Construction on 9,500 new oil and gas wells in western Colorado is creating erosion and runoff that's clogging towns' irrigation systems and raising cleanup costs. Most sites don't have required silt fences to prevent runoff, likely due to industry efforts to not only squash a new state law requiring erosion-control permits, but also to move even further away from the Clean Water provisions this year's energy bill ended.
Full story is at the Denver Post, and EWG's work on public lands is here.