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Posted inClimate, Energy, Environment, News

Federal judge blocks plan for 35 gas wells on national forest land in western Colorado 

A U.S. District Court judge blocked a plan approved by federal agencies for 35 fracked gas wells across 30,000 acres of U.S. Forest Service land between Gunnison and the Grand Mesa, handing a victory to environmental groups suing the government for failing to take climate change into account in approving new drilling.  U.S. District for […]

Posted inClimate, Energy, Environment, News

West Elk mine cannot leak methane, must flare the greenhouse gas, judge rules

The West Elk coal mine must keep flaring dangerous methane and seek state air pollution permits instead of leaking the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, in a consent decree hailed by environmental groups across Colorado.  Though burning the methane on-site near Somerset creates CO2, it causes far less damage to the atmosphere than allowing raw […]

Posted inNews

Colorado ranchers are selling off cattle to survive another year of dried-up grass and parched soil

Janie VanWinkle can hear it in the discontented way her cows call to their calves, the way the dried grass crunches into powder under her boots. It’s the sound of drought. The landscape where her cows graze in Grand Junction doesn’t have a green tint this spring. It’s gray and brown, ugly and parched. “And […]

Posted inBusiness, Climate, Coloradans, Economy, Environment, News

Colorado’s North Fork Valley finds “baby-step” solutions to tackle its big problem with methane-leaking mines

Chris Caskey points across the river to a thin thread of steam rising from a snow-caked cliff.  “That’s methane,” he said of the emissions seeping from the long-shuttered Bear Mine. “Millions of cubic feet, every day. That’s the equivalent of tens of thousands of cars.” Across the North Fork Valley in Gunnison County, nearly 20 […]

Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns

Opinion: Colorado’s Bureau of Land Management lawsuit needs to go forward, even with Biden’s oil and gas pause

Why is the state of Colorado suing the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and does it even matter now that the Biden administration is at the helm? The answers are: For us, and yes!  Filing suit against the BLM is something state officials are doing for the public good, and we’re grateful they are standing […]

Posted inBusiness, Climate, Energy, Environment, News, Politics and Government

Colorado oil and gas industry blasts Biden’s pause on public lands drilling as environmental advocates cheer

Conservation advocates in the West quickly praised President Joe Biden’s executive order pausing new oil and gas leases on federal lands and in federal waters, while the resource industry and local business backers called it a misguided attack with massive economic fallout.  “For far too long, federal lands in Colorado have been leased to big […]

Posted inBusiness, Crime and Courts, News, Outdoors, Politics and Government

Colorado sues Bureau of Land Management over Western Slope management plan from William Perry Pendley

Gov. Jared Polis didn’t like the Bureau of Land Management’s long-range management plan for the Uncompahgre Plateau, saying the expansion of oil drilling in the region did not jibe with state laws and regulations protecting water, air, wildlife and recreation.  And because the agency did not resolve those issues in its Resource Management Plan, Polis […]

Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Economy, News, Wildfire

Grape disappointment: Colorado vineyards say an October freeze will chill their 2021 vintage

The grape vines lined up in rows throughout the Grand and North Fork valleys look promising for a 2021 vintage with their usual winter-brown foliage bunched neatly on trellises. But cut into a bud, or scrape a stalk, and there are hints of the underlying damage done by a severe late-October freeze. An estimated 70% […]

Posted inSunLit, SunLit Interviews

How fly-fishing lessons and movie soundtracks figured into a Colorado author’s “Stolen Heart”

K. L. (Karen Lea) McKee  earned her B.A. in English from Regis University, worked in the Reference Center of the Mesa County Library for 29 years before retiring in 2014 to pursue writing full time. She is a member of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. She and her husband reside in Western Colorado. Her roots in […]