Epa

Gov. Bill Ritter’s Colorado Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act brought together some strange bedfellows this morning in the west foyer of the State Capitol in Denver, with frequent Ritter energy-policy critic Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, joining in a press conference to announce the bill.

Gov. Bill Ritter may be a lame-duck chief executive laid up by a recent bike crash, but his clean-energy agenda keeps rolling along like Lance Armstrong in the Alps.

Jeff Biggers, a civil rights activist and cultural historian, watched helplessly a dozen years ago as the hollers of Eagle Creek, Illinois — a corner of the Shawnee National Forest and his family’s home for roughly 200 years — were blasted away, the forested hills bulldozed by companies harvesting the lucrative coal seams underground — a scene from Avatar playing out before the movie was made.

Colorado oil and gas regulators have admitted to the Colorado Independent they’re spread too thin to handle a new set of EPA rules if proposed federal hydraulic fracturing legislation is passed by Congress, but a new ProPublica investigation suggests staffing may even be inadequate to handle current levels of state oversight.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents obtained by Environment Colorado reveal behind-closed-doors negotiations between the EPA and Powertech USA that would allow the company to contaminate part of the underground aquifer beneath its proposed Centennial uranium mine north of Fort Collins, according to the Fort Collins Coloradoan.

While uncertainty swirling over a meaningful climate change agreement coming out of Copenhagen, and the U.S. Senate far from passing anything close to last summer’s House climate change bill, the Obama administration’s Plan B – the threat of stepped-up EPA regulation – is making Colorado’s oil and gas industry increasingly nervous.

The agriculture industry is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling requiring anyone spraying pesticides on or near water to hold a Clean Water Act permit.

U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey and Sen. Michael Bennet Monday released a letter they sent to the Environmental Protection Agency calling for more public involvement in any federal regulation of a proposed uranium mine 15 miles northeast of Fort Collins in Weld County.
The EPA is reportedly giving the public until Dec. 24 to comment on Powertech’s [...]

Garfield County public health officials believe a relatively untested type of health impact study could be a valuable tool in assessing the risks of natural gas drilling in the heart of the Battlement Mesa retirement community on Colorado’s Western Slope.

The conflict between environmental protection and coal extraction is a long simmering political flashpoint in the Appalachian states, which are home to some of the largest coal deposits in the world. Now, amid the extended national unemployment crisis — and with the Obama administration showing signs of cracking down on the destructive practice of [...]