Colorado is a great state, but it’s changing. The oil and gas fracking boom means thousands of wells are being drilled every year, many of them along the densely populated Front Range. For years, Coloradans have been struggling to deal with the very real impacts of this increased heavy industrial activity. While some progress has been made, we are not adequately protecting our neighborhoods, air, and water.
The fracking issue gained national attention recently when New York State announced it would ban the controversial practice. New York officials carefully studied and balanced the impacts of drilling and fracking, and decided they wanted nothing to do with it.
The acting state health commissioner, Dr. Howard A. Zucker, expressed the essence of the decision when he wondered aloud, would he want his family to live in a community where fracking was taking place? The answer was no.
Here in Colorado we need to take strong, reasonable action to protect what we love so much about our state. One step is to empower local elected officials — those closest and most responsive to their constituents — to take action to protect their communities.
Why? Consider the situation in Windsor where citizens are concerned about what even industry has described as a mega-industrial site. It has 28 wells, 45 oil tanks, nine water tanks, 20 separators, three gas compressors and two vapor-recovery units on 11 acres that is just over 500 feet from homes and is between two neighborhoods. If approved, this would be one of the largest oil and gas operations in Colorado — and it’s adjacent to two neighborhoods. State law allows a major industrial operation like this to be 500 feet from homes, and that’s unacceptable.
Simply put, current laws and regulations have not kept up with the recently developed use of mega-industrial sites with numerous wellheads and their processing facilities that are being located closer and closer to our homes, our neighborhoods and our schools.
Moreover, the status of the state/local regulatory relationship inhibits local elected officials from using their land use authority to govern location of these operations. They are also prohibited from regulating the obvious noise, constant semi-truck traffic, 24-hour-a-day heavy industrial drilling activity, and public health and safety risks associated with mega-industrial oil and gas operations next to residential neighborhoods.
Coloradans are asking for relief but they aren’t getting it. Last fall Gov. Hickenlooper negotiated a temporary stand down in exchange for a promise of action, including appointment of an oil and gas task force to address these critical issues.
We supported this compromise under the expectation that the task force would recommend strong action to protect our neighborhoods, air, and water and that Gov. Hickenlooper would work to turn those strong recommendations into needed protections and safeguards for Coloradans.
Conservation Colorado and residents around the state are counting on the task force to recommend significant measures — to set a strong state regulatory floor for oil and gas development and at the same time recognize the right and responsibility of local governments to provide additional protections to control what happens in their own communities.
The situation in New York should serve as a wake-up call for lawmakers, regulators, and the oil and gas industry. Gov. Hickenlooper needs to rebuild public trust on this issue by ensuring the task force makes substantial recommendations and that they are enacted. If not, the Colorado we love today will continue to be threatened and Coloradans will be forced to exercise their right to bring the fracking issue directly to the voters.
Pete Maysmith is executive director of Conservation Colorado, the largest state-based conservation organization in Colorado. The oil and gas task force will meet Thursday and Friday in Greeley.
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