Environment

Undoing a national monument is apparently a casual and half-assed process, judging by the way the Trump administration is going about it.

The Western Values Project is digging deep to track the potential conflicts of interest in Zinke’s department, while exploring their potential effects on fossil fuel drilling in Colorado.

On Sunday, August 6, a thus-far-unidentified 35-year-old Front Range man died while climbing the Knife’s Edge portion of Capitol Peak, in the Elk Mountains near Aspen. He’s the second person to perish scaling Capitol Peak in less than a month, following Parker’s Jake Lord, who suffered a fatal fall there on July 15. And according to Lloyd Athearn, executive director of the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, data compiled by the organization shows that Capitol Peak and several other Elk Mountains fourteeners are among the riskiest in Colorado.

Researchers at the Boulder-based NIST are taking air pollution to the next level with drone technology.

Zinke’s order came as a concern to leaders of the recreation industry as well as conservationists, who say that the Trump administration is putting oil and gas interests first and foremost – even though the BLM leased the second most land in Colorado of any state during the 2016 fiscal year —  and threatening public lands just as many are citing Colorado’s conservation efforts as the reason behind Outdoor Retailer’s relocation from Salt Lake City.

Opponents of the $1.8-billion highway expansion claim the federal government shirked its obligations to fully consider a range of economic and environmental impacts before approving the biggest road project in Colorado history.

For forty years, the Golden-based NREL has led the country in providing the foundational technology for innovations in solar, wind, biomass and battery efficiency – all to make renewable energy companies more successful, one breakthrough at a time. But as the climate begins to rapidly change, researchers are facing new pressures to push America’s energy economy in a new, sustainable direction.

The administration plans to rescind the Clean Water Rule, a contentious Obama legacy that President Donald Trump has described as “this very destructive and horrible rule.”

National Geographic’s upcoming documentary feature, From the Ashes, which spotlights Denver among other cities, depicts an ominous political and social battle brewing between opponents of “the war on coal” and advocates of “coal’s war on our health.”

The Trump administration is delaying for two years implementation of a pair of rules intended to limit methane emissions by oil and gas operations.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recently signed a Secretarial Order to review current federal and state sage-grouse conservation plans. Colorado had worked hard to make sure those plans were collaborative and fair.

As a service to readers, Westword presents this primer in how to distinguish the enigmatic, embattled energy giant Anadarko from the enigmatic, ominous cult classic Donnie Darko.

At the fourth and final “sharing session” to discuss the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge that occupies most of the site that was once home to the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, there was on sharing. So two weeks later, opponents shared something else: a motion to stop construction of the refuge.

As with most things Trump, Alan Prendergast’s Slaughter ’Em: The Trump Plan to Solve the West’s Wild Horse Problem, a story about the president’s plan to control the West’s wild horses population, drew plenty of comments from our readers. Some were sympathetic to the majestic beasts, others not so much. Says…

A lawyer for Denver residents challenging a  $300-million stormwater project says that city officials are being excessively secretive about the case, declining to provide more than 7400 pages of documents and maintaining that the internal processes that brought the project into being should be shielded from outside scrutiny.

The proposed 2018 BLM budget would cut $10 million from the wild horse program and lift restrictions on the sale of “excess” animals to slaughterhouses. It would also remove a ban on euthanasia of unadopted equines that’s been in force since 2010.

In the final days of the legislative session, state Democrats and Republicans blocked each others’ attempts to earn political kudos with oil pipeline safety legislation — though the two plans differed substantially in their aims. On Monday night, two days before the legislative session ended, House Republicans filibustered a bill…

David Sirota, a Denver-based journalist and nationally recognized columnist, took to crowdfunding to raise enough money to get e-mails between Republican lawmakers in Colorado and oil and gas donors and lobbyists. Sirota raised the $1,670 required by the state to mine the e-mail accounts of Republicans in the Colorado Senate…

Yesterday was Earth Day, and while many people renewed their commitment to recycling and keeping the environment as clean as possible, others were talking trash about Denver’s new bin system. Dumpsters are scheduled to be eliminated by the end of the year, according to Denver Recycles and Solid Waste Management, and some readers already miss them.

Every old T-shirt or toy you throw out sits in landfills forever. This spring, be wise about your waste.

Forget sci-fi movies: For a real surreal experience, look no further than Golden. Colorado’s first capital is now the capital of the green movement and home to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is celebrating its fortieth anniversary in July. NREL, which started out as the Solar Energy Research Institute…

This month, an environmental group called Colorado Moms Know Best (no, seriously) and the Girl Scouts teamed up to school the State Legislature and lieutenant governor on climate change challenges facing the 21st century. For doing this, they got not only a little experience in talking with our state’s elected officials — but also earned a new Climate Change patch.