Doug Pflugh's Blog

June 6, 2014

Applying GIS Mapping to Environmental Law

Map of oil and gas development in the Roan Plateau Planning Area, created by Earthjustice and included in litigation filings.

Geographic Information Systems have become an integral part of Earthjustice's work to protect public health and the environment; GIS services are provided by our staff to support case development and litigation, advocacy and public outreach and education.

May 14, 2014

Plan Advances to Aid San Pedro River

A plan to aid the San Pedro River seeks to balance needs of endangered species and Fort Huachuca.

February 12, 2014

Colorado Tackles Rules Governing Oil, Gas

$A fracking drill rig.$

Colorado has emerged as a western ground zero in the fracking boom, with more than 50,000 active wells in the state and 3,000 wells permitted annually on average in recent years. The state is struggling to deal with this staggering growth as well as the changing nature of the industry as operations have moved into communities along the Front Range.

February 11, 2014

Healthy Coexistence: Key to Saving San Pedro River

Suit seeks to make Army help protect the river and its species

January 24, 2014

A Year of Threats Looms for Western Rivers

The now-dry Colorado River delta branches into the Baja / Sonoran Desert, only 5 miles north of the Sea of Cortez, Mexico.

Drought, diversions threaten Colorado, San Pedro and other rivers

October 18, 2013

Supreme Court Preserves Victory Over Oil/Gas Development

It is rewarding to successfully wrap-up a case. This can be especially true when our work protects special places, preserving them for future generations. It is a pleasure to be able to point at a map and say, “Those are the places that were saved.”

May 16, 2013

Defending Arizona's "Ribbon of Life"

Earthjustice has worked with our partners for more than a decade to sustain the San Pedro River of southern Arizona. Our attorneys have taken legal action—a series of cases challenging inappropriate groundwater depletions by the U.S. Army’s Fort Huachuca—to keep water in the river until a balance can be struck between the needs of the river and the local communities.

May 10, 2013

Drillers Make a Play for Thompson Divide

There is no dispute that the Thompson Divide—a 220,000-acre forested wildland in western Colorado—is a special place. It comprises some of the most valuable and diverse mid-elevation forested landscapes in Colorado and includes the headwaters of streams that sustain the Crystal, Roaring Fork and North Fork valleys.

April 26, 2013

Driller Seeks to Overturn Roan Plateau Victory

The Roan Plateau stands proudly above the Colorado River, an island of refuge in the sea of energy development that threatens to industrialize much of western Colorado.

April 17, 2013

San Pedro River Faces a New Threat

The upper San Pedro River valley in Arizona is the epitome of the Wild West. Open and arid, stretching north from Mexico and lying in the shadow of the rugged Huachuca Mountains, the valley looks much the same as it did more than a century ago when miners and settlers uneasily shared the land. It is a place where the long shadows at sunset bring visitors back to a long-past time.

April 17, 2013

Our Nation's Most Endangered River -- The Colorado

Unrestrained thirst puts Colorado atop American Rivers' threat list

May 21, 2012

A Victory—and Challenges Ahead—for the Green River

It’s been a tough spring for rivers in the Rocky Mountain West. After a winter that never really got started, the snow pack—our primary source for water in our rivers—is historically low in Colorado and throughout the region.

April 6, 2012

Twice Rejected, Developer Again Tries To Seize Water

How many times does Aaron Million need to hear the word, no?

The president of Wyco development corporation has twice been rejected by federal agencies in his attempt to build Flaming Gorge Pipeline—a massive trans-basin water supply project that would annually take approximately 81 billion gallons of water from the Flaming Gorge Reservoir and the Green River and pipe it more than 500 miles over the Continental Divide to Colorado’s Front Range.

To win the most important environmental fights of our time, it is going to take all of us.

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Doug Pflugh's Blog