NUNN, Colo.—The northern Colorado prairie stretches for miles, as small ranches and homes sparingly dot the landscape, horses’ stares fixate on some distant pasture and cattle look up lazily as the cars pass.
Families and small business owners chose to call this home years ago. It’s a quiet pocket of country living that suits their businesses and lifestyles in their small acreages, but it is now threatened by the recent craze to find black gold 7,000 feet below.
Here, six miles west of Nunn and about 30 miles north of Greeley, is where the action begins.
Huge semitrailers caravan north on Weld County Road 17 to a well Chesapeake Energy has been working the past few months along Weld 100. The operation runs 24 hours a day, while it “fracks” the well that took months to prepare and drill.
Interest in the vast reserves in the Niobrara shale has lured as many as 31 oil and gas companies to northern Weld County to try their luck on the unforgiving rock beneath the cattle ranches and homes in this once-serene countryside.
While oil and gas companies in this increasingly rich and proven reserve realize their gains, nearby residents feel they are on the losing end.
“They have to do what they have to do, and go and get the oil,” said resident Doug Patterson. “I’m all about drilling. But you need to have more community responsibility.”
Truck traffic rolls 24-7 through the area surrounding that well, leaving in its wake dust, noise, ruts in the road and sometimes trash and broken glass.
Neighbors in this neck of the woods years ago had to worry about a proposed “SuperSlab” tollway that would have all but erased their havens with pristine views of the prairie capped by Rocky Mountain peaks in the western skyline. Then a Canadian company proposed uranium mining in their backyards, a battle they continue to fight.
Now, with the pressure the Niobrara has inadvertently forced on them, they feel as if they will live in constant chaos with the volume of their voices dwindling.
“We’re wondering when the next shoe is going to drop,” said Cynthia Burkhart, who with her husband, Daryl, runs Meadowlark Ranch and Cattle Co., west of Nunn and not a half-mile from the well. “We haven’t had a year of peace since we’ve been out here. It has always been something.”
The well drilling last year under a different company was a nightmare for the Burkharts —with bright lights from nighttime drilling keeping them awake for weeks to the shrill drilling noises that stressed their cattle so much they lost 50 pounds a head.
The noise has dropped considerably with a new company, Chesapeake, that is now fracking the well, Burkhart said. She said Chesapeake is much more neighborly with her and responds quickly to concerns.
“I’m still concerned about our water quality,” Burkhart said, noting that so far, testing has revealed their water is safe.
But neighbors along that entire stretch of Weld 17 must deal with the collateral impacts of the industry hustle, from semi-truck traffic kicking up constant dust to trash and broken beer bottles on the sides of the roads.
John and Lisa Voytko have been planning to plant a row of trees along their property’s eastern edge along Weld 17, where they see as many as 20 trailers a day pass their front doors. Their property is regularly veiled in dust from the road, which the county grades every Monday to ease the ruts.
“I called (the oil company) to complain and they said they’d put water on the road, and the guy was real nice,” John Voytko said. “But why did the residents have to take the initiative to get these guys to do the right thing?”
Oil companies are on their honor to work with the surrounding neighbors. Since companies own the mineral rights to the property on which they dig, they have a right to dig and get to their drilling operations.
Their impact is not lost on Weld County commissioners, who last year started a working group with as many as 20 oil and gas companies to sort out problems in specific areas before they start.
“There’s no doubt that county roads that a few years ago had less than 20 cars a day, and now with oil and gas development, are going to be up to higher numbers,” said Commissioner Sean Conway. “We have a working group that meets monthly with oil and gas companies to identify problems and work with them, because we realize this is an area of the county there hasn’t been a lot of activity.”
“We don’t get that many calls” from residents yet, said Commissioner Dave Long. “We do get calls from certain people, and that’s not to say those are not warranted. . We’re trying as hard as we can to get (the companies) to voluntarily step up with their mitigation measures. . We recognize we can’t get rid of all the impacts, but we could lessen the impact or harm to the neighborhood.”
Some mitigation measures could be reducing speed limits. Unincorporated areas in Weld County have speed limits of 55 miles per hour, which Nunn area residents think is too high for truck traffic on dirt roads.
“We have horses and won’t ride them on the side of the road anymore,” Diane Patterson said. “People are on horseback all the time out here. But you’re almost taking your life into your own hands to get on that road, and the trucks scare the horses.”
Added John Voytko: “We’ve got alpacas, and they’re bathed in filth from the road.”
The county also can mitigate with road grading, magnesium chloride application on the roads to control dust, or work to find alternate truck routes.
Officials must work to find a good balance between the companies’ right to drill and the residents’ property rights and their quality of life.
“The thing is, it’s a joint venture. When this industry provides 40-plus percent of the revenue for this county to function, it’s a balance of what we have to do to make the impact as negligible as possible on the part of our citizens,” said Pat Persichino, director of the county public works department.
