when you can create habitat for them.

And quickly, just for anyone who doesn't know, keystone species, that's a really important term. I just want to take a minute.

Keystone species are essentially species that are highly representative of the health of that ecosystem. Beavers on waterways, right, could be a representative of a keystone species. Some people say elk herds are another example of keystone species.

So what can we expect from Kevin? What's he going to be doing with parks and beaver species?

Yeah. So Kevin's going to be working together again, bringing capital. I feel like that's one of the biggest things we do as program managers. Which

is great. We obviously need funding to be able to do these things and try things out. So thank you.

Yes. Moving capital and sustainability tax around to have an impact. And yeah, he's going to be looking at helping to rebuild along very... various different waterways. And with that, hopefully the beavers come or they get reintroduced from another site location where they're considered a nuisance or whatever it may be. That's working with Watershed Center and Collective and Parks and Open Space. And again, I think we have this nexus of where we lean on open space to focus on the public lands and figure out where those sites are. And then we lean on our resources and third-party nonprofits to focus on the private lands. Why duplicate when we can literally take the bones of what we're trying to create and then again, sort of spread that across the, you know, regulations and zonings and all those good things of what we have. Which

is so great because a lot of, you know, obviously at Parks and Open Space, we're mainly focused on the lands that we've purchased or have conservation easements over and how great you can bridge that to the other landowners in the county because it's nature does not know jurisdictional boundaries. Explain a little bit about why beavers, how does this help with forest and, you know, grassland health as you were talking about?

So I don't claim to be a beaver expert. We can keep it really,

really basic. They're cute. We can say that

for one. They're adorable. They're fun to see on the trails when you're hiking, right? The benefit really is you are creating sort of dams or systems that slow and help spread water, which then allows for water retention in terms of fire mitigation. And obviously water is such a key in terms of biodiversity, health, plants, et cetera. It just follows up the food chain from there it also helps in resiliency so flooding events right we're seeing higher patterns of precipitation in the spring specifically over the past 20 years there's a desertification study that we're about to finish and put out that I'm referencing specifically for that data set and they can help sort of slow those events that are occurring in the spring as snowfall and sort of snowpack i should say is melting at the exact same time right so they can be a tool in the toolbox right of helping our our watersheds be as healthy as they possibly can

amplifying amplifying the powers of nature What are some other tools in that toolkit?

To stay under the bubble of forestry and grasslands, we just completed a liability biomass study. So as you know, there are a number of forest thinning projects that are happening across Boulder County. Those forest thinning projects produce a lot of biomass, right? Typically they're stacked and burned. That is the standard operation practice.

Yeah, so biomass, just to really kind of make sure everybody follows, is the natural materials that you get from landscapes like the forests as they, you know, branches and leaves and things that accumulate on the ground, right? That's the biomass. I just made that definition. Add to it if you have to. No,

I mean, that's pretty much it, right? Liability, biomass. Study.

Study. Pine beetle kill, right? It's biomass that can be set to go. Nonetheless, like we're on the end. And the other part of my job is circular economy work too.

Circular economy work. Yes.

Thread over into the space of how are we maximizing and retaining supply chains or material flows within our community? And community can scale and shrink and, you know, that can be a complicated sort of sizing question. But that's really what I think circular economy is. To decrease the extraction of raw materials from our natural systems.

Decrease the extraction of biomass. Is that what you're talking

about? So biomass can be a great example. So if we take biomass, right, from our forest, again, this material would be burnt and just left there. And we're working through pilots this year, and that's what we hope to get a couple of the thinning projects and actually be like, what would be the additional cost? How hard does it get this material, the trailhead, so it can get pulled out of there? What's the transportation cost to get it from that trailhead down to? And we want to work with biochar production, we believe is one of our goals, and that's from the study.

Okay, so we want to get this biomass out of the forest to what you're calling biochar productions because...

In this study, we looked at a market analysis of 10 different sort of sources of where it could all go from lumber, mycelium application, composting, biochar. We sort of looked at to the best of our technical ability, right? Almost like a pros and cons list of each of these market choices. And from that biochar was elevated as one of the highest choices we could possibly utilize a material for.

And what is biochar?

Essentially where you take wood and you burn it at an extreme temperature. And that temperature through what's called pyrolysis essentially locks in carbon into that material and creates this very, really really magical sort of ingredient for soil health the hope or the belief is that we can and it's not a belief we know it's an NRCS conservation practice we know you can apply it but the system i should say is where the belief is is that we can create biochar here in boulder county and that we could then turn around and maybe we pair it with composting right and there's talks of a compost facility and compost facility to be paired with a biochar facility. And the biochar helps draw down carbon at the exact same time. And then we create a material that goes directly back onto our agricultural lands, or it could go onto our parks and municipalities or golf courses that offsets synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. It's an example of a lot of times in sustainability, like everything is so intersectional. I'm seeing that. And so it's solving one problem on one side for circular economy, but it's also a part of a natural climate solution system at the same time. Feeds back into regenerative agriculture, right? It's a part of what we're trying to solve and answer. And that liability biomass study is another example of where we're trying to spend time and resources and energy. And hopefully it's scale. That's the other one. We hope in 2026, we're going to be launching an RFI, which will maybe eventually-

Okay, what's that acronym?

Request for Information. A lot of times in sustainability and climate action, our work, even the science of the research around it, is interdisciplinary. And I think it's one of the beautiful things of what I get to do on a daily basis. Another example that threads back, I think, to open space, and I found so magical when I came across it, this idea or deeper understanding of what we call scope three emissions, which are supply chain emissions. So it is the emissions associated from that which we consume as a community. A typical greenhouse gas inventory or what paints a picture for a government is what's called scope one and two. Most of those emissions are emissions within boundary. So if you think about, I drove my vehicle here today to be at the podcast. Yes. What are the emissions associated with me driving that vehicle to be here or commuting or the energy utilizing at your home? You know, all of those things would be scope one and scope two. If I order something from Amazon, right, and it shows up at my door, all of the emissions associated with the production of whatever it is that I ordered are not in our greenhouse gas inventory. And that was something I didn't fully understand when I first sort of entered the position. And I remember looking at our greenhouse gas emissions and waste was always about 3% of our greenhouse gas emissions. Like, it doesn't make sense to me. There has to be more. We hear all the time of consumption, all these other things. And so I was lucky enough via, you know, my director giving me guidance and saying, go do this to help us understand as a community, what are scope three emissions within Boulder County and how does it impact us here? And we went out to bid with a request for proposals, which is a government tool that we utilize in order to get consultants to respond to a need for work that we have to have done where we don't have the technical expertise to do that per se. We got a great response from Eco Data Labs, which is out of UC Berkeley and utilizing a tool that they have called consumption based emissions inventory. And that tool sort of brings in this sort of scope three consumption based emissions inventory. There is some double accounting, so it can't be a perfect. way of describing it, but what it painted for us is that there is a significant greenhouse gas emissions associated with that which we consume if we include that, roughly 43%. Again, I think it's a little bit lower due to double counting, but it's significant enough. One of the things that I found so fascinating is the tool breaks down by census block and neighborhood an average household greenhouse gas emission. So you can start to paint the picture across Boulder County by census block. What are we looking at and what are the reasons why a certain community may have or may not have a significantly more or less carbon footprint?

And I like that, too, because it brings it down to the individuals in the community and each of us have a role to play in all of this and all these emissions. And what are some of the interesting findings that you saw from that?

One of the things that we discovered and again, no study is perfect. So there's plenty of holes you could poke in different directions. is that a household living in a dense transit-oriented community could have as low as one fifth of the carbon footprint of a household living in a non-dense transit-oriented community.

And dense transit oriented community would be something more urban is what I'm imagining, right? Just to make it layman's term.

One of the biggest markers or metrics in this toolkit that determines a individual household's carbon footprint is the square footage of their home. I think it's so interesting because the light bulb that went off for me, it interlinks back to what the vision of open space was back in the 60s and 70s. And they knew that the suburban sprawl sort of lifestyle was non-sustainable. And we have data now that is proving that and demonstrating that. If we can amplify and allow infilling to occur in our communities, it's essentially a tier one climate action strategy. We can reduce future carbon footprints of households by having people live in dense, walkable communities. At the same time, and, you know, unincorporated Boulder County has started to do this, right? But restricting the size of homes that we're building in unincorporated Boulder County as well. And the numbers and the locations and all those places. And making sure in as much as we can that those who are living in unincorporated Boulder County are linked to the values of the preservation of agricultural heritage, right? And the growing of food in these other places and whatnot. Again, nuances in that in terms of gun barrel and other spots. I recognize that. 

Gunbarrel being one of the communities in Boulder County. This is interesting. And what I'm hearing is that there's so much data that your office is gathering that can help form policies at Boulder County and decisions for how we grow and evolve as a community and make decisions like you said, infilling and building in more densely in areas that are already populated or, you know, encouraging the spaces that are preserved to stay undeveloped.

Yeah, and I'm lucky enough, I am the liaison for the Boulder County Comprehensive Plan update from Oscar. I hopefully will be a part of the Boulder County Comprehensive Plan update. I was just in a call earlier with Hannah Hippley, and we were having this conversation of like, how are we amplifying the message that dense transit-oriented housing, which you can start to interlink with affordable housing, right? We have a housing crisis, arguably, in Boulder County in terms of affordability. And I think you can actually... pull together the notion that climate action and strategy of dense transit oriented housing is actually an answer to affordable housing too at the same time.

And Hannah works in the regulatory department at Boulder County Community Planning and Permitting, and they're in charge of long range planning updates and changes to the land use regulations. So yeah, I can see how your role and your teammates member in that making those changes would be important. Yeah. Informing, informing what we do.

Yeah, absolutely. But without the history of open space and what they did, we wouldn't have this conversation of amplifying that protection, right? It already was there. And now we're just amplifying it further and trying to think of solutions for like the next 50 years out.

I'd love to hear a little more about the Urban Landscapes Toolkit that I've heard mentioned before, because it sounds like this is a tool that perhaps residents in Boulder County could utilize.

Yeah. So we've talked about agriculture. We've talked about forest and grasslands. This is the third bubble of natural climate solutions. And this is really within the jurisdiction of the municipalities. We wanted to help create a toolkit that could guide elected officials. It could guide governmental staff. It can guide individual citizens to be able to understand what does it mean to take natural climate solutions and apply it in an urban landscape. It looks at everything in the sort of menu of options from individual sort of grain gardens and bioswale systems to green roofs to removal of impervious to pervious surfaces to the highest level in regards that we talked about open space and the preservation and the stopping of sprawl is included inside of that toolkit as well. We're excited in 2026, we're going to be launching what we're calling a grade to green fund. So it is a impervious to pervious grant program.

And just for those who may have heard that term, that's specifically about water's ability to get through the earth, through whatever surface might be between the water and the

soil. Yeah. Yeah. And so we're looking to communities to bring forward ideas and maybe multifamily units. It can be commercial where they have places where they're experiencing high heat effects and they want to try to think about how can we put in different systems and tools from this toolkit within their community. And so this is an opportunity in 2026 that we're excited to be able to launch here shortly.

Gray to green. Let's pick one of those. You mentioned green roofs. Tell me more.

There is a, I would say a misconception that green roofs do not work in the high desert plains. And I think the misconception is, is somewhat interlinked with how the city of Denver unveiled their sort of green roof requirements. I'm not sure how familiar you are with that. And I won't spend a ton of time down that. Nonetheless, green roofs can thrive here. They absolutely need to be designed properly. They need to have the right watering and maintenance systems. They can't just be put up there and left alone. They will die. These are, again, in the toolkit. You can dive into all these recommendations and guidance around them. And the benefits, right, are you're removing what would be an impervious surface. You're creating something that can slow water as it sort of flows. flows off your home or commercial entity or whatever it may be and you're also creating spaces for biodiversity plant biodiversity insect biodiversity birds you know it's it's incredible with some of the scales of what you can do with some of these green roofs you can grow food on some of them depending on how you install them it's taking something that has negative externalities associated with it heat island effects water runoff etc and then making a positive external And that's why we're excited to be able to support this work via the sustainability tax and the Greater Green Fund.

Nice. So we'll be looking out for opportunities to tap into this Greater Green Initiative in 2026. And people living in Boulder County will be able to leverage this and learn and access this toolkit. That's the goal. That's pretty phenomenal. Where can people go to learn about this? Where can they watch for this becoming available?

I should clarify, the toolkit is live. So you can go Google Boulder County's Natural Climate Solutions Urban Landscapes Toolkit. And I guarantee you the AI machine will pop it up as like number one or two. You can download it. There's even like a printable option if you want to go that route. And it's stunningly beautiful. Like the way they put it together is just awesome. And then the greater green will be going live as we enter the new year. So the application portfolio will go up. We'll have a press release. We'll make sure information gets out. All the news outlets that we can reach to let people know that that resource is there.

exciting. I'll be looking for that one in particular. It sounds great. Well, there was a lot in our conversation today. I feel like we could go on and on, but instead I would love to just finish with having you paint a hopeful picture for the listener. So Tim, if everything works out the way you and your office intends with these initiatives, all these efforts take hold, what does our community look like 50 years from now? Give me some dreaming.

That's a great question. And I will try not to get too trapped in like, I feel like the utopian version, right? Like there's always going to be problems. There's always going to be little things that could go wrong in different ways. If I look backwards again, and if I look towards the oldest level, right? Indigenous knowledge and what we're trying to re-understand and bring back into the fold as a part of decision-making. Open space history, the connection to environmentalism really threads up and up and up into what I envision the next 50 years to potentially look at. I think a part of that first and foremost to relate back to what is our relationship to nature. I think that is going to deepen. It is going to strengthen. And the way you do that is by creating places where you can tap into that nature. And we're so lucky to have the open space land from Forest Service land to the National Park close by to Boulder County's open space land to have that in our backyard. And that needs to be continued to be preserved and protected. But I think what I envision the next 50 years is that we need to recalibrate around how do we make that accessible and how do we make Boulder County affordable for those that work here and live here. And I think that's where the work inside of the cities and the jurisdictions to do that is a part of how we achieve sustainability, climate action, equity, and all the other parts and pieces of what we envision as Boulder County here of the future. I think within the cities, having growth boundaries and having limitations is critically important. We need to re-envision what it looks like here in terms of density and walkability and how do we have density and walkability, but also still have beautiful natural places. trails that walk along the Boulder Creek or here in St. Vrain, Longmont and other places. And I think that's the piece where it's not an either or, and we have to open our minds to understand that we can create density and we can create places for people who work here to live here and have them still be stunningly beautiful and still have green quarters and green roofs and biodiversity, all those things that we're talking about. I think that's where the next 50 years moving forward will be the part that we're really going to be trying to understand and unpack and And those who are in it daily, the staff and the private sector and public and all of that have to work in collaboration to make that dream a reality.

Let it be. Thank you so much for joining me here today for this conversation. I have learned so much. There's so much your office is doing. And I understand your team, which is so many people behind the work that you're all doing. We're very grateful for you. We're grateful to our residents who voted for the sustainability tax. We're grateful for our leadership who prioritizes this. What an amazing, hopeful conversation this was and makes me more proud than ever to live in Boulder County and work for this government.

Well, thank you again for having me, and the chance is an incredible platform to amplify the message of what Oscar is doing. Yes. Truly, thank you. Yes,

absolutely. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. A big thank you to Longmont Public Media for providing the space to record. You can follow Boulder County Parks and Open Space on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube to stay connected. And don't forget to follow Voices of Open Space on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss a story.