About two dozen or so protesters stood and held antifracking signs in front of a meeting of Weld County representatives and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) this week, broadcasting concerns over the state’s direction with local control over oil and gas drilling.
When COGCC Director Matt Lepore ran down the agenda of the Aug. 3 meeting in Greeley, members of Coloradans Against Fracking, a coalition of more than 40 environmental organizations, stood and turned their backs to the group of county commissioners, Weld County municipal leaders and COGCC representatives. The group held up paper protest signs and one member handed Lepore a packet with their collective opinion on the topics at hand: two Task Force recommendations that would help define where drilling operations are allowed and who has jurisdiction over their future placement, among other things. The groups’s opinion is that municipalities and counties should have control over fracking decisions in their jurisdiction.
After the activists walked out a minute into the hearing, Lepore opened the discussion on Task Force Recommendations No. 17 and No. 20. The COGCC has been holding meetings this summer across the state with counties and municipalities as an opportunity for local government to express concerns with the plans.
Recommendation No. 20 would require oil and gas operators to register with municipalities in which drilling is planned and surrender certain information at the municipalities’ request.
Recommendation No. 17 “contemplates” that the COGCC adopt a process for local governments to have input with COGCC’s permitting process if an oil/gas operator wants to locate a largescale oil and gas facility in an Urban Mitigation Area. Urban Mitigation Areas are areas with a relatively large amount of homes or high-occupancy buildings like schools and hospitals. However, Lepore said there is no definition yet of what a large scale oil and gas facility is. Volume of output, drilling times and duration will factor in, he said.
The meeting provided an opportunity for Weld County representatives to plunge into the vast gray area of the recommendations. The biggest gray area concerned what local municipalities will be able to control when an oil and gas operator wants to drill in their jurisdiction.
“We don’t agree with COGCC going into the local authority business,” said Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Weld County commissioner. “Siting, lights, truck traffic is all under the purview of local government. We don’t really even adhere or listen to [COGCC drilling site] setback rules. I know the industry has to but we do not.”
“I do not agree with the commissioner,” Lepore said. “We believe it is our [COGCC’s] jurisdiction to say where an oil and gas site can be built.”
A mineral right’s owner, “has a right to access their minerals,” Lepore continued. “If you tell them to go 2,000 feet away on someone else’s property, you are imposing costs on them and they have a legal right to put it on the surface above where their minerals are. A horizontal [drilling technique] does not solve anything.”
“Can you ban them? No,” Kirkmeyer said. “Can you force them to a spot where they cannot acces their property? No. But can you limit their access point? Yes. Can you limit their hours of operation? Yes.”
Lepore again disagreed that local municipalities have this right.
“There are gray areas, you are right,” Lepore said. “[But] if you say you’re going to limit tanks and you’re going to make sound standards, on a good day you’re at risk of litigation.”
