No more burying bodies willy nilly, Coloradans, if a bill that got its first approval Wednesday by the full House continues its progress, The Denver Post reports. House Bill 1275 by Rep. Randy Baumgardner would require those burying bodies on private property to notify either the local coroner’s office or local law enforcement of the location.

The Tribune editorializes that the emissions issue is becoming partisan, placing the Republican-dominated Weld County Board of Commissioners against the Democrat-appointed Air Quality Control Commission. “The Air Quality Control Commission and Legislature need to take the time, get good information and make their decision about Weld’s inclusion in the emissions program based on science rather than politics.”

The state senator writes: “The talks that took place in Copenhagen are not a step forward for the people of our great nation or renewable energy technologies; they are alarmist and a grandiose attempt to grab raw political power by those who hold extreme and dangerous political opinions.

In a rare show of solidarity, all seven U.S. House of Representatives members from Colorado agreed to cosponsor legislation to combat the effects of the state’s bark beetle infestation. U.S. Sen. John Salazar, a Democrat from Manassa, introduced the measure. It is cosponsored by fellow Colorado Democrats Jared Polis, Diana DeGette, Ed Perlmutter and Betsy Markey, and Colorado Republicans Mike Coffman and Doug Lamborn, The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports.

The Wilderness Workshop honored champions of public lands and raised money for themselves at a benefit and awards ceremony at the Wheeler Opera House Sunday night, as a mild group of protesters demonstrated against the Carbondale nonprofit’s most recent wilderness campaign, The Aspen Daily News reports.

By Peter Marcus, DENVER DAILY NEWS
Environmentalists Wednesday called on state leaders to “stop clowning around on climate change” and commit to replacing existing coal-fired plants with clean energy.
Gathered at the Capitol dressed in clown outfits with Gov. Bill Ritter face masks and red noses, WildEarth Guardians called upon Ritter to replace Xcel Energy’s Cherokee coal-fired plant in north Denver with clean energy. The group says Ritter can take a stand by revoking state air quality permits issued to Xcel.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment will hold a hearing tonight at 6 p.m. to evaluate Xcel’s compliance with emission regulations.
“It’s time to power past coal in Colorado — that starts with the Cherokee coal-fired power plant in north Denver,” said Jeremy Nichols, director of WildEarth Guardians. “If we are to make any significant reduction in greenhouse gases and confront global warming, we need to start replacing coal with clean energy.”
Nichols filed a lawsuit against Xcel back in August, citing 22,000 violations of the Clean Air Act at the Cherokee plant.
But Xcel spokesman Mark Stutz said the utility is in compliance with emission regulations 99.97 percent of the time at Cherokee. He said federal and state regulations take into account the fact that it is impossible for a utility to be in compliance all the time. Over the course of five years, as many as 1.8 million emission measurements can be taken. In that time, it is possible for monitoring equipment to be down, though that equipment is up close to 99 percent of the time, said Stutz. But the violations cited by WildEarth don’t take into account the leeway provided by state and federal regulators, or the fact that monitoring equipment is occasionally down, he said.
“It’s not a reasonable expectation to think that a plant is going to be in compliance 100 percent of the time,” said Stutz. “There has to be some enforcement leeway.”
WildEarth says the Cherokee plant is the “largest and dirtiest” coal-fired plant in the Denver area. The plant includes four boilers, which burn more than 2 million pounds of coal annually, the group said. It also has three smokestacks that spew 162 pounds of mercury, environmentalists said.
Stutz defended the plant, however, arguing that Xcel is always installing the latest emission controls at its plants, which is reducing sulfur, mercury and carbon emissions, to name a few. He said what environmental groups often forget is that alternative energy sources can supplement energy production — but it can’t completely replace it.
“The problem that these groups never consider is the here and now in reliability,” said Stutz. “It is one thing to say, ‘Let’s go to an all-renewable environment with wind and solar,’ and some people would consider hydro. It’s another thing for all of those renewable resources to actually work on a 24-hour basis, seven days a week — it simply doesn’t happen.”
The governor’s office also defended itself Wednesday, calling it odd that environmentalists would target Ritter considering his dedication to environmental issues. Ritter made national headlines in 2008 when he enacted major pieces of his Climate Action Plan, including an executive order establishing a goal of a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions statewide by 2020 and an 80 percent reduction by 2050. The ambitious order has been used as a template and rallying call for environmentalists and lawmakers across the nation.
“This was a rather ridiculous publicity stunt on their part,” Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said of WildEarth’s rally Wednesday. “Bill Ritter has been named the greenest governor in America and is becoming a national leader for his work on clean energy and climate change. He issued the state’s first Climate Action Plan, set out strategies to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent and is building a New Energy Economy that is creating a sustainable energy future for Colorado.”
Dreyer adds that over the past three years, the state has nearly quadrupled the amount of clean wind power generated in Colorado. It has also increased by 10 times the amount of installed solar photovoltaic in Colorado, he said. Just Wednesday, Ritter’s office announced that the subsidiary of a German-based wind power company, SGB USA, Inc., is moving to Wheat Ridge where it will make transformers that convert electricity generated by wind turbines into energy for the power grid. And last month, German-based SMA Solar Technology announced that it will open its first solar inverter manufacturing facility outside of Germany in Denver next year.
But WildEarth says Ritter’s efforts in expanding the New Energy Economy and lowering greenhouse emissions will be totally lost if he doesn’t do more to crack down on utilities like Xcel, which they say are polluting through the use of coal-fired plants. The group believes pollution will only continue to rise.
In fact, a report released Wednesday by Environment Colorado states that Colorado ranks fifth in the nation for increase of global warming pollution since 1990. The state experienced some of the fastest emissions growth of any state in the nation, according to the report. “We need electricity, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of our health, our quality of life and the climate,” said Nichols. “It’s time for our governor to be the leader Coloradans deserve, to power past coal, starting with the Cherokee power plant — it’s time to get clean energy solutions in gear.”

Distributed by Colorado Capitol Reporters

A group of local and retired politicians who favor quick passage of climate-change legislation is launching a public dialogue in Colorado and other states this week, warning that climate change may threaten national security, The Denver Post reports.
Former U.S. Sens. John Warner and Gary Hart, joined by Gov. Bill Ritter’s climate-change coordinator, Alice Madden, are to lead a public forum today at 10 a.m. in the University of Colorado Denver’s Tivoli multicultural student lounge.

The state recently issued new rules about road development on the most pristine of public lands, but some environmental groups are concerned the changes may actually result in less protection for roadless national forests than in any other state. Rocky Mountain PBS asks why is Colorado following its own rules, and what’s the latest on federal protections?

Joining host Cynthia Hessin:
- Mike King, Colorado Department of Natural Resources
- Jim Sims, Western Business Roundtable
- Amy Mall, National Resources Defense Council
- Andrea Robinsong, Western Colorado Congress

A small group of Colorado environmentalists — including mountaineer Aron Ralston, who became famous in 2003 for freeing himself by using a dull pocketknife to sever his arm after it became trapped under a fallen boulder during a backcountry hike — called for more protection of Colorado land during an event in Denver Tuesday morning, The Colorado Statesman reports.

By Peter Marcus, DENVER DAILY NEWS
Colorado Democrats and environmental groups are rallying behind tough climate control legislation introduced Wednesday in the Senate.
Following House passage this summer of controversial cap-and-trade legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, Democrats in the Senate Wednesday introduced similar legislation that goes beyond the so-called Waxman-Markey bill.
“Passage of a clean energy bill is so important,” said U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who joined fellow Democrats, including Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and Barbara Boxer of California, at a news conference on Capitol Hill announcing the more than 800 pages of draft legislation. “To put it bluntly, we are not going to create the jobs we need for the future if we allow China, Europe and other countries to outpace us in the race for energy security.”
The Boxer-Kerry legislation would hike emission cuts to 20 percent below 2005 levels from the 17 percent target in the House. It aims at reducing smokestack emissions of carbon dioxide 20 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 from 2005 levels.
The bill would also answer calls by environmental groups to give the Environmental Protection Agency more control over emissions. The bill would grant the EPA the authority to set emissions standards when issuing permits for existing power plants — a stark difference from the House bill that would place boundaries on the EPA’s authority to regulate emissions.
Like the Waxman-Markey proposal, the Senate plan also calls for a cap and trade system for replacing fossil fuels with alternative energies to power factories and produce electricity.
Under cap and trade, ever-declining carbon dioxide emission limits would be imposed and companies would be allowed to sell to each other, through a regulated market, the pollution permits controlling those emissions.
Critics of such a system — mostly Republicans and industry groups — argue that increased costs would be passed on to Americans, especially to low-income families.
The Lakewood-based Western Business Roundtable recently said such legislation would levy “crushing new costs” on citizens in the midst of an economic downturn.
“The Waxman-Markey bill in Congress, as well as other highly complicated regional efforts to impose cap-and-trade schemes on the economy, are on political life support now primarily because citizens have awakened to the crushing costs, job losses and market uncertainty these bills would inevitably cause,” said Jim Sims, chief executive of the conservative Western Business Roundtable.
Some environmental groups, however, are calling for even more stringent legislation, including a national renewable energy portfolio standard of 25 percent by 2025.
But Dana Hoffman, energy associate at Environment Colorado, said the Boxer-Kerry bill is a step in the right direction, and added that Colorado can offer inspiration to the rest of the nation for making the switch to renewables and cutting back on toxic greenhouse gas emissions.
“(The Boxer-Kerry) announcement shows that the (Obama) administration is looking to states like Colorado as shining examples of the power of a clean energy future,” said Hoffman.
“The bill introduced in the Senate (Wednesday) is an important next step in putting this country on sound a foundation of clean energy that will increase our national security and improve our economy while protecting our environment,” Hoffman continued.
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet did not attend the news conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday, but in a statement told the Denver Daily News that he is supporting the bill.
“It’s time for a new way forward,” he said. “It’s time we harness the potential of our entrepreneurial spirit and our abundant clean energy resources to create a more sustainable path for the future. We can and must lead the world to a new energy economy.”

Distributed by Colorado Capitol Reporters