“I was stunned to find out that Komen announced it had decided to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, which is the largest provider of women’s health care in the country,” DeGette said. “I was pleased when they reversed that decision. But I am concerned about how Komen is making its decisions.”

DeGette explained that she has had concerns about Komen decision-making for a while and that its perilous up-and-down journey through some of the murkier reaches of the abortion-politics swamp this week demonstrated confusion at the heart of the organization.

“As the attacks on Planned Parenthood [in Congress] revved up last year, Komen was touting the fact that it didn’t support stem cell research, even though they know stem cell research shows great potential to treat breast cancer.”

DeGette elaborated that thought in a release sent out minutes ago.

I have grave concerns that last fall, seemingly during the same time they decided to change [the funding policy to cut off Planned Parenthood], Komen also enacted a new policy of refusing to fund the pursuit of lifesaving ethical embryonic stem cell research (ESC), despite a history of recognizing its great potential. Given the massive resources of their organization and the great potential of ESC [to bolster] breast cancer treatment and [the search for] cures, it is deeply disturbing that Komen has turned its back on this research because of the same political pressures that led them to the original Planned Parenthood decision.

A politically-motivated grant process has no place in the pursuit of life-saving screenings, treatments, and research.

DeGette has long been an advocate for stem cell research and re-introduced her Stem Cell Research Advancement Act last year. The act passed the House and Senate years ago but fell victim to a George W. Bush veto. The legislation would establish a more permanent legal framework in which scientists could conduct stem cell research without being subject to the start-and-stop political pressures that shape life on Capitol Hill.

DeGette said she was “very glad” that Colorado’s Komen affiliates “stood up for science-based care” when they asked to be excluded from — and when Aspen Komen rejected altogether– the ban on funding Planned Parenthood and did so based on the statistically proven vital work Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains has done over the years to detect and head-off breast cancer among thousands of Coloradans with severely limited health care options.

DeGette said the Komen story this week was a wake-up call.

“I can’t tell you, we had such an outcry. My website and Facebook accounts were just full of messages,” she said.

“My daughter is 22 and she said this was the first time in her life she donated to Planned Parenthood. People need to be assured this major organization [Komen] is making science-based decisions.

DeGette said it was clear this week’s funding flap was part of a larger messaging battle.

“You know I sit on the Stearns committee doing the investigation into Planned Parenthood,” DeGette said, referring to the Planned Parenthood audit called by Florida anti-abortion Rep. Cliff Stearns and based on a mostly debunked Americans United for Life report on alleged Planned Parenthood misdeeds and corruption. The Stearns investigation was the reason Komen initially gave for throwing Planned Parenthood off its funding rolls.

“Listen, some Republicans in Congress have had a vendetta against Planned Parenthood for years, but 97 percent of what that organization does is well-women visits. For many of those women all over the country these are the only type of annual checkups they receive. There is no public tax money being spent on abortion and abortion is a small part of Planned Parenthood’s mission.

“I have been saying for years that these lawmakers don’t just oppose abortion. They oppose birth control and disease prevention for women. It’s the 21st century and we’re arguing about birth control?

“A lot of Americans woke up this week and said, ‘wow, the GOP agenda really is extreme. It’s about opposing contraception and mammography.’

“We want Komen to get back to science-based funding decisions”

DeGette is the head of the congressional Pro-Choice Caucus and has been a lead critic of the attacks on Planned Parenthood launched on Capitol Hill this year. Together with California Rep. Henry Waxman, she denounced the Stearns investigation as “unwarranted” and as a legalistic cover to “harass and shut down an organization simply because Republicans disagree with the work that it does.”

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In a letter to the president, the two Colorado Democrats, along with Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y, ask Obama to support the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, which would require the disclosure of chemicals used in the natural gas extraction process called “fracking.”

In his State of the Union speech last month, Obama emphasized natural gas as a key resource in his “all-of-the-above” strategy to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil and to make the United States a global leader in clean energy. Obama followed it up with speeches at Buckley Air Force Base and another in Nevada in which he called the United States “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”

Rep. Diana DeGette

“With hydraulic fracturing expanding across the country, it is more important than ever we ensure the economic benefits of natural gas do not come at the expense of the health and safety of our families,” DeGette said Thursday.

DeGette, Hinchey, and Polis also requested an expansion of an ongoing Environmental Protection Agency study of hydraulic fracturing, which received a congressional hearing Wednesday so charged Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Josh Fox of “Gasland” ended up in handcuffs.

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently embarking on the first, independent and comprehensive study of the risks that hydraulic fracturing poses to drinking water,” their letter states. “Unfortunately, media reports indicate that some in the oil and gas industry are seeking to narrow and even undermine this important study. This must not be allowed to happen. We urge you to maintain a strong commitment to the research that is under way by providing the necessary resources and support. We also urge you to consider expanding this research to cover hydraulic fracturing’s impact on air quality and human health.”

The House members also questioned the shale gas statistics cited in the State of the Union address.

Rep. Jared Polis

“We also believe it’s critical to have an accurate understanding of exactly how much shale gas lies beneath the surface,” their letter states. “Much has been said about our country’s potential supply of shale gas. Some in the industry have claimed we have an ocean of natural gas buried beneath our surface. Despite these claims, independent estimates about shale gas reserves reveal great uncertainty. In fact, just this week, the Energy Information Administration slashed its estimate of technically recoverable resources of U.S. shale gas by half. Furthermore, the United States Geological Survey’s estimates released last year are even lower. This is an enormous swing and it should be a caution to those who claim these new shale gas fields are the silver bullet to our country’s energy challenge. We must take care to ensure that any ‘bridge fuel,’ doesn’t instead prove to be a bridge to nowhere.”

On Tuesday, in the lead up to a hearing on a controversial federal study of water contamination from natural gas drilling, residents in the Pavillion, Wyo., area voiced unwavering support for the EPA.

“The Pavillion area was heavily drilled for natural gas,” said John Fenton, an alfalfa farmer. “No consideration was given to well spacing or to the impacts on the people or the environment. Our land and the land of our neighbors has been damaged and devalued. The water has been contaminated and the air fouled. Our health has also been attacked, my wife is losing her sense of smell and her sense of taste, my youngest son has developed seizures and I suffer chronic headaches and fatigue.”

Fenton was one of three landowners from the Pavillion area to speak to the press in a teleconference the day before the hearing over the EPA’s draft report, which has been criticized by gas industry executives, Wyoming officials and some members of Congress.

At the hearing, GOP lawmakers questioned the integrity of the EPA’s draft report, alleging it “jumps to conclusions” in making connections between fracking and water contamination. EPA officials clarified the scope of the draft report and explained the uniqueness of the Pavillion gas field.

“We make clear that the causal link to hydraulic fracturing has not been demonstrated conclusively, and that our analysis is limited to the particular geologic conditions in the Pavillion gas field and should be assumed to apply to fracturing in other geologic settings,” James B. Martin, EPA’s Region 8 administrator in Denver, testified. “It should be noted that fracturing in Pavillion is taking place in and below the drinking water aquifer and in close proximity to drinking water wells — production conditions different from those in many other areas of the country.”

The EPA on Tuesday issued more than 600 new pages of data to support its draft report.

Fenton praised the EPA for paying attention.

Louis Meeks’ well water contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead and copper, according to the EPA’s test results. When he drilled a new water well, it also showed contaminants. (Photo by Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)

“When the people of the Pavillion area began to notice negative impacts to their water they looked to the state and industry to provide answers and help to remedy the contamination,” he said. “However there was no help from the state of Wyoming or the natural gas industry. The people of the Pavillion area were told that there was no way the natural gas drilling and fracking operations in the Pavillion area could have caused damage to the water. When industry did admit that problems existed they blamed the impact on the landowners saying that they lacked proper hygiene or that they had contaminated the wells themselves.”

“During the entire time we’ve known our water is bad, we contacted our elected officials, the Wyoming Governor, Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, and the BLM, who administer the Tribe’s minerals under our property, asking for help. They continually said our water was fine,” added landowner Louis Meeks. “While reading the EIS for the Wind River Gas Field Development Project, I saw Region 8 EPA Greg Oberley’s name and called him to ask for EPA’s help. Several of our impacted neighbors also contacted the EPA. After site tours of the Pavillion area, we were invited to go to Denver to explain the problems we were having with our water. We welcome and are thankful for the help that the EPA has given us.”

The EPA is extending the public comment period on its study into March and it also sent out a request for peer review. Martin and other officials stressed that the study is not final.

In the meantime, natural gas prices are plunging due to a surge in supply. Several oil and gas companies recently announced plans to close off natural gas wells, pull out rigs and slow spending.

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The letter comes on the heels of news that roughly two dozen of Udall and Bennet’s colleagues in the Senate have signed on to a letter strongly urging Komen, the high-profile marketing firm behind the breast-cancer pink-ribbon campaign, to reverse the decision it announced this week to cease funding Planned Parenthood breast cancer screening and education efforts.

The Senate letter has reportedly drawn support from a wide spectrum of Democrats, including moderates like Montana’s John Tester. It decried the Komen decision as the latest front in the partisan political battle launched against Planned Parenthood this year that has driven moves inside and outside of government to strip funds from the reproductive healthcare and abortion provider.

“It would be tragic if any woman– let alone thousands of women– lost access to these potentially life-saving screenings because of a politically motivated attack,” the letter reads.

The support the letter has garnered reflects the increasingly high-level pushback Komen has received this week. News outlets have reported the intense back-and-forth that erupted in the wake of the announcement as it unfolded and as it played out on the internet, where supporters and detractors have waged furious social media messaging battles.

Denver Komen is one of select foundation affiliates across the nation that have asked for a waiver from the controversial decision to cut Planned Parenthood funds and has made the case in its public statements for its continuing to fund Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM), pointing to the vital role the embattled organization plays in fighting breast cancer here.

PPRM provides distinctly cost-effective service for Komen. Its Front Range clinics were responsible for 19 percent of all the breast cancer detected through Denver Komen funding last year and it received only $125,000 or 4.3 percent of the $3 million Denver Komen awarded to nonprofits spread across the region, from Douglas County just south of Denver north to the Wyoming border.

Komen also notes that the state budget this year was slashed for the Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program provided by the Women’s Wellness Connection Program, leaving nearly 5,500 women in Colorado without access to services and opening the door to nearly 90 cases of cancer. In such an environment, Komen suggested, cutting off Planned Parenthood funding would be irresponsible.

There is no word yet on whether members of the U.S. House will weigh in formally on the Komen funding question. Calls to members of Colorado’s delegation were not immediately returned.

Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette is the head of the Pro-Choice Caucus and has been a lead critic of the often specious attacks on Planned Parenthood launched on Capitol Hill this year.

Indeed, although Komen has said its decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood was not motivated by abortion politics, it cited as the cause a controversial congressional investigation launched by Florida Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns into twenty years of Planned Parenthood finances. Komen said that its new grantee criteria preclude funding any organizations under investigation.

Yet the Stearns audit of Planned Parenthood was spurred mainly by anti-abortion activists working off of a largely discredited Americans United for Life report brimming with lurid accusations that, for example, Planned Parenthood abetted human trafficking and child prostitution operations.

DeGette, together with California Rep. Henry Waxman, denounced the congressional investigation as “unwarranted” and as a legalistic cover to “harass and shut down an organization simply because Republicans disagree with the work that it does.”

“We are aware of no predicate that would justify this sweeping and invasive request to Planned Parenthood,” Waxman and DeGette wrote in a letter to Stearns last September as the investigation was being proposed. “It would be an abuse of the oversight process if you are now using the Committee’s investigative powers to harass Planned Parenthood again. Your fervent ideological opposition to Planned Parenthood does not justify launching this intrusive investigation.”

In a Thursday call with reporters, Komen CEO Nancy Brinker walked back reference to the Stearns investigation. The Washington Post reports Brinker said the decision not to continue funding Planned Parenthood “had very little to do with the ongoing congressional probe” but was based primarily on the fact that some Planned Parenthood clinics do not provide mammograms.

“We have decided not to fund, wherever possible, pass-through grants. We were giving them money, they were sending women out for mammograms. What we would like to have are clinics where we can directly fund mammograms.”

Northern Colorado Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains clinics will continue to draw funds, as will clinics in Texas and Southern California, Binker said, because “they are the only provider” of breast health services in the areas they serve.

News outlets and blogs have pointed to the fact that national Komen leadership has been tilted recently by a growing number of hardcore pro-life executives and board members, such as Senior Vice President Karen Handel, who came on last April after running as an anti-Planned Parenthood candidate for governor in Georgia’s Republican primary, and prominent Komen Advocacy Alliance board member Jane Abraham, who is also general chairman of the anti-abortion lobbying organization Susan B. Anthony List.

Leadership at Susan B. Anthony includes former arch-social conservative Colorado Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave. The group has played a key role in the effort to “defund” Planned Parenthood nationwide. This year it kept a running state-by-state scorecard tracking the roughly $60,399,000 in federal and state funding stripped from Planned Parenthood affiliates in eight states.

“Our efforts during the federal budget fight gave Planned Parenthood a black eye,” the organization boasted.

The Atlantic reported today that sources inside Komen are beginning to confirm that the new policy cited to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood– whether ultimately tied to on-site mammogram services, congressional investigations or something else– was adopted specifically to cut off Planned Parenthood and that that effort was spearheaded by anti-abortion personnel led by Handel.

Ties among Komen executives and Congressional Republicans are sure to be scrutinized in the coming days.

Komen board member Jane Abraham’s husband, Spencer Abraham, for example, may draw looks. He was Energy Secretary under George W. Bush and last year joined Republicans in the House, including House Energy Committee member and Planned Parenthood investigator Cliff Stearns, in denouncing the government program that guaranteed loans to Solyndra solar panel company. Abraham’s law firm recently teamed with Florida law firm Roetzel & Andress to form DC-based lobby shop Abraham & Roetzel, which has offices in Columbus, Ohio and Tallahassee, Florida.

Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains told the Colorado Independent this week that the Denver Komen affiliate has been a “strong advocate” for the work Planned Parenthood does in Colorado.

More than 80 percent of PPRM patients have no health insurance and 62 percent live at or below the federal poverty line.

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Rep. Scott Tipton

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, on the other hand, issued a statement after the State of the Union address to say he was “encouraged to hear the President talk so much about clean energy, as Colorado is leading the nation when it comes to renewable energy research and development. Many of the new jobs the President talked for this industry will be created in Colorado – and we are ready.”

Despite his stance on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, Obama touted the millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration that have been approved under his tenure and directed his administration “to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.” American oil production is the highest it’s been in eight years. “That’s right — eight years,” he said to applause in the chamber.

But noting that the United States has only 2 percent of the world’s known oil reserves, Obama pledged to end subsidies for oil companies and instead “double-down” on “an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy.”

In last year’s State of the Union speech, the president also emphasized domestic energy production but never climate change. This year, he briefly acknowledged the problem.

“We can also spur energy innovation with new incentives. The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change. But there’s no reason why Congress shouldn’t at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation. So far, you haven’t acted. Well, tonight, I will. I’m directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power 3 million homes,” said Obama, adding the Department of Defense will also purchase enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year.

“Clean energy,” however, means different things to different people. In the past, the White House has used the term to include nuclear power, natural gas development and other controversial fuels.

Obama paid special attention to natural gas, noting that America has an almost 100-year supply and that his administration “will take every possible action to safely develop this energy.” He estimated natural gas could create more than 600,000 jobs in the next decade.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colorado, applauded what she heard in the State of the Union.

Rep. Diana DeGette

The president’s pleas for Congress to rise above partisanship were heard loud and clear by U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, who, after the State of the Union, remarked “… One place we can find common ground is on the responsible development of clean-burning natural gas, which Colorado has in abundance, as part of a transition toward clean energy and away from overseas oil.”

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colorado, also issued words of encouragement for Obama’s speech.

“President Obama tonight outlined not only a blueprint for an economy built to last but an action agenda that reflects what Coloradans have been telling Congress to address for months: create jobs and strengthen the economy; reform education for our children and economic future; make college more affordable; invest in clean renewable energy to make us energy independent; and ensure that all Americans have a chance to work hard and succeed,” Polis said. “These are all practical, common sense solutions to our most pressing challenges that Congress should embrace, and I look forward to working with Democrats and Republicans this year to make progress for Colorado and America.”

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.”

A new study says border fences are disrupting the migration of black bears.

A recently published study (pdf) to be disseminated to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that barriers built to keep out illegal immigrants are blocking black bears in Arizona from their relatives in Mexico. Border fences are choking off bear migration corridors that are already under stress from urban encroachment, according to the study authored by the Department of Agriculture’s Todd C. Atwood and Julie K. Young and other biologists.

“While black bears are not a species of concern in [the] U.S., they are in Mexico, which represents the southern extent of their historic and current range,” the study reads, noting that border bears “may be particularly vulnerable to further loss of habitat due to urbanization and border security activities.”

The study focused on Arizona’s desert Sky Island mountain ranges, which are also home to mountain lions and jaguars and encompass one of the nation’s most biologically diverse regions.

Its findings come as the State of Arizona is soliciting private donations to build a wall in an attempt to secure the remaining 82 miles of the state’s 388-mile border with Mexico that isn’t fenced.

A mishmash of barriers currently cover about one-third of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border with nearly half of them in Arizona and the rest equally split between California, New Mexico and Texas.

The U.S. Border Patrol first began erecting barriers in 1990 to deter illegal entries and drug smuggling in San Diego and, in 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which bestowed what is now the Department of Homeland Security broad authority to construct fencing. Then in 2005, Congress passed the REAL ID Act, authorizing Homeland Security to waive all legal requirements to expedite the construction of border barriers. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 directed Homeland Security to build 850 more miles of border fencing, though that requirement was later modified to authorize fencing along not fewer than 700 miles.

Republican congressmen and women from Colorado have historically voted for federal fence-building while Democrats such as Mark Udall and Diana DeGette have opposed it and questioned the effectiveness of barriers, their cost, environmental impacts and diplomatic ramifications.

Border security doesn’t come cheap. The Government Accountability Office estimates (pdf) the federal government doled out between $400,000 to $4.8 million for every mile of border fencing it constructed and that another $6.5 billion is needed for its maintenance over the next 20 years.

Atwood, Young and the other biologists urge government officials and policymakers to identify opportunities to maintain and restore suitable wildlife habitat to protect borderland migrations.

“Currently, in the western U.S., there is opportunity to integrate connectivity conservation with land-planning. For example, land-use planners in the Tucson metropolitan area have developed a regional conservation plan with a specific focus on maintaining wildlife linkages and increasing the permeability of transportation corridors. The information we present here, if incorporated into land-use planning, may aid in ameliorating the adverse effects of inevitable urbanization and border security activities. If connectivity can be maintained, there is greater likelihood of the longterm persistence of species such as black bears, mountain lions, and jaguars along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

“This whole tragedy is really Mitt Romney ruining Christmas for 160 million Americans,” U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, said early Thursday on a conference call with reporters. “This is typical of the tax-and-spend Republican Party. They’re interested in raising taxes on the middle class. They show no interest in lifting a finger to maintain this thousand-dollar tax benefit for middle class families.”

Romney has largely avoided the stalemate, which heated up Tuesday when House Republicans rejected a Senate compromise that was passed by a vote of 89-10 on Saturday – with 39 Senate Republicans voting in favor of the two-month extension. House Speaker John Boehner said the GOP insists on a one-year deal and that Congress should stay in session.

Romney has tried to stay out of what he called the “congressional sausage-making process,” instead trying to deflect blame toward President Barack Obama. But the Obama administration has jumped on Romney’s dodging of the issue, and even GOP rivals have joined in. Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich called staying out of the fray a “timidity of calculation.”

Colorado U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat, agreed.

“There’s a lack of leadership here in the House on the part of the majority, and I have to tell you there seems to be a lack of leadership at the national level among the Republican candidates running for president,” Udall told reporters Thursday.

“Mitt Romney has dismissed the payroll tax cut as “a little Band-Aid,” but it’s beyond interesting to me that his home-state [Massachusetts] Republican senator, my colleague, my friend Scott Brown, has come out strongly in support of the Senate position and the Senate bill,” he added.

Brown issued this statement right after the House vote on Tuesday:

“It angers me that House Republicans would rather continue playing politics than find solutions. Their actions will hurt American families and be detrimental to our fragile economy. We are Americans first; now is not the time for drawing lines in the sand.”

Colorado U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, again blasted the intransigence of her Republican House colleagues on Thursday.

“One thing we’ve been hearing the American public say ever since the [budget] debacle of last summer is we need to have our elected officials compromising,” DeGette said. “What the tea party Republicans kind of forced the Republican caucus to do was reject the entire compromise.”

Democrats and many Senate Republicans say the two-month extension is necessary to work out a full one-year extension, and that all the many details cannot be ironed out in the nine days remaining before the end of the year.

After calling for the Senate to work through the break and come up with a better bill, Colorado’s four Republican House members were quiet on the issue on Thursday.

Smog over Denver (WildEarth Guardians photo).

“The public health benefits far outweigh the costs. And contrary to the doomsday predictions of industry and their allies in Congress, the lights will stay on.”

Backers of the new rules say mercury is a neurotoxin with serious health implications for children and pregnant women, and the EPA estimates the new rules – which require new scrubber technology within three years (with extension possible on a case-by-case basis) – will prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths each year. Coal industry lobbyists argue the new rules are unnecessary and will increase energy costs in a fragile economy.

Climate change denier and leading oil, gas and coal advocate Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., told the Los Angeles Times he’ll introduce legislation to overturn the new EPA rules when Congress returns following the holiday break.

“This rule isn’t about public health,” Inhofe told the Times. “It is a thinly veiled electricity tax that continues the Obama administration’s war on affordable energy and is the latest in an unprecedented barrage of regulations that make up EPA’s job-killing regulatory agenda.”

But Obama will likely veto any such legislative attempt to undercut the new rules even if the Democrat-controlled Senate passes Inhofe’s bill, which is highly unlikely.

In Colorado, Xcel Energy is out ahead of the new rules thanks to the Clean Air, Clean Jobs Act in 2010 that compelled the state’s largest public utility to shut down several aging coal-fired power plants and convert others to cleaner-burning natural gas and renewable energy.

“We are modernizing our system and significantly reducing emissions under the state’s Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act,” Xcel officials said in a statement Wednesday, according to the Denver Post. “We also currently use activated carbon injection to control mercury emissions at our Pawnee Generating Plant and at all three units of our Comanche Generating Plant.”

Clean Air, Clean Jobs – highly controversial at the time it was passed – is now being held up as a model for other states, including neighboring Wyoming.

Environmental groups were dispirited by the Obama administration decision last summer to hold off on implementing new EPA smog rules ahead of a scheduled review in 2013.

Conservationists also have been sharply critical of the State Department approval this fall of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, although Obama later scored points by delaying that decision until after the 2012 election. Now a provision to fast track his decision has been included in a payroll tax cut extension that’s stalled in the House.

Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette today said Keystone XL was a necessary compromise to provide payroll tax relief and extend unemployment benefits and reimbursement for Medicare

“Over in the House, the Democrats, we don’t love this compromise,” DeGette, a Denver Democrat, said on a call with reporters today. “We don’t think it should be for two months. We don’t like the extension of this pipeline that was in it. We don’t like some of the ways it was paid for. But the fact is it was a compromise.”

“This entire session of Congress has felt to many of us like a trip into Alice’s Wonderland,” the eight-term Democrat from Colorado said Thursday. “While our nation struggles with a devastating economy … we do nothing about jobs or getting America back to work; instead we repeatedly fall down the rabbit hole of extreme legislation, and now with this so-called ‘Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act,’ it would seem we’re having tea with the Cheshire Cat. To paraphrase the Cheshire Cat, ‘We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad … You must be mad or you wouldn’t have come here.’”

The fact that the Environmental Protection Agency maintains it has no plans to regulate farm dust is only partially what left DeGette challenging the sanity of her colleagues at a time when their approval rating lags behind both President Nixon during Watergate and Paris Hilton circa 2005. She was also tripping out that they refused to limit the scope of H.R. 1633 to agriculture, as its title implies.

U.S. Reps. Cory Gardner, Scott Tipton and Doug Lamborn — Coloradans who co-sponsored the bill — and their Republican cohorts shot down several amendments that would have exempted farm dust from the Clean Air Act but would have ensured the EPA can regulate coarse particulate matter from the mining and extraction industries, or dust that contains arsenic or other heavy metals, or dust that substantially harms public health.

DeGette floated a “motion to recommit” that sought to refer the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act back to committee so the legislation would clearly state that the EPA could still be able to regulate dangerous asbestos, lead and cadmium emissions but the GOP-led House rejected that too.

Rep. Diana DeGette

Republicans defended the legislation.

“While our nation’s farmers are expected to continue meeting the needs of a growing population, unnecessary regulations that place increased burdens on American agriculture are making production more costly and challenging — hurting jobs and small businesses,” Tipton said in a prepared statement. “I urge the Senate to quickly send this common sense pro-jobs bill to the President.”

Rep. Scott Tipton

Many Democrats counter the bill is a solution in search of a problem. A white rabbit.

“The truth is that the EPA doesn’t currently regulate farm dust. This bill would prevent a regulation that doesn’t actually exist, from overseeing something undefined,” DeGette told the House. “… Sadly for the American people, H.R. 1633 simply underscores the ‘madness’ of this body right now.”

Colorado oil and gas regulators say holding ponds like this one in Pennsylvania cause much more groundwater contamination than hydraulic fracturing (www.industrialscars.com photo).

WRA now wants the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) to implement recommendations (pdf) made in October by a group called the State Review of Oil & Natural Gas Environmental Regulations (STRONGER) suggesting minimum surface casing depths for oil and gas wells that are fracked.

It’s been suggested that the failure to properly case and cement natural gas wells to depths below the groundwater aquifer may have been to blame in Pavillion, Wyo., where a report last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) linked fracking chemicals to well-water contamination.

“[STRONGER] recommends that the COGCC work with stakeholders to review how available information is used to determine minimum surface casing depths and how those depths assure that casing and cementing procedures are adequate to protect fresh groundwater,” the October STRONGER report reads.

COGCC director David Neslin said on Tuesday that fracking chemical “disclosure is not our first line of environmental defense. It’s important for transparency, it’s important to build public confidence, but our first line of environmental defense is the integrity of the wellbore. It’s the work that our engineers and environmental staff do in reviewing the permit applications.”

Neslin has long said that disclosure won’t stop spills caused by bad cement jobs of wellbores, pipeline problems or leaks from holding ponds that store fracking and other fluids. On Tuesday he said another line of environmental defense is “groundwater sampling, baseline sampling that we require our operators to do, and the prompt response that our field inspectors make when complaints or allegations of impact arise.”

WRA, however, would like to see another rulemaking on both the STRONGER recommendations and “a mandatory program for baseline testing, monitoring and tracers to protect our water quality.”

“Baseline testing can help eliminate the he said, she said arguments over contamination so that we can focus on keeping people safe,” WRA’s Chiropolos said. “One sick person is one too many. The [COGCC] should continue to be proactive in 2012 in order to protect Colorado families and our water.”

There are approximately 45,000 active oil and gas wells in Colorado, which is in the top five nationally for natural gas production and top 10 for oil. Huge reserves in the Niobrara Shale formation on the state’s populous Front Range have sparked a wave of drilling speculation and local fears about the impacts of fracking.

“Colorado citizens are justifiably worried about the practice of fracking and deserve full confidence that the state is protecting the quality of their air, water and soil,” said Josh Joswick, energy issues organizer of the San Juan Citizens Alliance. Joswick was a La Plata County commissioner when local drilling rules were implemented in that gas-rich area of the state.

Increased drilling activity on the Front Range from Colorado Springs all the way north of Denver to the Wyoming state line will occur where far more Coloradans live than on the sparsely populated Western Slope.

“This [disclosure] compromise means there is no free pass for drilling firms,” state Rep. Deb Gardner, D-Longmont, said in a release. “There is now a greater degree of checks and balances.”

Calls for more COGCC rulemaking on issues ranging from surface casing depth to increased baseline water-quality testing to greater setbacks for oil and gas rigs from homes and public buildings will likely increase along with the drilling.

The WRA Tuesday also called for “increased residential setbacks from the current minimum levels — 150 feet for rural areas; 350 feet for urban areas.” That’s an issue that some observers say was never properly resolved during the last significant revision of the state’s oil and gas drilling regulations.

Those revisions in 2007 and 2008 were so sweeping – including some of the first rules in the nation dealing with fracking – that they required the approval of the State Legislature after months of sometimes bitter debate.

Colorado’s senior member of Congress, Democrat Diana DeGette of Denver, has been trying for years to compel the public disclosure of fracking chemicals at the national level. Her Fracturing Responsibility and Chemical Awareness (FRAC) Act would remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the fracking process that was granted during the Bush administration in 2005.

She praised the new Colorado rule Tuesday, but also pointed to the Pavillion case.

“The fact that we have a proven case of a connection between hydraulic fracturing and the contamination of an aquifer underscores just how important it is that we take cautionary steps to protect our communities’ water supply,” DeGette said. “That is why I continue to encourage members of Congress to pass my FRAC Act, so communities across the country will have transparency in the drilling process as well.”

EnCana, the Canadian company drilling in the Pavillion area, has disputed the EPA’s findings, and Republican lawmakers and industry trade groups have questioned the agency’s methods and motivations.