Colorado residents push to protect homes, river from fracking

BUSINESSENERGY
Colorado residents push to
protect homes, river from
fracking
AAron Ontiveroz, Denver Post file
An oil drilling site stands between Northridge High School and a
subdivision in Greeley in 2014.
By BRUCE FINLEY | [email protected]
May 22, 2016 | UPDATED: 3 weeks ago
PARACHUTE — Colorado residents 䂁褸ghting new oil and gas
development — 53 wells and a fracking waste facility on the banks
of the Colorado River — have turned to an untested state rule in a
last-ditch push for protection.
The proposed Ursa Resources wells here, drilled within 1,000 feet of
Battlement Mesa homes, also would be near a public water system
and a state wildlife area.
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment of䂁褸cials
have raised concerns, warning that six storage tanks at the waste
injection facility “creates a signi䂁褸cant contamination risk to the
public water supply” and that a spill could hurt wetlands and the
river.
“A ban on fracking? Most of us aren’t a0er that. But we want
responsible siting,” said Battlement Mesa resident Bill Nelson,
whose retirement home sits 846 feet from the proposed drilling.
A second project would put 22 more oil and gas wells in Greeley,
where companies have drilled 600 wells within city limits. Greeley
residents said they see no option for stopping Extraction Oil and
Gas from drilling but that, under Colorado’s new “urban mitigation”
rule, extraction must minimize impact using higher sound walls,
quiet rigs and pipeline instead of trucks to move oil and gas out to
markets.
These cases have emerged as tests of the rule established under a
task force process that Gov. John Hickenlooper launched in 2014 as
a political compromise to keep anti-fracking measures off election
ballots.
Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission director Matt
Lepore now must decide how much “mitigation” is appropriate to
offset health and environmental harm.
“We are evaluating best practices (and) are cognizant” of CDPHE
concerns, Lepore said.
“We wrote a rule that we think gives us the opportunity to put
strong mitigation measures in place for large facilities in urban
mitigation areas,” he said. “We will use the rule as it was intended.”
Ursa vice president Don Simpson said “there are already injection
wells and pads closer along the river” and that waste from hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking, would be pumped deeper than 8,000 feet,
separated from the river and communities under rock.
“This will be a good project,” Simpson said.
Ursa plans mitigation including controls on noise and dust, and has
removed plans for the waste injection well from a drilling permit,
he said.
“If you don’t have an injection well site, you’re going to have
increased trucking,” Simpson said.
The residents in western Colorado and the northern Front Range
are pressing their cases amid rising tensions around oil and gas
drilling. The new development would bring Colorado’s statewide
well count to more than 53,683 active wells and 40,000 inactive
wells. Community groups are gathering signatures for ballot
initiatives aimed at establishing 2,500-foot buffers and boosting
local power to regulate oil and gas activity near people.
The residents said they see few options a0er the Colorado Supreme
Court ruling that state rules promoting oil and gas development
trump local rules to restrict or ban drilling near homes and schools.
State lawmakers directed the COGCC to promote ef䂁褸cient oil and
gas development while taking into account environmental and
human health impact.
“In Colorado, you can’t stop the drilling. This is a last-ditch effort,”
said Carl Erickson, chairman of the citizen group Weld Air and
Water. “We’d like Extraction to change the times they drill, use lownoise rigs, low lighting, and take the oil and gas out using pipelines.
If there are no tanks on site, then volatile organic compounds would
not be released.”
Colorado’s split estate legal system confers property rights in
underground minerals, setting up clashes between landowners and
companies. Surface landowners must grant reasonable access for
mineral owners to extract oil and gas.
The new urban mitigation rule applies where 22 homes are located
within 1,000 feet of a proposed oil and gas facility or 11 homes
within a semicircle around the facility.
Fracking crews watch over water tanks at an Anadarko Petroleum
Corporation site near Brighton, May 19, 2014. Oil and gas operations are
booming in northern Colorado.
RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post
In Greeley, Extraction has proposed 22 wells and 22 oil tanks that
would be located closer than 1,000 feet to at least 14 homes.
Company spokesman Brian Cain said they have put in 14-foot
earthen berms around the site and have worked with local
government of䂁褸cials to meet their requests.
“We are committed to working with our neighbors to minimize
impacts of developing the energy resources we all need,” Cain said.
“Triple Creek is a &agship energy development facility that utilizes
best available technology and practices to minimize impacts to the
local community.”
Matt Sura, an attorney challenging the industry projects in
Parachute and Greeley, said the COGCC should be using the new
rule “to address the handful of large facilities proposed within
neighborhoods to move these facilities as far as possible from
homes and, if they cannot be moved, require best available
technologies to mitigate the impacts to the greatest extent possible.
“Gov. Hickenlooper’s legacy on oil and gas issues is tied to the way
this rule is applied to neighborhoods,” Sura said. “If the
Hickenlooper administration fails to protect neighborhoods from
the worst impacts of oil and gas development, then the people
would be right to decide that the system is broken and needs to be
changed through the citizen initiatives.”
A worker helps monitor water pumping pressure and temperature at a
hydraulic fracturing and extraction site on March 29, 2013, outside Rifle
in western Colorado. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)
Brennan Linsley, Associated Press file
TAGS: DRILLING, FRACKING
Bruce Finley Bruce Finley covers environment-related news:
the land, air and water issues around Colorado and the West. A
longtime Post staþ reporter who has worked worldwide and a
lawyer, Bruce grew up in Colorado and its mountains and has
relished the chance to serve residents. Bruce graduated from
Stanford University, then earned masters' degrees in
international relations as a Fulbright scholar in Britain and in
journalism at Northwestern University. He went to law school
at the University of Denver, earning his JD in 2012 and joining
the Colorado Bar. He has won numerous journalism awards.
His international aþairs work led to on-site reporting in 40
countries including a stint in Africa, multiple assignments in
Iraq, and a䂁褸er the 9/11 attacks,
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