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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Down to the Wire for BLM Methane-Rule Vote

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Wednesday, May 10, 2017   

DENVER - The fate of a new rule aimed at reining in methane-gas pollution will soon be known.

The U.S. Senate faces a Thursday deadline to vote on overturning the Bureau of Land Management's methane rule, using the Congressional Review Act. The federal rule is based on Colorado's 2014 rule targeting methane emissions at oil and gas drilling sites.

There is money to be made from capturing methane, said Gunnison County Commissioner John Messner, noting that Colorado missed out on $36 million in royalty revenue since 2009 before enacting its own rule.

"This is money that could have gone to local governments to support a wide array of programs and projects," he said, "including schools, health care and maintenance and improvement of our transportation infrastructure, which is a priority of the current administration."

The BLM rule requires energy developers to capture natural gas being wasted through leaks, venting and flaring, but opponents have argued that it increases costs and hurts the industry.

Since Colorado's rule took effect, Messner said, natural-gas and oil production have increased in the state, with about a 75 percent reduction in leaks.

Wayne Warmack of Durango, who worked in the oil and gas business for 27 years, most recently as a director with ConocoPhillips, said that seven out of 10 Colorado operators said in a survey the benefits of regularly checking equipment for leaks outweighed the costs. That survey is online at squarespace.com.

"Colorado's already kind of established a track record that says it's well worth the time and the effort," Warmack said, "and that cost to the industry is not so excessive that it becomes burdensome or costs jobs, or requires operators to go out of business."

In the U.S. Senate. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., opposes the rollback and Cory Gardner, R-Colo., hasn't commented. Messner said he's hopeful the Senate will see the methane rule as a common-sense solution to a difficult problem.

"This is one of those opportunities where we need to step out of the norm of partisan politics and see the win-win situation in supporting the BLM methane and waste-prevention rule," Messner said, "a rule that both supports the American taxpayer as well as the quality of the air."

Eighty-three percent of Colorado voters in a recent Colorado College "Conservation in the West" survey said they support continuing the methane-reduction rule on public lands. That survey is online at coloradocollege.edu.

A fact sheet on the BLM methane-waste rule is online at doi.gov.


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