New Mexico’s Udall seeks GAO probe to make sure taxpayers get fair share of mining profits

With profits soaring for hard-rock mining and oil and gas companies doing business on public lands, U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is leading the charge to get the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate whether American taxpayers are getting their fair share.

GAO calls for study on water requirements tied to oil shale development

A new Government Accountability Office report (pdf) issued this week concludes that a lot more study of water resources needs to be conducted before there’s a full-blown resurgence of the Colorado’s Western Slope oil shale industry.

Actually, resurgence isn’t…

Boulder nuke worker widow scores new hope from Harkin

Boulder resident Bo Fellinger’s husband Michael worked with nuclear material at the Ames Laboratory in Iowa during the cold war and died of lung disease in 2008. The cause of his death was very likely exposure to radiation. Like so…

Iowa’s Harkin spurring movement at last on Udall nuke worker bill

Michael Fellenger died in April 2008 of lung failure stemming from his work with nuclear material at the Ames Laboratory in Iowa. His wife Bo lives in Boulder and she is one of the many direct and indirect victims…

Udall nuke-worker bill stalls; another widow denied compensation

Boulder resident Bo Fellinger is disgusted. She recently discovered that the Department of Labor yet again denied her husband Michael’s claim to compensation for chronic lung disease. Fellinger doesn’t have a good word to say about the department or its Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program (EEOICPA). Her husband, a grad student at the Ames Laboratory in Iowa, died of lung failure in 2008 at age 62, his claim shuttled back and forth among bureaucrats for nearly four years.

Groups call on BLM chief to suspend drilling permit practice skirting NEPA

A coalition of environmental groups is demanding the U.S. Bureau of Land Management immediately suspend use of so-called “390 categorical exclusions” for permitting oil and gas drilling operations on BLM land.

In a letter signed by, among others, Western Resource…

GAO rips BLM for sidestepping NEPA on oil and gas leases

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 rather famously – or infamously, depending on your point of view – allowed for a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the Haliburton-perfected process of hydraulic fracturing in of natural gas wells.