U.S. Department of the Interior

Catch up on Colorado's past at the History Colorado Center

A little-known chapter of indigenous Colorado history will unfold tonight when the History Colorado Center's ongoing monthly lecture series presents "And Many Wore Moccasins: The Ute, Navajo and Blackfoot Nations and World War I," with Dr. Timothy Winegard of Colorado Mesa University. See also: - ... More >>

Rocky Flats land swap goes through: Pardon our dust!

When the dust finally settled on December 31, a complicated $10 million land swap involving the Colorado State Land Board, Boulder and Boulder County, Jefferson County and the Department of the Interior -- which now owns Rocky Flats, the former nuclear weapons plant -- had gone through. And that pav ... More >>

Five guys Ken Salazar should offer to punch out

Uneasy hangs the cowboy-hatted head of the man in charge of one-fifth of the land mass in the United States. The strain of running the Department of the Interior seems to be catching up with Ken Salazar, who offered to "punch out" a reporter last month in response to a question about Interior's scan ... More >>

Ken Salazar approves final fix on Martin Luther King Memorial -- "if" only

The situation was stupid enough that Ken Salazar probably wanted to punch someone. When the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was unveiled in 2011, eagle-eyed wordsmiths quickly pointed out that one of the quotes etched into the granite monument had taken King's words out of context, making him seem l ... More >>

Video: Cory Gardner bugged by beetles, fuming over fires

Cory Gardner is on fire. More than two hundred homes and thousands of acres of forests went up in flames in his district in the past few weeks, and the freshman congressman from Colorado knows exactly who and what to blame. Not drought, not climate change, not even the bark-beetle epidemic that's ki ... More >>

Callie Hendrickson: "Pro-slaughter" appointee to wild horse board draws protests

The appointment of Callie Hendrickson to a board that helps shape the federal government's wild horse management plan has touched off a frenzy of petitions and protests by horse advocacy groups. They say the Grand Junction woman is a defender of ranching interests who's endorsed commercial slaughter ... More >>

Ken Salazar's "squeeze" budget still subsidizes grazing on public lands

In these lean times, last week Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar proposed slashing costs and hiking a range of user fees -- everything from the cost of a federal stamp for duck hunting to oil and gas drilling permits -- to make ends meet at his agency. But one bit of government welfare is consid ... More >>

Reader: "Big money draws thieves as much as a cow patty draws flies"

Shell settles one royalty dispute with feds for $25 million

This week's cover story, "Drilled, Baby, Drilled," reports on the efforts of a group of federal auditors to hold energy companies accountable for underpaid royalties on oil and gas leases. On the eve of its publication, the U.S. Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) announced a $25 million sett ... More >>

Ken Salazar: BLM decision on Vermillion Basin a classic bit of Kenmanship

Ken Salazar.​The long-awaited, much-debated Bureau of Land Management plan for oil-and-gas drilling on public lands in northwest Colorado has something in it to annoy everybody. In other words, it's the kind of classic, middle-of-the-road, concessions-to-all-sides-and-favoritism-toward-none c ... More >>

Preble's meadow jumping mouse conquers Wyoming -- again

​That gnashing of teeth and muttered cursing you hear is coming from energy companies and developers north of the state border. Last week, U.S. District Judge John L. Kane ruled that an obscure jumping mouse should be considered a threatened species not only in Colorado but in Wyoming, too -- ... 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 >>

Five great Colorado whistleblowers

Philip Van Cise​This week's cover story, "A Dam Shame," looks into the controversy generated by a state dam inspector named John Redding, who raised concerns about ethical violations inside the Colorado Department of Natural Resources--and ended up paying a high price for his concern. People w ... 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 >>

Martin Luther King Jr. a sexual degenerate and Communist, says Greeley school board member

Martin Luther King Jr.​Check out these three Colorado-centric blog posts. 5280's Michael de Yoanna shares his take on Greeley school board member Brett Reese's radio attacks on Martin Luther King Jr. Will he take down Mother Teresa next? Colorado Pols: The mercurial Tom Strickland is leaving ... More >>

Ken Salazar gets a vote of confidence (sort of) from Barack Obama despite remaining messes

Ken Salazar​In an interview in the October 15 issue of Rolling Stone, President Barack Obama defends his administration's overhaul of the Department of the Interior amid agency scandals and outrage over the Gulf oil spill -- and insists Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will keep his job, calling ... More >>

Dan Maes: First-day proclamations of the new administration

"There's no 'UN' in Colorado!"​This is shaping up to be one lively governor's race, what with GOP hopeful Dan Maes suspecting a UN agenda behind Denver's bicycle program, promising layoffs of state workers and an unshackling of the energy industry -- and claiming to have driven 5,000 miles a m ... More >>

Preble's mighty meadow jumping mouse is back! Eeeek!

​Nothing moves swiftly in the upper echelons of government decision-making -- especially when the decisions have to do with a tiny rodent that can stall development projects. Today marks the public-comment deadline on the proposal for critical habitat designation of the Preble's meadow jumpi ... More >>

Ken Salazar and other Barack Obama cabinet picks messier than the BP oil spill

​Today, President Barack Obama gets to enjoy the ultimate, inevitable result of tapping Janet Napolitano -- Janet Napolitano, as though the governor of Arizona was the ideal person for the job! -- to head the Homeland Security department: He'll meet with Republican governor Jan "Jannie Get Her ... 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 is spinning the Deepwater Horizon debacle

Michael Brown does a heckuva job explaining the oil-spill conspiracy

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 >>

Ken Salazar: Oil spill gets sludge on his shiny green suit

Department of the InteriorThe fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon.​It's too soon to start putting a figure on the damage -- to marine life, tourism, fishing industries and more -- from the 600-square-mile oil slick oozing onto the Gulf Coast today. And it's too early in the investigation to know ... More >>

Fast-track this: Five untapped Colorado energy sources

Thar she blows: The Penry-Huttner Geothermal Project.​The Department of the Interior just designated six renewable energy projects, including a 400-megawatt solar tower, as "fast-track" developments deserving of the highest priority. All six of the projects happen to be in California. Hard t ... More >>

Running the government? There's an app for that...

​Government 2.0 is just around the corner. This week, the White House announced the launch of the government's very own app store, a place for various arms of the fedeal government to get their assorted IT needs met. It's an effort to streamline and lower the cost of said IT needs via a method ... More >>

Barack Obama's Michael Bennet shout-out

Barack Obama, cast in a golden glow, with Michael Bennet.​With ex-speaker of the Colorado House Andrew Romanoff's entry into the U.S. Senate race merely a formality at this point, Michael Bennet, appointed by Governor Bill Ritter to fill the slot opened up by the departure (to the Department o ... More >>

No place for wild horses on Ken Salazar's New Frontier?

Cloud, star of three documentaries--and until recently a target for the BLM roundup. ​The Obama administration talks tall about its fresh ideas and new directions. Especially at the Department of the Interior, where Secretary Ken Salazar has vowed to change course from the Bush years and devel ... More >>

"Sheriff" Salazar rounds up some artifact rustlers

In his first few weeks as Secretary of the Interior, former Colorado Senator Ken Salazar was fond of sporting his cowboy hat and declaring that there's a new sheriff in town -- even though the work at hand didn't lend itself to quick draws, as explained in my feature "The Zen of Ken." But now t ... More >>

Wake-Up Call: Salazar needs to stay put

Timing is everything. Early on, as president-elect Barack Obama started filling his Cabinet, Ken Salazar's name kept surfacing -- but so did word that what the first-term senator and former Colorado Attorney General ultimately wanted was a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, and in the meantime, he wa ... More >>

First 100 days? Ken Salazar gives himself an A

We're No. 1: Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar addressing DOI employees. Probably no other member of the Obama Cabinet has racked up as many frequent-flier miles over the past three months than former Colorado Senator Ken Salazar. As the new sheriff in town at the Department of the Interior, he ... More >>

Letters from the week of April 9

Ken Salazar wants windmills in the ocean, but first he'll have to save the Interior Department

Salazar hearing a lovefest among chums

You might expect a confirmation hearing for a new Secretary of the Interior to be tough going, given the multiple scandals and vast challenges facing the agency after years of Bush administration bumbling and plundering. After all, the Department of the Interior manages a fifth of the land in ... More >>

Wake-Up Call: Countdown to a Senate nomination

At gatherings on New Year's Day, the talk was all about when Governor Bill Ritter will announce a new senator -- and, of course, just who his pick will be to replace Ken Salazar, Barack Obama's choice to head the Department of the Interior. Technically, there's no hurry; Salazar's confirmation hear ... More >>

From Obamanation to Abomination, these characters were the worst of the worst

Environmental group rips Obama's choice of Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary

Local coverage of Barack Obama's selection of Colorado Senator Ken Salazar as the next Secretary of the Interior has mostly been rah-rah, sis-boom-bah. Take the Denver Post editorial "Salazar a Wise Choice for West, Nation." But as noted in a National Public Radio story, assorted environmental gro ... More >>

Sex, blow and government secrecy

Shortly before Thanksgiving, the U.S. Department of Interior announced it was carving up several turkeys caught in the sex, drugs and graft scandal at the Minerals Management Service office in Lakewood. After months of costly investigation and blistering official reports on brazen conflicts of int ... More >>

Crossing Over

How government watchdogs became the energy industry's party animals

Going, Going, Gone

Will the first new American bird discovered in a hundred years be the next to go extinct?

Politicking on the Plateau

Underdog Has His Day

Beneath the Rough Exterior, a Rotten Interior

Letters to the Editor

From the week of April 21, 2005

Grazin' Hell

Bush put former industry lobbyists in charge of public lands. Now a deal with a Wyoming rancher has the stewards running for cover.

Off Limits

Naked ambition

A Gopher in Your Pocket?

Douglas County's very own gopher is the latest endangered-species hopeful.

Lode Warriors

A Denver mining company is looking for copper. All it's found so far is a rich vein of environmentalists.

Dark Days on Black Mesa

The Hopi want one of the largest coal mines in North America to stop using their groundwater. If springs and wells dry up, their ancient culture may disappear.

OFF LIMITS