Rocky Mountain states can reduce wildfire danger and better contain the soaring cost of firefighting by investing in far more aggressive efforts to reduce the buildup of forest fuels around houses, neighborhoods and communities, Western Progress' Steve Woodruff told a Montana legislative committee studying wildland fire suppression.

     The legislature's Fire Suppression Interim Committee, kicking off the first in a series of statewide hearings April 28, invited Western Progress to outline an ambitious plan for a tenfold increase in fuel reduction in the so-called wildland-urban interface or WUI.

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Wind could provide 20 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and only slightly raising costs to consumers but requiring a vast new transmission system, a new Energy Department report shows.

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If all goes according to plan, a few years from now the first of an estimated 30,000 people will start moving into a new Henderson community just off Lake Mead Parkway in the vacant desert that lines the road headed toward Lake Las Vegas. The new neighbors will have the comfort of knowing that the dirt beneath their homes and their yards has been studied — and studied again — to ensure it’s just as safe as the rest of the land in Southern Nevada.

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There's a growing dialogue across the West about whether the pros of the recent energy boom outweigh the cons. And ground zero for this debate might be Pinedale, Wyo., a town of 1,500 in the shadow of the Wind River Range that is flanked by oil and gas fields. Last week, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal criticized the Bureau of Land Management's land-use plan for the area for failing to address the impact of oil and gas development on fish and wildlife. And some 50 people held a sit-in last weekend on the gas fields outside Pinedale to protest the drilling's impact on the environment.

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Colorado took another step toward building its role as a renewable-energy hub Thursday when Vestas Wind Systems revealed plans to open the world's largest wind-turbine-tower factory in the state.
The nearly $250 million facility would be fully operational in mid-2010 and employ about 400 people by the end of that year, the Danish wind-energy firm said in a financial report posted on its website Thursday.