May 10, 2014 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Oil and Gas Drilling
Cleanup crews raced against rain and snow Saturday night to keep a wrecked oil train along the South Platte River from leaking into the river, pumping oil from 28,000-gallon tankers.
An estimated 6,500 gallons of Niobrara crude oil spilled from the New York-bound 100-car train into the sandy banks of the South Platte — west of La Salle, about 45 miles north of Denver.
Union Pacific Railroad officials said they’ll excavate contaminated soil and replace it with clean soil.
Five of six derailed tankers had been hauled away, and crews were draining the last one.
Railroad workers replaced an 80-foot stretch of damaged track and were fixing a bridge.
No oil had been detected in the river, federal authorities said.
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May 9, 2014 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Oil and Gas Drilling
A crude oil train that derailed Friday morning south of Greeley — with six cars toppled along the South Platte River — for several hours was leaking at a rate estimated at 20 to 50 gallons per minute.
Environmental Protection Agency officials were dispatched to the scene. No oil has been confirmed in the river thanks to the work of Union Pacific Railroad responders.
The 100-car train loaded with niobrara crude derailed west of LaSalle near a bridge over the river.
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May 8, 2014 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Oil and Gas Drilling
Scientists have found that Colorado’s Front Range oil and gas boom has been emitting three times more methane than previously believed — 19.3 tons an hour — a climate-change problem that state officials hope new rules will address.
The scientists also measured industry emissions of cancer-causing benzene and smog-forming volatile organic compounds at levels up to seven times higher than government agencies have estimated.
Their study — done at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and partly supported by the Environmental Defense Fund — is based on data gathered in 2012 from aircraft flying over the drilling zones north of Denver.
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May 8, 2014 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Recycling, Waste
FOUNTAIN — Colorado’s role as a morgue for 60 million of the nation’s 100 million scrap tires is over: State lawmakers are shutting down tire landfills. A state-run $5.8 million subsidy program for tire recyclers also will end — by 2018 — under a bill that Gov. John Hickenlooper said Monday he will sign into law.
Sprawling heaps of scrap tires — like the ones south of Colorado Springs and northeast of Denver at Hudson — are seen as environmental and health hazards. In addition to the fear of a large fire, the sites can act as havens for rats, rattlesnakes and virus-spreading mosquitoes. As well, support for the recycling subsidies soured among lawmakers after a questionable operator collected $578,246 in state funds and later was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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May 4, 2014 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Oil and Gas Drilling
Colorado’s intensifying oil and gas boom is taking a toll on soil — 200 gallons spilled per day seeping into once-fertile ground — that experts say could be ruinous.
The state’s approach has been to try to compel companies to excavate and haul the worst muck to landfills.
But with support from state regulators, oil companies increasingly are proposing to clean contaminated soil on site using mixing machinery and microbes. This may be cheaper for the industry — and could save and restore soil.
But it is not proven.
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April 21, 2014 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Oil and Gas Drilling
An oil and gas industry proposal to drill 19 wells within 900 feet of an elementary school in Greeley ignited such parent fury that company officials on Monday backed down.
Mineral Resources Inc. officials said withdrawing their application to drill by the Frontier Academy school is an example of listening to community concerns.
They made their decision as state regulators are investigating recent fires and explosions at industry storage tanks northeast of Denver — including one last week near a different elementary school.
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April 15, 2014 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Oil and Gas Drilling
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers was walking down Denver’s 16th Street Mall recently when a Greenpeace activist asked if he’d like to ban fracking.
It reflected the intensifying battle over how to balance public demands for a pristine environment and health versus ramped-up production of fossil fuels.
Front Range residents have proposed 17 state ballot measures to bolster local control over drilling, short of a statewide ban, and are drawing support from at least one Internet-made multi-millionaire — U.S. Rep. Jared Polis. Coloradans for Local Control campaign adviser Rick Ridder said national groups also will join the fray, fighting the industry’s Colorado Oil and Gas Association and Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development.
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March 8, 2014 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Colorado’s effort to replenish its aquifers by cracking down on pumping groundwater threatens to leave the thousands of sandhill cranes that arrive here each February without the water they need.
“This certainly has the potential for changing the dynamics of what we have witnessed for the last 50 years,” said Michael Blenden, federal manager of the San Luis Valley complex of three national wildlife refuges and the Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area.
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March 6, 2014 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Denver Water and Western Slope leaders have reached a deal to try to save the Fraser River and its trout while letting Denver siphon 11 percent more water across the Continental Divide.
The deal obligates city, state and Grand County watershed experts to monitor temperatures in the Fraser and tributaries, count stone flies and other aquatic insects crucial for trout, and document how water flows affect vegetation.
Federal authorities still must approve Denver Water’s $360 million Moffat project, which would put 18,000 acre-feet more water a year into an enlarged Gross Reservoir southwest of Boulder.
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February 25, 2014 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Oil and Gas Drilling
While Gov. John Hickenlooper, industry leaders and environment advocates praised Colorado’s new statewide air-pollution rules for oil and gas operations, local elected officials and community activists are launching campaigns to buttress local control.
The elected officials, 50 from around the state, have sent a letter urging Hickenlooper and state lawmakers to reinforce local land-use power over oil and gas development.
Separately, Local Control Colorado, a coalition of community activists, is preparing to gather signatures for a November ballot measure that would amend the state constitution to allow stricter local limits.
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A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
