Former top federal public lands officials are urging the Obama administration to stay the course on onshore oil and gas leasing reforms despite a major setback from a U.S. district judge in Wyoming earlier this month.
U.S. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, both Colorado Democrats, sent a letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson today seeking clarification on the EPA’s ability to facilitate third-party “Good Samaritan” cleanups of critical watersheds contaminated by hard-rock mining.
The U.S. Forest Service Friday released the results of new aerial mapping showing the mountain pine bark beetle epidemic raging since the mid 1990s has now consumed more than 4 million acres of pine trees in Colorado and southern Wyoming. In Colorado alone, more than 400,000 acres of trees were killed last year, mostly in the Arapaho, White River, Roosevelt, Medicine Bow and Routt national forests.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today praised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for delaying for three years carbon dioxide emissions permits for biomass boilers that convert wood and other plant material into energy. The move is significant in Colorado because backers of biomass energy say that more 2 million acres of national forest land hit hard by a mountain pine park beetle epidemic could be tapped to generate hot-water heat and electricity that would actually replace dirtier fuel sources like coal and natural gas. The EPA delay makes that process more realistic.
Sen. Mark Udall’s bill to promote year-round recreation at ski areas cleared a critical committee vote late last week and is headed to a vote of the full U.S. Senate.
First introduced in 2008 and then revived last summer,…
In the end, it may not be NIMBYism or environmentalist objections to producing power by burning trees that dooms Vail’s proposed biomass power plant. It may just be a simple lack of funding.
The environmental law firm Earthjustice Tuesday challenged a May court ruling in favor of the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management that would allow dozens of natural gas wells in the HD Mountains between Durango and Pagosa…
Gov. Bill Ritter today, after a briefing with the state forester, said Colorado is headed for an average wildfire season thanks to a wet spring and near-normal winter for snowfall. But the governor warned the northwest part of the state…
The Ritter administration Wednesday tapped Department of Natural Resources deputy director Mike King to take over for DNR executive director Jim Martin, who was picked by the Obama administration last month to head up the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s…
Just outside of Central City in Colorado’s Gilpin County, the historic Perigo gold mine drains metal-laden water at an average of 70 gallons per minute into a small perennial stream known as Gamble Gulch. Below the mine for six miles, the gulch is virtually devoid of life, according to the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety.
A design for a proposed project has been completed, but Colorado won’t bid it out for construction because it worries that if it does, it open itself up, in perpetuity, to a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act.
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