Boulder Weekly has received 11 first-place honors and 17 other awards for its 2012 articles in a multi-state contest held annually by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).

When Gasland Director Josh Fox started making what would become one of the most galvanizing forces in the national battle against hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” he thought it would just be a short educational clip for people around his home state of Pennsylvania.

The list of symptoms of PTSD — hyper-vigilance, sensitivity to noise, difficulty sleeping, irritability — was a checklist for Mary Swan’s complaints after she came back from active duty in Afghanistan.

Something unsightly has gotten a bit too close to one of Boulder’s crown jewels. An environmental contractor hired to deal with possibly hazardous materials from an old gasification plant near the Dushanbe Teahouse downtown has confirmed the need to clean up contamination at the site.

1770 13th St. wasn’t always a center of Boulder culture. For more than 50 years it was home to a towngas manufacturing plant that appears to have left behind a serious mess in the form of soil and groundwater contamination, contamination that is proving to be quite a challenge to clean up, mostly because the City of Boulder built a plaza and a teahouse right on top of it even after it knew the subsurface contamination was an issue.

Encana Oil & Gas Inc. has withdrawn its motion to dismiss a case filed by Rod Brueske that challenges the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s handling of an alleged violation at an Encana well near his house.

An internal affairs investigation has cleared one officer accused of using a Taser to stun an inmate on his bare buttocks and genitals, and jail administrators are denying that two inmates were kept naked in a one-person cell for five days without a functioning toilet.

A prominent anti-fracking activist from South Africa was in Boulder County this week as part of a national tour of the areas most affected by hydraulic fracturing and other oil/gas operations.

As Brueske works to prove his claim, he says, he’s running up against roadblocks from the state that he argues may prevent him from successfully making that case, including being denied access to the documents showing the state’s calculations for Encana’s settlement fine.

University of Colorado leaders say that a recently announced push for more collaboration with industry does not mean the corporatization of the university or pose a threat to academic freedom, the publication of research findings or the faculty’s control over the curriculum.