Tag: Arch Coal

Our friend Gavin Dahl, who just took a job in the Roaring Fork Valley as news director of the community radio station KDNK, interviewed...

Somerset, CO — If you know what to look for, you can spot the old well pads in the hills above West Elk Mine....

A court ruling issued in Colorado on Friday could nudge government agencies toward making more honest assessments of the climate impacts tied to the projects they approve for federal lands.

The U.S. Forest Service overturned a decision Monday to approve the expansion of a coal mine in western Colorado that biologists feared would destroy wildlife habitat.

Clearly U.S. Forest Service (USFS) officials and opponents of coal mine expansion in western Colorado won’t be exchanging Christmas cards this holiday season. Instead, shovelfuls of coal and snark to spare will be dumped in their respective stockings.

The United States Forest Service (USFS) Tuesday gave the green light to a 1,700-acre expansion of the West Elk coal mine 10 miles east of Paonia on Colorado’s Western Slope. West Elk owner Arch Coal, based in St. Louis, Mo., praised the decision for its job-saving potential. Environmental groups blasted the USFS ruling for its possible industrialization of the pristine Sunset Trail roadless area adjacent to the West Elk Wilderness Area.

Republican lawmakers, at least in Colorado, are fond of pointing to America’s vast domestic fossil fuel reserves as a largely untapped means of ending the nation’s dependency on overseas energy imports. But there isn’t a lot of talk these days about getting other countries hooked on our homegrown power sources. According to the second-quarter earnings report for Arch Coal, the St. Louis, Mo., company that owns Colorado’s West Elk Mine, 2011 is expected to be a banner year – based at least in part on increasing overseas exports.

Federal regulators late last week shut down a Utah coal mine owned by a company that also owns Colorado’s West Elk Mine, citing elevated...

Lawmakers have introduced legislation to try to stop Xcel Energy from closing its outdated Cameo Station power plant, a coal-solar plant that Xcel says is too costly and impractical to maintain. Debate over the law sees politicians flipping ideology on its side. Grand Junction-area Republicans looking to preserve jobs in coal country are attempting to use government to force Xcel to make management decisions in direct opposition to market demands. Xcel says it's just bad business to keep the plant open.