Environment

The Colorado Independent Ethics Commission ruled on Monday that Senator Vicki Marble violated state law when she allowed Extraction Oil and Gas to pick up the tab on a constituent town hall that was purporting “the facts” on oil and gas development in Broomfield, a city and county that has posed strong opposition to fracking by the very company who picked up the tab. But Marble isn’t going to drop the issue; she plans to appeal.

A taskforce that includes the initiative’s backers, representatives of the real estate industry and a few city council members could recommend changes to its language that would stay true to its intent but offer builders more options.

A Denver-based oil and gas exploration and extraction company is suing an anti-fracking activist who locked himself to a bulldozer on a drilling site under development in Greeley.

A shouting match broke out between a senator and Commerce City resident during an oil and gas-related hearing. She wanted to talk about explosions. He wanted to shut her up. Ultimately, her microphone was cut off and she was forcibly silenced. Now, a bill that would have put public health and safety over industry profits is dead.

Proponents of an anti-fracking ballot initiative knew it was coming. Fierce opposition from a pro-oil and gas group has been mounted to nip the initiative in the bud. The Colorado Association of Mineral Rights Owners is opposing a ballot measure that would effectively ban oil and gas activity from almost all but federal lands in Colorado. But proponents won’t go down without a fight.

“Colorado has its own race to run. We can’t afford an Olympic-size distraction,” says Dick Lamm.

Extraction Oil & Gas was the operator of the Windsor drilling site when it went up in flames on December 22. More than two months later, the company still doesn’t know exactly what happened that night, according to its preliminary report.

A 23-year-old CSU student was arrested on two charges today at a proposed drilling site next door to Bella Romero Academy for protesting the fracking activity and what he called “environmental racism.” Now, he’s facing his first court hearing on March 9, and he will be in police custody until he can post bail.

The military history of William F. Hayden Green Mountain Park had been long-forgotten by everyone, including the federal government. That is until a 2009 grass fire uncovered unexploded artillery shells and munitions debris pre-dating World War II.

After months of heated debates and public meetings, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission finalized new industry regulations on flowlines in the wake of the Firestone tragedy. Local governments called for a complex mapping database hosted by the state.

Next week will be the last opportunity Coloradans will have to influence new regulations on flowlines, which transport crude fluids and gasses for processing. Even after months of public meetings, the current draft proposal falls short of what cities, counties and affected residents have called for.

Radon is unavoidable in Colorado, which has the seventh-highest levels of radon in the country. The real danger lies indoors, where radon can linger and levels can grow over time. The radioactive gas is the second leading cause of cancer in Colorado and the U.S. So for National Radon Action Month, state and county public health agencies are offering free radon test kits.

Last January, we told you about an unusual ski-injury lawsuit in which the man accused of injuring another skier while racing in a reckless fashion was 72 years old. That defendant, Michael Sura, has now settled the suit, but not before his attorneys attempted to blame the accident that broke Stuart Pendleton’s ankle on Snowmass, the ski resort where the incident took place, as well as the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs and a charity group, the Disabled American Veterans.

After a three-year district court battle went downhill for it, the Audubon Society of Greater Denver is appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and has filed an injunction to halt construction of a controversial water project at Chatfield State Park that it says would wreak massive environmental damage.

The Colorado Real Estate Alliance, whose members includes many businesses that campaigned against I-300, sent Mayor Michael Hancock and Denver City Council a letter on December 5 asking for a six-month stay of implementation of the ordinance.

It’s like Google Maps, except you can zoom in on individual buildings and check their Energy Star scores, which reflect a structure’s energy efficiency on a 1-100 scale.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office warned that it would level attorney Jason Flores-Williams and his law office with financial penalties — and even the possibility of Flores-Williams’s disbarment — on the grounds that his “rights of nature” case was unlawful and frivolous.

As we’ve reported, at least 168 bears have been euthanized in Colorado so far in 2017, a year in which the number of conflicts between bears and humans has both alarmed and exasperated Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials. Ground zero for this phenomenon is Pitkin County, home to the moneyed enclave of Aspen, where CPW personnel have put down more than fifty bears and dealt with literally hundreds of incidents during the past ten months-plus. The troubles are so frequent that they seldom make headlines even at times when bears rip apart homes with residents hiding inside them.

Colorado is not amused with the rights of nature case, “Colorado River v. Colorado,” and has moved to dismiss the environmental lawsuit.

Approximately 168 bears have been euthanized by Colorado Parks and Wildlife personnel in the state during 2017 to date and another 107 or so have been relocated, usually because of problematic interactions with or near human beings, including multiple break-ins to homes and cars. According to one CPW administrator, these numbers have been growing steadily of late for reasons that are both wide ranging and intertwined, forcing wildlife officers to take actions they’d much prefer to avoid.