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Environment/Energy

With new fire season upon us, FEMA ponies up for 2007 Malo Vega blaze

FEMA coughed up more than $1.6 million in federal disaster relief funds Thursday to compensate the Colorado State Forest Service for fighting the 13,000-acre Malo Vega Fire in Costilla County in June 2007.

Credit Suisse and the collapse of the West’s most posh ski and golf resorts

A March 5 article in Bloomberg Markets Magazine paints a picture of wild excess in the high-end mountain resort development game, starting with the recent failure of Tamarack Resort in Idaho, the bankruptcy of the private Yellowstone Club in Montana and ending with Florida’s Bobby Ginn.

Harvey, Lundberg argue contraception kills on Senate birth control bill

Semantics were the order of the day when conservative Republican state senators attempted to weaken a bill defining contraception arguing that the state must first define that "life begins at conception."

Proposed Pueblo solar plant generates buzz, barbs

News this week that Colorado could one day be home to the nation’s largest concentrated solar power plant — a facility of at least 200 megawatts near Pueblo — comes as welcome news to an energy sector faltering right along with the rest of the economy. But some critics say continuing to artificially mandate renewable energy simply drives up the price of coal- and gas-generated electricity, which still provides the vast majority of power in Colorado.

Salazar cheers Department of Interior on 160th birthday

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar invoked both President Roosevelts -- Teddy and FDR -- in a speech celebrating the department's 160th birthday at Interior headquarters in Washington Tuesday afternoon. "When faced with a crisis, Americans always build a path to progress," Salazar said, according to prepared remarks released shortly before the hoopla kicked off.

Williams discusses energy stimulus on ‘Colorado State of Mind’ tonight

TCI's own David O. Williams mixes it up with a panel of local experts on Friday's broadcast of the public affairs show "Colorado State of Mind" over federal stimulus funding for state energy projects.

Beetle-kill wildfire bill moves on as Scanlan, Gibbs lobby feds

The biggest no-brainer piece of legislation the state’s 67th General Assembly will like see this session, the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (or SB 1), easily passed out of the House on Wednesday, even as its co-sponsor, Rep. Christine Scanlan (D-Dillon) headed to Washington seeking federal funds to combat the beetle-kill epidemic.

Salazar keeps on rolling back Bush’s 11th-hour oil shale regs

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Wednesday continued to clean house on Colorado’s nascent oil shale industry, rolling back midnight regulations from the Bush administration that would have offered four times as many acres for research and development as the industry last leased in 2005.

Park Service retirees: Repeal Bush-era concealed weapons rule change

Late in 2008, the Bush Administration rushed through a regulatory change that would allow concealed-carry firearms to be possessed in national parks and national wildlife refuges in accordance with state permit requirements. The rule went into effect on Jan. 9. The previous common-sense rule had been in effect for national parks since the early 1900s, in one form or another. The rule did not prohibit guns, but simply required them to be unloaded, cased and not immediately accessible.

Intact FASTER bill to raise vehicle registration fees passes House vote

SB 108, the so-called FASTER plan to fund road and bridge repairs, is just a couple of minor procedural steps from hitting Gov. Bill Ritter’s desk for a signature after the state House of Representatives passed it 34-31 on final reading Wednesday.
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