Priscilla Stuckey: A revolutionary law—for people and nature

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April 23, 2012

This is a guest post by Priscilla Stuckey, a finalist in the TckTckTck Rio Blogger Prize competition. If you would like to see this entrant as the official TckTckTck blogger at Rio+20 this June, please help spread the word by sharing this post on your social networks.

My friend in the next county lives near a gas well. It’s a fracking well, where millions of gallons of toxic liquid are pumped a mile underground under high pressure to crack shale and extract methane. Her county holds 18,000 oil and gas wells, and her town of Erie, Colorado, once a peaceful village with panoramic views of the Rocky Mountains, now has more methane in its air than Houston, Texas, with its oil industry.

My friend’s son asked her recently, “Why are they doing this to us?”

What can she say? That corporations don’t care they are poisoning the air and water and causingearthquakes? That local governments won’t protect their citizens?

Thomas Linzey is an attorney who thinks the problem goes far deeper:

Local people don’t have the power to say no

Current law elevates the rights of corporations over those of local people. “Under our present system,” hesays, “it is perfectly legal for a small number of people within a corporation to override whole communities.”

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Rep. Jared Polis hears from Boulder County constituents concerned about fracking

By John Fryar Longmont Times-Call 

LONGMONT -- Several eastern Boulder County residents upset by the oil and gas wells being drilled hundreds of feet away from their doorsteps got a sympathetic ear from U.S. Rep. Jared Polis on Wednesday afternoon.

Local, state and federal levels of government should all have roles in protecting people from the potential environmental and health risks of drilling, Boulder Democrat Polis said during a visit to a 2.7-acre farmstead southeast of Longmont, on East Boulder County Line Road.

"This was a dream for my family," said Rod Brueske, who bought that onetime Boulder County open space property for $195,000 and took possession of it last May.

Brueske said that with existing wells in his neighborhood, and new wells being drilled across the road, in Weld County -- along with those that Brueske fears may proliferate on the farmland now surrounding his property -- that dream is threatening to turn into a nightmare.

He said that besides having "a long-term health concern for my family" about the air and water hazards from wells, "our property values have been canned."

If that's not enough, Brueske said, he charged that the fleets of heavy trucks conveying fluids and equipment used in hydraulic fracturing -- injecting those fluids to free up deep underground oil and gas deposits -- are destroying East County Line Road and other rural roads in the area.

Brueske and several of his neighbors complained to the congressman that they'd gotten little notice, if any, before drilling began.

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Boulder County commissioners to review impacts of potential increase in oil, gas drilling

Longmont Times-Call
By John Fryar
2/25/2012

BOULDER -- Significant expansion of oil and gas exploration in Boulder County could cause expensive-to-repair damages to county roads near those well sites, according to the County Transportation Department.

"The impacts of heavy trucks necessary to serve potential oil and gas development on Boulder County roads could be equivalent to the wear and tear of hundreds of millions of passenger vehicles,"

Transportation director George Gerstle has written the Board of County Commissioners.

That additional truck traffic might also "increase conflicts with other vehicles and bicyclists and would place significant new demands for road infrastructure and safety improvements on the county, without additional revenue to address the potential needs," Gerstle said in his memo, which is part of a 277-page report the county staff prepared for a commissioners' meeting this coming Thursday.

Boulder County's Land Use Department has initially estimated that as many as 1,800 oil and gas wells could be drilled in unincorporated Boulder County under current county and state regulations.

Parks and Open Space director Ron Stewart wrote the commissioners that there are now about 345 active oil and gas wells in Boulder County. About a third of those active wells are on county-owned open space. Another third are on privately held lands covered by Boulder County conservation easements, and the rest are on privately held land not protected by conservation easements.

Stewart said his department has had its own both short- and long-term experiences with the impacts of oil and gas operations on county open space -- wells the county had to let be drilled and operated because the property was subject to existing oil and gas leases when the county bought it. The county doesn't have the legal ability to prevent that drilling and production when it doesn't own the mineral rights that previous property owners severed from the surface rights -- or even when it does own those mineral rights but has to honor existing leases.

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timescall.com

Oil and gas drilling issues

What: Boulder County commissioners will hold a public hearing on issues relating to the adequacy of the county's current Land Use Code regulations about oil and gas exploration in unincorporated Boulder County.

When:  March 1st, 4 p.m. Thursday

Where: Commissioners' third-floor hearing room, Boulder County Courthouse, 1325 Pearl St., Boulder

Further information: After a county staff presentation that's expected to last at least an hour, members of the public will be invited to comment. There'll be a three-minute time limit for each individual speaker. Comments also can be submitted via email, to commissioners@bouldercounty.org.

People unable to attend the meeting in person can watch it over the Internet, via a live stream at http://bouldercounty.org/government/pages/hearings.aspx. Further information about the issue, including the county staff's report for Thursday's hearing, is available at http://bouldercounty.org/live/property/pages/oilgas.aspx

Boulder County commissioner candidates focus on fracking - A Ban?

Times-Calltimescall.com
By John Fryar Longmont
2/18/2012

All are critical of county's regulations on drilling

BOULDER -- Boulder County shouldn't waste time tinkering with land use regulations in an attempt to reduce the potential public health and safety hazards that might come with using hydraulic fracturing to free up oil and gas deposits, a Boulder County commissioner candidate said Saturday.

Instead, commissioners should enact an outright prohibition against such "fracking" for future wells drilled anywhere in unincorporated areas of Boulder County, said Garry Sanfacon, even if that means paying to defend the county in any oil and gas exploration companies' lawsuits that might result.

All the Democratic candidates for the two Board of County Commissioners seats up for election this year expressed strong concerns about the adequacy of this county's current land use code's rules about oil and gas drilling, during a candidates' forum at Boulder County Democratic Party headquarters on Saturday afternoon.

Present regulations "don't have any strength to them," said Commissioner Deb Gardner, who voted with fellow board members on Feb. 2 to impose a six-month temporary moratorium on accepting and processing new drilling applications in order to give the county staff time to study and propose possible revisions to those existing Boulder County rules.

Gardner -- a Longmont resident who was appointed to the vacant District 2 seat on the county board in January and is seeking election to a full four-year term in that seat -- urged people to attend the March 1 public hearing the commissioners have scheduled as they consider whether to terminate, renew or otherwise amend that temporary drilling moratorium.

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But District 1 candidate Sanfacon, a Nederland-area resident who manages county government's Fourmile Canyon Fire recovery effort, said Boulder County needs to ban fracking, and not just "monkey around with the regulatory framework."

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Makes perfect sense to us! Ban it! Who's on the 'Ban Wagon?'

Boulder County imposes moratorium on oil, gas drilling

Times Call

By John Fryar

Posted: 02/02/2012

 

BOULDER -- Boulder County commissioners on Thursday imposed a temporary moratorium on accepting and processing new applications for oil and gas drilling operations in any unincorporated areas of the county.

The six-month moratorium, which took effect immediately and is to remain in place until Aug. 2, is intended to give the county staff time to study the adequacy of Boulder County's current land use regulations as they apply to oil and gas development, and to propose possible amendments to those existing local rules.

"I think we all agree that we have some sense of urgency around this," said Commissioner Deb Gardner, who said the time-out on processing new drilling applications is needed to make sure Boulder County is doing everything a local government legally can do, in "protecting the people and the environment."

Gardner and Commissioners Cindy Domenico and Will Toor unanimously voted Thursday to adopt a resolution imposing the temporary moratorium resolution and to tentatively set a March 1 public hearing on the issues associated with oil and gas drilling, particularly those involving the potential impacts of horizontal drilling and of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" -- the process of injecting a mixture of sand, water and chemicals into rock formations in order to free up hard-to-reach oil and natural gas deposits.

"This is a time to take a breath and step back," said Domenico, chairwoman of the Board of County Commissioners.



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