June 17, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Pollution, Water, Wildfire, Wildlife
The hundreds of thousands of gallons of red slurry that air tankers are dropping on Colorado forests to shield mountain houses from wildfires has a downside: It is toxic. Laced with ammonia and nitrates, it has the potential to kill fish and taint water supplies.
Federal authorities say they’re implementing new rules prohibiting application of fire-retardant chemicals within 600 feet of waterways. Air tanker pilots and crew commanders now are required to carry maps that identify sensitive terrain — such as areas where greenback cutthroat trout and Pawnee montane skipper butterflies are monitored as sentinel species.
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June 7, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Wildfire
A decade-long move toward prescribed fires and forest-thinning has not reduced the risk of catastrophic wildfires along the Front Range, federal and state authorities say.
And firefighting commanders increasingly favor letting more forests burn — if people aren’t threatened — instead of mounting all-out assaults. They say it’s smarter to let some fires burn naturally because this can help prevent huge fires that ruin forest seed stocks and watersheds.
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May 11, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Pollution, Water
An underground plume of toxic petrochemicals spreading from Suncor Energy’s oil refinery in Commerce City is complicating a $211 million upgrade at the adjacent Metro Wastewater Treatment Plant — work that must be completed on schedule to meet water-quality requirements.
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May 2, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Pollution, Water
COMMERCE CITY — State-ordered remedies have not stopped toxic pollution from Suncor Energy’s oil refinery north of Denver — with new data showing benzene levels in Sand Creek and the South Platte River more than doubling last month.
Neither state regulators nor Suncor has calculated how much cancer-causing benzene and other contaminants have entered the waterways from an underground plume spreading from the refinery under the adjacent Metro Wastewater Treatment Plant.
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April 21, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Pollution
COMMERCE CITY — Suncor Energy is spraying Sand Creek water contaminated by its oil refinery into the air, trying to remove more cancer-causing benzene before the creek water flows into the South Platte River.
This poses a regulatory dilemma: Is it worse to release benzene into the air or into the water?
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April 13, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water, Wildfire
WESTCREEK — Pushing to accelerate nature’s healing, the U.S. Forest Service is deploying contract labor crews who this week began planting 146,000 more pine and fir trees — an effort to stabilize wildfire-ravaged mountainsides that slump into metro Denver water supplies.
But every new catastrophic wildfire adds to the blackened-dead acreage west of Colorado’s Front Range cities. And water providers face increasing costs — which are passed to residents in monthly water bills — as more eroding sediment descends across burned watershed and clogs reservoirs.
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April 10, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Oil and Gas Drilling, Pollution
ERIE — This town is trying a new approach to protect residents riled by oil and gas drilling along Colorado’s Front Range: implementing local air- and water-quality rules.
Town officials are asking companies to let them review drilling plans for compatibility with local development. They’re demanding new drilling operations capture 100 percent of air emissions. They’ve begun using a $50,000 device that tests water for hydrocarbons.
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April 1, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Natural Resources, Oil and Gas Drilling, Water
Front Range farmers bidding for water to grow crops through the coming hot summer and possible drought face new competition from oil and gas drillers.
At Colorado’s premier auction for unallocated water this spring, companies that provide water for hydraulic fracturing at well sites were top bidders on supplies once claimed exclusively by farmers.
The prospect of tussling with energy industry giants over water leaves some farmers and environmentalists uneasy.
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March 1, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Pollution
Suncor Energy has expanded the hose system blowing air bubbles into Sand Creek attempting to expel cancer-causing benzene spreading from under the company’s oil refinery north of Denver.
Its crews also have been packing a trench with bentonite clay from Wyoming, focused on meeting a deadline today for the completion of a 1,000-foot-long, 30-foot-deep underground wall designed to hold back contaminated groundwater.
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February 24, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water
Conservationists are casting a project to pipe water from Wyoming to Colorado as dead after federal authorities Thursday nixed an entrepreneur’s pitch for a preliminary permit.
“The Flaming Gorge Pipeline is a zombie. It’s just staggering around looking for anything to latch onto to keep it alive,” said Stacy Tellinghuisen, a Western Resources Advocates energy policy analyst.
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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.
