Click the link to read the article on The Aspen Daily News website (Scott Condon). Here’s an excerpt:
Pitkin County government has joined a legal challenge to try to prevent crude oil from being shipped by rail from Utah to Denver in an effort to support neighboring Eagle County. Pitkin County doesn’t have a dog directly in the fight, but the county commissioners on Oct. 26 approved attempting to hop in because of concerns over what a train derailment could mean to Colorado’s environment.
“You can only imagine the catastrophe if we had an incident in Glenwood Canyon, for instance, or anywhere on the river corridor on the Upper Colorado,” said Commissioner Greg Poschman. “It would affect 40 million people downstream, so I think it’s a risky thing to do, and I think they can find another way to transport their oil.”
[…]
Pitkin County is one of several counties and municipalities that entered an amicus, or friend-of-the-court brief, asking for permission to join the legal fight headed by Eagle County and a coalition of conservation groups. Eagle County and conservation groups headed by the Center for Biological Diversity appealed a decision by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board that would allow construction of an 88-mile rail line from the Uinta Basin in Utah to carry crude oil from a production field and tie into the existing 457-mile Union Pacific rail line for delivery to a refinery in Denver. The crude oil would be hauled along the Interstate 70 corridor into Eagle County and then into Grand County, through the Moffat Tunnel and down the East Slope to Denver.