Jill Hanauer, a Democratic consultant from Denver, articulates better than most people what it means to be a Westerner.
“We may not make it to the mountains each weekend, but we aspire to. We like to know that wilderness will be available to us and our children. Despite wages and benefits that are lower than in other regions, it’s that aspiration that keeps us choosing to live here,” she says.
Hanauer’s words came to mind Monday as hundreds of Coloradans packed into Denver’s Paramount Theatre to weigh in on rules for oil and gas drilling.
You may have heard about the state proposal in a massive spin campaign by the industry.
Companies want you to think they might be forced to pack up and drill in another state. “Please Don’t Rule Us Out!” read the politely threatening stickers passed out Monday.
Some will have you believe that if the rules pass, you’ll pay even more at the gas pump.
One industry booster even testified the regs could make it impossible for her family to help her autistic daughter.
What is scariest about the industry’s sky-is-falling scare tactics is that they actually may work on the majority of Coloradans — Front Rangers insecure about our own credentials as Westerners and often as clueless about where our energy comes from as where we glean our water.
For the record, companies in Colorado are drilling mainly for natural gas, not petroleum for which we’re paying out the nose at the pumps.
Fact is, there’s a drilling boom in our rural communities that most of us don’t see in our daily commutes. The total 6,950 permits projected this year is more than four times the number issued in 2000.
No one’s seeking to stop the drilling.
The state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission merely is trying to update decade-old rules and carry out laws regulating the effects on health and the environment. The proposal would require companies to drill away from homes and water supplies and consult with the state about impacts on wildlife. Though unprecedented in the West, it merely asks for accountability in a state where you’re freer to extract energy than pitch a tent.
In opposing the proposed rules, the industry’s cast of rig workers, chamber of commerce types and methane millionaires are asking city folk to take pity on their communities whose tax bases rely mostly on drilling.
They’re trying to appeal to our sense of Western libertarianism and fear of government overstepping.
“The state is stomping in between my property rights and the production company, and it’s just wrong,” said Las Animas County rancher Warren McDonald.
In their gripes Monday came suggestions that regulating gas drilling would be an affront to Colorado’s Western identity.
Never mind that a pipeline has been permitted in roadless areas of the White River National Forest. And never mind that drilling permits are being issued near important mule deer habitat in the Piceance Basin and other spots where us city folk go to fish on weekends, backpack during our summer vacations and wander, if only in our daydreams.
Evi Klett doesn’t make it out of Denver nearly as often as she would like. But supporting the proposed rules before her shift Monday, the public librarian counted herself every bit as Western as the cowboy- booted rig operators seated around her.
After all, she asked, isn’t it peculiarly Western “to need to know there’s wilderness out there” that’s not being drilled into oblivion?
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com
