Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment

Members of Colorado’s environmental community liked the selection Monday by Gov. Bill Ritter of Jim Martin, head of the Department of Public Health and Environment, to take over for Harris Sherman as executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
“Martin’s leadership on the state air commission was essential to cutting mercury pollution 90 [...]

Three oil and gas companies have been fined nearly $700,000 for allowing loose dirt from a pipeline project and access road to wash over a cliff into Garden Gulch and then on into Parachute Creek above the Western Slope town of Parachute.
According to a press release from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment [...]

MONTROSE — It began with the audience turning, facing the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Just over an hour later, a special Montrose County commissioner meeting ended with the unanimous approval of controversial uranium mill permit that was as much an endorsement of American energy independence as it was a repudiation of environmental concerns.

MONTROSE — Actress and environmental activist Daryl Hannah says all the heated rhetoric over who should have the most say about the proposed Piñon Ridge uranium mill — western Montrose County mining families or affluent residents of Telluride and surrounding San Miguel County — is a moot point to Mother Earth. “These boundaries and these borders are manmade, but the air and the water and the soil and the wildlife don’t really recognize those boundaries,” she said in an interview with The Colorado Independent.

Montrose County commissioners on Wednesday will consider a plan to revive the area’s long-dormant uranium industry.

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment Wednesday questioned the accuracy and methodology of a New York Times series on Clean Water Act violations after the Colorado Independent and Colorado Ethics Watch on Tuesday questioned the state’s lack of responsiveness in the Times report.