Fossil Fuel Energy Production

Todd Helton pleads guilty to driving while ability impaired

The mug shot of Colorado Rockies all-star Todd Helton taken after his arrest for DUI in February spoke volumes about the most humiliating moment of his career -- an incident detailed in an arrest report on view below in its entirety. Now, however, with the Rockies' season underway and going better ... More >>

If Mitt Romney won't tell you about these tax loopholes, we will

Aurora theater shooting: Ken Feinberg named special master of victims fund

In a very brief press conference at the State Capitol announced less than an hour before it began, Governor John Hickenlooper introduced Ken Feinberg as the new "special master" for the Aurora Victim Relief Fund -- almost a full month after victims' families first came together to express their frus ... More >>

Controversy over fracking continues despite industry's best efforts to bury it

Photos: Treff Carpenter identified as victim of Boulder Canyon fall

When Greeley's Treff Carpenter, a field engineer for Noble Energy, died Sunday after a fall in Boulder Canyon, he was doing something he loved. That's clear from his Facebook page, which is dominated by photos and videos of mountain climbing -- a couple posted just days before his tragic death. See ... More >>

Ken Salazar wants more drilling, but industry won't oblige?

See, it's like this. Far from being the obstructionist tree-hugger his critics accuse him of being, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar really, really wants to drill, baby, drill, for oil and gas on federal lands and offshore. He wants to drill the hell out of the place. But the energy companies a ... More >>

Reader: Denver Post changes are like Exxon watering down gas

Our item sharing a memo from editor Greg Moore about impending cuts in the Denver Post copy-editing department, which sources tell us could result in two-thirds of the staff being laid off, prompted plenty of discussion about the state of journalism today. Here's a comment from a reader who thinks s ... More >>

Pierced Arrows at Hi-Dive, 4/21/12

PIERCED ARROWS @ HI-DIVE | 4/21/12As the last notes of "The Wait" ended, they blended into the Toody Cole's familiar bass pulse that introduced Pierced Arrows' epic, and much beloved, "Paranoia." Fred Cole tapped the Bigsby on his Guild Polara to modulate the feedback before heading into one of the ... More >>

Big Oil making big profits on declining production

​It's official: 2011 was a record-busting year in the oil industry, with the five largest companies -- BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Royal Dutch Shell -- reporting all-time-high profits of $137 billion. That's a 75 percent jump from the year before, even though the giants produc ... More >>

Drilled, Baby, Drilled: The strange battle to keep Big Oil from cheating

Encana blasts EPA report linking fracking to Wyoming water pollution

Encana WY drill rig. ​In a telephone conference with journalists this morning, officials of the Canadian energy giant Encana sharply disputed an EPA draft report that linked the company's gas drilling operations in Wyoming to contamination of residents' drinking water, calling the report badly ... More >>

Tom Strickland exits Interior, chased by big bucks

Tom Strickland.​The news that "lobbyist lawyer" Tom Strickland, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's chief of staff for a hectic two years, is now taking a job with British Petroleum's law firm in its battles with his former boss over the Deepwater Horizon mess made a big splash in the Denver Post ... More >>

Ken Salazar's salary at center of David Vitter ethics complaint, CREW tells Keith Olbermann

Ken Salazar.​During last night's sophomore edition of Countdown on Current TV, Keith Olbermann featured an extended segment about Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filing an ethics complaint against Louisiana Senator David Vitter. But the man in the middle of the cont ... More >>

Ask the bartender: Meet Rory Donovan of Peach Street Distillers

​Sean Kenyon knows how to pour out both drinks and advice. A third-generation bar man with almost 25 years behind the bar, he is a student of cocktail history, a United States Bartenders Guild-certified Spirits Professional and a BAR Ready graduate of the prestigious Beverage Alcohol Resource ... More >>

Oil-shale plans could be derailed by ruling on Graham's penstemon, an endangered plant

Susan Meyer​William Blake saw heaven in a wildflower. The energy industry sees nothing but trouble. Last week, a federal judge in Denver ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision not to declare an obscure plant as endangered was "arbitrary and capricious" -- a ruling that could ... More >>

Harrold Wright: The unsung whistleblower behind a big settlement with Big Oil

John JohnstonBobby Maxwell​The Department of the Interior's Office of Natural Resources Revenue recently announced that Shell Oil and related companies have agreed to pay the goverment $2.2 million to resolve claims that the companies underpaid royalties from natural gas wells on federal and I ... More >>

4/20: A day that will really live in infamy

Deepwater Horizon.​Does any other day carry as heavy a load as April 20? The day's fate was sealed in 1889, when Adolf Hitler was born in a small village in Austria. In the early '70s, April 20 also became an underground stoner holiday, now so aboveground that it's celebrated across the countr ... More >>

Restaurant roll call for February

Lori MidsonMark Dym opened his second Marco's Coal-Fired Pizzeria in February.​February saw a handful of high-profile openings, including a second Marco's Coal-Fired Pizzeria in the upscale Vallagio project. But Denver also lost a couple of longtime restaurants, including the Rocky Mountain Di ... More >>

La Choza serves up tacos, tortas and breakfast burritos from a gas station in Boulder

Lori Midson​In the past two weeks, our culinary escapades have taken us to two gas stations: first, to Pho Bowl, which recently opened in a Conoco in Denver. Then, this past weekend, we checked out La Choza, a taco trailer that's practically attached to a Sinclair on the Diagonal Highway in Bo ... More >>

Get gassed: Pho Bowl opens...inside a Conoco station!

Loir MidsonGas up on pho inside a South Broadway Conoco station​While Denver lays claim to dozens of pho joints, Pho Bowl is the first to reside in a Conoco station. Yes, that's correct: Inside the Conoco station at 3298 South Broadway, there sits a tiny cafeteria-like parlor of pho, just adj ... More >>

Gas-drilling oversight bill killed by the House: What's the fracking point?

Gas well pads.​A bill that sought to increase the reporting process for water-quality complaints related to oil and gas drilling in Colorado died quietly at the statehouse yesterday, with Republican lawmakers insisting that the industry's use of hydraulic fracturing fluids, or "fracking," pose ... More >>

BP oil-spill report identifies a failure of management -- and regulators

​A chronic whine from oil and gas interests has to do with the glacial, foot-dragging pace of government. But a presidential commission report on the British Petroleum offshore well explosion that killed eleven people blasts the now-extinct Minerals Management Service for moving too quickly to ... More >>

Jarrett Berlin unarmed when SWAT team shot him, cohort Tara Salazar says he was massacred

Large pics below.​Update: On Friday, the Lakewood Police Department confirmed that Jarrett Berlin, shot and killed by a SWAT team after a standoff at the Bentley Apartments, was unarmed at the time of his death. Now, Tara Salazar, the woman who was allegedly in the car he used to get away from ... More >>

Social studies: Education officials debate adding it to state tests, as Americans get dumber

Recognize this fella?​ Do you know from which country the U.S. of A. declared its independence in 1776? If so, consider yourself among the 74 percent of Americans who do. If not, consider yourself dumber than a first grader, which is when everyone learns about George Washington and how he comm ... More >>

Ken Salazar: Democrats holding Senate might've been easier if he hadn't taken Obama's job offer

Ken Salazar.​Tired of the endless Ken Buck/Michael Bennet attack ads that have made it unsafe to turn on your television for the past month? Blame Barack Obama, who pulled Ken Salazar from his spot in the U.S. Senate and put him in the cabinet as the Secretary of the Interior. How's that worki ... More >>

Rocky Mountain Arsenal's transition from Superfund site to wildlife refuge is complete

​Fifteen years after Shell Oil Company and the U.S. Army began a massive, $2.1 billion cleanup at Rocky Mountain Arsenal, one of the most contaminated Superfund sites in the United States, the Army is getting ready to hand over the last of its cleaned parcels to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Serv ... More >>

Three important Biennial art exhibits bring the Western world to Denver

The solution for cleaning up the Gulf is out of this world

Hip-hop hearsay: Xperiment joins Humble Beast, new track from SP Double, F.O.E. and Whygee's Dispensary Music, DJEarAttent's new mixtape and more

Xperiment​ Colorado hip-hop is serious right now, and there's a bunch of cats making moves. Hot on the heels of his runner-up finish to back-to-back winner Boonie Mayfield in the recent Red Bull Big Tune battle, Xperiment is the latest addition to the Humble Beast roster. Based in Portland, O ... More >>

Tonight: Drink beer to help the Gulf Coast Spill Relief Fund

A Flickr photo. ​So that oil spill in the Gulf -- bummer, right? And it's still spewing, and apparently doesn't intent to stop anytime soon. We might be landlocked here in this state, but that doesn't mean no one here cares about the BP disaster; to prove it, Bull & Bush Pub & Brewery, 4700 Ch ... More >>

British Petroleum fined by feds in Colorado case -- three years later

Tony Hayward.​Under fire for its lax supervision of British Petroleum and other offshore drillers, the embattled federal agency formerly known as the Minerals Management Service has fined BP $5.2 million for filing "false, inaccurate, or misleading" reports about its energy production in Color ... More >>

Xcel milks bill to bilk customers, fill coffers

aflcio / flickr​ The best of today's Denver blogs Is Xcel using green sentiment to justify hiking its rates for "dirty" power? Face the State makes the case that the legislature is writing the power utility a "giant blank check." 5280 congratulates Colorado schools for getting 29 schools on ... More >>

Gary Faulkner displays Colorado's can-do spirit

​And here we thought Ryan Snodgrass and Justin Lariscy, the rafting guides who rescued a thirteen-year-old girl from Clear Creek and got arrested as thanks, were take-charge guys. Now comes news of Gary Faulkner, the Greeley man who made it his mission to kill Osama Bin Laden -- and was pack ... More >>

Ken Salazar getting tough with BP: Too little too late?

New MMS head Michael Bromwich.​The naming of a former prosecutor to head the scandal-plagued Minerals Management Service, coupled with President Barack Obama's lackluster but occasionally pugnacious speech about making British Petroleum "pay" for the oil-slick disaster in the Gulf, suggests th ... More >>

Westword Music Knowcase: We sucked. Big time.

​ After all our hype, all our shit-talking and all of our preparation (okay, preparation consisted solely of previously mentioned hype and shit talking, we admit it), we came, we played and we got our ever-loving asses kicked at our own music Knowcase. Yeah, we came in a desultory sixth place. Si ... More >>

Ken Salazar finds oil spilling from Gulf into Colorado

​The Deepwater Horizon disaster keeps spilling into my inbox, more than 1,300 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, where there's "oil for miles and miles," Attorney General Eric Holder lamented yesterday in New Orleans. Denver is more than 1,300 miles from the Big Easy, but the disaster has spilled ... More >>

Ken Salazar still in hot seat -- but with lots of company

"Bring me the head of Tony Heyward." ​Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is still getting roundly pummeled in the press over the Obama administration's response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. But there's increasing evidence that the administration is trying to shift the falte ... More >>

Ken Salazar under fire: Can he survive the spill?

All systems go, but which way? Out the door?​It was fairly predictable that Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar would emerge as the whipping-boy of conservative pundits over the Deepwater Horizon spill. What better symbol of the alleged impotence of the Obama administration than a cowboy-ha ... More >>

BP spill flow much worse than we estimated, says United States Geological Survey director

Marcia McNutt calls the spill a "significant environmental disaster." ​It's official: Even with the corrective measures British Petroleum is undertaking to try to contain the oil leak flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, the massive spill has been flowing at a rate two to four times greater than o ... More >>

Ken Salazar fumes, hair booms nixed: Gulf spill update

Department of the InteriorSituation hairy: The Deepwater Horizon rig, before it sank. ​As oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster begins to stain shorelines along the Gulf Coast, beauticians across the nation are learning that one of the more feel-good (and dubious) solutions proposed in recen ... More >>

Ken Salazar: Lessons on the Gulf spill from Denver's own "toxic horror"

Photo by Alan PrendergastWhite-tailed deer cross a road at the Rocky Mountain National Wildlife Refuge.​Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has been spending a lot of time on the Gulf Coast lately, dealing with the noxious plumes (environmental and political) spewing from the Deepwater Horiz ... More >>

Ken Salazar is spinning the Deepwater Horizon debacle

Ken Salazar's role in BP disaster: More spin than reform?

Department of the InteriorThe explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig still hasn't been explained.​The finger-pointing over the massive oil slick threatening the Gulf Coast is spreading almost as fast as the spill itself. While critics on the right chortle over Department of the Interior c ... More >>

Say Yes to the Yes Men

Flick Pick

Juggalos Band Together at Primos

Meet the Insane fans who united Denver's hatchet-wielding, Faygo-loving family.

KwanZoo

Pick your favorite Kwanzaa celebration and run with it.

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Star Struck

The Broadmoor has a heavenly reputation, but the food falls flat.

Check, Please!

Readers give our food critic something to chew on.