Conservation groups were elated Wednesday by a U.S. District Court decision in Wyoming affirming the Interior Department’s ability to weigh environmental impacts when issuing oil and gas leases on public lands – as long as it does so in a timely fashion.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal made the ruling in a lawsuit filed by the oil and gas industry over a backlog of U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) leases in Utah and Wyoming. She ruled the DOI can consider impacts to air, water, land and wildlife habitat when deciding whether or not to issue oil and gas leases, but must do so within 60 days of the lease auction.

“This underscores the importance of balanced safeguards put in place by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to ensure that the public gets a say before our lands are put up for sale to the oil and gas industry,” said Bill Eikenberry, a Wyoming rancher and former associate state director of the BLM in Wyoming.

By the time Wednesday’s ruling was handed down, the BLM had worked through the backlog of more than 1,100 leases, leaving only 36 still being contended in both states. Overall, according to BLM records (pdf), more than 17,000 leases have been issued for energy development in Wyoming and more than 4,100 leases have been issued in Utah.

The Interior Department reports that only about half of all the oil and gas leases on federal lands around the nation are actually in production. That number is only 33 percent in Wyoming and just 22 percent in Utah, and Interior predicts drilling permits on federal lands will increase 40 percent this year.

Still, Republicans are pushing hard to speed up both the leasing and the permitting process, including a bill introduced this week by U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., that would compel the Interior Department to identify 200 onshore leases a year with the highest oil and gas production potential and move them through the permitting process within 180 days.

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., this week blasted the Obama administration for tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gasoline prices this summer while impeding domestic oil and gas production. But critics say the industry is stockpiling federal leases, stalling on production and needs to start developing its backlog of oil and gas leases.

“What we need is a sensible energy policy to increase the supply of American energy, which will lower costs and create millions of American jobs. According to the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. has 163 billion barrels of recoverable oil,” Lamborn said in a release.

“As part of the American Energy Initiative in the House, my Republican colleagues and I have passed numerous bills so far this session to increase our access to those sources. The Senate has yet to pass any of them.”

But Robin Cooley, the Earthjustice attorney for the conservation groups that intervened in the Utah and Wyoming case, said Wednesday’s decision is actually a win-win for both the industry and the environmental community.

“The ruling clearly provides the Interior Department the room to make educated decisions about whether to issue a lease while providing certainty to the oil and gas industry that such decisions will happen on a reasonable timeline,” Cooley said.

Denver District Judge Brian Whitney sided with the Telluride-based Sheep Mountain Alliance, which contends the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) may have violated various state and federal laws in issuing a permit for the mill. The lawsuit can now move forward.

The state and the project developer, Toronto-based Energy Fuels, had argued that the court had no role in reviewing the radioactive materials license for the proposed mill or jurisdiction in the case.

“For too long, state radiation regulators and the uranium industry has had a cozy relationship that has caused long-term contamination to continue unabated here on the Western Slope and on the Front Range,” said Hilary White, executive director of Sheep Mountain Alliance.

“That questionable relationship continues today as both Energy Fuels and the state try to argue Colorado residents have no seat at the table in trying to protect our clean air and water from uranium mining and milling. Thankfully, the court has rejected those arguments.”

Sheep Mountain also has sued Montrose County for permitting the proposed mill, which would be the first new uranium processing facility in the United States in nearly three decades. In an earlier interview with the Colorado Independent, Energy Fuels President and CEO Stephen Antony said legal challenges have been taken into consideration in the time frame for building Piñon Ridge.

“It’s all subject to how that process winds its way through the judicial system, but we added about six months in the schedule, so that puts us breaking ground in the fourth quarter of this year and commissioning [a working mill] a year later in the third quarter of 2012,” Antony said, adding the project is also contingent on capital investment and the global uranium market.

In his ruling on Wednesday, Whitney wrote that Sheep Mountain Alliance “members’ property interests, monetary interests, recreational interests, agricultural interests, and ecological interests are adversely affected by the issuance of the license” and that their “interests are those of an organization whose members are or will be injured, not an organization with mere interest in a problem.”

Sheep Mountain Alliance also is requesting the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) delay its proposed approval of radon permits for the mill until it updates outdated Clean Air Act regulations. Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet has also urged the EPA to move cautiously on the mill.

The lawsuit filed just days ago sought to have Tancredo disqualified on the grounds that he had not been a member of the party long enough to qualify to be a candidate.

The suit was filed by Joseph Harrington of Highlands Ranch and Marian Olson of Golden. Both are registered Republicans and both have contributed to the campaign of Republican nominee Dan Maes.

The judge ruled in part that party bylaws trump state law in terms of determining a candidate’s eligibility. He also noted that the rules would have been different had former Republican Tancredo been originally nominated by the American Constitution Party, but he was not. The party had a candidate who withdrew from the race to make room for Tancredo.

His withdrawal established a vacancy which the party could then fill. The rules for filling vacancies are less stringent than the rules for nominating a candidate in the first place.

“Huge victory today,” Tancredo said in a release. “I will be on the ballot in November.

“The high-paid Republican lawyers managed to present a case that was weaker than their candidate,” added Tancredo. “Their attempt to impede my candidacy has now failed in the courts as well as on the campaign trail. Now our focus must turn to the liberal mayor of the sanctuary city of Denver.”

Congresswoman Diana DeGette responded to the ruling immediately with this statement:

“Today’s ruling from the U.S. District Court is deeply disappointing, as it once again delays groundbreaking treatment and even cures for the millions of patients and their families clinging to the hope of embryonic stem cell research. We strongly disagree with the judge’s ruling because, by definition, embryos and stem cells are two entirely different organisms. Today’s ruling is the case of one judge ignoring the scientific fact that research on pluripotent stem cells is not the same as research on an embryo.”

DeGette, a Democrat, represents Denver’s CD1 in the United States House of Representatives. Chief Deputy Whip in the House, DeGette has made stem cell research one of her signature issues.

“Our nation already lost valuable time over the last decade, when we could have been bringing our massive resources and expertise to bear, expanding stem cell research and helping 100 million American patients living with devastating and debilitating diseases. President Obama’s executive order last year opened a door to hope and promise for those patients, and today, Judge Lamberth has sadly once again closed that door. Today’s ruling underscores why we must pass common-sense embryonic stem cell research legislation, placing these regulations into statute and once and for all, ensuring this critical life-saving research can be conducted for years to come, unimpeded by political whims or naysayers.”

Nationally, scientists are scrambling to find ways to continue their research without running afoul of the law. “This ruling means an immediate disruption of dozens of labs doing this work since the Obama administration made its order,” Dr. George Q. Daley told The New York Times. Daley is director of the stem cell transplantation program at Children’s Hospital Boston.

The Times says this ruling may be more restrictive even than rules put in place by former President George W. Bush, and may eliminate all stem cell research in the United States.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Judge Vaughn Walker

“Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license,” Walker wrote in the conclusion to the 136 page ruling. “Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.”

One Colorado Executive Director Brad Clark celebrated the ruling as a victory for fairness.

“One Colorado celebrates today’s ruling with gay and lesbian couples and their families all across the nation,” he said in a release. “This is an issue of basic fairness. It’s not about Republicans or Democrats. It’s a constitutional issue that goes beyond party lines.”

Clark also saw the ruling as a lesson in constitutional protections in our democracy against discrimination, especially the discrimination of majority groups against minority groups.

“Today’s groundbreaking decision affirms that the law cannot treat people differently based on their sexual orientation and that a majority cannot strip a minority group of its fundamental freedoms at the ballot box.”

Openly gay Second District Colorado U.S. Rep. Jared Polis also issued a statement celebrating the ruling. He said Prop 8 “set the country back” in its efforts toward greater equality:

“I applaud Judge Walker’s decision… No one should be denied the opportunity to choose his or her spouse. It is a basic human right. It is a deeply personal decision. Throughout history, our country has made great strides moving forward with equality and civil rights for all. Proposition 8 set this country back by attacking gay couples who only wanted to share lifelong obligations and responsibilities. It sent the wrong message to society, was unconstitutional and it deserved to be overturned.”

The ruling may have the effect of moving gay marriage closer to the center of political discussion. Social issues have generally been pushed aside this midterm election season as economic issues in the recession have taken center stage. Arizona’s new immigration law, SB 1070, however, and the recent ruling barring its most controversial provisions from taking effect, have thrown the spotlight back onto immigration reform, for instance, despite wariness on the part of politicians exhausted from the health care reform battle and facing tough re-election battles.

Prop 8 overturned a previous California Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage. The proposition’s defenders anticipated today’s ruling and were organizing protests today in San Francisco, the site of the trial. They planned to ask an appeals court to issue an immediate stay on Walker’s order while the appeals process was set in motion. The stay would prevent same sex couples from getting married as the legal contest continued.

San Francisco and other California cities hosted a run on gay marriage for the months it was legal before Prop 8 took effect. There is likely to be a similar euphoric run in California in the coming weeks should the stay on Walker’s ruling be denied. (**Update: the stay was granted. No rush to marriage yet.)

The Prop 8 trial will be seen as an historic case, not least for the way it seemed to capture a cultural moment and turn preconceptions on their head, making strange bedfellows and throwing up the kind of material ripe for Hollywood treatment.

Judge Walker, for example, is a Reagan conservative who is openly gay but who also has been accused of being insensitive to gay issues. GOP-associated attorney Ted Olson — who argued in favor of the Bush campaign in the Bush v Gore Supreme Court case that decided the 2000 presidential election and who is not gay — by all accounts argued a brilliant case in favor of gay rights. Straight witnesses declined to testify against gay marriage at the trial because they were afraid of being harassed by gay-rights supporters– ie, by members and friends of a long-persecuted minority group. And one of the witnesses for Prop 8 who did give testimony was David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, who referred mainly to works by George Rekers, the famous anti-gay “expert” recently caught on a whirlwind tour of Europe with a male escort.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

The Post kicked off an interesting weekend piece on the regulatory hurdles facing Gov. Bill Ritter’s “New Energy Economy (NEE)” by focusing on uranium mill hearings in Telluride. Sen. Mark Udall and other politicians have been pushing a nuclear renaissance as a way to kick the national fossil-fuel habit.

The problem with that push, as a lot of environmentalists will quickly point out, is Colorado stands to get all the dirty front-end fallout from uranium mining and milling but few of the benefits because our lack of water for cooling reactors makes new nuclear power plants somewhat problematic for the state.

Meanwhile, peaceful uses for nuclear weapons continue to pose a problem for operators looking to drill for natural gas – the state’s plentiful, cleaner-burning “bridge fuel” to the Ritter’s NEE – in the Project Rulison area of Garfield County.

That’s where the federal government detonated an atomic bomb more than 8,000 feet below the surface in 1969 in an effort to free up natural gas. It was the world’s biggest – and most environmentally devastating – frack job in that it produced radioactive and therefore unusable gas.

The Glenwood Springs Post Independent reports the Colorado Court of Appeals last week ruled in favor of nearby property owners who are concerned about what will come to the surface if oil and gas companies are allowed to drill too close to ground zero – Mothra or loads of clean and clean-burning natural gas?

The court overturned a lower court ruling and gave standing to the landowners before the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission despite their lack of subsurface mineral rights. That gives the property owners and residents of nearby Battlement Mesa some hope that the state will at least listen to their concerns.

[Nuclear fracking planet: Godzilla vs Mothra via kourouna2007 ]

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Conservationists, meanwhile, reacted Friday with tempered enthusiasm for the ruling, which they claim means the bird must “wait in line” for endangered species protection behind higher-priority species while oil and gas development continues to cut into habitat in Colorado and 10 other Western states.

“The decision regarding sage grouse will definitely have an impact on our member companies,” Tisha Conoly Schuller, president of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association, told the Colorado Independent Monday.

“At this time, it is difficult to determine its full effect until we can analyze it further. However, I hope that many of the steps taken by our industry to protect the sage grouse habitat will minimize the impact of the listing on our industry and the communities in which we operate.”

The ruling means federal land managers will have to continue to treat sage grouse as a sensitive species and keep an eye on its dwindling numbers throughout the arid sagebrush country where the birds once thrived. According to the National Wildlife Federation, 20 of 27 sage grouse populations have decreased in numbers since 1995.

“Unfortunately, sagebrush is the most overlooked and underappreciated Western landscape,” NWF Colorado senior policy analyst Kate Zimmerman said in a release.

“If we don’t pay attention to what science is telling us, sage grouse and other sagebrush species – even pronghorn antelope -– could end up in deeper trouble. Losing this unique habitat would also be devastating for the many people who enjoy outdoor recreation or rely on tourism in sagebrush country.”

Schuller said Colorado’s oil and gas industry has been proactive on the sage grouse front, including implementing timing limitations on drilling activity during nesting and breeding periods; survey work to foster habitat enhancement; and sage grouse employee awareness and educational programs.

“Our members work with the Colorado Department of Wildlife and [U.S. Bureau of Land Management] to establish sage grouse management plans,” Schuller said. “This work is done to mitigate the impact of oil and gas activity on sage grouse.”

NWF sage grouse experts were simultaneously encouraged by the science behind Friday’s decision recognizing the bird’s shrinking habitat and dwindling numbers and to some degree concerned that federal management practices remain up in the air.

“A business-as-usual approach isn’t going to conserve the sage grouse or its sagebrush habitat,” said Ben Deeble, NWF sagebrush habitat expert for Montana.

“Now that the federal government acknowledges the decline of sage grouse, we need to ensure that its land-management agencies reconcile their energy-development practices with the latest wildlife science. And we need strategies to cope with the impacts of drought, fires and invasive species brought on by climate change.”

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

A mixture of salt water, fracking chemicals and hydrocarbons, brine was seen by Penry and Buescher as a potential source of groundwater contamination. Their bill required it be stored in non-permeable synthetic pit liners at facilities at least a half mile away from homes. Two Moffat County storage operations challenged the rules as unconstitutional and usurping local authority.

According to the paper, Judge William W. Hood III ruled that the Colorado Solid and Hazardous Waste Commission correctly interpreted that the intent of Penry (an ardent oil and gas industry backer) and (now Secretary of State) Buescher’s bill was to mandate synthetic pit liners over more permeable clay liners.

Hood cited a comment by Penry to fellow lawmakers that the liners are the “best technology available to protect ground water from any undesirable consequences [associated with the pits.]”

Conservationists agreed. Frank Smith of the Western Colorado Congress praised the ruling: “Pit liners, absolutely that helps protect people and water.”

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Federal judge Dee Benson was having none of that, according to the Associated Press, denying a motion by DeChristopher’s lawyers and essentially rejecting his defense that he jacked up the bids at a chaotic BLM auction last December in order to curtail climate change by blocking drilling near iconic national parks like Canyonlands and Arches.

Tim DeChristopher

“Unlike a person demolishing a home to create a firebreak, DeChristopher’s actions were more akin to placing a small pile of dirt in the fire’s path,” Benson reportedly wrote in his ruling – a statement that hopefully at least made sense to the judge.

Benson said DeChristopher should have demonstrated outside the auction, where he could have rubbed elbows with protesting luminaries like Robert Redford, or sued along with other conservationists who ultimately succeeded in getting much of the acreage removed from drilling consideration.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar just last month blocked the most critical acreage near national parks from drilling. The legal system apparently works, is the message there, with a Colorado auction just last week underscoring the point.

The BLM in Colorado auctioned approximately 6,000 acres for $112,969 on Thursday, according to AP, the third smallest amount of leased acres since the late 70s. Exxon Mobil was the big spender, paying a mere $215 an acre for an 81-acre parcel in Rio Blanco County, but clearly the economy and depressed gas prices are still impacting the industry.

Before the Colorado auction, Western Resource Advocates praised a BLM decision to remove from the sale 907 acres adjacent to the Black Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area on the Routt National Forest in Moffat County. WRA filed a protest on behalf of the Colorado Environmental Coalition because the land is critical deer, elk, cutthroat trout and sandhill crane habitat.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Areas of Routt National Forest are included in Colorado's roadless areas. (Creative Commons photo by andso via Flickr)

While conservation groups called Wednesday’s federal appeals court decision reinstating the Clinton-era roadless rule a major victory, the state of Colorado contends its own revised rule is still a far more practical way of managing the state’s 4.2 million roadless acres.

Mike King, deputy director of Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, said Wednesday that the 2001 Clinton rule, which provided sweeping protections against road building on nearly 60 million acres of largely undeveloped public lands nationwide, did not take into consideration wildfire mitigation or other critical economic drivers.

“In Colorado in 2001, we didn’t have a bark-beetle epidemic, and now we find ourselves eight years later with at least 2 million, and maybe more like 2.5 million, acres of dead trees,” King said. “Many of these acres are adjacent to communities, and the risk of catastrophic wildfire has increased exponentially as a result.”

The Bush administration quickly tossed out the Clinton rule in 2001 and four year later allowed states to petition for their own roadless rules. Only Idaho and Colorado went that route, with Idaho adopting its own set of rules late last year.

Colorado’s draft rules, released in 2008, were formed by a task force with extensive public input over a period of two years, but it has been slowed by critics charging that it allows far too many road-building exceptions for energy extraction, water and power infrastructure, logging and ski-area expansion. It was also stalled in the transition between the Bush and Obama administrations.

On Monday, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s administration issued a revised version of its 2008 draft, drawing jeers from environmentalists. But Wednesday, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling upholding a 2006 U.S. District Court decision that reinstated Clinton’s Roadless Area Conservation Rule and threw out the Bush administration’s State Petitions Rule.

“Today is a victory for one of the most important land protection measures of the decade,” Jane Danowitz, director of the Pew Environment Group’s U.S. public lands program, said in a statement. “It is now up to President Obama to fulfill his pledge to permanently protect our unspoiled forests by resurrecting the [2001 Clinton] Roadless Rule.”

Colorado had been operating under the notion that the 2001 rule was permanently enjoined in the state and that the U.S. Forest Service could not use it to manage public lands in Colorado.

Rob Vandermark of the Pew Environment Group disagreed with that reading of earlier court decisions, instead arguing that injunctions by lower courts were only in effect pending appeals.

“Today’s decision by the higher court … affirmed [District] Judge Laporte’s ruling that the Bush administration unlawfully repealed the 2001 roadless rule and reinstated the 2001 rule nationwide,” Vandermark said. “Today’s ruling means that the U.S. Forest Service is now bound by the provisions of the 2001 rule on lands it manages in all states — except Idaho and within Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.”

According to a spokeswoman, Pew wants Obama to affirm that the 2001 rule applies in Colorado and suspend the state rulemaking process in favor of a permanent national rule. King said that would be a mistake for a variety of reasons, most of them having to do with states having more knowledge of special circumstances such as wildfire mitigation.

In the 2008 draft Colorado rule, for instance, King said conservationists were concerned that language on logging road exceptions was too broad and could allow local officials to declare an entire county high risk under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act and set up a Community Wildfire Protection Plan in order to land a timber mill in the county.

So in its revised version, the state shored up that language to allow fairly unfettered thinning within a half mile of towns and then public review as part of a Community Wildfire Protection Plan process — as allowed under state Senate Bill 1, which went into effect Wednesday — for public lands between a half mile and 1.5 miles of town.

“I’ve had candid conversations with many environmentalists who say, ‘We know that when the Obama administration takes up this issue at the national level there will have to be some accommodation for fuel treatment because of [the fire] issue in Colorado and other western states,’” King said. “So we think the question of does there need to be some flexibility for fuel treatment is a no-brainer and it’s a foregone conclusion.”

King said two other exceptions for temporary road building include 29,000 acres on the North Fork of the Gunnison River for coal mining and ski-area expansion on roadless areas within existing resort permits — about 8,000 acres spread over 11 existing ski areas.

“Those are two examples of narrowly tailored exceptions that we can do on a state analysis that the national rule would never give you the ability to do,” King said, adding both industries are critical to the economy of the entire state.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter. And we’re hiring.