What a shocker. The Colorado Oil & Gas Association (COGA) is suing the city of Longmont over its voter-approved fracking ban.
Now might be the time for a national fundraising effort to generate badly needed revenue for the legal battle, since it’s likely that the city will be outgunned by the industry group and its overflowing coffers.
We think another video like the one that Our Longmont trotted out before the election is in order. You know, the one that makes fun of the seven former Republican mayors who came out in opposition to the fracking ban. It’s still online at http://bit.ly/7mayors.
Maybe do another one of those bad boys, an even better one, and we all agree to tweet and Facebook post the shit out of it, and, presto! It goes viral, and it’s got a PayPal donation link accompanying it. We could raise (almost) as much as the oil and gas industry is going to pour into this thing!
That, or we have to place our trust in the justice system and pray the judge isn’t in the industry’s pocket. Wonder why COGA chose to sue in Weld instead of Boulder County, where Longmont has its city charter?
Either way, it’s a sad day when an industry takes a city government to court because its citizens voted to protect the health and safety of its families.
THE FRACKING DEBATE SIMMERS
In related news, we’ve got to give the county commissioners some kudos for opening the much-anticipated, police-laced Dec. 13 meeting on the new oil and gas regulations with speeches making it clear they would prefer to be enacting an outright county ban on fracking.
The speeches seemed to defuse the situation a bit. (That and the dozen deputies posted around the doors to the hearing room.)
While the new land use code on oil and gas development does not go as far as many of us would like, the commissioners’ comments — especially those of Will Toor and Deb Gardner — made it clear that they truly believe not approving the new regs would revert the county back to its 1993 code when the moratorium expires, creating a drilling free-for-all.
Let’s hope Toor’s successor, Elise Jones, is even more committed to the cause.
Sure, there is some hysteria about fracking that may be unwarranted. But the point is, we don’t know all of the dangers and risks yet, and until the scientific research about its effects catches up, we should put the brakes on.
And kudos should also go to the fractivists, whose silent protest consisted largely of wearing signs on their shirts and putting duct tape over their mouths, which neither the cops nor the commissioners seemed to think qualified as a “disturbance” under the new rules they implemented after the beginning of the previous week’s meeting was hijacked.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
