May 7, 2026 · Energy & Environment · 4,372 words · 22 speakers · 67 segments
Please call the roll. Representatives Barone.
Present.
DeGraff. It's here. I see him in the room. Goldstein.
Here.
Jackson.
Joseph.
Yes.
Right here. Pascal. Here. Rutno.
Yep.
Saw.
Is also here. I see him. Here.
Smith? Here. Wilford? Here. Wook? Here. Velasco? Here. Chair Valdez? I'm here as well. All right. We have our bill sponsors here. Senate Bill 171, who would like to tell us about the bill?
Representative Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I am pleased to present this bill at your last committee meeting. Members, I appreciate the chance to present this bill to you today. This is a critically important bill that we introduced to address a technical defect in a previous bill we sponsored and passed this session. If you recall, we passed Senate Bill 16 previously in this committee which addressed pollution from plastic pellets which are very small pieces of plastic feedstock that are melted down to create other plastic products because they are so small and lightweight they can be spilled at every step in the manufacturing process we are grateful for the passage of that bill so we can prevent pollution of our soil and waterways from pre-production plastic materials. Senate Bill 016 was signed into law on March 30th. After the bill passed and before it was signed, no, Senate Bill 16 was passed, but after the bill, before it was signed, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment discovered a technical defect in the bill that makes it inoperable for plastic manufacturers and transporters who are trying to comply and dispose of their plastic materials properly. We are here today to fix that. It's a very small fix, and I will hand it over to my co-prime to explain how we are doing that.
Representative Lukens. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, members of the Energy and Environment Committee. Today we bring before you Senate Bill 171. So the other time I was in this committee this year was for Senate Bill 16, which created a new section of law that prohibits land application, which is also known as land disposal, of pre-production plastics unless disposal is done with federal approval or pursuant to a state permit. That bill references the specific statutory provision for the state permit, which is a permit for hazardous waste. What this means is that if plastic pellets and other pre-production plastic materials cannot be recycled or reused and are intended for disposal at a landfill. They can only be disposed of at a hazardous waste landfill. Until Senate Bill 16 passed, pre-production plastic materials were regulated as solid waste and could be disposed of at a solid waste landfill. This is a problem because there is only one commercial hazardous waste landfill in Colorado, and it is much more expensive for a business to take their waste there. So we are removing the provision in Senate Bill 16 that references the hazardous waste statutes and replacing it with a requirement to only dispose of pre-production plastic and solid waste landfills. That is the status quo, and we need to maintain it, and that is why we will be asking for your yes vote on Senate Bill 171. Thank you.
Committee, are there questions for the bill sponsors?
Representative Fuluk. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Who, I would say not to point fingers, but kind of is like, who's at fault for missing that in the first place?
Representative Smith? Well, I would say, and we have somebody from CDPHE who might say differently, but they were the ones that found the issue once it passed both chambers, but before the bill got signed.
Representative Voo. Real quick, and had they seen the bill though previous?
Representative Smith. I assume so.
Thank you.
Additional questions? Seeing none, we'll have a witness testimony. There's one person signed up today, David Snap. You guys can probably just move over one seat and he can fit here on the end. Welcome, Mr. Snap. Please introduce yourself and provide your testimony.
DAVID SNAP, THANK YOU, MR. CHAIR AND COMMITTEE MEMBERS. I MANAGED THE SOLID WASTE MATERIALS MANAGEMENT PROGRAM AT THE COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT. WE REGULATE SOLID WASTE DISPOSAL SITES AND NUMEROUS OTHER TYPES OF WAST MANAGEMENT AND RECYCLING FACILITIES IN COLORADO. I'M HERE TODAY IN STRONG SUPPORT OF SB 26171. We want to thank Representatives Lukens and Smith for their sponsorship of this bill. Senate Bill 2616 prohibits the disposal of pre-production waste in locations that are not permitted to accept hazardous waste. Pre-production plastic waste, pre-production plastic materials include plastic generated from facilities that use virgin plastic or recycled plastic to create plastic products or facilities that recycle plastic. Pre-production plastic materials are not listed as a hazardous waste and are not characterized as hazardous waste, yet SB 2616 required their disposal at hazardous waste landfills. Requiring plastics recyclers and plastic product manufacturers to dispose of their waste generated from the plastics recycling process at hazardous waste landfills will likely place a large financial burden on plastic processors and is inconsistent with Colorado solid waste laws and regulations. 26171 allows these plastic waste to be sent to a solid waste disposal site rather than a hazardous waste site which is consistent with the current solid waste regulations. In summary, the department supports 26 SB 26171 because this bill aligns the disposal prohibitions passed in 2616 with the current solid waste regulations and current practice and will prevent increasing cost of plastics recyclers and plastic product manufacturers. Thank you.
Committee, questions? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony. All right, is there anyone else here to testify on 171 that has not testified? Seeing none, the witness testimony phase is closed. All right, amendments. Sponsors, any amendments?
Yes, sir.
Committee, any amendments? All right, seeing none, the amendments phase is closed. Sponsors, wrap up.
Well, as you can see, it's a very simple bill. Unfortunately, it got to the point that it did, but at least it was recognized that this would cost a lot of money for people to haul to the one hazardous waste site in the state. So this is a good fix for the bill, and I urge you to vote yes.
Representative Lukens? No? Okay.
Committee, any final comments? Would you like to motion your bill, Representative Smith?
Yes, I move SB 26-171 to the Committee of the Whole, and I ask for a favorable vote.
Second.
All right, seconded by Representative Goldstein. Ms. Falco, please call the roll.
Oh did you want to say something Representative Brown Thank you Mr Chair and thank you Bill Sponsors for bringing this forward Even though I didn agree with the first bill voted no on the first bill and I see that this is needed, so I'm going to be a yes today just for that reason, even though I don't agree with the bill as a whole, but yes, I will be a yes today.
Any additional comments? All right, now, Ms. Falco, please pull the committee. Representatives Brown.
Yes.
DeGraff.
Yes, for today.
Goldstein. Yes.
Jackson. Yes.
Joseph. Excused.
Pascal. Yes. Rutino. Yes.
Saw. Yes.
Smith. Yes.
Wilford. Yes.
Wu. Yes.
Velasco. Yes.
Mr. Chair.
Yes.
I voted yes. I did say yes.
All right. Representative Joseph votes yes. All right. So that passes unanimously 13 to nothing. Congratulations. All right. So next up, we will take action on 1030. Prior to doing that, I just wanted to take a few moments since that will be the last action of the committee today and likely the last committee action of the year. Just wanted to reminisce for a second about the time that I've spent on this committee, first appointed back in 2019 before COVID. And we were in a budget situation like this, and we did Senate Bill 181, which was the most comprehensive oil and gas regulation. We did our first climate change, and, you know, I think that was the start of a huge flow, and the state really has since 2019 made strides and is now a national model for environmental policy. so um you know the challenge is now in the lack of of money um what great ideas are going to come next and are going to help to move colorado forward in a way that not only is environmentally sound but one that creates jobs for our constituents um and make sure that we have clean water to drink and breathable air and all of the things that make planet earth a great place to be so uh it's really been a pleasure to serve as the chair of the committee since when did garnett put me in here 2021 i think and so um i just wanted to say thank you to everybody um for having me as your chair and with that i'll move down to the diastom mr chair yes
representative brown thank you mr chair i know it's your last meeting do you uh want to take a
group picture we will take a group picture let's um do this last thing and then uh at the very end And if we all want to form up and take a picture, that would be great.
Madam Vice Chair will take over. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and we're here just to take action on HB 1030.
Please go ahead.
Yeah, so first of all, thank you for indulging me to make some comments about the process that has taken place on this bill. So I joined the data center discussion and effort two years ago. and I think that from the places where we started having this discussion to where this bill is today, and I'm going to talk in terms of the strike below, so Ms. Falco, you can release the strike below to be looked at, and I know everyone has anxiously awaited that because that has been a negotiation amongst many national players on the subject, and at 58 pages long was a lot of work. And I think that the reason that that work was worth it to me was because this is my vision for data centers. It isn't about data. You all are using that. I mean, we talked about this the other day. I think we said we can't stop tech. We can't stop where we're going as a society. Everything is electronic. Everything. More automation coming, LIDAR, radar, you name it. And we are a state that is increasingly poor. It was not a poor state when I grew up here. It has become increasingly poor since the mid-90s. You can figure that out however you want. But we have no money to spend on the things that our peers in this country are spending on. and that is starting to show. And so when I first started looking at the data center question, it wasn't about what can we do for data centers. It was about what can data centers do for Colorado? And in case you haven't heard, we have a quite serious transmission issue. We have a generation issue. We have a stagnant economy issue. it is what it is. And the reason I believed in this work was because I was reading in the New York Times and in the Wall Street Journal that these hyperscalers, Google, Meta, Facebook, I guess Meta is Facebook, Amazon, you name it, they were making these massive investments. There were these articles about hundreds of billions here, hundreds of millions here, hundreds of millions here. Gigawatts of new renewable energy. Transmission projects. Reinvigorating communities by reopening shuttered power plants. And why? Just to serve the needs that we already have, because I know I'm probably going to use DoorDash later. And we're on Zoom, and we have smartphones, and it's what we've chosen. So I saw this as a pathway to create a connection between, quite frankly, their money and our need, which is what I believe good lawmakers do. They come to work looking for ways to fix what they see is broken and what is broken. They're not coming. It's OK. You know, but what's broken is we're not competing anymore. you know i'm not saying it's about giving away the farm remember this bill was novel and that it only offered sales tax abatement in other words tax we're not currently collecting we wouldn't collect it in the future in order to gain jobs billions of dollars every three years in investments local tax share etc etc etc so let's put all that aside you know uh the the opposition here was called quote-unquote the enviros okay I just gave my farewell speech as the chair of this committee I earned that chair and I earned it by being a astute and competent environmentalist who was able to pass over 70 bills in the subject area And so to have the accusation being that this bill was bad for the environment was ghastly to me as an individual. But it worked on some. The truth is, what's happening here today, I don't want to be the message that it is, but it is. And that is that we cannot find a path to connect the future to today here in Colorado. Two weeks ago, I was in Texas. They have 630,000 megawatts of new business coming onto their grid. You hear that? 630,000 megawatts. some of it's wells fargo that just left my district some of it's cia craft just left my district we got to turn the corner and what this strike below promised to do was not only meet the environmental needs of the future and i want to be clear about a few things on that number One, water was never in the questionnaire. All the mailers, lies. We never allowed for water usage. It was a closed loop mandate. If you know what a closed loop is, you got a car, got an engine, you put a lot of water in it. But we didn't have an opportunity to really have those conversations because the truth of what happened wasn't that the policy was bad. it was that once you let certain factors into the argument, you can't put them away. And you can't make a deal that way. And you can't be effective that way long term. Three to one clean to emitting resources. Where are we at today? 40% renewable energy as a state? This required 75% 100 by 2030. Game changing. highest standard in the country, ratepayer protection, fully protected. In fact, 30% of the investments aimed at consumer rebates right to the customers who pay the rates. Free batteries, free solar. All of that, unfortunately, isn't going to happen today. We were looking at $8,000 per megawatt hour of annual fees over, I believe, $150 million a year in transmission investments. And what did we offer? We offered 10-year sunset. We offered so much. You see in the strike below, there's a humongous difference between where we landed and where we started. We have to do better. We're the home of the development companies. And I say we, Denver. Denver is home to the companies that want to do this investment. But yet, Colorado is only home to 2% of what they do. We can do better. My fear is that we'll look back in future years and say, look at this opportunity we had to change and make a generational change that would have invested in the generation and the transmission. It would have invested in the battery that I'm sure a lot of you want to have in your garage. It would have invested in the solar PV that I really care about. But unfortunately, we have to continue with the status quo, and I think that's what is going to happen. And that's not good for us because that means Wyoming wins and Texas wins. No offense to them, but I'm playing and rooting for the home team here. And I really want to see us fix our issues that we have with energy and embrace a business, any business, that will make things better for us as the citizens of Colorado. And so with that, I would ask that the committee postpone, I would move that the committee postpone indefinitely House Bill 1030.
Second.
That's a proper motion. Members, do we have any comments? Representative Slough.
Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. I did actually want to make a few comments. Mr. Chair, I appreciate all the work that you've put into this. I really do. I know that it's been a ton. And I hope that we recognize that though this bill may be PI today, Data centers aren't a topic that's probably going anywhere anytime soon. And many of the things that you said I think are exactly right, as I sit here with a smartphone and a tablet on Zoom and all the things. We probably wouldn't agree on a handful of things. The totality of renewable energy and exactly the direction we should go with that. Nor we maybe agree in totality about rebates, tax credits, but I think those are things that can be worked through. I know you've obviously tried, and those have been things. But I think we do, again, agree on a couple things. Data centers have a lot of money that they bring with them. I was on a webinar earlier today with an organization, and they were speaking from the D.C. area. The largest data center county in the United States is Loudoun County, Virginia. Unbelievable amounts of money that go there. I think some of the biggest problems that I have is I have asked a lot of questions outside of this room, but to other people in and near my district about data centers. There's a lot of concerns out there in our constituencies. I think that those are concerns that need to be addressed. Obviously, we as representatives represent our constituents. Sometimes I think another piece of what we have to do that's equally important, we heard and voted on a bill earlier about ketchup packets and plastic forks and spoons and napkins and such that was brought by constituents who, as fantastic as they are, those ones in particular, I think there was some learning that needed to be done, for my opinion, because I have a different perspective than those who passed that bill or those who brought that bill. And so I think with data centers also, I think that there is an immense amount of learning still yet to be done. I have a lot to learn. I will say that. I know that. And I think that there is a lot for constituents to learn. I don't know that we need to fear data centers as much as I feel like a lot of people that I talk to fear data centers. I think that that's something that I will continue, at least for myself, to work on, is to learn more about these things, to find the right and best ways for us to be able to see data centers come to Colorado, because I think that it probably is something that is going to happen, and we just have to make sure that we do it right. And I know that's what you were trying to do, and I appreciate all the work that you put into that. I, again, think there's some things that we would have probably done different. But, again, I think this is something that is still on the table, the topic of data centers and them coming to Colorado and how exactly we do that. And education of all of us throughout the state those are important topics and things I think we will need to work on So again thank you for your work on this We will see where it goes in the future They are not going anywhere other than all over the place. So it behooves us to do it right. Thank you.
Committee, do we have any more comments?
um well i do have some comments and i i want to thank uh mr chair valdez for all the work that you did um on this bill and these last eight years that you were here uh i did have some concerns with the strike below um that definitely i think there you build a strong foundation with some of the conversations that need to continue. So I appreciate that. And, you know, I think what you mentioned around drought or water issues, the resiliency of the grid and, you know, the impacts on the environment, those are all definitely top of mind i think for for me in in this conversation and also you know the the ask which was the the tax exemption that was a 20-year exemption plus a 10-year extension so i i really appreciate all the work that that everyone did i think that y'all really brought in labor, brought in the environmental community, and also industry, which I think that I do know that there was a lot of work that went into this bill, and appreciate that there's going to be time for more conversations in the future.
Representative Joseph. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for your leadership. And thank you, Rev Valdez, as well, for your leadership on this particular bill. And thank you for bringing this conversation. I knew that I was a no from the beginning because of the importance of not having a data center in the state without extreme strong regulations. And I truly believe that Colorado should not continue approving data centers without extremely strong regulations. And frankly, I believe we need a moratorium on new data centers until we fully understand their long term impact on our communities or workers or water or energy grid and our fiscal future. As you heard from Representative Velasco, we're being asked to move quickly on an industry that promises jobs, innovation and economic development. But we need to ask a deeper question. Development for who and at what cost? Data centers consume extraordinary amount of electricity and water, regardless of what I've just heard earlier. At a time when Colorado families are already struggling with rising utility bills, housing costs and climate pressures, we should not be rushing to subsidize infrastructures that can place additional strains on our resources while offering limited long term community returns. So let us be honest about labor. These projects are often sold as job creators, but many of the jobs are temporary construction jobs. Once operational data centers employ relatively few permanent workers compared to the amount of land, energy, tax incentives and infrastructure support they received. We cannot build Colorado's economic future around highly automated facilities that extract public resources while creating limited, sustained employment opportunities for working people. I also worry deeply about the fiscal consequences. Across the country, states and local governments are offering massive tax incentives and abatement to attract data centers. In the short term, it may appear beneficial, but in the long term, we risk creating a fiscal cliff where corporations receive substantial public subsidies while communities are left carrying the burden of infrastructure costs, energy demand, water consumption, and environmental mitigation. That is not sustainable economic development. That is transfer of public risk into private hands. Before Colorado expand in this industry further, we need strong guardrails. We need enforceable labor standards, community benefit agreements, transparency around tax incentives, protections for our water supplies, environmental reviews, energy accountability, and clear proof that these projects will deliver meaningful long-term public values. And until those protections are in place, I believe Colorado should pause the approval of any new data centers. Because once these facilities are built, the consequences are not temporary. The demands on our grid, our environment, and our fiscal future can last for decades and will last for decades. Colorado has an opportunity to lead with foresight instead of reacting after the damage is done. We should not allow ourselves to become so desperate for the promise of economic development that we fail to ask whether the deal is actually good for working families, taxpayers, and future generations. Thank you for P.I.ing this bill today.
Thank you so much. So the motion in front of us is to postpone indefinitely.
Representative Wug. Madam Vice President, thank you. Just really quick. I appreciate it. And I know, yeah, I just want to thank you for your hard work. And I agree. We definitely got a lot of messages, a lot of emails, people in the Capitol. A lot of people just generally very scared about the future with data centers here and what it might do. So I just want to acknowledge that I think you're right. I think there was a lot of misinformation out there as well. And, yeah, I just want to thank you for the work. And, yeah, that's it. Thank you.
Representative Goldstein. Thank you, Rep. Valdez, for bringing this forward. And I think that we could take from this lessons learned on how we could possibly move forward where we make sure everybody is part of the conversation and all the concerns are addressed and dealt with. Because I feel that we could get to a place where we could go forward and make all the stakeholders agreeable to what we could potentially do here. So I look forward to continuing these conversations and hopefully getting to a place where we can move forward.
Okay. Members, and just to remind everyone that the motion is to postpone indefinitely. Ms. Falco, please call the vote. Representatives Barone.
Yes. Degraff.
No. Goldstein? Yes. Jackson? Yes. Joseph? Yes. Patzco? Yes. Brutineau? Yes. Saw? Yes. Smith? Yes. Wilford? Yes. Wu? No. So, Alaska. Yes. Mr. Chair. Yes. That passes 11 to 2. So, that motion passes 11 to 2. So, House Bill 1030 has been postponed indefinitely. And we are adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.