Re: Mineral owners assert property rights in Colorado’s oil and gas fight, March 6 news story.
Your article narrowly focuses on money lost and made from urban resource extraction. The discussion has been directed away from health and well-being issues to property rights. The value of a house is not comparable to the health of your family any more than a royalty is. Not to mention a more important discussion about the indisputable fact that fossil fuels as an energy source are making the planet uninhabitable.
That omission sharpens the focus on the question of whether this way of making money is a more absolute right than the right to breathe clean air and have clean water. Is there any other property right that is untouched by local land use codes and comprehensive land use planning, and that extends beyond the surface property border? Mineral rights should stop at the property line, where neighbors rights to clean air begin.
Barb Coddington, Glenwood Springs
This letter was published in the March 11 edition.
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