Tag: West Elk Mine

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

Dear readers, If you’ve been to the Newseum, the media museum in D.C., you may have seen this H.L. Mencken quote etched on a wall:...

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 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.

New revelations this week that Massey Energy kept two sets of books at its Big Branch Mine, failing to report major safety hazards to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), have put the media spotlight back on coal mine safety around the country. Colorado coal mines have racked up millions in health and safety violation fines over the last decade, according to the MSHA.

A coalition of national environmental groups Wednesday petitioned U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lisa Jackson to begin limiting air pollution from coal mines...

Obviously pleased with last week’s roadless ruling allowing Oxbow Mining to vent more methane at is Elk Creek Mine near Paonia, a company spokesman over the weekend also took the opportunity to skewer environmentalists on the issue of methane capture or flaring.

Even as Gov. Bill Ritter Thursday thanked U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for allowing road building around a coal mine in relatively unmolested Colorado forestland near Paonia, environmental groups and sportsmen harshly condemned the decision for exposing forest but also for flying in the face of smart business efforts to combat global warming.