“I’m not going to go out and say the sky is falling and that climate change is happening, but I’m very concerned about the risk of climate change,” Gov. John Hickenlooper told a coalition of 22 southeastern Colorado counties at a public meeting last week, as reported by the Pueblo Chieftain.

The governor’s comments echo some of the same language he used at the Colorado Environmental Coalition’s “Rebel With A Cause” gala in May 2009, except then his views were a lot more clear.

“I’m not saying that the sky is falling. I’m saying that clearly the climate is changing, clearly mankind’s activities are causing it,” Hickenlooper said back then.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper in Yuma.

Now, Hickenlooper clarifies that he is concerned about the risk of climate change but he deliberately stops short of acknowledging climate change is actually happening.

Even before he ascended to the governor’s office, there were questions as to whether Hickenlooper wears flip flops to the planet’s climate change debates.

In February 2010, at the National Western Mining Conference & Exhibition in Denver, Hickenlooper raised eyebrows when he said, “I don’t think that the scientific community has decided with certainty that climate change is as catastrophic as so many people think.”

It was a surprising remark that caught many people off guard, including Beth Conover, the author of “How the West Was Warmed.” Conover tweeted: “What the … ?” Hickenlooper wrote the forward for her 2009 book in which he called climate change “one of the greatest challenges of our time.”

Whether the governor now doubts how much the West has warmed is unclear. But rising sea levels, warmer temperatures and below-average snowpack are unmistakable to most scientists. And while he no longer comes out and says it is happening, Hickenlooper is preparing for climate change.

In an effort to conserve water, Colorado’s governor said Americans need to get rid of nonnative Kentucky bluegrass from their yards and that industry needs to develop more water-efficient toilet flushing. As mayor of Denver, he swapped out energy-guzzling bulbs in traffic lights with more efficient ones. He introduced biodiesel into city fleets, successfully lobbied for mass transportation solutions, implemented an ambitious recycling program at Denver International Airport and praised urban infill. In his speech last week in Pueblo, Hickenlooper reportedly mentioned he has been in discussions with the CEO of Kum & Go about possibly facilitating a low-interest government loan so that the convenience stores could offer compressed natural gas as an alternative to gasoline.

When it comes to climate change, Hickenlooper may walk the walk. But he no longer talks the talk.

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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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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.”

Natural gas may be a cleaner-burning energy source than coal, but making the switch isn’t likely to slow global warming any time soon, according to a new study in the journal Climatic Change.

Reducing coal use may cut down on carbon dioxide, but its affect on the earth’s warming trend isn’t quite so simple, according to Tom Wigley, a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Among other considerations, methane leaks from gas production and in transmission lines could negate the climate benefit until well into the 22nd Century:

When gas replaces coal there is additional warming out to 2,050 with an assumed leakage rate of 0%, and out to 2,140 if the leakage rate is as high as 10%. The overall effects on global-mean temperature over the 21st century, however, are small.

Just how much methane currently leaks during transmission — or would leak during a massive push to burn more gas — is still an open question. So is methane’s affect on climate change compared to carbon dioxide — a Cornell University study released earlier this year suggested methane was far worse for the climate than old estimates from the U.S. Environmental Protestion Agency had suggested. The American Petroleum Institute, among other industry groups, was highly critical of that method.

In the new study, Wigley uses a more conservative model for methane’s impact on climate change than the Cornell researchers. But the switch from coal to gas — dropping our coal use by 50 percent by 2050, he suggests — would come with a couple of planet-warming chemical side-effects.

For one, somewhat paradoxically, the sulfur dioxide released from burning coal has a cooling effect that’d be lost in a switch to natural gas.

Just how much methane escapes into the atmosphere before being burned is another, less certain, variable, Wigley writes. “Unless leakage rates for new methane can be kept below 2%, substituting gas for coal is not an effective means for reducing the magnitude of future climate change,” he writes in his conclusion. (You can read the study here.)

A study commissioned by the City of Fort Worth suggested improvements in pipe connections to limit methane leakage have been targeted as the prime targets for improving the natural gas industry’s affect on air quality.

As the Los Angeles Times reports today, Wigler considered a range of methane leak rates. Even in a perfect scenario, he found, the switch from coal wouldn’t do much to slow climate change for decades:

Even assuming there is no leakage — unlikely, most would agree — the switch analyzed by Wigley would still add to Earth’s overall average temperature through about 2050. After that, temperatures would fall, but only by a few tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. If a substantial amount of methane leaks, the warming trend will last until 2140, he found.

Bear in mind, the most widely reviewed studies predict a global average temperature rise of 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 under current fossil-fuel consumption rates.

“Relying more on natural gas would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, but it would do little to help solve the climate problem,” said Wigley, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia. “It would be many decades before it would slow down global warming at all, and even then it would just be making a difference around the edges.”

A group of doctors and scientists from 24 different universities and non-profit research organizations – including Colorado School of Mines and the University of Colorado – recently sent a letter (pdf) to Energy Secretary Steven Chu blasting his picks for a Department of Energy panel studying the controversial natural gas drilling process of hydraulic fracturing.

The group wrote that the panel is tilted too much to oil and gas interests and that “reducing individual biases” would lead to a more balanced report without “advocacy-based science” that “seems to have already concluded that hydraulic fracturing is safe.”

However, the panel did release its report today (pdf), making several recommendations for improving safety and addressing environmental concerns about the process in which water, sand and frequently undisclosed chemicals are injected under high pressure deep into natural gas wells to fracture tight rock formations and free up more gas.

The panel, dubbed the Shale Gas Subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, stopped short of actually making regulatory recommendations but did call for greater transparency and disclosure of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

That has been a key legislative goal of U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis, both Colorado Democrats, and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper last week announced his intention to push for a new fracking rule at the state level that would compel disclosure of chemicals.

The letter to Chu was signed by researchers with Paonia, Colo.-based TEDX, The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, as well as the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado, which recently conducted a Health Impact Assessment on natural gas drilling in Garfield County.

“We urge you to modify the panel’s membership so that the panel can make recommendations on hydraulic fracturing that are unbiased and scientifically sound,” the group wrote. “In our work, we believe in reducing individual biases in evaluating the merits of scientific or technological ideas. The current panel does not meet this standard. Six of the seven members have current financial ties to the natural gas and oil industry.”

Eagle County’s landfill manager is considering disposing of natural gas drilling pit liners that neighboring Garfield County stopped accepting two years ago because the massive, high-density polyethylene sheets are potentially toxic and too tough to handle.

The Eagle County landfill.

However, Garfield County – one of the most heavily drilled counties in the state – banned pit liners in July of 2009, citing tests showing the liners can be coated with sludge containing toxins such as benzene, a known human carcinogen. Companies have been taking liners to nearby Mesa County and facilities as far away as Utah.

“Some of the soil and stuff that’s come in I’ve actually handled some of that to see what kind of consistency it has,” Eagle County Solid Waste and Recycling Director Ken Whitehead said when asked last month about the liner issue. “It’s a lot like a dried sludge. But the liner stuff, that’s a different story.

“I want to research that, especially if some of that stuff has permeated the liner and it has potential to come out. I don’t know. Just based on what you’ve said, it’s something I need to take a harder look at.”

Pit liners became somewhat of a political hot potato after the state oil and gas regulatory agency, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), passed a rule prohibiting the on-site disposal of the liners near the drilling pad when it revised its drilling regulations in 2009. Some companies have had success recycling the liners but still fought to overturn the rule. Now the industry has backed off its opposition to the new rule.

The liners are required in holding pits that store chemically tainted water which comes to the surface during drilling or that’s pumped into the well during the controversial hydraulic fracturing process. The liners, meant to keep the water from leaking into groundwater supplies, are large and very unwieldy to deal with – sometimes requiring shredding for optimum disposal.

Eagle County Commissioner Jon Stavney said there has been some public concern voiced about accepting drilling waste at the county landfill near Wolcott, with people worried “like it’s Yucca Mountain” – the nuclear waste disposal site in Nevada.

“It’s really a lot more mundane than that for us,” Stavney said. “The good news for us is that as construction waste went significantly down over the last couple of years, (E&P waste) just really helped fill a great gap for us. But people get real worked up about it.”

Stavney said other forms of mining and excavation waste disposed of at the landfill are similar or even worse than E&P waste in terms of toxicity, but that everything is tested and disposed of according to state standards.

“We took the waste from underneath the B&B Gravel Pit [in Edwards] as well, and I would make the argument that it’s probably just as bad, although it’s not as political,” Stavney said.

Barbara Christopher, a resident of Eagle County for more than 40 years, said she’s worried about the spillover impacts from oil and gas drilling in neighboring Garfield County.

“The average person in Eagle County, what does that mean to have that stuff go into the dump down in Wolcott and how will it impact the Colorado River, because it’s so very, very close to us,” Christopher said. “I think Eagle County should have been more aware of this even when it was exclusively Garfield County’s problem. To have our heads in the sand over this is really remarkable. It’s only 60 miles away.”

Right now, all the E&P waste being accepted in Eagle County comes from one company, Denver-based Antero Resources. Involved in drilling operations in the Silt Mesa subdivision and other Garfield County locations, Antero also has proposed a controversial 200-well drilling plan in the Battlement Mesa community. That project sparked an aborted health impact assessment to evaluate the air and water quality risks in the retirement community of more than 5,000.

Antero also has been targeted by the New York law firm that handled the massive class action lawsuit brought by cleanup workers at Ground Zero in New York City.

Whitehead said the loads of E&P waste coming in from Antero are all undergoing a battery of tests on a “single-delivery” basis — not just the profiling that’s sometimes conducted for multiple loads — and that it all meets strict Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) standards.

Stavney said upping the ante to take pit liners is something all three county commissioners would have to ultimately decide. The decision to take E&P waste was made by the previous solid waste director.

“I think there was just some prudent cash flow in taking what we have taken so far, but I’m definitely making a note here and it’s my opinion that if we were to decide to do that [consider taking pit liners], it would be a commissioner-level decision,” Stavney said.

Despite having complained for years that studies on the effect of hydrofracking on drinking water supplies are deficient because they don’t include pre-drilling water quality data on wells and water systems, the natural gas industry has been keeping that data away from researchers.

ProPublica reports:

The absence of baseline data was one of the most serious criticisms leveled at a group of Duke researchers last week when they published the first peer-reviewed study linking drilling to methane contamination in water supplies.

That study—which found that methane concentrations in drinking water increased dramatically with proximity to gas wells—contained “no baseline information whatsoever,” wrote Chris Tucker, a spokesman for the industry group Energy in Depth, in a statement debunking the study.

Now it turns out that some of that data does exist. It just wasn’t available to the Duke researchers, or to the public.

Ever since high-profile water contamination cases were linked to drilling in Dimock, Pa. in late 2008, drilling companies themselves have been diligently collecting water samples from private wells before they drill, according to several industry consultants who have been working with the data. While Pennsylvania regulations now suggest pre-testing water wells within 1,000 feet of a planned gas well, companies including Chesapeake Energy, Shell and Atlas have been compiling samples from a much larger radius – up to 4,000 feet from every well. The result is one of the largest collections of pre-drilling water samples in the country.

“The industry is sitting on hundreds of thousands of pre and post drilling data sets,” said Robert Jackson, one of the Duke scientists who authored the study, published May 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Jackson relied on 68 samples for his study. “I asked them for the data and they wouldn’t share it.”

If the gas companies really wanted to understand whether hydrofracking does or does not contribute to contamination of drinking water supplies, they would turn that information over to independent scientists.

The state’s largest rural election association last week once again elected just one green candidate in a bloc of three members looking to reform policies currently geared more toward conventional power sources.

Mike Kempe

Two other candidates who favor conservation and more renewable energy sources – Mat Matson and Janet Spooner – didn’t fare as well. Spooner narrowly missed out in District 6, losing to Robert Graf by a margin of 2,057 to 1,856. Matson lost 2,510 to 2,262 to Duke Dozier in District 2.

Last month, Kempe told the Colorado Independent (TCI) that entrenched old-energy management and board members of the IREA were working hard to stave off green challengers, spending lavishly on advertising for the campaigns of Dendahl, Dozier and Graf.

“The idea is that if they can get me off the board, then this movement to reform IREA could be squashed. That’s what’s at stake,” Kempe told TCI. “What’s at stake is real oversight over the co-op from my perspective.”

Kempe said that over the years he has daylighted and helped curtail such suspect practices as paying consulting contracts for groups and individuals working to cast public doubt on widely established scientific data about global climate change.

“The bigger thing is making the co-op accountable to its members and getting a board that actively questions management,” Kempe said. “I’ve been on the board for four years and in that time I’m the only one who’s ever voted no on anything and that’s not normal for a co-op board.”

Even as U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, continued his crusade last week to step up federal oversight of the natural gas drilling industry, his fellow Western Slope congressman, Republican Scott Tipton of Cortez, proposed a new regulatory impact study (RIS) to tabulate the fiscal impacts of federal regulations on industry.

“I’m exploring ways to cutback regulation, including possible legislation to require a regulatory impact study — an RIS, similar to an EIS for environmental issues — and establish a joint House and Senate committee on regulatory oversight,” Tipton wrote in a guest column for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel on Sunday.

Tipton, who represents the vast majority of the Western Slope in his 3rd Congressional District, has also floated legislation to strip the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of a significant amount of its regulatory authority.

Polis, whose 2nd Congressional District straddles the Continental Divide and stretches from Boulder west to the western edge of Eagle County, wants to see the EPA regulating certain aspects of natural gas drilling previously exempted from federal oversight.

Polis last week introduced the BREATHE (Bringing Reductions to Energy’s Airborne Toxic Health Effects) Act to remove two natural gas exemptions from the Clean Air Act. Earlier this month, Polis, along with Denver Democrat Diana DeGette, reintroduced the FRAC (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) Act, which would eliminate another natural gas drilling exemption from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Today the Colorado Oil & Gas Association — the primary lobbying organization for the industry in Colorado – responded to Polis’s BREATHE Act:

“Our industry supports reasonable environmental regulation,” COGA President and CEO Tisha Conoly Schuller wrote in an email. “It is crucial that we carefully evaluate new regulation to ensure that it is adding additional safeguards and not simply providing impediments to economic development and affordable energy creation.

“We encourage our lawmakers and stakeholders to avoid hyperbole and mischaracterizations of the industry as they engage in a dialogue to strike a balance between appropriate environmental protections and economic development. Nationwide, it is important that we have a balanced conversation about energy development and environmental protection.”

Polis, in a release last week, cited an ozone alert in Pinedale, Wyo., that shut down drilling operations in that area, and he said that increased drilling activity nationwide has led to a spike in emissions that in some areas is having adverse health impacts.

“The sheer number of wells has grown exponentially in recent years, and this growth correlates directly to an impact on regional air quality and resident health in areas of active drilling,” Polis said.

In Garfield County, the second most drilled county in the state, Battlement Mesa residents continue to push for increased county regulation over a proposed drilling plan that could see up to 200 new wells on public areas inside the subdivision. Garfield County is in Tipton’s congressional district.

Paid for by the county and conducted by the Colorado School of Public Health using data collected in large part by Antero Resources, the Denver-based company proposing the Battlement Mesa drilling planning, the health impact assessment (HIA) is open for public comment until April 27.

In its executive summary, the HIA states that the “health of Battlement Mesa residents will most likely be affected by chemical exposures, accidents/emergencies resulting from industry operations, and stress-related community changes.” The HIA goes on to make more than 70 recommendations for mitigating those impacts.

Four of its recommendations, including full public disclosure of all chemicals used during drilling operations, should be implemented prior to the county approving a special use permit for Antero’s drilling plan, according to the HIA. There are another 16 actions recommended as conditions of the county permit approval.

“I feel the HIA team has done an outstanding job of identifying the risks and making recommendations to minimize the negative impacts,” Dave Devanney of Battlement Concerned Citizens wrote in an email. “It will soon be up to our county commissioners to listen to the public health experts and heed their warnings.”

Antero was seeking a one-month extension to continue to review the second draft of the HIA, which has already been rewritten once to address industry concerns, and the commissioners granted that request in a meeting this afternoon.

Environmental groups trying to compel the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to mitigate the climate change impacts of coal mine methane are encouraged by today’s BLM decision to reconsider approval of a mine expansion on Colorado’s Western Slope.

The BLM last week asked the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) to remand its environmental assessment (EA) and decision to approve expansion of Oxbow Mining’s Elk Creek coal mine near Somerset. Today the IBLA granted that request and vacated the BLM’s January decision approving the expansion.

Flaring off gas at Colorado's Elk Creek Mine.

WildEarth Guardians and the Sierra Club last month filed an appeal of the BLM’s approval of the expansion, arguing via the environmental law firm Earthjustice that the BLM failed to take into account the “one-two punch” of carbon dioxide produced by burning the coal in power plants and the discharge of methane gas into the atmosphere at the actual mine site.

In their appeal, the groups cited BLM data showing the mine will vent at least 5.1 million cubic feet of methane into the air on a daily basis. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says methane is 20 times more potent as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

However, coal mines have to vent methane so that coal can be safely mined beneath the surface without a potentially deadly explosion like last year’s Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia that killed 29 miners. That disaster put more focus on safety at Colorado coal mines.

The BLM’s own analysis reveals that methane venting at the Elk Creek Mine will release the equivalent of one million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year – or about 1 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions released in the state

The latest BLM decision to take another look at coal mine methane is a boost for environmentalists who want the federal agency to require the industry to either capture methane – the main constituent of natural gas – and produce electricity, or flare it off to reduce its climate-change impacts.

“This isn’t about shutting down coal mining; it’s about seizing opportunities to protect clean air, the climate, and public health,” said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians. “More importantly, it’s about finding every opportunity possible to recover value.

“In this case, recovering methane from the Elk Creek Mine would bring in much-needed revenue and create new jobs. This is a win-win opportunity, and we support the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to take another look at this issue.”

However, it’s unclear to what degree the BLM will require Oxbow Mining to either capture or flare methane at the Elk Creek Mine.

“We have rewritten the environmental assessment to account for issues related to coal mine methane and climate change and we’re currently reviewing it in the state office and the solicitor is doing it also,” the BLM’s Jim Sample said. “The next step will be for our state director to review it and sign it and we’ll post it.”

An Oxbow official last year told the Colorado Independent it was too dangerous to flare off methane and impractical to capture it and convert it to electricity. However, credible industry groups are trying to work out ways to do exactly that, exploring plans to convert methane into power and reduce the amount of gas that’s simply vented into the atmosphere.

The state’s natural gas industry has been blasted recently by the coal industry for leaking methane into the atmosphere during production – specifically during hydraulic fracturing — and then again during transport of natural gas via pipelines.