“I woke up this morning to hear about a horrifying political ad using images from the explosion and fire that destroyed my life and killed my husband Mark and my brother Joey,” Martinez said through a spokesperson Thursday.

The ad, from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, uses video from the explosion to criticize John Hickenlooper, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate. When Hickenlooper was governor, his office from Anadarko Petroleum, which owned the gas line that exploded. One donation came weeks after the explosion.

“No one went to jail, no fines under Hickenlooper,” a narrator says in . “John Hickenlooper took the money and let them get away with it.”

The ad began airing online, on Denver television stations, and on cable Thursday morning. The NRSC has spent millions of dollars, and plans to spend millions more, criticizing Hickenlooper before he faces Sen. Cory Gardner, a Yuma Republican, on Nov. 3.

Martinez said Thursday that she and her family have worked extremely hard to prevent tragedies like the one that killed her brother and husband. She stood next to Gov. Jared Polis last year when he signed an oil and gas regulations overhaul.

“Not a single day goes by that we are not heartbroken and struck with unimaginable grief,” Martinez said in the emailed statement. “This ad uses my story in a negative light and disgraces the memory of Mark and Joey. Please remove this ad from public view immediately.”

Joanna Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the NRSC, responded to the request: “The kind of grief Ms. Martinez and her family have survived is unimaginable, and their public fight to keep other Colorado families safe is incredibly important.

“John Hickenlooper said he was going to do the right thing to protect Colorado families right after the explosion, but then a private donation to his office from the gas company responsible changed that,” Rodriguez added.

Hickenlooper’s campaign said the ad is a gross mischaracterization of the public-private partnerships that he and other governors used to improve Colorado. Anadarko donated money years before the explosion for a children’s reading program and wildfire relief fund, Hickenlooper’s campaign noted. The campaign also pointed to several regulatory steps Hickenlooper took after the explosion.

“Erin Martinez is absolutely correct — Washington Republicans must take down their ‘horrifying’ and false attack and stop exploiting this tragedy and distorting the facts to score political points,” said Melissa Miller, a Hickenlooper spokeswoman.

A federal probe determined that the April 17, 2017, blast, which killed Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin as the men were replacing a hot water heater in the basement, was caused by natural gas leaking into the home from a severed underground pipe.

Erin Martinez, Mark Martinez’s wife and Irwin’s sister, spoke in front of the nine-member commission of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission via video conference Monday afternoon.

“We are coming up on the three-year anniversary of the explosion and to the ones who love Mark and Joey it feels like time has stood still,” said Martinez, who also was badly injured. “Nothing has gotten easier and if anything time has only intensified our pain. It worsens with each passing day, and it is hard to breathe. It is difficult to wrap your mind around the fact that a fine is the only recourse when such devastation and tragedy was the result.”

The fine was levied on Kerr McGee, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corp. Kerr McGee was a subsidiary of Anadarko Petroleum, which oversaw the pipeline at the time of the explosion and was purchased last year by Occidental.

Mark Mathews, an attorney representing Occidental, addressed the commission Monday: “Kerr McGee knows that nothing it says or does here today can bring back what was lost in this accident but it is our hope the extensive safety efforts it has undertaken over the past three years and the penalty now being paid will prevent a tragedy like this from happening again.”

The COGCC announced the proposed fine last month to punish Kerr McGee for the destruction of the Martinez home. The fine approved Monday is more than 10 times larger than the previous top penalty assessed by the agency against an oil and gas company — a $1.6 million Noble Energy fine in 2018.

COGCC Director Jeff Robbins last month explained that “the aggravating factor of death” boosted the fine amount. Erin Martinez chastised the industry in her statement to the commission.

“As an industry, it is critical that you are held responsible to properly maintain all and any equipment left in the ground,” she said. “The bottom line, had you done your job correctly, my husband, my children’s father, and my brother would be alive today. Had the flowline been properly abandoned from the beginning, then nothing that transpired after would have led to the explosion.”

Anadarko reached an undisclosed settlement agreement in 2018 with the families of victims and survivors.

The National Transportation Safety Board concluded last fall that the likely cause was a natural gas leak through a pipeline that had been cut during construction of the home two years earlier.

Fire investigators found a plastic pipe running from an Anadarko well near the house that had been cut when a tank battery was moved before the Oak Meadows subdivision was built five years ago. That pipeline leaked the gas from a point 6 feet from the southeast corner of the home.

Investigators said they found the gas valve at the Anadarko well in the “on” position.

The COGCC plans to use the majority of the penalty’s proceeds to “fund special projects relevant to flowline monitoring and air emissions and will help to increase public safety.” Some of those projects include a mobile air monitoring van, optical gas imaging cameras, satellite and remote sensing technology, remote methane leak detectors, and gas detection and metering equipment.

“These are in concert with ensuring that a travesty such as what happened will not happen in the future,” Robbins said Monday. “We think this is a good use of the penalty money.”

The fund will be known as the Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin Memorial Public Projects Fund.

It would be the largest enforcement penalty ever sought by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission — more than 10 times larger than the previous top penalty assessed by the agency.

The fine would be levied on Kerr McGee, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corp. Kerr McGee was a subsidiary of Anadarko Petroleum, which oversaw the pipeline at the time of the explosion. Anadarko was purchased last year by Occidental.

The COGCC’s nine-member commission will make a final decision on the penalty April 6, but Occidental spokeswoman Jennifer Brice said the company won’t contest it.

The blast nearly three years ago killed Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin and left Erin Martinez, Mark’s wife and Irwin’s sister, badly burned. Mark Martinez and Irwin were replacing a hot water heater in the Weld County home’s basement at the time.

COGCC Director Jeff Robbins said “the aggravating factor of death” boosted the fine amount.

“This is the first time this aggravating factor has been applied,” Robbins said. “However, due to the violations and loss of life, COGCC believes this is appropriate. We know that it won’t ever mean that the Martinez family will have their loved ones returned, but with today’s decision we’re using every tool possible to the COGCC to be able to avoid any more tragedies.”

Erin Martinez issued a statement on the announcement Thursday morning.

“Our lives are forever changed,” she said. “It is hard to comprehend that the only recourse is a penalty or a fine, how do you put a price on human life?

“However, legally that is all that can be done.”

Anadarko reached an undisclosed settlement agreement with the families of victims and survivors of the deadly explosion in 2018.

The company’s spokesperson said Thursday the company also has cooperated with local and federal agencies throughout the investigations.

“In that same cooperative spirit, we will continue to work with the state, listen to our stakeholders and collaborate with the communities around us,” Brice said.

Robbins said the majority of the penalty being sought will be used to “fund special projects relevant to flowline monitoring and air emissions and will help to increase public safety.”

Some of those projects include a mobile air monitoring van, optical gas imaging cameras, satellite and remote sensing technology, remote methane leak detectors, and gas detection and metering equipment.

The largest previous fine the COGCC had levied on an oil and gas company was a $1.6 million penalty assessed to Noble Energy in 2018.

The National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the explosion, the , determined the likely cause was a natural gas leak through a pipeline that had been cut during construction of the home two years earlier. The home was completely destroyed by the blast.

Fire investigators later found a 1-inch-diameter black plastic pipeline running from an Anadarko well near the house that had been cut when a tank battery was moved before the Oak Meadows subdivision was built. That pipeline leaked the gas from a point 6 feet from the southeast corner of the home at 6312 Twilight Ave. Investigators said they found the gas valve at the Anadarko well in the “on” position.

The report stated that a previous owner of the well, Patina Oil and Gas Corp., had recorded the flowlines — pipes that connect wells to surrounding equipment — as being properly abandoned in 1999. But state regulatory records, the report said, “showed this to be incorrect.”

Anadarko acquired the well in 2013 and two years later temporarily shut it in.

“However, the well was not plugged and no pipelines were abandoned,” according to the NTSB.

Last fall, Brice told The Denver Post that after the Firestone tragedy the company shut-in and inspected more than 3,000 vertical wells in and around Weld County, permanently disconnected and used cement to plug approximately 3,600 one-inch return lines, and provided more than 750 free methane detectors to area residents.

The rules approved by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission include new requirements for testing and ensuring the integrity of flow lines and making sure out-of-use lines are shut down properly. The regulations will help implement that prioritizes public health, safety and the environment when making decisions about oil and gas development.

The rules also are aimed at carrying out the goal of providing people more information about the location of the oil and gas lines they live, work and drive over. Former Gov. John Hickelooper and other state officials made that pledge in 2017 after a deadly home explosion in Firestone tied to a cut but uncapped flow line.

However, as The Denver Post has reported, the comprehensive public maps haven’t been realized. There are an estimated 17,300 miles of flow lines in Colorado. Julie Murphy, the COGCC chief of staff, told oil and gas commissioners that the agency has processed registrations covering about 7,000 miles of those lines.

Erin Martinez, whose husband, Mark Martinez, and brother, Joey Irwin, were killed in the Firestone explosion, has lobbied for stricter regulation of flow lines and for Senate Bill 19-181, the overhaul of state oil and gas rules. Martinez, who was badly injured in the accident, spoke in the COGCC hearing Thursday in Greeley, urging the commission to require companies to remove inactive flow lines rather than leave them underground and require independent verification that companies have followed all the rules.

In her family’s case, Martinez said, correct procedures weren’t followed. A  National Transportation Safety Board report released in October said state records show the lines weren’t properly taken out of service.

“It’s important for you to understand what was taken from me, what the results of inadequate regulations can lead to,” Martinez said.

The COGCC staff strove to strike a balance between making sure the public knows as much as possible about the vast network of oil and gas lines with addressing some of the industry’s concerns. More of the lines are being installed in populated areas as drilling has expanded along Colorado’s Front Range. The lines carry oil and gas from wells and run on or near a well site.

There are thousands more miles of lines that carry oil and natural gas to a collection point or facility. The Colorado Public Utilities Commission has been authorized by the federal government to  regulate those, which are called gathering lines. The PUC is preparing to update its regulations on the lines.

The federal government regulates transmission pipelines, which are larger and cover longer distances.

“I think the rules are a positive step forward. They’re in line with our mission from (SB)181. That’s to regulate in a manner that’s protective,” said Jeff Robbins, COGCC director. “For the first time, the flow lines rules will create a full map with actual locations of flow lines.”

About 55 entities were part of the rule-making process and the COGCC received hundreds of comments from across Colorado, Robbins said. The COGCC staff and commissioners also traveled across the state to get input, he added.

During hearings Wednesday and Thursday, the commissioners debated how much detail to require on publicly accessible maps in the face of the industry’s concerns about security, potential vandalism and landowners’ concerns about privacy.

The commission approved the staff’s suggestion to require that companies identify the location of flow lines within a range of 25 feet. Industry officials testified that mandating more specific data might require companies to dig several holes to identify the lines, possibly creating environmental damage and delaying submission of the information to the COGCC.

The state will have more precise information about the lines’ locations. Members of the public can see that information by checking with the COGCC or local governments.

Another new regulation deals with whether flow lines no longer in use should be dug up and removed or be allowed to stay in place once they are disconnected from the well and capped. The rules adopted allow, with consultation with the COGCC director, abandoned lines to remain underground under certain conditions and with verification from an independent expert that all the proper steps were taken.

The COGCC and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment will hold more hearings and consider more proposals to further implement SB181.

State regulators are updating rules to give people more information about thousands of miles of oil and gas lines under their feet in the first round of major changes mandated by a new law overhauling regulation of the industry.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is looking at proposals for better mapping and public disclosure of the locations of oil and gas flow lines. The proposals also address inspection of the lines and how to handle inactive or reactivated lines.

The lines, which carry oil and gas lines from wells and run on or near a well site, were a focus during debate of which directs the state to put public health, safety and environment first when regulating oil and gas development. The potential danger of flow lines loomed large because of a 2017 home explosion in Firestone that killed two people and severely burned a third.

Erin Martinez, whose husband, Mark Martinez, and brother, Joey Irwin, were killed, lobbied for SB 181. Investigators say the explosion, which injured Martinez, was caused by a build-up of methane in the home’s basement from a leaking flow line that had been cut but not capped.

The proposed rule changes build on updated regulations approved in 2018, Julie Murphy, the COGCC chief of staff, said during a hearing Wednesday in Greeley. The hearing will continue on Thursday.

After the Firestone explosion, former Gov. John Hickenlooper ordered companies to identify and test flow lines within 1,000 feet of occupied buildings. Hickenlooper said the location of the lines should be part of the public record.

However, as The Denver Post has reported, the comprehensive public maps haven’t been realized. In October, COGCC  asked companies to provide information on flow lines they knew about.

There are an estimated 17,300 miles of flow lines in Colorado. Murphy told oil and gas commissioners that the agency has processed registrations covering about 7,000 miles of those lines.

People can call a national 811 phone number before starting excavation for a house, swimming pool or other project to see if there are oil and gas pipelines or other utility lines.

While the COGCC regulates the flow lines, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission has authority over gathering lines, which carry oil and natural gas to a collection point or facility. The federal government regulates transmission pipelines, which cover longer distances.

One of the rules the COGCC is considering is whether companies should remove flow lines no longer being used. Industry representatives said Wednesday that they support allowing operators to leave abandoned lines in place under certain conditions and as long as the well is shut down and the lines are disconnected from the well and capped.

The excavation required to remove abandoned flow lines could create safety risks and environmental damage, industry officials said. Landowners frequently don’t want the surface  disturbed, they said.

Representatives from Front Range communities where drilling is occurring have said the COGCC director should consult with local governments when a company wants to leave an unused flow line in place rather than remove it. They also support more pinpoint mapping of flow lines than recommended by the COGCC staff and more detailed representation of the lines on public maps.

Officials said all the right things as Erin Martinez, a teacher, mourned the loss of her husband, Mark Martinez, and her brother, Joey Irwin. Gov. John Hickenlooper promised reform. Anadarko took responsibility and inspected lines, closing wells and other abandoned flowlines.

But now we learn, from a Denver Post investigation by reporter Bruce Finley, that the response has been wholly inadequate.

The problem is easy to articulate: the oil and gas industry has for decades, with little regulation and no transparency, put pipes in the ground to carry the oil and gas from the well. Those pipelines would today create an overwhelming map of underground veins. However, no such map exists, nor will it anytime soon.

As it turns out, the mapping efforts touched off by the Firestone explosion only deal with one small subset of the pipes put in the ground — the relatively smaller “flowlines” that the industry uses to move gas smaller distances around a well site, often to power other nearby equipment. And, the effort only required companies to report the start and endpoints of those flowlines, not the actual path the lines cut under the ground.

Not addressed in this half-hearted mapping effort are the larger “gathering lines” that transmit oil and gas from the well site to even bigger interstate transmission lines that take oil and gas to their next destination, typically a processing plant.

Finley reported that the interstate transmission lines are regulated at the federal level, but the “gathering lines” have fallen into an abyss.

Colorado must take the initiative and require the industry to disclose the location of all lines they have in the ground, those in operation and those that have been abandoned. And, we think it����ap reasonable to require removal of lines that are no longer in use as part of the final chapter of a well’s life.

This will not be an easy task. But the fact that the industry doesn’t know where the lines are speaks to the danger they pose to future landowners on and around these industrial sites.

Martinez told Finley she went out of her way to avoid flowlines when she selected her new home — a place where she and her two children could try to recover from the explosion that ripped their lives apart.

The family moved into their home only to one day observe Anadarko employees in a nearby field digging. The employees were looking for an old flowline. They dug closer and closer until the line was exposed near the family’s backyard fence.

Martinez is now speaking out about this dangerous reality for thousands of residents living in the heavily drilled Denver Basin, although the problem is a statewide one when you consider activity on private and federal land across the state.

She is brave to take on this battle that she never asked to wage.

She deserves our support and the support of lawmakers who will return in January to the General Assembly with a chance to implement meaningful changes. The public has a right to know where these lines are, whether they are active or inactive, and how often they are being checked for dangerous leaks and defects.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Jeff Robbins, director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, said Wednesday that his staff expects to issue a notice to Kerr McGee Oil and Gas, a subsidiary of Anadarko Petroleum Corp.

“We’re evaluating the actions and inactions that resulted in the Firestone incident. We are evaluating whether those actions or inactions resulted in the violation of our rules,” Robbins said.

The COGCC staff will identify which specific rules were allegedly violated and consider fines and other penalties. Robbins said the staff was waiting for a final report on the Firestone explosion from the National Transportation Safety Board, which issued a decision Tuesday.

The NTSB said the probable cause of the April 17, 2017, explosion that killed Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin was gas leaking from a 1-inch diameter line running from an Anadarko well near the house. The line had been severed but wasn’t capped when a gas tank battery was moved before the subdivision was built.

Erin Martinez, Mark’s wife and Joey’s sister, spoke out in support of , a new law aimed at overhauling how oil and gas are regulated. One of the law’s mandates is stricter regulation of flow lines, which run from the well to nearby equipment. A hearing is scheduled Nov. 20-22 on the proposed rules.

After the explosion, former Gov. John Hickenlooper ordered companies to identify and test their pipelines within 1,000 feet of homes. The regulations were updated in 2018.

However, The Denver Post reported Sunday that 30 months after the Firestone tragedy, not much progress has been made on the promised comprehensive public mapping of pipelines, due in part to the difficulty of locating them. Robbins said the proposed changes include far more specific mapping of the flow lines.

When the state issues a notice of alleged violation in the Firestone case, the company will appear before state oil and gas commissioners to accept or contest the notice. Occidental Petroleum, which acquired Anadarko earlier this year, didn’t return a request for comment Wednesday.

Just as the release of the long-awaited NTSB report is shaping work on the series of rules being written to carry out SB 181, a new health study has prompted state regulators to make some changes as they strive to fulfill the law’s objective of making public health, safety and the environment a priority. The study, released Oct. 17 by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, found that people within 2,000 feet of drilling operations might face a higher risk of short-term health impacts from emissions of benzene, a known cancer-causing chemical, and other substances in worst-case scenarios.

As a result, the COGCC said it will more closely scrutinize permit applications for wells within 2,000 feet of homes and other buildings. Criteria currently being used until new health and safety regulations are approved call for a harder look if the proposed site is within 1,500 feet of occupied buildings.

In addition, the COGCC will begin monitoring emissions at multiple well sites during different phases of pre-production — hydraulic fracturing, drilling and “flowback,” when the liquids injected during fracking return to the surface.

Weld County Commissioner Barbara Kirkmeyer, who has been a vocal critic of SB 181, said during the COGCC’s monthly meeting Tuesday that the county is offering to help state agencies with on-the-ground air-quality monitoring to  gather more data about potential health effects.

Weld County, with about 21,000 active wells, is Colorado’s largest oil and gas producer.

The findings of the health study, which began in 2017, have increased calls to halt any new drilling permits until all the regulations are updated, a process expected to stretch into next summer.

Wes Wilson with Be The Change, a group advocating for stronger regulations, said that discussion of the study’s findings is playing down the health impacts of oil and gas sites on human health. The study shows there are still effects beyond 2,000 feet, he said.

“This study is showing that you have effects, such as hematological, neurological and respiratory effects, the very same effects that the population is reporting to you,” said Wilson, who said the sites should be appropriately monitored around the clock. “We need to know the concentrations that are coming off these sites.”

In contrast, which advocates for business and has fought more stringent air-pollution standards along the Front Range, has launched a series of radio and digital ads attacking the study as “junk science” and politically motivated. The ads accuse Gov. Jared Polis of using the study to target oil and gas workers even though the study began during his predecessor’s administration.

“This study was commissioned by the Hickenlooper administration, was peer-reviewed and is an important data point. The Governor believes there needs to be scientifically rigorous testing to inform policy and rulemaking,” Conor Cahill, Polis’ spokesman, said in an email.

The also blames the government of Firestone for allowing development on former oil and gas fields without the full knowledge of where pipelines remained buried underground.

“Contributing to the accident was the approval by local authorities to allow occupied structures to be built on land adjacent to or previously part of oil and gas production fields without complete documentation from the operator, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, on the location and status of its gathering system pipelines,” the investigators wrote.

The April 17, 2017, blast killed Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin and left Erin Martinez, Mark’s wife and Irwin’s sister, badly burned. Mark Martinez and Irwin were replacing a hot water heater in the Weld County home’s basement at the time.

Fire investigators later found a 1-inch diameter black plastic pipeline running from an Anadarko well near the house that had been cut when a tank battery was moved before the Oak Meadows subdivision was built. That pipeline leaked the gas from a point 6 feet from the southeast corner of the home at 6312 Twilight Ave. Investigators said they found the gas valve at the Anadarko well in the “on” position.

The report states that a previous owner of the well, Patina Oil and Gas Corp., had recorded the flowlines — pipes that connect wells to surrounding equipment — as being properly abandoned in 1999. But state regulatory records, the report said, “showed this to be incorrect.”

Anadarko acquired the well in 2013 and two years later temporarily shut it in. “However, the well was not plugged and no pipelines were abandoned,” according to the NTSB.

In the wake of the explosion, Colorado leaders promised they would do all they could to prevent a similar tragedy, including pledging a comprehensive public map of pipelines in the state. Thirty months later, as The Denver Post reported Sunday, that still hasn’t happened.

The NTSB completed its report Oct. 18. It did not include any recommendations or directives for homebuilders, local government officials or oil and gas operators relating to the tragedy.

“Know what you’re building on”

On Tuesday, Erin Martinez harshly criticized the NTSB’s report for “its brevity and lack of any recommendations whatsoever to protect public safety and prevent further tragedy.”

“After all this time, it����ap shocking to me that the NTSB gives neither me nor the public anything that we didn’t know prior to the investigation,” she wrote in a statement. “Whoever authored this document could have released it a short time after my home exploded. It����ap difficult to understand why it took two-and-a-half years to write seven pages that provide no concrete recommendations to prevent another tragedy.”

Martinez said she would turn her attention to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s rewriting of its rules on energy extraction in the state. And she said she would “continue to serve the memory of both Mark and Joey in creating a safer Colorado and ensure that no other family will have to live through what my family experienced.”

Kevin Bommer, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, said cities and towns can only make decisions on the prospective location of new homes based on information they have or that which is available to them. Given that a previous oil and gas company had listed the flowlines near the Martinez home as properly abandoned, Firestone officials didn’t have reason to suspect there might be a problem.

“I don’t think the municipality could compel anything out of the operator that wasn’t available from the COGCC,” he said. “Information is key here — there wasn’t complete documentation.”

A.J. Krieger, Firestone’s town manager, said late Tuesday that the fast-growing town 30 miles north of Denver is in the middle of updating its land-use development code, “which will include enhanced requirements for regulating oil and gas activity.”

“These more stringent regulations will not just focus on siting and pre-development activities, but also on the post-production life cycle and inspections,” he said.

Krieger said Firestone, which is located in the southwest corner of Weld County, has recently “moved toward requiring removal of abandoned subgrade infrastructure, including the types of lines cited in the NTSB report.”

Martinez, in an interview with The Post on Tuesday, thinks local governments should be more proactive in assuring the safety of a site before permitting homes to be built there.

“Before you move forward with development plans, you should know what you’re building on,” she said. “We can’t hide behind the fact that ‘we were told this.’ ”

That means towns should hire inspectors who can ascertain the underground safety of a prospective neighborhood development before allowing the earthmovers to come in, she said. And she questioned why the state setback for new wells from occupied buildings that oil and gas companies must comply with don’t apply to developers who build near existing wells.

She noted that her home was built less than 200 feet from the well that leaked gas into her basement — yet state rules prohibit energy companies from drilling new wells within 500 feet of an existing home.

“It should be the same setback applied to all of it,” Martinez said.

Mapping flowlines

A spokeswoman for Occidental Petroleum Corp., which acquired Anadarko in August, said the company takes the NTSB’s findings “very seriously.”

“We are mindful of the events of April 17, 2017, every day, and our thoughts continue to be with the families, friends and communities affected by this tragedy,” said spokeswoman Jennifer Brice. “… as part of our commitment to safety, we continually review our processes and procedures.”

After the explosion, Brice said Anadarko shut-in and inspected more than 3,000 vertical wells in and around Weld County, permanently disconnected and used cement to plug approximately 3,600 one-inch return lines, and provided more than 750 free methane detectors to area residents.

Colorado officials have set a deadline of Thursday for oil and gas operators to provide start-point and end-point coordinates — but not full maps — for flowlines. The COGCC has said flowlines span at least 6,522 miles in the state, based on data submitted before Thursday’s deadline.

State officials estimated that a broad unregulated class of pipelines called “gathering lines” — which collect oil and gas from initial storage sites and carry it toward interstate transmission lines — spans tens of thousands of miles. They couldn’t be more precise because they lack location information from oil and gas companies.

On Tuesday, COGCC spokeswoman Megan Castle said as part of the state’s flowline rulemakings, it is proposing the creation of a map of flowlines for the public while at the same time addressing public safety concerns. The agency also will place emphasis on removing old flowlines rather than presuming they are safely abandoned in place, she said.

FIRESTONE — Thirty months after the explosion that blew up their home and killed her husband and brother, Erin Martinez and her shaken children are uprooting a second time, still trying to settle away from underground oil and gas pipelines.

Martinez had done about all a Colorado resident can do, in buying their first replacement home, to find out whether fossil-fuel lines remained in the ground — checking with the home seller, the builder, town planners and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. She received assurances the closest old well was a mile away.

But a few months later, she and the kids saw white Anadarko Petroleum trucks in an adjacent field. That’s the same company that owned the well hooked to an uncapped 1-inch pipeline that leaked methane into their old home, leading to the April 17, 2017, blast that killed Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin, and left her badly burned.

Anadarko crews dug closer and closer, eventually exposing an abandoned oil well buried at their fenceline, shattering her children’s trust.

“Very upsetting,” Martinez said in a recent interview, the day before she underwent her 27th surgery. “It is insane. We have all these lines running through the ground that are carrying these dangerous energy things. And we don’t even know where they all are.”

Colorado leaders promised in 2017 that they’d do all they could to make sure such a tragedy never happens again. They pledged comprehensive public pipeline maps and better inspections to detect leaks.

But that still hasn’t been done — due to the difficulty of locating lines and a failure of government agencies to take charge. Only now, ahead of a Halloween deadline, are state officials asking companies to provide partial data on a subset of existing lines.

A widening underground web of pipelines in Colorado and across the nation spans millions of miles and remains partially unmapped, unregulated and uninspected. These pipelines carry fossil fuels out of sight and largely out of mind, snaking beneath homes and buildings to enable the consumption of oil and gas.

Federal government and industry officials contend pipelines are less risky and harmful than the alternatives of moving oil and gas in tanker trucks on public roads or by train.

“Safety is the industry’s top priority,” said Lynn Granger, director of the Colorado Petroleum Council, run by the American Petroleum Institute.

Yet pipelines still fail, sometimes causing catastrophic harm, and oil and gas companies are resisting stricter controls. Problems along the larger pipelines in Colorado for which the federal government keeps records are reported at least once a month, an investigation by The Denver Post found. Colorado health officials say air pollution leaking from pipelines worsens climate warming. And state data shows pipelines as a source of toxic spills.

The uncertainty about where lines are located has complicated efforts to create rules, let alone ensure inspections. Colorado officials estimated that a broad unregulated class of pipelines called “gathering lines” in the state spans tens of thousands of miles, but couldn’t give a more precise number because they lack location information from companies, which still aren’t required to provide it.

State officials have asked companies only to give start-point and end-point coordinates for the smaller class of pipelines that industry officials and state regulators call “flowlines.” These connect wells to surrounding equipment. (The data that companies have submitted, ahead of Thursday’s deadline, indicates flowlines span at least 6,522 miles, an oil and gas commission spokeswoman said.)

Among the Post’s other findings:

— Along the bigger interstate lines in Colorado, federal data shows 35 “accidents” and “incidents” since early 2017. Those resulted from a variety of problems including leaky valves, ruptured seals and a farmer plowing too close. State records on oil and gas facilities along pipelines reveal multiple fires and explosions since April 2017. And pipeline companies in Colorado haven’t been required to report all incidents.

— Nationwide, 438,000 miles of the 2.9 million miles of underground oil and gas pipelines are not regulated, according to calculations by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

— The number of serious pipeline incidents reported in the U.S. averages 32 a year, causing an average of 12 deaths and 66 injuries, a 2019 Congressional Research Service study found. As pipelines deteriorate, the number of serious incidents increased to 40 in 2018.

— For the pipelines that federal authorities oversee, 20 inspectors are tasked with covering Colorado and 11 other western states. And when the inspectors try to shut down pipelines where they suspect corrosion, they say they face resistance.

— Deficient pipelines cause roughly 10% of the toxic spills that contaminate Colorado soil, water and air, the state’s engineering integrity supervisor Mark Schlagenhauf told The Post.

Colorado’s lag in dealing with pipeline safety and environmental harm has compelled blast survivor Martinez — forced by her injuries to retire from her work as a high school chemistry teacher — to take on this matter as a family mission. Martinez now is advocating for comprehensive public mapping of all underground lines, frequent inspections including pressure tests before restarting abandoned lines, and a rule that companies must remove their old wells and lines.

“I don’t see why this industry can leave their trash in the ground. Flowlines that are abandoned need to be removed,” she said. “It is your right to know what is under your house. And what is under the school where you are sending your kids?”

American roulette

The risks for Americans are rising, especially along Colorado’s Front Range and other areas where communities are expanding onto once-rural land, said Carl Weimer, director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit watchdog organization formed as part of a criminal plea deal after a who were playing in a park and wiped out a two-mile stretch of Whatcom Creek.

“We’re playing roulette as a nation right now,” Weimer said. “We’re relying on an industry that is trying to make a fast buck to do the right things. It works for some operators. For others, it does not.”

Fossil-fuel pipeline problems have emerged as particularly vexing along the Front Range because population growth and a development boom are bringing tens of thousands more people to land where energy companies simultaneously are expanding their extraction of oil and gas.

The industry operates more than 53,000 oil and gas wells statewide. Underground pipelines also are associated with an estimated 40,000 inactive, abandoned and “temporarily abandoned” wells. More than 120,000 pipeline segments are in the ground within 1,000 feet of homes, according to information companies submitted to state authorities following the Firestone explosion.

Yet Colorado does not require companies that own pipelines to provide public maps. And Colorado does not enforce pipeline construction standards or require regular high-pressure tests of underground lines, relying on companies to ensure safety. State agencies generally don’t send inspectors to monitor corrosion, look for leaks and measure emissions.

Elsewhere, Texas officials have been considering regulation of the gathering lines that collect fossil fuels from initial storage near oilfields and carry them toward larger interstate transmission lines. They’ve been spurred by an , killing a 3-year-old girl and burning her parents. Ohio officials have expanded their regulatory authority over gathering lines.

A University of Colorado School of Public Health analysis of state records found that companies reported 116 fires and explosions at oil and gas facilities between 2006 and 2015. However, fires, explosions, leaks and other problems may happen more frequently, researchers concluded, because Colorado has a relatively lenient self-reporting system, unlike states such as Utah that mandate reporting of every fire and explosion.

Colorado requires self-reporting to the director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission only of fires, explosions and detonations that result in harm to a member of the general public that requires medical treatment and/or caused damage to equipment or a well site that companies deem significant.

Colorado records show that, in the eight months after the Firestone explosion, at least a dozen explosions and fires occurred at oil and gas industry facilities including pipelines. Two of those explosions killed workers.

Expansion of underground network

The oil and gas industry is preparing to construct many more underground pipelines — despite growing demands, buttressed by a scientific consensus, for a faster shift off fossil fuels in order to save humans and other species from potentially catastrophic warming.

U.S. industry leaders are projecting that current production of about 14 million barrels of oil per day will increase to nearly 20 million barrels per day by 2035, according to a 2018 study by the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, an industry organization that lobbies for pipelines. “This growing supply results in the need for new pipeline transport and oil handling capability,” the study’s authors wrote.

Fossil-fuel companies will spend an average of $14.7 billion a year until 2035 installing new pipelines, the study found. Across the United States and Canada, companies will construct 7,720 miles of gathering lines each year, adding nearly 140,000 miles by 2035. And the study found companies will construct another 41,000 miles of oil and natural gas transmission pipelines.

Roughly 64% of the new gathering lines will carry gas, with the remainder moving oil, it found. Significant oil still is stored in tanks near wellheads and transported by truck. Gathering lines generally are 8 inches in diameter, with some as large as 30 inches. Modern multi-well industrial pads of the sort companies are installing along the Front Range extract greater volumes of oil, requiring larger underground lines near people.

Colorado officials are wrestling with how best to handle the widening underground web of oil and gas pipelines.

“The use of pipelines is an important, positive benefit, overall, for the state,” Jeff Robbins, director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, said in a recent interview. “What is important is that we know where the pipelines are.”

But commission officials preparing for another round of “rulemaking” in late November are looking only at some of the underground pipelines, the flowlines that run near well pads connecting production facilities to nearby processing equipment and storage tanks.

Two years ago, after the Firestone explosion, former Gov. John Hickenlooper ordered companies to identify and test their pipelines within 1,000 feet of homes. Companies reported conducting integrity tests on 120,815 pipeline segments and finding 428 that failed — which then were repaired.

The state’s oil and gas commission regulators in 2018 updated flowline rules. Companies now must inform state officials where new flowlines are installed. Commissioners set the Thursday deadline for companies to provide information on old flowlines they know about. Major leaks must be reported within 24 hours. And if companies discover more old flowlines in the future, they’re supposed to notify state regulators using forms available on a state website.

Those updated rules adopted under Gov. Hickenlooper “certainly upped the ante in terms of our regulation of flowlines,” said Robbins, who previously represented local governments and was appointed by Gov. Jared Polis, who has urged greater caution in conducting oil and gas industry operations near people.

Robbins has directed his staff to consider whether start-point and end-point data for tracking underground pipelines is sufficient. Colorado could push for maps that show “the actual location of flowlines,” he said.

Proposed new rules would require mapping of flowlines and public access to those maps via a state government website. These rules also would set standards for preventing corrosion and making repairs, require state review of the frequency of pipeline integrity tests and how best to detect leaks, and better define how companies respond to problems.

In April, Colorado lawmakers passed legislation — Senate Bill 19-181 — ordering the oil and gas commission to prioritize public safety and protection of the environment before allowing oil and gas extraction in the state. That law instructs the oil and gas commission to “review and amend” rules on flowlines and inactive, temporarily abandoned and shut-down wells “to the extent necessary to ensure that the rules protect and minimize adverse impacts to public health, safety and welfare, and the environment.”

And lawmakers said companies must disclose to the public information on flowlines and inspect inactive flowlines before companies can re-activate them for moving oil and gas.

But the tens of thousands of miles of unregulated gathering lines aren’t addressed. Julie Murphy, the COGCC’s chief of staff, recently told commissioners they lack legal authority from lawmakers to regulate pipelines other than flowlines related to production.

“A lot of issues deserve scrutiny,” Robbins said. “We’re at the first stage of our rulemaking.”

Industry resists regulation

The state push for better control over flowlines, let alone gathering lines, faces industry objections. Oil and gas companies favor less regulation, not more. And lobbyists are raising concerns about proposals for stricter pipeline construction standards, inspections, mapping and removal of pipelines and other equipment after fossil-fuel extraction is finished.

Industry lobbyists have pressed for reliance on an existing safety system that requires residents, homebuilders and others who plan to dig — from house site excavation to tree-planting to installing a swimming pool — to call a national 811 phone number. Calls are routed to dispatchers who ask about planned projects, then notify oil and gas pipeline operators along with electric, phone, gas and other utilities that run underground lines. Companies then, if necessary, can send crews to proposed digging sites and locate possible underground lines.

Making maps available to the public, including property owners and homebuilders, could cause people to skip making 811 calls, said Granger of the Colorado Petroleum Council. “We just want to make sure folks aren’t using that in lieu of the 811 number.”

Vandalism and terrorism could become problems, too, she said, if pipeline locations are made public.

And a rule requiring removal of inactive pipelines could be costly, compelling companies to tear into private land against the wishes of owners and to dig up roads, she said.

“We’re still evaluating,” Granger said. “We want to make sure what we are discussing is reasonable and attainable — something we are able to comply with.”

Fossil-fuel companies also are raising concerns about proposals to require more high-pressure inspections of underground lines.

“Regular high-pressure testing that ensures safety is important, but it shouldn’t be so frequent that tests overly stress a piping system,” Colorado Oil and Gas Association President Dan Haley said in an email. “Common over-pressurization can prematurely fatigue pipes, leading to cracks and leaks that otherwise would not occur.”

Pipeline company officials relied on lobbyists rather than openly discuss safety and environmental issues, and industry plans for expansion.

Major operator DCP Midstream did not respond to queries from The Post. DCP Midstream representatives in the past have told state officials the company uses 3,700 miles of gathering lines in Colorado. Officials at Enterprise Products, which runs the 447-mile Colorado Front Range Pipeline, the 8,035-mile Mid-American Pipeline and a 190-mile gathering system in western Colorado, declined comment. Representatives of Western Gas Resources and Colorado Interstate Gas, companies that run thousands of miles of pipelines, also did not respond to requests for comment.

Gathering lines lost in limbo

This past month, state discussions bogged in a jurisdictional morass over who should take responsibility for the tens of thousands of miles of unregulated pipelines — issues that officials stalled on last year, too.

Federal pipelines and hazardous materials authorities have claimed jurisdiction for large interstate lines carrying oil and gas toward refineries. State oil and gas commissioners still look only at the flowlines that connect wells to nearby equipment and tanks. Nobody has stepped up to regulate the gathering lines that span 438,000 miles nationwide.

Federal officials acknowledged criticism for being “reactive” and now are trying to be “proactive,” federal pipeline safety liaison Tom Finch said.

New rules passed this month for oversight of large lines, including some rural lines, won’t lead to the regulation of most gathering lines, Finch said. And the feds face resistance when enforcing rules, he said. For example, inspectors encounter “pushback” when they try to shut down aging pipelines for maintenance where corrosion is suspected, Finch recently told Colorado officials.

“A lot of times there are some pipelines we need to shut down, and we get pressure the other way: ‘We need that pipeline,’ ” he said.

Finch referred to a fatal explosion in 2010 caused by a deficient pipeline in California that officials previously had thought was deteriorating. That 30-inch gas pipeline in the San Francisco suburb of San Bruno ruptured and exploded, .

Elsewhere, a broken 28-year-old, 2-inch diameter oil line near Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2015 . A ruptured Enbridge Energy pipeline carrying heavy crude oil from Canada’s oil sands in 2010 , which flows into the Kalamazoo River — one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history.

While federal pipeline officials have the power to enforce standards, the limitations of having 20 inspectors to cover regulated lines across 12 western states means inspections often don’t happen. “We get pretty spaced out,” Finch said. “We could always use more help to get more inspections.”

The federal government has certified the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to help conduct inspections of federally regulated pipelines. But the PUC relies on six inspectors who already are tasked with oversight of other utility lines statewide.

PUC pipeline safety program manager Joe Molloy recently addressed state oil and gas commissioners, raising concerns about the “somewhat discombobulated oversight of pipeline safety.”

Federal transportation officials “make it clear that (they have) jurisdiction over pipelines. In reality, they chose not to regulate certain things,” Molloy told the commissioners.

But the federal jurisdiction does not prevent states from passing and enforcing controls that are stricter than federal construction and testing standards, he said. And the PUC, as a certified agency, has the authority to set rules for companies operating in the state and conduct inspections to enforce the rules.

“Does the PUC have any plans to adopt those types of rules?” state oil and gas commissioner Erin Overturf asked.

“Not at this time,” Molloy said.

Overturf later summarized: “There are currently no standards governing the integrity of gathering lines,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Benefits and rising concerns

Few in Colorado dispute the benefits of pipelines compared with tanker trucks to move fossil fuels, though many favor a faster shift to clean energy. Neighborhood representatives fighting oil and gas industry proposals to drill and conduct hydraulic fracturing near people increasingly negotiate for pipelines.

“Pipelines are better than trucking all our oil and gas out, better than trucking water in and your flow-back” — waste that rises to the Earth’s surface after fracking — “out. There’s a lot of reasons you need your flowlines. And obviously pipelines are an important part of the infrastructure,” Colorado House Majority Leader KC Becker, D-Boulder, said. “But pipelines are going into new places, the volume is so much higher, and the pipelines go deeper. There could be a significant underground impact. And it could mean an impact on neighborhoods and communities.”

Some local governments are demanding maps before allowing the installation of pipelines on their turf. Northwest of Denver in Erie, town Trustee Christiaan van Woudenberg, who also helps lead Erie Rising activists, is calling for stricter state-level regulation and, ultimately, “a full migration to renewables” so that underground oil and gas lines aren’t necessary.

“There’s a risk of another Firestone,” said van Woudenberg, who lives with his daughters 50 feet south of a major transmission line and near flowlines from two industrial pads just north of his neighborhood. He’s spent $30,000 to install solar panels on his roof to meet energy needs.

“I’m worried for myself and my family and the residents of this community around ever-growing and aging oil and gas infrastructure,” he said.

And Colorado’s failure to provide public maps and ensure inspections 30 months after the Firestone explosion is fueling frustrations and anger among residents.

At a recent state oil and gas commission field hearing in Thornton, police stood by. State natural resources director Dan Gibbs, opening the hearing, prohibited disruptive conduct and asked residents who arrived with signs to take them out, an effort to ensure orderly discussion conducive to hearing from all sides.

“You have no idea where the pipelines and flowlines are located. You have no freakin’ clue where they are,” Colorado Rising board member Lauren Petrie shot back at the meeting. “How can we manage risk, and say something is safe, if we don’t even know where it is? You’re operating on wild guesses and no information. Pause all the permits until you can get a handle on what is happening with pipelines.”

Be the Change leader Phil Doe warned commissioners many of the nation’s underground oil and gas pipelines were installed before 1970, meaning ruptures may become more common. All the more reason, Doe said, to embrace their mandate from state legislators to prioritize the protection of public health and the environment.

“We’ve got a time bomb under our feet,” Doe said. “You have an obligation to regulate these.”

Colorado health officials’ role

Beyond the oil and gas commission, officials at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment are starting to target underground pipelines.

Under Polis, the department has embarked on a more aggressive approach to reducing air pollution. Air in nine Front Range counties for more than a decade has violated federal health standards. And air pollution control officials have identified fossil-fuel industry facilities, including pipelines, as significant sources of emissions of the heat-trapping methane and carbon dioxide that accelerate climate warming.

Health officials have proposed tighter controls on oil and gas companies that include requirements to measure and minimize emissions seeping up from underground pipelines — using infrared, aerial and other devices.

Cracking down on air pollution from pipelines would be a big new mission for air quality enforcers, division director Garry Kaufman said. But preventing leaks could help the state attain federal air quality standards, he said. Any effort to oversee pipeline pollution would require knowing where underground lines are located.

State health director Jill Hunsaker-Ryan listened to residents expressing concerns at the recent  oil and gas commission field hearing. Among the notes she jotted: “What could CDPHE do?”

Neither the health department nor the commission has been certified by federal authorities for inspection of underground pipelines. Only the PUC, which lacks manpower, has that certified capability.

“The underpinnings of public health start with assessment,” Hunsaker-Ryan said in an interview. “We need that information. How are we better able to get that data? This is something we’ve got to get a handle on.”

Survivor on a mission

The hunt for a house away from pipelines has proved difficult for Erin Martinez, the blast survivor who lives in Weld County, which has become one of the nation’s biggest oilfields.

When she started looking for the first house to replace the one that blew up, Martinez said, her priority was “to give the kids a sense of stability.” She has worried especially about her son Nathan, now 14, who survived the explosion by leaping barefoot out his second-floor bedroom window, landing in debris and looking back as flames devoured the house where he knew his mother, father and uncle were inside.

He has a tendency to focus intensely on his fears, she said. So she was motivated, once they found the replacement house in Firestone that they all liked, to do all she could to make sure no pipelines ran near it.

In quizzing authorities, she learned there was an old well a mile from the new house. That seemed far enough way, so she and the kids moved into the home in October 2017. But several months later, they saw the Anadarko crews digging nearby. They watched as the men searched.

The builder was planning a second phase of housing development. “They weren’t finding anything” at first, Martinez said. Then she got a call from her lawyer. “‘They just wanted to let you know that they would be moving a little closer.’ ”

When the company crews finally found the old well, it was under the fenceline at the edge of her yard. “I couldn’t believe it. It was crazy.” She pressed for details. “They said it was a plugged and abandoned well and that all lines had been disconnected.”

But that assurance, given what happened before, “was not something I’m going to believe.”

Anadarko officials declined to discuss the situation. Last summer, Occidental Petroleum acquired Anadarko. An Occidental spokeswoman, Jennifer Brice, issued a statement: “Anadarko representatives were not involved in conversations regarding the purchase of the new home. The company took responsibility to locate the abandoned well on the neighboring property and provide detailed information about its location to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.”

Most troubling for Martinez was the loss of her son’s trust, and she said they struggled with his fears while finding the new house they were moving into this month.

“He just kept telling me, ‘It is going to happen again, mom! It is going to happen again!’ He put his trust in me, that I was going to find a house that was free of all oil and gas industry lines. And, basically, I lost his trust.”

This ordeal has compelled her push “to make sure nobody ever has to go through what my family is going through again. This has been an absolute nightmare for my family.”

To help her navigate the state’s bureaucratic processes, Martinez has hired an attorney. She’s making responsible oversight of underground oil and gas pipelines, promised more than two years ago, a personal mission that could “lend closure” so her children can heal.

“I don’t think we’ll ever have that peace or assurance,” she said. “But I’m hoping that, in the end, we can find a way to make it safer for everyone else.”

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission held a public meeting on the proposals it’s exploring to update rules on flow lines connected to oil and gas wells. Wider public disclosure of the location of flow lines and increased monitoring are required by a new law overhauling oil and gas regulations.

Some of the speakers urged the COGCC staff to broaden the scope to include “gathering” lines. Flow lines typically are connected to a wellhead and carry fluids or gas to other parts of the network. Gathering lines, which are bigger, are the next segment of the gathering system, which includes processing equipment.

“You’ve got this thing so narrowed down. Major changes were made in this law. Get after it,” said Phil Doe with Be The Change Colorado, an environmental group that supports stronger oil and gas regulations.

Commission staffers said there are questions of jurisdiction because the Colorado Public Utilities Commission and the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration have roles in overseeing gathering lines.

The staff will talk to lawyers about whether the COGCC can regulate gathering lines, said Julie Murphy, COGCC chief of staff.

The rules governing flow lines are just one set of proposals that state regulators are developing to implement , signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis in April. Sponsors said the law will result in the most sweeping changes to Colorado’s oil and gas regulations in decades.

It’s expected to take several months for the COGCC and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to write and approve new rules to implement SB181. Besides making public health and safety a priority, the new law also makes clear that cities and counties can approve oil and gas regulations that are stronger than the state’s.

Business and oil and gas industry representatives spoke in support of ensuring any changes are consistent and reasonable. Industry officials continue to air concerns about what they say is uncertainty created by the rewriting of regulations and the economic fallout as companies pull back on new projects in Colorado.

A high-profile supporter of strengthening protections for the public was Erin Martinez, whose husband, Mark Martinez, and brother, Joey Irwin, were killed in a house explosion in Firestone in April 2017. Investigators said the cause was a build-up of methane leaking into the house from an uncapped, cut flow line that was still attached to a well. The well had been turned off and later was turned back on.

Bob Randall, speaking for Martinez on Thursday, urged regulators to look at requiring the removal of inactive flow lines and strengthening rules for wells that have been temporarily abandoned, are inactive or have been shut down.

“We all know what can happen if these flow lines are not removed,” Randall said.

More meetings on new regulations for flow lines are planned for October and November with a public hearing on proposed rules planned for Nov. 20-21.

The COGCC has created for the public to submit comments on proposed rules as regulators continue their work. The staff will review all comments submitted and take them into consideration while developing proposals, the COGCC said.

“Our goal is to engage the public and all stakeholders, and to allow them the opportunity to provide their voice in the rulemaking process,” COGCC Director Jeff Robbins said in a statement.

To learn more about the rulemaking schedule and comment on the online portals, visit the COGCC website: .