Good morning and happy Colorado Sunday to you all!

This newsletter is nothing if not nostalgic and this week I’ve been thinking about one of my first big environmental journalism assignments. It was in the late ’80s and I was assigned to take a train ride around Rocky Mountain Arsenal with elected officials. Chemical weapons were no longer being produced there and the focus had turned to cleaning up this vast Superfund site, while paying attention to the welfare of wildlife that had recolonized the property.

Though we were not allowed to leave the train during the tour, it looked perfectly safe, a piece of beautiful prairie rolling out from the edge of Commerce City’s heavy industrial zone.

But then a biologist on the train started talking about the sentinel bee hives he kept there. In

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