The 3-2 vote by , in favor of the State Sunlight/Long well pad proposed by Crestone Peak Resources, came after about five hours of testimony and deliberation. The decision ends what had become one of the more contentious battles over energy extraction in Colorado.

Board Chair Jeff Robbins acknowledged that the application from Crestone had evoked a strong reaction from homeowners living nearby. But in the end, the company complied with rigorous state oil and gas regulations enshrined in a law known as Senate Bill 181, which was passed by state lawmakers seven years ago.

“At the end of the day, State Sunlight/Long achieves the balance we were told to look for,” Robbins said.

The two commissioners who voted no were Trisha Oeth and John Messner. The approvals process for the Sunlight/Long well pad encompassed seven hearings before the commission, stretching over several months.

Nearby homeowners rose up in opposition, claiming that the project would pose health hazards to those living nearby — in particular, to school-age children. They also worried about the drilling’s potential environmental impacts on the Aurora Reservoir, which is a water source for the 400,000 residents of Colorado’s third-largest city.

“I cannot believe that the state came down on the side of the industry yet again,” Randy Willard, the president of opposition group , said in an interview minutes after the vote came down Tuesday afternoon. “The group as a whole is severely disappointed.”

The group had pushed back on the proposed project using the 2019 oil and gas reform law as a guide, Willard said.

The 2019 law prioritized public health, safety and the environment when regulators consider oil and gas development — a profound change from the industry-focused approach Colorado had taken for decades.

“We’ve done everything we feel is possible under 181, only to find the industry comes out on top yet again,” Willard said. “I don’t know what else we’re supposed to do.”

In December, the state commission voted 4-1 to put a stay on the project, ordering Crestone to return with a list of alternative sites from which it could drill.

Crestone, a subsidiary of Denver-based SM Energy Company, came back this month with a slimmed-down proposal, knocking down the number of wells at Sunlight/Long from 32 to 24.

The company insisted that after examining 11 other potential sites, most of which were farther away from homes, its preferred site near Aurora’s Southshore neighborhood and the reservoir remained the best place to locate its wells.

Civitas Resources was Crestone’s parent company until late January, .

Jamie Jost, an attorney for Crestone, spoke to the commission during an online hearing Tuesday that, at one point, was attended by nearly 1,000 people. She called the site the “most vetted, most analyzed” location for the pad.

The company said the site would have the least impact on wildlife and waterways across 26,500-acre Lowry Ranch, a stretch of rolling prairie owned by the Colorado State Land Board where Crestone has plans to drill just over 100 wells in total — down from 166 just a couple of years ago.

Dan Harrington, SM Energy’s asset development manager, told the commission that reducing the number of wells at Sunlight/Long would curtail the time needed for drilling and fracking.

“This will reduce operational duration by about 25%,” he testified.

And the scaled-back operation will emit fewer emissions, including of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds and methane, the company in favor of its preferred site.

Mike Foote, a former Democratic state lawmaker who represents the neighbor opposition group as its lawyer, testified that Crestone didn’t conduct an honest comparison of alternative sites.

“It found things wrong with everyone else’s suggested sites instead of coming up with something that worked,” he said.

But Nathan Bennett, SM Energy’s director of permitting and compliance, said Crestone looked at other potential locations with an open mind. The company, however, said the alternate sites had problems, with questions raised about whether Xcel Energy could provide electricity to some of them to power electric drilling equipment.

Other locations, the company said, would have required much longer truck trips and called for running pipe over more ecologically sensitive areas.

Commissioner Mike Cross said Crestone’s proposed site for Sunlight/Long was well outside the state’s required 2,000-foot distance buffer from homes. He said the company’s commitment to use quieter and cleaner electric equipment on site was a positive aspect of the project.

“The best practices that we’ve seen from operators in the state, we’ve seen in this application,” he said. “It does meet our rules.”

But Willard, who has been working to defeat the application for nearly two years, said neighbors were already complaining of noise from other Crestone drilling operations on Lowry Ranch. In a presentation that the opposition group ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, the group claimed that more than 40 noise complaints were filed with the agency last month alone.

That, Willard said, will only increase once drilling starts at Sunlight/Long in the coming months.

Metro cities and utilities are starting to lay out various defensive strategies against what has become a crispy-dry 2026, starting with an alarmingly warm and dry winter in Colorado that’s been marked by .

Denver Water, which serves 1.5 million people, could follow a similar track to Thornton’s by month’s end. Aurora Water, which is relied upon by 400,000 people, may be right behind with its own Stage 1 drought declaration in early April.

“We’re looking for a 20% reduction in outdoor irrigation compared to last year,” said Shonnie Cline, an Aurora Water spokeswoman.

The Aurora City Council is set to have a study session on the city’s water situation on March 23, followed by a council vote on potential watering restrictions on April 6.

“We’re at the lowest snowpack we’ve been at since 1978,” Cline said.

Locally, that also translates to abysmal conditions in the Clear Creek basin, where Westminster gets most of its water. Last week, the Westminster City Council discussed enacting a drought watch — a less severe step than a Stage 1 declaration that would rely on voluntary cutbacks.

“The current trend is tracking just above the 2002 line for the Clear Creek basin, which is the driest year on record,” Westminster Mayor Claire Carmelia said.

Broomfield was the first metro city to , on Feb. 9.

Jason Ullmann, the state engineer for , said the drought of the last quarter century in the southwestern United States is believed to be . Things are particularly strained this year, with Colorado’s snowpack measuring in at just 61% of median levels for this time of year as of late last week.

Earlier this month, federal forecasters projected that the Colorado River this spring will deliver 2.3 million acre-feet of water to Lake Powell, one of the river system’s largest reservoirs and downriver from much of the mountain states’ snowmelt. That����ap just 36% of the median of 6.4 million acre-feet recorded annually between 1991 and 2020.

Closer to home, the painted a grim weather picture based on conditions in Denver. Last month was the third-warmest and second-driest February in the city, while it was the least-snowiest February on record for Denver, tying 2009’s equally snow-starved February.

Exactly when the city — and region — will finally shake off their dessicated state is unknown, Ullmann said.

“There’s no guarantee we’re going to have a better year next year, so we can’t count on that,” he said.

What water managers can control sits on the demand side of the water ledger.

Thornton gets the bulk of its water from the Upper South Platte River and Clear Creek watersheds, which are both at “record low levels,” according to a memo accompanying last Tuesday’s council meeting.

Emily Hunt, Thornton’s interim infrastructure director, says the concern lies not so much with the summer ahead but with the summers to follow, assuming precipitation stays meager. Colorado’s sixth-largest city is presently at 83% of storage capacity . It stores a large portion of the water it consumes in Standley Lake, which is also a water source for Westminster and Northglenn.

“We’re going into the summer with good storage, but with this snowpack, we’re not going to be able to top off our reservoirs the way we normally would,” Hunt said. “We’re basically trying to keep the year in balance so that if the drought continues into next year, we’ll be in pretty good shape.”

Thornton’s new rules stipulate that watering can occur only between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m. Violations of the twice-weekly schedule, which goes into effect May 1, will result in a warning for a first infraction. If not remedied within 10 days, households face a $100 fine, while commercial customers will pay a $250 fine. Repeated infractions, including the failure to address leaky pipes, will result in heavier fines.

The city provides a , which differ depending on the type of sprinkler head that’s used. Residents will be able to choose which two days of the week they water their lawns.

Denver Water operates in a forward-looking manner as well. Greg Fisher, its manager of demand planning and efficiency, said Colorado’s largest water supplier is taking on this summer’s challenges with 2027 and 2028 in mind.

“We are very much in drought preparation,” he said.

The good news is that Denver Water’s storage capacity is at around 80% — just a little lower than the 85% it typically sits at this time of year, Fisher said. And efficiencies in landscaping and indoor water use are a world away from where they were in 2002, with the average household using 35% less water than it did 24 years ago.

Fisher expects the utility’s to make a drought declaration by the end of March.

“With these dry conditions, I think we’re headed to a Stage 1 declaration,” he said.

Aside from a mandatory twice-weekly outdoor watering schedule under a Stage 1 declaration — Denver Water would assign watering days to households in its service area — the utility would also ask restaurants not to serve water to customers unless requested, and to ask hotels not to wash sheets or towels unless requested.

“If we get better weather, we can scale back on restrictions,” Fisher said.

But even under a mandatory water reduction scenario, green thumbs can still make their front and backyards sing this summer, said Cassey Anderson, a horticultural specialist with Colorado State University Extension in Adams County.

“You don’t have to water a lot to water well,” she said.

Trees should be a focus, Anderson said, with the most effective watering applied on the ground in a radius from the trunk all the way out to the tips of the branches. Kentucky bluegrass, a notoriously thirsty grass that has become a villain in the eyes of water experts and policy makers, will go dormant without water — but will be primed to bounce back in more auspicious conditions.

“You aren’t going to kill it by not watering it for a season,” she said.

Anderson cautioned that this summer might not be the time to put in a new drought-tolerant or native garden, given that new plantings require extra water to establish themselves properly.

Carmelia, the Westminster mayor, says there is nothing to do but hope that the supply side of the water ledger eases up after the start of spring on Friday.

“The silver lining is that March and April are typically the wettest months of the year, and there’s still time for Mother Nature to come through for us,” she said.

The City Council on Monday night unanimously approved a on first reading. It aims to reduce underage access to tobacco products, like e-cigarettes and vaping cartridges, by stiffening fines on businesses that sell those products to people under age 21, while tightening rules on where tobacco retailers can set up shop in the city.

The ordinance would also cover sales of kratom and certain psychoactive hemp products to minors, and it would give the city greater oversight of hookah lounges.

The new law, which will be up for a final vote next month, would not ban the sale of flavored tobacco products, as was authorized by voters in neighboring Denver last fall.

“The primary concern for us is that these products are targeted towards youths,” said Trevor Vaughn, Aurora’s manager of licensing. “We’re addressing youth access to and usage of the products.”

It’s a move that , a nonprofit coalition, has been advocating for.

“In Aurora, we have a problem with tobacco retailers selling tobacco to our youths,” said Alison Reidmohr, a member of the advocacy group. “It would improve the resources for doing age-compliance checks at retailers.”

Aurora Partners cites the 2023 that found nearly 84% of Aurora youths who attempted to buy tobacco or vape products in stores were able to do so, despite not being of legal age. The city has about 340 tobacco retailers, and Aurora Partners says more than 100 of those outlets are within 1,000 feet of schools and recreation centers.

During Monday night’s council meeting, Joyce Baker, a respiratory therapist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, said that although many people view tobacco as a “problem of the past,” its main addictive component, nicotine, “has simply changed forms.”

“Today our kids are exposed to an entirely new generation of products — like disposable vapes, e-cigarettes, pods, nicotine pouches — that are designed to be discreet, addictive and appealing,” she told the council.

Baker held up a picture of a vape device that closely resembled a doctor-prescribed asthma inhaler, allowing for “stealth vaping” by underage kids.

‘Our kids are so addicted’

DeLisha Boyd, dean of students at Aurora’s Rangeview High School, told the council that responding to vaping has been “one of the biggest disciplinary actions we have to take” at the school. Students, she said, will often buy vape products in bulk and then resell them at school.

“Our kids are so addicted,” Boyd said.

Joe Miklosi, a lobbyist for the Rocky Mountain Smoke Free Alliance, an industry group that fiercely opposed Denver’s flavored tobacco ban, said his group was happy with Aurora’s proposed ordinance. His group advocates for 125 small vape stores in Colorado, 25 of which are in Aurora. Many of them are minority-owned, he said.

A sticking point was a provision in the initial draft of the ordinance that would have banned retailers from selling tobacco and vape products that the federal government hasn’t explicitly approved. That generated fear among vape shop owners that much of their inventory would be prohibited for sale, Miklosi said.

The provision was removed before the council voted Monday.

Miklosi said adults’ freedom to buy what they want must be protected, especially given the critical role vaping plays as a less harmful alternative to smoking.

As an odd contrast to Monday’s vote, Philip Morris International recently began ramping up production of its increasingly popular ZYN nicotine pouches at a new factory in Aurora, south of Denver International Airport. Aurora agreed to provide $7.1 million in tax rebates to the company while the Colorado Economic Development Commission approved $4.5 million in Job Growth Incentive Tax Credits, and Adams County has agreed to chip in another $4.3 million in incentives.

The company has hired about 120 of the 500 workers it plans to eventually employ in Aurora, which is the location of its second U.S. ZYN plant after one in Owensboro, Ky.

How ordinance would work

Aurora’s proposed ordinance cracking down on sales to young people follows a move by state lawmakers in 2020 to in Colorado from 18 to 21. Aurora’s punishment for retailers that flout its new law will be tougher than the state’s.

A first violation is set at $1,000. A second violation will get a store owner a $2,000 fine and a seven-day suspension. And a third strike will raise the fine to $2,650 and the suspension to 21 days. A store that violates the ordinance a fourth time within three years will lose its license.

A license will cost a business that sells tobacco products $500 annually, which will help pay for two compliance checks a year by the city. Aurora projects the program will generate about $170,000 a year, with an additional $30,000 expected from fines.

The measure also sets new distance requirements to “prevent over-concentration of outlets,” according to a city memo. That would mean they could be located no closer than 1,500 feet from schools or 2,000 feet from another vape store. Existing retailers will be exempted from the spacing limits.

Under the proposed law, hookah lounges would have to close by 2 a.m. and would be required to prohibit alcohol consumption and illicit drug use on their premises.

It was just half a year ago that Aurora passed a sweeping measure banning the sale of an array of “gray market” substances and drug paraphernalia commonly found in convenience stores, gas stations, and smoke and vape shops. They included nitrous oxide, synthetic cannabinoids and poppers, a nitrate product that the Federal Drug Administration says is not safe to inhale or ingest.

Dr. Terri Richardson, a retired physician who is vice chairwoman of the said there was a higher concentration of smoke and vape shops in parts of the city where more ethnic and racial minorities live. And with pipes and other tobacco paraphernalia bearing cartoon characters and puppets — like Hello Kitty and Oscar the Grouch — as a major selling point, she said there’s no question who the industry is trying to lure.

“The manufacturer is telling you exactly who they’re targeting,” Richardson said.

In a Feb. 10 settlement agreement, Five Dallas Partners — an affiliate of CBZ Management — and Aurora city officials agreed to settle the civil lawsuit brought by the city to avoid “the uncertainty and expense of the lawsuit.”

In exchange for paying the city $300,000 and selling the property, Aurora officials will cancel all liens or summons against Five Dallas Partners, according to the filing.

The company will also hire private security to monitor the properties at 1218, 1238, 1248, 1258 and 1268 North Dallas St. until they are sold or “returned to a commercially viable habitable use” to limit police response to the buildings.

The $300,000 payment is “a partial reimbursement for costs the city suffered in responding to, closing, maintaining and securing the buildings in the company’s absence over the last two years,” Aurora city officials said in a statement.

“The agreement the city reached with Five Dallas Partners is a resolution that is amenable for both parties to avoid the risk and costs associated with a jury trial and to position the company’s property to be sold to new independent ownership,” Aurora officials said.

An attorney for Five Dallas Partners did not respond to an email seeking comment about the settlement.

A sixth building at Edge of Lowry — which is owned by a different CBZ-connected company — is still in a receivership, city officials said.

The settlement is separate from other ongoing cases against CBZ Management, which owned and operated apartment complexes in metro Denver through several affiliated companies, including Five Dallas Partners.

CBZ owner Zev Baumgarten has multiple open arrest warrants after he failed to appear in Aurora Municipal Court for a code violations hearing in June.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office is also investigating the company over reports of unsafe living conditions and allegations of fraud and deceptive practices.

While tenants say squalid living conditions and poor management at CBZ-connected apartments date back to 2020, problems at the Edge of Lowry first gained national attention in August 2024, when residents recorded a group of armed men forcing their way into an apartment.

That video went viral and became a major talking point about immigration in President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.

Eleven suspected Tren de Aragua members were arrested in December 2024 after police say they kidnapped and tortured a couple living at the complex. The suspects had previously extorted and forced the couple to pay them an additional rent, investigators said.

The kidnapping was enough for an Aurora judge to grant city officials an emergency closure order for Edge of Lowry. The buildings were officially shuttered in February.

Another CBZ-owned complex in Aurora, Aspen Grove at 1568 Nome St., remains closed after it was ruled uninhabitable under city code, while the Whispering Pines complex at 1357 Helena St., is being managed by a court-appointed receiver.

Summit Communities bought both the Highline Lofts at 456 S. Ironton St. and Arboreta Apartments at 2038 S. Vaughn Way in 2022.

The company paid $29.1 million for the Highline Lofts, which has 112 units, and $69.5 million for Arboreta’s 268 units.

Summit financed both deals — and subsequently defaulted, according to its lenders.

MF1, the lender for Highline Lofts, took ownership of the property last week through a foreclosure auction held by Arapahoe County.

The lender gave Summit a $25.5 million loan in 2022 that needed to be repaid by March 2024, records show. MF1 sued later in 2024, saying Summit hadn’t paid off the loan. A receiver was appointed, and MF1 initiated the foreclosure process last May.

Summit����ap Arboreta complex, meanwhile, which is 4 miles away, is now being overseen by Thomas Dwyer of Transwestern. A judge appointed him receiver of the property last month, at the request of a different lender.

Summit took out a $58 million loan to buy the property in 2022, records show. It needed to be repaid by May 2025.

At the time of the acquisition, Summit said it planned to spend $4 million on interior renovations so that each unit would have granite countertops and a washer and dryer. Founder Jeff Young also told the Denver Business Journal that he planned to raise rents by $150 to $200 per unit.

In a lawsuit last month, however, the lender said that Summit stopped making its interest-only loan payments in February 2025 and that a receiver was needed to avoid property damage.

“Borrower recently informed Lender that as a result of there being insufficient cash flow generated from the Property to pay expenses at the Property, Borrower will be terminating all employees at the Property, leaving the tenants at the Property in potential harm with the likelihood of utilities and other services being discontinued,” the lender said in a Dec. 23 filing.

Summit didn’t respond to requests for comment last week. According to its website, in addition to the Arboreta Apartments, the company owns seven other Denver-area apartment complexes, including 1410 and 1430 S. Albion St. in Denver.

Loan distress is increasing in the multifamily sector. An influx of new supply has pushed rents down and concessions up to a 15-year high as of the third quarter last year, according to the Apartment Association of Metro Denver.

Foreclosure proceedings were also recently initiated for the Signalmen Apartments building at 1259 Newton St. in Denver, which was purchased in 2022 by an affiliate of Denver’s Armada Venture Partners for $17.6 million. The lender, M360 Community Fund, says it is owed $12.6 million on a loan taken out that year.

In November, the California-based owner of a 301-unit apartment complex in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood surrendered it to a lender.

Read more from our partner, .

The German-based discount supermarket chain announced Monday it will open more than 50 stores across the Denver and Colorado Springs areas, supported by a new distribution center in Aurora.

The move marks Aldi’s first expansion into the state, with the Aurora facility expected to open in 2029 and bring hundreds of new jobs to the region.

“One in three U.S. households shopped at Aldi this past year, and in 2026 we’re focused on making it even easier for customers to shop our aisles first,” said Aldi U.S CEO Atty McGrath in a news release.

“That means bringing Aldi to even more neighborhoods, upgrading our website and planning additional distribution centers to keep our shelves stocked with the products our shoppers love.”

As Aldi enters its 50th year in the United States, the discount grocer plans to open 180 new stores by the end of 2026 and is outlining expansion plans for the next five years.

The company said it will continue expanding in Southeast and Western markets and will open three new distribution centers nationwide, including the Aurora center and facilities in Goodyear, Arizona, and Baldwin, Florida.

In addition to Colorado, Aldi is expanding in key U.S. markets such as Maine, Phoenix, Las Vegas and the Southeast, while continuing to convert nearly 80 Southeastern Grocers locations to the Aldi format.

Since acquiring Southeastern Grocers in 2024, Aldi has converted and opened nearly 90 stores, with plans to convert more than 200 in total by the end of 2027.

With its increased footprint, Aldi said it will operate nearly 2,800 stores by the end of 2026, moving closer to its goal of 3,200 locations by the end of 2028.

By 2028, the company said it will have invested $9 billion over five years to expand its store footprint, strengthen its supply chain and upgrade its online shopping experience.

“These strategic investments are all about making sure customers can continue to count on us for the quality, affordable groceries and enjoyable shopping experience they love,” McGrath said.

“As we look ahead to our next 50 years in the U.S., we’ll continue to earn shopper loyalty by staying true to what’s made Aldi successful: keeping things simple and delivering real value.”

and launching its first U.S. store in Iowa in 1976, Aldi now operates thousands of stores in more than 10 countries.

Concept plans for the project at 3333 Quebec St. in Denver show the 310-room hotel will be converted to a 220-unit building, with renderings suggesting a mix of studio and one-bedroom apartments and 605 parking spaces split between a garage and surface lots.

The project, dubbed “Stapleton Plaza Hotel,” also has plans for a ground-floor lobby, coworking space, game lounge, golf simulator, dog lounge, and a fitness center featuring handball courts and a cold plunge and thermal pool room.

Outdoor amenities are set to include firepits, lawn games and grill stations.

The property is owned by Eagle PropCo 7 LLC, which appears to be tied to , a global hospitality management company that manages 240 properties across the United States and Canada.

The LLC acquired the Quebec Street property in 2021 for over $15.7 million, according to city property records.

Representatives from HHM and Premier did not respond to requests for comment on the project.

Founded in 1994, Premier has since completed more than $2.5 billion in renovations and development projects.

The firm specializes in interior design, architecture, procurement and project management services for any renovation, redevelopment, or ground-up new construction project, according to its website.

Converting hotels into housing is not a new concept, and in recent years it has become increasingly common across the Denver area to address housing needs.

A notable example is a project by Chicago-based hotel investment and management firm Arbor Lodging, which, in partnership with Bridge Investment Group, acquired the former for $26.8 million in 2022.

The 440-room property was redeveloped into an apartment community now known as , which is pre-leasing studio, one- and two-bedroom units, according to its website.

This strategy has also been considered as a response to homelessness.

At the beginning of 2023, the City of Denver announced they purchased a motel along Peoria Street for $9 million with plans to use it for homeless housing, but the four-story building has since remained vacant.

In the meantime, it appears that the only people who live on the property are those who are housed in a network of shed-like structures on its parking lot.

State and county officials signed off on three of the — featuring nearly 60 wells combined — on a windswept stretch of prairie southeast of Aurora that’s near both hundreds of homes and the primary drinking water source for Colorado’s third-largest city.

Then, on Dec. 10, the $2.3 billion company hit a wall.

The Energy and Carbon Management Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator, voted 4-1 to put — a 35-acre, 32-well extraction project that would lie just over a half-mile from the Aurora Reservoir and from the closest homes in the city’s Southshore neighborhood.

Commissioner Brett Ackerman said Crestone Peak Resources, the Civitas subsidiary that is overseeing the project, should do more to ensure it doesn’t impact neighbors.

“This can be accomplished by Crestone examining locations for this pad farther away from the dense residential development along the boundary of the property,” Ackerman said.

It wasn’t the denial Randy Willard wanted from the ECMC. But the 62-year-old resident of Aurora’s Tollgate Crossing neighborhood for the past 11 years said he sees it as a victory — for now — given the roll Civitas had been on this year with approval of its other well pads on the 26,500-acre Lowry Ranch.

“It was good, but we know the work is not done — it’s not denied or in a safer place,” Willard said.

He’s been fighting Civitas’ drilling plans for nearly three years as president of , a 2,500-member citizens’ advocacy group that goes by the acronym STAR.

Neighbors fear that more than 100 wells producing oil and gas just east of their homes will pose a health hazard, especially for children, and threatens to contaminate the Aurora Reservoir, a drinking source for more than 400,000 people. In March, a that drew links between childhood leukemia and proximity to oil and gas wells gave more energy to the fight.

Four schools stand less than a mile away from the proposed State Sunlight/Long well pad.

Civitas still has three more proposed oil and gas well pads planned for Lowry Ranch after that one, for a total of 112 wells across seven pads. That’s down from the 166 wells the ECMC greenlit in August 2024 as part of a comprehensive plan hearing it held on Civitas’ application.

Now is not the time to rest, Willard said.

“We will continue to comment on the plans — we will continue to ask for a denial,” he said.

Civitas will try again

Civitas hasn’t decided yet when it might bring back its application to the commission, or whether it will proffer any new locations for the .

Company spokesman Rich Coolidge told The Denver Post that Civitas was confident it could gain the commission’s confidence to move ahead.

“While the decision was postponed, we have direction on resubmitting clarifying information that will garner support from a majority of the ECMC commissioners, who largely agree the site is approvable under the state’s protective rules,” Coolidge said.

Commissioner Michael Cross, who was the lone vote against issuing a stay on the pad, said during the Dec. 10 hearing that Civitas had agreed to take steps to minimize its impact during drilling and production. Those include moving an access road to a less troublesome location, electrifying its drilling rigs to make them cleaner and quieter, and moving product by pipe rather than truck.

“Simply put, the (best management practices) agreed to here and the operational plan are some of the most protective measures we’ve seen,” Cross said.

State agencies and local governments have raised no alarm bells over the pad, Coolidge said, with no objections from entities including the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and the City of Aurora. Arapahoe County gave in May.

“The State Sunlight/Long development plan is undoubtedly the most-vetted site in the state, if not the country,” Coolidge said.

That may be due to the five ECMC hearings held on the pad, including three marathon sessions in November. At the December hearing, Commissioner John Messner said the State Sunlight/Long site had “created some of the most attention of any application that I have had before me since I’ve been on the commission.”

Sakhawat Hussain, a retired gastroenterologist who has lived in Southshore with his wife for nearly three years, isn’t surprised at the controversy the pad has generated. His backyard is a half-mile or so from where State Sunlight/Long could end up.

“We’ll be able to see it from the backyard,” he said.

His wife, Ann, points to Weld County, where on April 6 a near Galeton lasted five days, resulting in the closure of an elementary school and the evacuation of 14 families. Toxic chemicals, including benzene, hung in the air, flowed into ponds and streams, and seeped into groundwater.

The ECMC is investigating the incident.

“If this well pad catches on fire, like Galeton, that will be a catastrophe,” Ann Hussain said. “It’s beyond common sense that they’d think this is approvable.”

Want to be ‘an example’

She sees the fight over State Sunlight/Long as a test of Colorado’s six-year-old landmark oil and gas law, passed as . The law prioritized public health, safety and the environment when state officials consider oil and gas development — a profound change from the industry-focused approach Colorado had taken for decades with energy extraction.

A site so close to homes and schools should not be treated the same as a well pad in a remote area, she said.

“They need to prove that when they passed that law, it meant something,” Hussain said. “The regulations cannot be one-size-fits-all.”

Michael Foote, a former state legislator and STAR’s attorney, said he doesn’t know exactly where this dispute will go from here.

But he has no doubt that robust public participation has made a difference.

“It was very good to see the commission take public opinion and public comment seriously when deciding on the stay,” he said. “Public sentiment is too often heard but not acted upon. We are hopeful that continues on to the next stage of the hearing.”

Willard said STAR raised $15,000 over the summer after Civitas started standing up the 19-well La Plata South pad, which had been approved for Lowry Ranch earlier in the year.

“When they dropped the rig across the reservoir with the lights on all night, that got the neighborhood excited,” he said.

Willard hopes his group’s efforts can resonate elsewhere in the state and give other communities strategies and resolve in their own fracking battles.

“We want to be an example for other groups,” he said.

That scene is burned into Emily Brock’s brain, she said.

Brock, the children’s program deputy managing attorney with the , remembered sitting in Denver Immigration Court years ago, witnessing the unaccompanied children without legal representation gripping each other as a judge asked them, through a translator, to recount their traumatic journeys to the United States.

The advocacy network, known as RMIAN, was designed to help kids like them — unaccompanied minors making their way through a federal immigration court that is not required to provide counsel to people who can’t afford attorneys, unlike defendants who are guaranteed representation in the criminal justice system.

But due to the Trump administration’s funding cuts, the 25-year-old organization described by local immigration attorney Violeta Chapin as the “largest and most well-resourced nonprofit organization supporting immigrants in Colorado” had to freeze the program.

Now, aside from limited exceptions, RMIAN must turn away immigrant youth who have come to the country unaccompanied, forcing children — in some cases not yet old enough to speak in complete sentences — to endure immigration court proceedings alone, Brock said.

“What we’re in effect doing is forcing children to grow up before they’re ready to grow up,” Brock said. “You’ll have older children say, ‘I’ll speak. I’ll tell the judge our story,’ to protect their younger siblings. They should just be children who have suffered traumatic experiences and now arrived at safety with adults who are stepping in to say, ‘I will now protect you and help you navigate it.’ And instead we’re saying, ‘Good luck.’ ”

This year, RMIAN lost $1 million in long-standing federal funding, said Mekela Goehring, the organization’s executive director.

For more than 20 years, Congress funded, through the U.S. Department of Justice, programs across the country that gave unrepresented people in immigration proceedings access to basic legal information, she said. RMIAN was part of the initial pilot project in 2003. But these programs have all been terminated, Goehring said.

As a result, the nonprofit froze hiring, cut programming and scaled back operations at a time when the demand for its services has never been higher, she said.

“There have been major increases in immigration enforcement and detention, loss of vital legal protections, increases in fear and attacks on the immigrant community, exponential increases on removals, unlawful removals and, on top of all of that, RMIAN has seen deep losses in funding to all of our work,” Goehring said. “You’re starting with a deeply unjust and unfair process where there isn’t a whole lot of due process, and what we’ve seen is that all those hardships have been compounded because of a series of both the federal government has made.”

Due to the funding cuts, the federal government terminated a program that allowed RMIAN to hold group “know your rights” presentations at the Aurora immigration detention center.

The program existed for more than 20 years, Goehring said, with bipartisan support from multiple administrations. Now, RMIAN attorneys have to educate people detained in the facility on a one-on-one basis.

Instead of informing between 200 to 300 immigrants every month, Goehring said RMIAN attorneys are only able to meet with about 40 to 60 people per month and provide them information that could prove useful as they navigate the complex immigration court system.

“These programs connected people who can’t afford private attorneys to pro bono counsel,” Goehring said. “Congress has repeatedly funded it and both immigration judges as well as numerous studies have said these programs are vitally important to ensure fairness and also for immigration court efficiences, because if people understand their rights, they’re much more likely to not ask for continuance after continuance.”

According to a , 37% of immigrants nationally secured legal representation in their removal cases, and only 14% of detained immigrants had attorneys. Detained immigrants who had legal representation were four times more likely to be released from detention, the report found.

Colorado has among the lowest rates in the nation of immigrants with legal representation, with about 85% of immigrants in the state representing themselves in court, according to a .

“It’s really difficult because RMIAN was taking the most clients for many years and being able to assist the most,” Chapin said. “Colorado does not hold up well in terms of most other states in terms of nonprofit legal representation for immigrants. Most other states have more nonprofit organizations helping people for free or low cost. RMIAN is suffering a significant blow, and that means we have even less representation.”

For a system that’s confusing to adults, Brock said, imagine the difficulty for a child trying to fight for their rights without any help.

RMIAN has more than 900 active client cases, Goehring said, with around 800 of those in the organization’s children’s program.

“What this administration would have children do is proceed through court alone and tell the court the most traumatic events that have ever happened to them in their lives without developing rapport with an attorney,” Brock said. “When you have attorneys specifically trained in immigration law working with children, they spend months allowing that child to feel safe enough to reveal they’re currently in a dangerous situation and need help getting out. We’ve had that happen on a number of occasions with a child finally asking us for help.”

The unaccompanied children are frequently escaping political or domestic violence, Brock said. They either seek safety in the U.S. foster care system or reunification with a family member in the country.

RMIAN no longer has the capacity to take on new kids’ cases. If a child manages to find RMIAN’s information while seeking resources, the organization has to turn them away and give them a list of other attorneys they might be able to contact.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Brock said.

Chapin, a University of Colorado Boulder associate dean and clinical professor of law, runs an immigration clinic out of CU’s law school.

RMIAN’s scaling back of services has impacted the clinic, too, she said, because the network often sends Chapin referrals for clients in need of help. If RMIAN can’t help as many immigrants, then the clinic receives fewer referrals, Chapin said.

RMIAN is looking for volunteer attorneys, interpreters, translators, medical doctors and mental health professionals to better serve their clients, along with that could assist the organization in continuing its work, Goehring said.

Even if a child can fill out an asylum application — which is a confusing document in English — the applications frequently get rejected for things like grammatical errors or missed questions.

“We’re sending children through this process without an adult to sit by their side,” Brock said. “That����ap all we’re asking… is to just have someone to be able to enable children to have an adult sitting by their side.”

Aurora patrol officers responded to a call at 7:24 a.m. Friday to assist Aurora Fire Rescue after a small fire was discovered in one of the hotel’s rooms.

Police said the suspect exited the hotel, located in the 14000 block of East Evans Avenue, as officers were responding and threatened fire personnel at the scene.

Officers located the suspect when they arrived and detained him. Once the suspect was in custody, firefighters entered the room and put out the fire.

Aurora Fire Rescue is leading an investigation into possible arson charges.

There were no injuries reported to hotel guests, firefighters or police officers, Aurora police said.

The suspect was taken to a local hospital for treatment of minor injuries sustained when he broke the hotel window.

Once the suspect is released from the hospital, he will be taken to the Aurora Municipal Detention Center.

Aurora police said they will release the suspect����ap name and charges once he is booked into jail.