Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Pity Texas billionaire Red McCombs and his developer sidekick, Bob Honts. For five years now, they’ve been fighting the Forest Service, environmental groups, locals, and the owners of a southern Colorado ski area so that they can build their dream resort.

McCombs and Honts want to build a year-round recreation village that would house 10,000. On alpine tundra at an elevation of 10,500 feet. In an inholding within the Rio Grande National Forest. Covering an area that’s also a migration corridor for the threatened Canada lynx. Surrounded by one of the state’s last mom-and-pop ski operations. These controversial circumstances have sparked multiple lawsuits (see our stories “Developers push ahead with mammoth ski village” and “Small time ski operator fights for his life“).

Now, reports the AP, the Forest Service has agreed to do a new environmental review of the project’s impacts:

The agreement signed Tuesday by Colorado Wild, the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council and the Forest Service settles a lawsuit by the two groups. Their lawsuit argued that the Forest Service didn’t adequately analyze the potential impacts of the project when it approved construction of a new road for primary access to the site from U.S. 160 and an extension of a road from the ski area’s parking lots.

The groups also claimed that the developer had undue influence on the process through lobbying of high-level federal officials and pressure on a consultant paid by the developer but directed to independently analyze the impacts of the roads. Environmentalists say e-mails and other documents show Honts and the consultant, Virginia-based Tetra Tech Inc., pressured Forest Service staffers to favor the developer.

Honts and McCombs have other problems, too. They’re facing a lawsuit from the Pitcher family, who run Wolf Creek ski area and once supported the development. And their building permit was recently voided. It’s time for these guys to give it up, sell their 288 acres to the Forest Service, and invest in something more financially rewarding and morally responsible. Like clean energy.