Colorado Environmental Law Journal

I. INTRODUCTION Coal is a necessary part of the twenty-first century global economy. Approximately thirty-six percent of all globally generated power is reliant on coal as a primary fuel source.[2] Cheap and relatively easy to extract and export, coal is the fuel of choice for many developing economies[3] and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.[4] In response to this demand, coal extraction operations will continue to produce coal for the global marketplace.[5] Found deep within the earth, coal extraction has historically been a Continue reading →

I. Introduction This Note offers an analysis of how courts in the Tenth Circuit should interpret water development project Environmental Impact Statements (“EIS”) in an increasingly dry and environmentally sensitive West. The analysis is carried out through a case study of the Supplemental Draft EIS (“SDEIS”) for the Northern Integrated Supply Project (“NISP”), a water development project on the northern Front Range. The case study and analysis will show why Tenth Circuit courts should demand that all No Action Alternatives (“NAA”) within an EIS consider Continue reading →

  INTRODUCTION Designating areas for conservation purposes often causes conflict in communities with competing public and private interests, particularly when the federal government is involved. However, due to increasing population and a finite land base, conserving natural resources is important for this and future generations. Collaborative methods that encourage local input can help alleviate long-term problems, although the process itself may still be contentious. Communities may use collaborative resource management, a discourse-based process, to combine overall policy initiatives with local concerns, taking into account citizens’ Continue reading →

I. Introduction Since the enactment of the Wilderness Act in 1964, some western states and counties have become involved in protracted battles over the federal designation of Wilderness within their jurisdictions. Many of these states and counties are composed of significant amounts of federally controlled land – for example, 64.5 percent of the State of Utah is owned and managed by the federal government.[2] For many of these communities, Wilderness is viewed as a threat because it restricts certain revenue-generating activities (e.g. oil or gas Continue reading →

*I. Introduction The headwaters of the Columbia River are in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Idaho, and Montana. From its headwaters, the Columbia River’s mainstem flows 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) crossing the U.S.–Canada border before it empties into the Pacific Ocean along the border between Oregon and Washington (figure 1). It is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest and the fourth largest in the United States. The Columbia River Basin (“the Basin”) covers 671,000 square kilometers (259,500 square miles), an area roughly the Continue reading →