Colorado’s oil and gas resources provoke sharply contrasting feelings. A bonanza for an energy company can be a deep source of worry if you live near a hotbed of drilling and fracking. As companies are encouraged by their return on investment, residents wonder how close to their own home, or to their children’s school, the next drilling rig will mar the landscape.
Developers and residents differ sharply on how close is too close. When the state attempted to revise drilling rules in 2008, a lack of consensus forced a delay in setting a new minimum distance between homes and drilling. After four years of inaction, state regulators are taking up the issue again because concerned local governments have moved to issue rules buffering homes from drilling and fracking. The industry no doubt expects a new state-mandated buffer will put the matter to rest.
Unfortunately, the state’s proposal is unlikely to reassure nervous homeowners. The state proposal sticks with the status quo: a minimum distance of 350 feet between drilling rigs and homes.
Enshrining the status quo makes no sense. Drilling and fracking are major industrial operations. Chemicals are pumped into the ground and toxic liquids, laden with heavy metals and cancer-causing compounds, are extracted from deep within the earth. Noxious gases are emitted. Scores of giant trucks move on and off fracking sites. Diesel generators run day and night to power the operations. Conducting industrial activity 350 feet from homes — essentially just down the block and amid parks and schools — threatens health, welfare, and property values.
We need to consider, above all, the health of Colorado residents. Adequate protection for them demands that we adhere to three principles:
• We need to maximize the buffer between industrial sites and homes based on public health and safety. New technologies enable developers to extract deposits as far as 9,000 feet from the drilling site.
• We need to minimize toxic emissions. It makes no sense to allow large quantities of carcinogenic compounds to be released near parks, homes and schools.
• We need to ensure that affected citizens have a voice in decisions about where to locate and how to manage drilling and fracking. No one who lives near a proposed drilling site should be deprived of a say in its final location.
The state, in fact, acknowledges that potential harms of drilling and fracking extend well beyond the 350-foot limit. The state’s proposal recognizes the 1,000-foot range as a zone of concern, an area in which companies must work harder to mitigate the impacts of drilling and fracking. We agree. A distance of at least 1,000 feet, not 350 feet, is the right starting point.
But we feel that the state must do more to aid and protect citizens within the 1,000-foot zone and recognize that many citizens and local governments will want protective measures to stretch further than 1,000 feet.
The state should prohibit developers from drilling within this area of concern unless they secure the consent of all affected landowners or work with them to develop a specific local drilling plan.
For proposed drilling sites close to homes, the state should do all it can to bring developers, residents, local governments and other interested parties together to work out solutions that everyone can support. A localized planning process, overseen by the state, stands the best chance of taking into account the range of interests and technical variables that are specific to any given site.
Oil and gas development will be with us for the long haul, but the concerns of Colorado homeowners must not be subordinated to profit over people. As Colorado’s population grows and more residents find themselves in the shadow of drilling rigs, it’s vital that the state take steps now to create the local planning processes that will reassure communities and not harm our precious quality of life.
Morgan Carroll of Aurora is a Democratic state senator. Rhonda Fields of Aurora is a Democratic state representative.