Council hurries into action, needlessly

No one likes over-intrusive government, certainly not conservatives and sometimes not even the most liberal liberals.

Gallup, in a survey in 2010, found record-high percentages of Americans who were critical of the size and scope of government. Nearly 60 percent of those polled said they thought the federal government had too much power, which was up eight percentage points from the previous year.

I doubt those figures have gone in any direction but up in the past couple years.

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So, could it be said that the Fort Collins City Council was inserting itself too deeply into the life and affairs of the citizenry when it gave its preliminary OK to a ban on fracking within city limits?

Unfortunately, yes.

It’s easy to see that the council believed it was acting out of the best intentions: to protect residents from the perceived dangers of fracking. The council tackled the question of the ban at roughly the same time that an oil well a few miles east of the city had sprung a leak, spilling about 20 barrels an hour for a little more than a day.

I don’t mean to suggest that a government shouldn’t act in what it believes are the best interests of the people it represents.

It’s just that, in this instance, the Fort Collins City Council didn’t need to go as far as it did. More precisely, it didn’t need to plop itself into a realm where a higher authority — state government — already was tending to matters. This is why the Gallup numbers are where they are.

Let’s start by understanding that, thanks to state laws, oil and gas drilling already is now prohibited in nearly 90 percent of Fort Collins. 

The council was aware of that, or should have been, but obviously didn’t feel as if that was adequate.

Apparently, it felt that the state’s latest oil drilling regulations, set to go into effect this summer, also are inadequate.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Commission’s new rules require oil companies that hope to drill within 1,000 feet of any building to take a series of steps to minimize their presence.

This includes employing “closed-loop” drilling that captures gases to reduce odors and emissions, as well as strict controls on noise, dust and lighting.

The rules also include the new, much-publicized setbacks, widening the buffer between drilling and residences or businesses to a uniform 500 feet vs. 350 feet in urban areas and 150 feet in rural areas.

Also, no oil company can drill a well within 1,000 feet of schools, nursing homes or hospitals without a full-blown hearing before the commission.

The council should have given all of the above much closer attention before adopting the ban.

It might also have done well to wait for the results of a study of oil and gas development emissions that is being undertaken by the state departments of Natural Resources and the Public Health and Environment.

But it didn’t do any of the above and so now, Gov. Hickenlooper is talking about suing the city.

The state already has sued the city of Longmont over its oil and natural-gas drilling regulations. The Colorado Oil & Gas Association also is suing Longmont, contending that its fracking ban is illegal.

Perhaps a better path for the Fort Collins City Council would have been to challenge the state’s authority to lay down the law on these matters, rather than hurriedly adopting a ban that that courts are very likely to overturn.

If the council had been more thorough in its consideration and a bit more patient, the legal battles ahead surely could have been avoided.

Allen Greenberg is the editor of the Northern Colorado Business Report. He can be reached at 970-232-3142 or agreenberg@ncbr.com.