Colorado: Utah

WASHINGTON — In one of her earliest appearances before the Senate Natural Resources Committee, Gale Norton, President George W. Bush's first interior secretary, proclaimed in 2001 the need to "explore the entire smorgasbord of different options" when it came to domestic energy production.

But what was actually on the buffet was telling: Drilling off the coast of Florida, coal extraction in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah and exploring for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Now fast forward eight years, to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's first appearance before the same Senate committee last week.

He laid out maps that showed wind-energy potential across the West; talked about tapping geothermal energy underlying states including Idaho and Colorado; and evoked the vision of a high-tech "super- electron highway" that will connect "renewable-energy zones" on public lands to homes in California or New Jersey.

The Colorado House has given its approval to the update of oil and gas drilling regulations.  
The rules also include new wildlife habitat protections, pit lining requirements, odor controls, chemical reporting regulations and numerous other provisions. They are scheduled to take effect this spring, pending legislative approval. The regulations are subject to a third reading in the House before being considered by the Senate.

The House vote this afternoon came after it rejected several amendments by Republican lawmakers, including one that would have postponed implementation of the rules until July 1, 2010.

The last-minute amendments were no surprise. Colorado Republicans have made cause to parrot every claim by industry lobbyists, and raised all manner of fear-based and hyperbolic arguments against the rules.

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.

The lease offering of 640-acre parcels on federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming — where an estimated 800 billion barrels of oil are trapped in shale rock and sand – was announced by the Bush administration in its final week in office in mid-January.

The leases would have been locked in at a 5 percent royalty rate also imposed at the 11th hour by the Bureau of Land Management.

Denver's historic Union Station. (Photo/Bettinche, Flickr)

Local rail and public transit enthusiasts are in for a cold slap of reality after the historic signing of the $787 billion economic recovery plan.

Denver's historic Union Station. (Photo/Bettinche, Flickr)

During Tuesday’s visit to Denver with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden said the federal stimulus bill will be a big boost to mass transit in the United States, with funding impacts for commuter rail projects from Colorado to Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.

“We should have the best transportation system in the world, and we don’t,” said Biden.

But many mass transit advocates are disappointed with the funding disparity between the money pegged for bridge and road repairs ($29 billion) and the funds for passenger rail and other mass-transit improvements ($17.