Biodilloversity

“The school brought in this company to push liberalism and radical environmentalism,” wrote Paul Gallagher, a Gypsum resident whose niece attends Eagle Valley High School. “My sister and I sat through this almost one-hour of garbage and heard the presentation about ‘climate change,’ a lack of snow in Colorado due to global warming, ‘glaciers melting,’ ‘polar bears’ disappearing, how cow ‘flatulence’ contributes to the problem, how we all should ‘walk or bike somewhere if less than five miles away,’ buy ‘local farmers markets’ produce, the importance of ‘recycling,’ ‘doomsday’ is approaching without taking action, etc. It was very concerning.”

The presentation by Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) aims to increase awareness of global climate change – sometimes using Winter X Games athletes such as Gretchen Bleiler and Seth Wescott.

A record December drought in Colorado’s high country underscored evidence of increasing warming in the Rocky Mountain West – a situation that has led to a widespread mountain pine bark beetle epidemic and mounting susceptibility to massive wildfires. It also took a toll on the state’s ski industry earlier this season.

“Climate science denial has been a really hot topic recently and we’ve faced our fair share of skeptics when trying to book presentations and during their delivery,” acknowledged Kara Muraki, program manager for Alliance for Climate Education. “The science behind our presentation is based entirely on the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report, and we believe that if students have the opportunity to learn the conclusions of 98 percent of the world’s leading climate scientists – no matter what else they hear — it will help to reverse the recent increase in public skepticism about global warming.”

Based on his email, Gallagher won’t be helping to reverse the trend any time soon:

“At the end of the assembly, kids were asked to come onstage if they had an interest in starting a ‘climate change’ group at their school,” he wrote. “I would say two-thirds of the kids went onstage. Not good. I would say brainwashing, scare tactics, lies and peer pressure made them feel obligated to get involved onstage.”

Even the U.S. Department of Defense is preparing for significant military interventions resulting from climate change, including “violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics.”

House Bill 1176 (pdf), which has been assigned to the House Local Government Committee, is sponsored by Democrats Matt Jones, Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, Sue Ryden, Nancy Todd and Roger Wilson.

“The [Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission] must require setbacks of at least 1,000 feet from any school or residence but allow a surface owner who is not located in an urban area to request a shorter setback than would otherwise apply,” reads the bill’s summary.

Current COGCC rules call for setbacks of 150 feet in rural areas and 350 feet in urban areas, but Jones says that’s not far enough away in densely populated Front Range areas where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is an essentially industrial process close to homes and schools.

“If three football fields from a school is good enough for medical marijuana, it’s good enough for oil and gas fracking,” Jones told the Colorado Independent earlier this month, comparing drilling setbacks to pot shops near schools. Jones also would like to see counties and municipalities take a more active role in regulating oil and gas drilling.

Republican state lawmakers Ted Harvey, Kevin Grantham and Scott Renfroe have introduced a bill aimed at stopping what even Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper has called a potential “patchwork” of local regulations overseeing stepped up drilling activities.

“The bill specifies that the regulation of oil and gas operations is a matter of statewide concern, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has exclusive jurisdiction to regulate oil and gas operations, and local regulation of oil and gas operations is preempted by state law,” reads the summary of Senate Bill 88 (pdf).

With regard to setbacks, COGCC director David Neslin told the Colorado Independent that such a bill is unnecessary because the vast majority of oil and gas wells already comply.

COGCC Director David Neslin

“Outside of Weld County – which is a different situation because you’ve had oil and gas and residential development growing up together there over the past 30, 40 years – in the balance of the state 90 percent of the wells are 1,000 feet or more from the closest building,” Neslin said.

Mike Chiropolos, lands program director for Western Resource Advocates, said setbacks are a valid issue with oil and gas booming in the Niobrara Formation beneath the state’s more densely populated Front Range.

“Even if it’s 90 percent, what about the 10 percent?” Chiropolos said. “You don’t want to leave those folks out in the cold. One Colorado family getting sick, one Colorado resident getting sick or having an avoidable negative experience because of a well being unacceptably close to a home is one too many.”

He added that new directional drilling techniques allow wells to be drilled 1,000 feet or even a quarter of mile away from homes and schools as opposed to predominantly vertically drilled wells in the past.

HB 1176 would require that “best management practices for new technologies be established by rule prior to use of the new technologies.”

As for greater local control of oil and gas drilling, Neslin disagrees with Jones, who recently told David Sirota on 760 AM in Denver: “If you want to not have a patchwork, you need to look at subdivision home building, cement plants, power plants. All of that is regulated by local governments. Local governments do land-use control all the time. This fits into that.”

Neslin recently told the Colorado Independent: “I don’t think it’s in the public’s interest or the state’s interest to wind up with a patchwork quilt of different regulatory regimes. I don’t think we want to Balkanize the regulatory program in that way.”

He added that oil and gas drilling is very different from other land uses.

“I would respectfully disagree with the representative that oil and gas wells are just another development activity like a subdivision or a cement plant,” Neslin said. “The state has decades of experience regulating [oil and gas] activity. Local governments have little such experience. So I just think there’s a fundamental difference there.”

But a bill like SB 88 blocking counties and municipalities from exercising any land-use control over drilling activity goes too far, says National Wildlife Federation attorney Michael Saul.

“That was basically the rule that the oil and gas commission passed in 2003 and then the Colorado Court of Appeals struck down in the Board of County Commissioners of La Plata County versus COGCC case,” Saul said. “It sounds to me like [SB 88 is] just an attempt to rewrite that decision.”

Saul says La Plata County in southwestern Colorado, where British Petroleum has been active for decades, has some of the most stringent local land-use regulations overseeing oil and gas drilling. There, the operator seems to have figured out how to work with county regulations without state preemption becoming an issue, he says.

“We’ve got 20 years of case law interpreting the existing state of the law on preemption and counties have learned pretty well how to follow that law,” Saul said. “Operators have been successful in navigating the permitting systems in those counties that have done so.

“Certainly there’s been a lot of successful drilling in La Plata County, which is arguably the most comprehensive [local] regulator.”

The local control question will likely continue to be litigated, but the issue of setbacks – which some critics say the COGCC punted during revision of the oil and the regulations in 2007-08 – will be the subject of a new round of stakeholder meetings.

“[Neslin] announced to the commission [last week] that COGCC will be convening stakeholder meetings on the issue of setbacks,” Colorado Department of Natural Resources spokesman Todd Hartman said.

“This is designed to get facts on the table, listen to all sides and determine whether changes are necessary or not. The meetings won’t begin with a preference for change or no change, but to educate all parties and see what adjustments — if any — to make.”

“If three football fields from a school is good enough for medical marijuana, it’s good enough for oil and gas fracking,” Jones told the Colorado Independent, referring to setbacks between oil and gas rigs and homes, schools and other public buildings.

Current state law requires that oil and gas rigs are set back at least 350 feet away from homes and public buildings in urban areas and 150 feet away in rural areas. It also requires medical marijuana dispensaries to be 1,000 feet from schools, and liquor stories to be 500 feet away.

U.S. Attorney John Walsh last week sent letters to 23 medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado that are within 1,000 feet of schools, telling them to shut down by Feb. 27 or face criminal prosecution. He cited concern for the health of nearby school children.

The issue of setbacks from oil and gas drilling has been unresolved since the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) punted on it during an 18-month revision of state drilling regulations in 2007 and 2008. Conservation and citizen activist groups have been calling for a new rulemaking on the issue ever since.

A middle school in Longmont has become the poster child in the fight for expanded setbacks. Testing of a natural gas well 350 feet from the school in 2006 and 2009 found levels of benzene much higher than state standards.

Fracking — the process of injecting water, sand and chemicals into oil and gas wells to free up more hydrocarbons — has come under increased scrutiny by Colorado counties and municipalities as drilling takes off in the Niobrara Shale formation beneath the state’s Front Range. Halliburton on Thursday announced it’s building a $20 million sand facility in Windsor to support fracking operations in the area.

State Rep. Matt Johes, D-Louisville

Jones is undaunted, telling radio talk show host David Sirota on Thursday that he knows the bill faces an uphill battle but that he expects to get a fair hearing. Jones also said Hickenlooper’s concern about a “patchwork” of regulations is unfounded.

“That horse has left the barn,” Jones said. “If you want to not have a patchwork, you need to look at subdivision home building, cement plants, power plants. All of that is regulated by local governments. Local governments do land-use control all the time. This fits into that.”

Fracking, Jones added, is just another industrial land use that local governments should have more control over.

“With fracking, when they come in repeatedly to re-frack a well, it’s changed the activity from just simply drilling a well to a repeated activity, and it’s more of an industrial activity now,” Jones said.

Both Gunnison and La Plata counties have had varied degrees of success regulating oil and gas drilling, implementing local rules that have been backed up by court decisions. However, the state contends it has a legislative mandate to regulate oil and gas drilling, with its rules preempting most local regulations.

Colorado oil and gas industry officials have expressed nervousness about increased local oversight. State oil and gas officials could not be reached for comment.

“Under my administration, domestic oil and natural gas production is up, while imports of foreign oil are down,” Obama said, adding that trend will continue “in a way that benefits American workers and businesses without risking the health and safety of the American people and the environment.”

Obama wants more time to study the potential environmental impacts of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of Texas, and he also wants to identify an alternative route that doesn’t cross Nebraska’s sensitive Sandhills region. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper reportedly told Obama his nation will now look to China.

U.S. House Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican, chided Obama for his decision to keep studying the project: “There is no question that our belief is the President’s policies have consistently failed to create jobs. This decision is another wrong move for America and the small businesses that we need so desperately to start creating jobs again.”

But a little over a week ago the U.S. Department of Interior reported oil and gas production on federal land across the American West is at an all-time high, and Obama administration officials say that’s a sign their more enviro-friendly federal leasing reforms haven’t hurt domestic drilling.

In fact, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a former Democratic senator from Colorado, reported that leasing reforms on U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land led to a decrease in protests from environmental groups and a 20 percent increase in lease sale revenues in 2011 compared to 2010.

In 2011, the BLM conducted 32 onshore oil and gas lease sales, offering 1,755 parcels of land covering nearly 4.4 million acres. Nearly three-quarters of the parcels offered (1,296 parcels of land) were sold, generating nearly $256 million. The BLM plans another 32 lease sales this year.

“This is an example of the power of a common-sense approach to growing America’s energy economy on public lands,” Salazar said in a release. “The Obama Administration is moving ahead with a comprehensive energy plan for the country that is enhancing our energy security, creating jobs, and improving protections for our land, water and wildlife.”

Matt Garrington, Denver-based deputy director of the Checks and Balances Project, said the new onshore leasing numbers “show how responsible drilling, clean air and water protections, and increased revenues can all go hand-in-hand.” He added that onshore oil and gas production is booming on public lands.

“Leasing, permitting, and drilling continue to rise under the Obama administration,” Garrington said. “But facts don’t matter to the oil and gas industry, who whine for more of our public lands. The truth is that industry is sitting pretty on tens of millions of acres open for development and billions in profits.”

Garrington points to statistics showing federal onshore natural gas production in 2011 reached the highest level (5.3 million cubic feet) reported since the BLM started tracking production in 1984. He added that the BLM issued 150 more drilling permits in 2011 than the previous year.

“I find it amusing that the Wilderness Society, Checks and Balances and other activist groups with no actual experience developing energy fall over themselves to interpret any new data as a reason to call for slowing economic development and job creation in the energy industry,” said Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs for the Denver-based Western Energy Alliance.

“The information released [by the BLM] showing increased natural gas production is a testament to the productive capacity and innovation of the industry, which is part of the broader natural gas success story of 2011,” Sgamma said. “Because of the 5- to 10-year bureaucratic lead time on public lands, production today is the result of actions taken years ago in prior administrations.”

Garrington, however, counters that the oil and gas industry continues to call for more BLM lease sales despite failing to develop two thirds of the public lands currently leased for drilling. “America’s public lands are open for business when it comes to energy development,” he said, pointing to the fact that 4,380,275 acres of BLM land are leased for drilling in Colorado but only 1,467,839 (or about 33.5 percent) are currently in production.

Sgamma says that percentage is higher if exploration is taken into consideration. She references the Interior Department’s Oil and Gas Lease Utilization Report (pdf).

“That report showed that 43 percent of leased acreage is in production or exploration,” Sgamma said. “Exploration must take place before a lease goes into official, full production mode. Before both the exploration and production phases, the government must complete environmental analysis as required by NEPA, and currently there are long delays in that process.”

President Obama rejected the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (globalwarming.org photo).

“By not allowing the State Department to complete the project’s necessary environmental review, congressional Republicans chose political games over a measured and informed discussion about the potential impacts of this project,” added the Denver Democrat. “A pipeline of this size and length involves significant environmental risks, and I applaud the decision to deny the initial application.”

Republicans included an accelerated timeline for the pipeline decision in a contentious deal to extend payroll tax relief and unemployment benefits in December. That move came after Obama pushed back a final decision until 2013 to allow for full environmental review and exploration of alternative routes that would not impact the sensitive Sandhills area of Nebraska. Preliminary routes for the pipeline included one alternative through northeastern Colorado.

Colorado U.S. Representative Mike Coffman said the project would bring “tens of thousands of jobs” to the United States.

“This decision [not to meet the GOP deadline in February] is not based on the jobs and the energy that our country so desperately needs, but solely on a political calculation that [Obama] can’t afford to offend his radical environmental base for his re-election,” Coffman said in a prepared statement.

However, TransCanada, the Canadian company proposing the pipeline, has said the project will produce thousands of temporary jobs but only hundreds of permanent jobs in the United States.

Oil pipeline safety has been a huge concern in Colorado and across the Rocky Mountain West since last summer’s ExxonMobil spill in the Yellowstone River in Montana and a spill in a tributary of the Platte River in Commerce City north of Denver. That spill occurred at the Suncor Refinery that refines some of the tar sands oil produced in Canada.

Environmentalists say tar sands oil is one of the most carbon-intensive forms of fossil fuel production.

“Stopping Keystone is not just good for the environment, it’s good for civilization,” said Gary Wockner of Clean Water Action in Fort Collins. “Climate change is real, and tar sands would make it much worse.”

Obama said his administration has steadily increased domestic oil and gas production, and he added that he’s disappointed Republicans politicized the Keystone XL process.

“This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,” Obama said in a prepared statement.

“I’m disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my Administration’s commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil.”

U.S. House Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican, blasted Obama: “Examples have been shown that the energy supply will go elsewhere and the jobs connected with this project will go elsewhere. Either we are going to get serious about the number one issue, which is creation of jobs, or not.”

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) has long contended its oil and gas drilling regulations trump any county or municipal rules and that the state attorney general may ultimately have to decide any such conflicts. The COGCC contends its supremacy stems from a state legislative mandate.

This month’s Gunnison County ruling comes as lawmakers consider legislation that would give more authority to cities and counties as oil and gas drilling – and its commonplace hydraulic fracturing of wells – picks up in the Niobrara Shale formation along the state’s populous Front Range.

Activists today announced a new Twitter hashtag (#CoFracking) to make it easier to follow such legislation and any news about local versus state control of oil and gas drilling.

On Jan. 3, Gunnison County District Judge Stephen Patrick issued an order on cross motions for summary judgment in a case brought by the oil and gas company SG Interests, which last summer sued Gunnison County. The company claimed the county could not regulate certain aspects of its operations because of preemption by state and federal regulations.

Thompson Divide (courtesy of the Thompson Divide Coalition).

“This is a huge win for the Colorado public and its local governments, acknowledging that preemption is not assumed,” writes Sonia Skakich-Scrima of the activist group What the Frack. “In effect, local governments can proceed to argue that closed-loop systems that capture all gases and emissions, sound barriers, non-toxic frack fluids and other mitigating measures do not present ‘material obstructions’ to the state’s interests, but rather that they ‘materially harmonize’ the local government need to control land use and protect public health and safety with the state’s interest in oil and gas extraction.”

However, Governor John Hickenlooper, in his State of the State address last week, warned against too many local regulations, saying, “… the state can’t have 64 or even more different sets of rules.” Colorado has 64 counties.

Industry representatives are also nervous about too much local control. The same day as the Gunnison County ruling, Tisha Conoly Schuller, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA), posted a blog entitled “Why Public Meetings Make Me Nervous.” She said she empathizes with the concerns, fear and anger of local citizens living near oil and gas drilling.

“So much emotion deserving of empathy,” Schuller wrote. “So much misinformation and little to no opportunity to correct it. The impotence of seeing scared citizens and uncertain decision makers taking in so much inaccuracy drives the blood to beat in my ears. In three minutes, how can I inspire them to look further, question the information, and participate in the conversation about responsible energy development?”

SG Interests is also at the heart of an ongoing debate on the Western Slope about drilling in the Thompson Divide area.

Gas drilling in Garfield County (David O. Williams photo).

State Rep. Matt Jones, D-Louisville, said last month he was working on a bill with Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins, that would give local governments greater control over drilling operations, including hydraulic fracturing. They’ll be fighting an uphill battle with Hickenlooper, however.

“In that same spirit [of collaboration], we intend to work with counties and municipalities to make sure we have appropriate regulation on oil and gas development, but recognize the state can’t have 64 or even more different sets of rules,” Hickenlooper said, referring to the number of counties in the state.

With a major drilling boom looming in the Niobrara Shale Formation beneath the state’s northern Front Range, some local governments have expressed concern that the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) isn’t doing enough to ensure air and water quality.

Environmental groups have called on the COGCC to continue the rulemaking process on issues such as reclamation of drilling sites and drilling rig setbacks from homes and public buildings, claiming those issues weren’t adequately addressed by the state during the revision of the regulations in 2008. COGCC director David Neslin could not be reached for comment this week.

“My focus has been actually getting the oil and gas commission to move ahead on the rules we have already given them the authority for,” state Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass, said. “Some of the issues are reclamation, setbacks, and the other issue is air quality.”

Schwartz said the COGCC can go ahead with a rulemaking on those issues without the legislature getting involved.

“They have the authority to do it; we’ve already done it legislatively,” Schwartz said. “We’ve already had that fight. We have the battle scars from that. We need to have the commission stepping up and really using their authority as opposed to providing more legislation, and if they don’t, it will call for more legislation.”

On the issue of more local control, Jones reportedly told the Boulder County commissioners last month that, “It just seems that local governments don’t have a lot of authority” to regulate oil and gas operations. But La Plata County in southwestern Colorado has had its own set of fairly stringent drilling regulations since the 1990s.

Industry critics in Garfield County have suggested counties need to start regulating oil and gas drilling using state 1041 powers, which are typically reserved for overseeing major infrastructure projects – such as water and power lines – that have significant impact on growing communities.

House Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, recently told the Denver Post that giving counties more authority would create “a patchwork of regulations” across the state. Senate President Brandon Shaffer, D-Longmont, said, “Whoever brings that forward, the duty will be on them to prove that there’s value added with the legislation beyond what is already in existing compromise rules.”

The COGCC’s Neslin has previously told the Colorado Independent that issues of state versus local control over drilling ultimately may have to be settled on a case-by-case basis by the attorney general.

The massive Hayman Fire near Denver in 2002 (Forest Service).

Vail saw eight inches of new snow on Saturday, but it still wasn’t enough to open the vast majority of the mountain. Ski industry woes aside, state water watchers and firefighters are nervously eyeing the miniscule mountain snowpack, which supplies so much of the water used by Front Range cities. As of Dec. 30, snowpack in the Colorado River basin was 44 percent of last year’s record level and just 63 percent of the annual average.

“[The drought] will make the beetle epidemic even more severe,” said state Sen. Gail Schwartz, a Snowmass Democrat who’s introducing a bill in the legislative session starting Wednesday that’s aimed at reducing the fire danger from a mountain pine bark beetle epidemic that has killed millions of acres of Colorado lodgepole pines. “What doesn’t burn down will blow down.”

But just as it lacked scientific validity to point to Vail’s record 525 inches of snowfall last season as proof that climate change is a hoax (which many conservatives gleefully did), ski industry experts say it’s wrong to totally blame the current drought (just 88 inches so far at Vail) on human-caused heating of the planet.

“You can’t take weather, which is what we’re experiencing, and make deductions about climate, which is the long-term trend,” said Auden Schendler, vice president of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company, which is suffering through an equally dry season. “But you don’t need to, really. All you need to do is look up the GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) NASA global temperature anomaly maps of the world and look at December. It’s insane, and each decade gets hotter.”

Still, it’s turned into the kind of summer-like ski season in the Rocky Mountain West that the new Mitt Romney – the front-running GOP presidential nominee Romney – should love. Not the 2002 version who turned a profit with the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and as recently as June said, “I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.”

Despite snowfall Saturday, this chairlift into Vail's Back Bowls hasn't run all season (David O. Williams).

But as far as the current conditions, Aspen’s Schendler again emphasizes climate change should not be blamed for the current drought but instead is behind longer term trends like a generally drier American West – one that is more susceptible to water shortages and wildfire.

“It’s key to remember that warming might actually bring bigger storms to the Rockies due to there being more moisture in the air,” Schendler said. “At the same time, because the atmosphere can hold more water, it can suck the land dry of more water than before.”

Schendler says the biggest impact of climate change for the ski industry may be significantly shorter ski seasons.

“The thing to look at — and we’re seeing this trend — is when runoff happens,” he said. “When spring comes, both are happening much earlier, because Colorado has warmed, and warmed disproportionately to the rest of the U.S.”

The last time Colorado’s high country was even close to this dry in mid-winter was during the 2001-02 ski season, which was followed by the worst wildfire season in the state’s history. June of 2002 saw the massive Hayman Fire scorch nearly 138,000 acres of land in the mountains southwest of Denver, darkening Front Range skies and loading key water storage facilities with debris from subsequent erosion.

NASA’s James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climatologists, recently issued a report tying last summer’s massive wildfires in Texas and the 2010 wildfires in Russia to global warming.

“Hansen argues that climate ‘loads the dice,’” Schendler said. “So in an average year you might have a one in six chance of extraordinarily hot weather or a super-violent storm. But in the climate-changed world in which we live, the odds change to something new — perhaps two in six.”

The Montana Supreme Court.

The 5-2 Montana ruling flies in the face of the landmark 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United versus the Federal Elections Commission. That ruling by a 5-4 margin in 2010 blocked the government from limiting spending by corporations and unions for political purposes, as long as that spending is independent and not coordinated with campaigns.

Montana Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike McGrath, writing for the majority, argued the sprawling western Rocky Mountain state passed its law to limit the undue influence of “mining and industrial enterprises controlled by foreign trusts or corporations.” He referenced the state’s “Copper Kings” who used to buy politicians and state officials.

“The question then, is when in the last 99 years did Montana lose the power or interest sufficient to support the statute, if it ever did. If the statute has worked to preserve a degree of political and social autonomy is the State required to throw away its protections?” McGrath wrote.

Donald Ferguson

Some observers welcome the opportunity to re-open the debate and compel the U.S. Supreme Court to rule again on the issue.

“If they take it up, there will be a new opportunity to push forward all the arguments as to why the court got it wrong,” John Bonifaz of Free Speech for People told Politico, adding that if they reaffirm their prior decision, “that will only fuel the efforts further to allow a constitutional amendment.”

A Slate analysis on Wednesday offered this take on the Montana ruling:

“Western Tradition Partnership, the lead plaintiff in the case, merits extra special scorn from the court for circulating a fundraising brochure that said, ‘If you decide to support this program, no politician, no bureaucrat, and no radical environmentalist will ever know you made this program possible.’ The majority openly accuses WTP of being responsible for ‘a multi-front attack on both contribution restrictions and the transparency that accompanies campaign disclosure requirements.’”

The question of who’s funding American Tradition Partnership, which was called Western Tradition Partnership when it first challenged the Montana law in 2010, dates back to 2008 when the group was first registered as a 501(c)4 nonprofit in Colorado by Republican political operative Scott Shires.

The group was later re-registered by an attorney for the Denver law firm of Hackstaff Gessler, which is the former firm of current Republican Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, a conservative election campaign lawyer who in the past represented Shires in various campaign finance violation cases.

Ferguson last summer flew out to Montana – at his own expense, he said – to counter community and environmental outrage in the wake of an ExxonMobil oil pipeline spill in the Yellowstone River.

Besides the corporate spending case, ATP is involved in other litigation challenging Montana campaign disclosure laws. The Montana Commissioner of Political Practices in 2010 found that WTP’s anonymous campaign fliers attacking Democrats and moderate Republicans “raised the specter of corruption” and merited formal action by the state’s attorney general.

That case is being heard by the same judge, District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock of Helena, who ruled in favor of WTP in the corporate spending case just overturned by the Montana Supreme Court.

A trial in that case has been set for March 19, according to John Doran, a spokesman for the Montana Department of Justice, who adds that the case essentially boils down to whether 501(c)4’s (named for a section of the IRS tax code) are educational organizations or political committees.

“The State of Montana contends they are political committees subject to state disclosure and disclaimer laws, and that they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars secretly in Montana to influence Montana elections,” Doran said in an email. “They are arguing they are educational organizations that don’t need to disclose anything to the state.”

Colorado lawmakers are watching closely after WTP sent out fliers in a tight state Senate race in 2010 that prompted calls for tougher campaign disclosure laws for 501(c)4 nonprofits.

Construction for the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 (skyscrapercity.com).

“Environmental issues such as air quality, traffic congestion, climate change, forest health, population growth, and water need to be considered in this Olympic bid,” he added.

At this point, however, there is no official bid, and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) – based in Colorado Springs – has clearly stated it won’t submit one for any location in the United States until it reaches agreement with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over revenue sharing.

Still, Hickenlooper and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock have been making moves to position Colorado for the next available Winter Games in 2022, including setting up the Denver Exploratory Committee last month. Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet has urged the USOC to resolve its financial dispute with the IOC soon so Colorado can submit a bid by the end of 2013.

But Wockner and others in Colorado’s conservation community say environmental concerns are just as prevalent today (perhaps more so) as they were in 1972 when then state lawmaker Dick Lamm led the charge to reject the 1976 Denver Winter Olympics already awarded by the IOC.

Colorado became the first host ever awarded the Games to later reject them after Denver metro area voters in 1972 decided not to commit the necessary tax dollars.

Lamm, who later was elected governor, declined to comment for this article, but in the past has defended the push to turn back the Games.

“I come down on believing strongly that the voters did the right thing,” Lamm told the Colorado Independent in an e-mail several years ago. “The history of the Winter Olympics was a history of red ink, and I believe it would have left Colorado with a very large expense and a worse environment.”

Some in Colorado’s resort industry are still sharply critical of Lamm’s anti-Olympic campaign. Vail Mayor Andy Daly points to the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 that made money and significantly upgraded the state’s transportation system, and mass transit to the mountains to fix the clogged Interstate 70 artery is seen as one possible environmental win from a 2022 bid.

“The idea of hosting the Olympics is exciting and presents a number of potentially powerful ‘win-win’ opportunities for Denver and Colorado,” said Pete Maysmith of Colorado Conservation Voters.

“Having said that, we know Coloradans are passionate about protecting our environment. Any serious look at whether or not to pursue a bid should evaluate environmental impacts and include voices from the conservation community in the conversation.”

Hickenlooper’s office referred questions about the makeup of the committee to Sue Baldwin, director of event development and marketing for the Metro Denver Sports Commission, or Denver Sports.

“The exploratory committee is a first step in what will be a long process to answer many questions about a potential bid,” Baldwin said in an email. “Essentially to start the basic framework of the evaluation process and build it out from there.

“There absolutely has to be a big tent, and [there] will be many opportunities for interested and educated parties to participate. Our objective is to be inclusive and transparent in the process and we will look to expand the group after this initial stage.”

Even some Olympic athletes have questioned hosting the Games in coastal regions and near cities not known for abundant natural snowfall, including the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, where rail service between the city and mountain resort of Whistler was actually discontinued prior to Games.

The next Winter Games will be held on the Black Sea in Sochi, Russia, in 2014. After that, the Olympics will be held in 2018 in PyeongChang, South Korea, where questions have already cropped up about a lack of alpine credibility.

Even in a low snow season like this one, Colorado is seen as cold enough and high enough for the sustained snowmaking necessary for major international events. In December, Beaver Creek hosted World Cup ski races cancelled in Europe because of a lack of snow.