Garfield County is getting over $7 million back from the federal government.
The money was collected from counties in Western Colorado to clean up an oil shale reserve, operated by the Navy.
The Anvil Points Federal oil shale research site, west of Rifle, was opened in the 1940s by the Navy to pioneer oil-shale mining.
It was decommissioned in the 1980s and transferred to the Bureau of Land Management in the 1990s.
It needed some cleaning up, which was paid for by federal revenues from nearby oil and gas development.
There was roughly $18 million not used for the clean-up. Garfield County is getting its portion of that money back.
This will nearly double the county’s oil and gas mitigation fund, which is meant to offset some of the environmental and community effects of energy development.
