A $23 million chunk of Colorado’s share of the $25 billion federal mortgage banking settlement is being reallocated to help provide affordable housing — especially for residents of counties hammered by floods and wildfires.
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers announced the shift Tuesday, saying rental vacancies have dwindled and too many displaced residents still are struggling to find new homes.
“Lost Boy” refugees from Denver and other cities who went back to Sudan to bolster the multibillion-dollar U.S. effort to nurture Africa’s newest nation are caught in the outbreak of fighting and fleeing.
And University of Colorado graduate Daniel Majok Gai, 33, risked his life helping lead civilians away from gun battles.
Denver-based Project Education South Sudan — which reconnected Gai and seven others with parents they had not seen for decades — is trying to bring him, his wife and infant son back to Colorado. Gai has been running schools and youth groups in South Sudan for three years.
“Lost Boy” refugees from Denver and other cities who went back to Sudan to bolster the multibillion-dollar U.S. effort to nurture Africa’s newest nation are caught in the outbreak of fighting and fleeing.
And University of Colorado graduate Daniel Majok Gai, 33, risked his life helping lead civilians away from gun battles.
The wolverine M56 who trekked to Colorado seeking safe haven and, perhaps, a mate has gone missing as federal and state authorities delay decisions on whether to protect wolverines from intentional killing.
No radio signal has been detected since October 2012.
Federal officials this month announced they will delay a decision on endangered-species protection for wolverines until scientific disagreements on climate- change impacts are resolved.
Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas have agreed to use a 12-mile pipeline to transfer water from wells in northeastern Colorado to the Republican River for agriculture in Kansas and Nebraska in 2014.
The deal made this week may help resolve a decades-old dispute over rights to water in the river, which flows from eastern Colorado into Kansas and Nebraska. Colorado hasn’t been meeting its obligations under the 1942 Republican River Compact that governs use of the river.
In May, Colorado officials sought arbitration after Kansas rejected a request to use the pipeline to meet its obligations under the compact.
COMMERCE CITY — There’s still no home for some of the bison that must be culled from the growing herd on a federal refuge north of Denver, and herd managers Tuesday had their hands full rounding them up into a circular corral.
“Bison are a different kind of animal. These are wild. They don’t behave like cattle,” said Dave Lucas, manager of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, as he looked down from a 12-foot elevated catwalk. “No human is getting down in there with these bison.”
A crew of 40 staffers and biologists — using native prairie grass and water as enticement — coaxed bison into a fenced area and chutes.
Government-backed U.S. scientists on Tuesday urged for the creation of a warning system to help people anticipate the impact of climate change on food, water and cities.
Early warnings would give more time to adapt, but they will require much closer monitoring of warming oceans, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and extinctions of plants and animals, according to the scientists and a report unveiled by a National Research Council committee.
There are too many blind spots to be able to anticipate change and its impacts, said Jim White, the University of Colorado-based committee chairman.
AURORA — A 1,100-acre patch of open prairie at the eastern edge of metro Denver is drawing more people — children better at identifying corporate logos than birds and adults whose feet seldom touch soil.
They walk, feeling soft clay and temperature shifts in the wind. They see sky, wispy cirrus streaks and billowy puffs. They hear the scampering of pronghorn. They smell wood fires at a homestead.
Five state lawmakers and Colorado’s biggest oil and gas producers — Anadarko, Encana and Noble — stood behind rules to cut industry air pollution by more than 100,000 tons a year as regulators on Thursday dived into the details.
But some small and midsized companies raised concerns about costs of complying — estimated at $300 per ton of pollution. Colorado Oil and Gas Association president Tisha Schuller told the Air Quality Control Commission that helping companies stay in business must be “an important consideration” and that COGA may convey “ideas for improvement.”
State health officials rolled out groundbreaking rules for the oil and gas industry Monday to address worsening air pollution, including a requirement that companies control emissions of the greenhouse gas methane, linked to climate change.
The rules would force companies to capture 95 percent of all toxic pollutants and volatile organic compounds they emit.
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.
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