Fracking decision con: State treating oil, gas differently than other uses
Oil and gas is back in the headlines with the Colorado Supreme Court’s decisions to overturn both the city of Fort Collins’ five-year moratorium on drilling and Longmont’s citizen-initiated ban on fracking. While our county attorney is still analyzing these disappointing rulings to understand how they impact Boulder County, what is immediately clear is that these two decisions did nothing to ease widespread citizen concerns about the lack of local control over oil and gas impacts in their communities.
The impetus for the actions taken by Fort Collins, Longmont and other local governments up and down the Front Range is the surge of oil and gas development occurring next to homes and schools. It’s not just that the number of active wells in Colorado has skyrocketed over the last decade — from 30,000 in 2006 to nearly 54,000 in 2016. But where we once had a single well pad in a farm field, we now are seeing 10- to 20-acre industrial fortresses with 12 to 16 wells — or more — invading residential neighborhoods.
This intensive industrial activity brings with it a host of concerns. Parents understandably worry about the adverse health effects of emissions generated by wells outside their children’s bedroom windows or near their schools. Homeowners are aggravated by the pervasive lights, dust, noise and odors of 24/7 fracking operations, and concerned about their impact on property values. Increased truck traffic can clog and tear up local roads, at the expense of local taxpayers. Spills, which occur at a rate of two per day in Colorado, can threaten water quality. Residents living near drill sites also fret about industrial accidents and explosions and the capacity (or lack thereof) for first responders to deal with these emergencies. Drilling and wastewater injections also have been shown to trigger earthquakes.
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Concerned residents turn to their local elected officials, assuming we can ease these intrusions into their quality of life. They are surprised and then angered to find out that cities and counties do not have the authority to regulate oil and gas in a manner sufficient to assure the health, safety and well-being of local residents.
The challenge for local governments is that oil and gas is treated differently than other uses of land. For more than a century, Colorado cities and counties have used their local land-use and zoning authority to keep incompatible uses apart and protect their residents. For example, we have strong local land-use controls that decide the location of junkyards, hazardous-waste facilities, power plants, marijuana stores and porn shops, and regulate their impacts. We wouldn’t allow these uses in a residential neighborhood or next to a school. Why is oil and gas development treated differently?
Other industries — development, mining, gravel, water, marijuana — all manage to comply with both local and state regulations. What’s more, technological improvements have given the oil and gas industry great flexibility as to where they locate their surface impacts; companies can now drill horizontally underground almost three miles.
One of the many wonderful things about Colorado is the diversity and richness of our communities and landscapes, from the urban streets of Denver to the pastoral landscapes of Yuma County and the mountain towns of Telluride and Breckenridge. Local control is a widely held Colorado value precisely because we respect and celebrate these differences, which local governments protect and enhance through their local land-use authority.
Similarly, communities have very distinct economic blueprints. Some localities choose oil and gas development as a major component of their economy. Others, such as Boulder County, rely on our scenic vistas, outdoor recreation, clean air and water, local agriculture and a high quality of residential life to fuel our prosperity by attracting residents, tourists, students and entrepreneurs. Not only is oil and gas development not a major part of our economy, but it directly threatens to undermine our economic basis.
The Colorado Supreme Court rulings highlighted the shortcomings of current statute. Until the law is changed to strike a better balance between state and local governments on how oil and gas development is regulated, giving cities and counties a more equitable voice, Colorado should expect to see continued attempts to achieve this balance through ballot initiatives, legislation and litigation.
Elise Jones chairs the Boulder County Board of Commissioners.
