January 20, 2013 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Pollution, Water
A snow-covered tailings heap on Boreas Pass leaks toxic cadmium and zinc, deadly for fish, into creeks that flow down through Breckenridge and, eventually, into Denver’s Dillon Reservoir.
This mining mess from a century ago sat largely ignored until Friday, when national, state and local authorities trudged in and eyed it as a potential demonstration project to jumpstart cleanups of thousands of festering mines around Colorado and the West.
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January 8, 2013 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Wildfire
PINEWOOD LAKE — A federal forester flicked a Bic, igniting a first bone-dry pile of culled young pines — testing conditions for the looming task of torching 180,000 similar piles across Colorado.
The continued construction of houses in burn zones is forcing this effort to thin overly dense forests and reduce the risk of super-intense wildfires.
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December 17, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Natural Resources, Oil and Gas Drilling
The oil and gas industry on Monday hit Longmont with a lawsuit to kill voters’ recent ban on fracking within city limits.
The Colorado Oil and Gas Association contends the ban is illegal because it denies mineral owners the right to develop their property and blocks operations that state laws allow.
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December 12, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
A hotter, drier climate is worsening the imbalance between water supply and rising demand in seven Western states where 40 million people depend on the Colorado River, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Wednesday after completion of a three-year study.
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December 10, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Natural Resources, Oil and Gas Drilling, Water
Colorado regulators, industry reps and environmentalists on Monday dove into the details of creating a before-and-after groundwater testing system to better detect contamination and ease concerns about drilling.
“This is our attempt to get more buy-in, more acceptability for these activities where they haven’t happened yet,” said Mike King, state director of natural resources, also serving on the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
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December 9, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Oil and Gas Drilling, Pollution, Water
Oil and gas have contaminated groundwater in 17 percent of the 2,078 spills and slow releases that companies reported to state regulators over the past five years, state data show.
The damage is worse in Weld County, where 40 percent of spills reach groundwater, the data show.
Most of the spills are happening less than 30 feet underground — not in the deep well bores that carry drilling fluids into rock.
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December 8, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water, Wildfire
BUCKEYE — The scorching of Colorado forests by super-intense wildfires is worsening the water woes for Eldon Ackerman and other Larimer County farmers, jeopardizing thousands of irrigated acres that normally produce millions of dollars in crops.
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December 5, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Importing water from the Missouri River to Colorado’s semi-arid Front Range has emerged as an option western states are considering to deal with increasing overuse of the Colorado River.
That diversion is listed as a long-term possibility after review of more than 100 sometimes far-fetched ideas submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Among them: “Towing an iceberg wrapped in some type of plastic to California and capturing the meltwater”; tapping the Mississippi River; and “filling large nylon water bags” in Alaska for distribution down south.
Bureau of Reclamation officials on Tuesday said the “Missouri River Reuse Project” will be evaluated for feasibility following the release in coming weeks of a federal government study on water supply for the West.
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December 4, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Oil and Gas Drilling
The increasingly common practice of disposing of oil and gas drilling wastewater by injecting it underground can trigger earthquakes, according to federal scientists who studied quakes since 1970 in Colorado and neighboring states.
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November 15, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Oil and Gas Drilling, Water
A Longmont-area farmsteader irked about odor, noise and leaks from gas wells by his house — whose complaints drove state regulators to negotiate a $15,000 fine against Encana — marched back to the regulators Thursday demanding tougher punishment.
Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation commissioners agreed to let Rod Brueske make his case at a formal hearing in the coming weeks.
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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.
