Fights persist over oil and gas drilling near Front Range homes six years after reform law “changed permitting” ...Saudi Arabia

The public comments submitted to regulators on a proposed oil and gas drilling site near the Aurora Reservoir are unflinching in their opposition.

One said the planned drilling would be “an unconscionable act,” allowing the operator “to exploit fossil fuels at the expense of our community’s health.” Another commenter wrote that the plan “endangers the health of Colorado’s youngest residents,” while a third urged regulators to vote no on fracking “too close to homes and schools!!”

More than 600 online comments and 1,300 emails have poured in over recent weeks, excoriating Crestone Peak Resources’ plan to drill up to 166 wells on 32,000 acres in Arapahoe County, just southeast of Aurora’s suburban Southshore neighborhood.

If the project sounds familiar, it’s because just last summer regulators with the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission — the state body charged with issuing drilling permits to oil and gas operators — approved a comprehensive plan for drilling by Crestone on what is known as Lowry Ranch.

But it wasn’t until last week that the individual well pads — there are eight proposed across Lowry Ranch — began their journey through the approvals process at both the state and county levels. It’s the latest face-off between energy developers and nearby neighbors in Colorado, and it comes six years after state legislators passed a landmark reform law.

The law was designed to give homeowners and communities a greater say in the location and intensity of oil and gas operations. At the time, Gov. Jared Polis said it should end Colorado’s “oil and gas wars.”

But if the ongoing concerns about safety and environmental impacts from energy extraction are any indication of the current state of play, the issue is still far from being resolved. At the Lowry Ranch site, first up for state approval was Crestone’s 17-well State La Plata pad, which won a unanimous thumbs-up vote from the ECMC on Wednesday.

“Many people have arrived at the foregone conclusion that if an operator wants to drill, there’s not much they can do about it,” said Jason Ephraim, a three-year resident of Southshore, sitting in his living room last week. “But we have to do something — we have to fight this project.”

For this stage of the battle, Ephraim, a volunteer with the neighborhood group Save the Aurora Reservoir, comes armed with a new study from the Colorado School of Public Health, released in late March, that draws links between childhood leukemia and proximity to oil and gas wells.

Add to that, last month a Chevron well northeast of Greeley released oil and gas into the air in what was called a “well control” incident. The release injured one person and resulted in the evacuation of nearby homes and an extended closure of Galeton Elementary School.

That April 6 incident in Weld County was a “stark warning” for Sakhawat Hussain, a retired gastroenterologist who has lived in Southshore with his wife for two years. His backyard is a half-mile or so from a proposed 32-well Crestone pad.

“These facilities are inherently dangerous, and accidents are inevitable — it’s not a question of if, but when,” he said. “Imagine trying to evacuate thousands of residents, many of them children and elderly, in such an event. The risk is simply too great.”

Denver-based Civitas Resources, the parent company of Crestone, says its operations adhere to some of the toughest regulations in the country in Colorado. Civitas spokesman Rich Coolidge didn’t directly respond to a series of questions The Denver Post sent the company but did provide a statement via email.

“The best management practices, including an electrified production site, high-line power drilling rig, pipeline takeaway, sound walls and many others, showcase the latest technologies and innovation driving our operations today,” he said.

A combustible atmosphere

The U.S. Energy Information Administration ranks Colorado fourth in the nation in oil production. Data from the agency show the state produced 172 million barrels last year — down from its peak of 192 million barrels in 2019.

All that oil and a growing population has made for an increasingly combustible atmosphere in Colorado. That’s particularly true in newer Front Range neighborhoods built on the edges of vast fields of underground mineral deposits.

The dynamic was thrown into sharp relief in the spring of 2017, when a severed, uncapped flow line that was attached to a well leaked odorless methane and propane into a house in Firestone, causing an explosion that killed two men.

The following year, voters were asked at the ballot box to dramatically boost the setback for new oil and gas development from homes to 2,500 feet. While the measure went down in defeat after the industry spent millions of dollars against it, the sentiment was there for state lawmakers to clamp down on the industry in one way or another.

In 2019, Polis signed Senate Bill 181. The law directed state energy regulators to prioritize protecting public health and safety and the environment over fostering development of the industry, as had been the case for years.

Environmental attorney Mike Foote, a fomer Democratic state representative who helped craft that law, said it was helping keep things in check.

“It’s changed permitting,” said Foote, who represented the Save the Aurora Reservoir group during the Lowry Ranch comprehensive plan hearings last summer. “Prior to SB-181, these new locations were going up right next to neighborhoods frequently. It’s also made it so that the (ECMC regulators) put more conditions on the permits they do approve.”

As a condition of the green light Crestone received last year from the state, the company pledged to use quieter and cleaner electric-powered rigs and equipment at all pad sites on Lowry Ranch. It also agreed to erect sound walls to dampen noise.

But for those worried about living in the shadow of extensive oil and gas operations, caution is the watch word. Hussain, the retired doctor, said his neighbors are particularly concerned about Crestone’s proposed 32-well pad called State Sunlight-Long. It would be closest to the neighborhood and the reservoir — Aurora’s main source of drinking water.

Crestone is seeking an exemption to Arapahoe County’s one-mile setback of wells from reservoirs. It says the Sunlight-Long pad is “at lower elevation or downgradient” from the reservoir and “isolated by intervening topography,” thereby minimizing the risk that drilling and extraction activity could contaminate the water body.

But Hussain said he has measured the topography and determined the Sunlight-Long drilling site is nearly 100 feet higher than the Aurora Reservoir.

“Despite this, the county is allowing the pad to be placed just 3,200 feet from the reservoir,” he said. “This undermines the purpose of the setback and exposes the residents and reservoir to unnecessary risk.”

Can safety be assured?

Jill McGranahan, a spokeswoman for Arapahoe County, said no approvals for Lowry Ranch pads have yet been issued by the public works and development department. Arapahoe County’s oil and gas rules, she said, are “some of the strictest in the state,” given updates the county made to its rules in recent years.

“Commissioners and staff are committed to balancing quality of life, health and safety issues with responsible energy development and will evaluate all applications through this lens in accordance with established regulations,” she said.

Of the State La Plata pad that was approved by the ECMC on Wednesday, Coolidge said it “represents Civitas’ best-in-class operations.”

Ephraim, the Southshore neighbor, said his objections are not just about human health. He testified virtually during the State La Plata hearing about potential impacts from oil and gas drilling to wildlife on Lowry Ranch.

“This is a high-priority habitat for pronghorn and mule deer,” he said in an interview afterward.

With a 6-year-old daughter, Ephraim says he finds the new health study from the Colorado School of Public Health “immensely scary.” Between 2002 and 2019, the study looked at 451 children ages 2 to 9 who were diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. They were 1.4 to 2.64 times more likely to live within eight miles or so of a well site than those without cancer.

While the study’s authors stopped short of saying exposure to chemical pollutants from oil and gas sites was the cause of the children’s cancer, they urged state officials to revisit Colorado’s setback requirements for oil and gas development.

“It made everything a lot more real,” Ephraim, 40, said of the study.

In light of that new science and the well release in Weld County last month, he said it’s time to slow down rather than push forward.

Lessons from Erie

A sign of just how intense the resistance to new oil drilling has become is that in southeast Aurora, state regulators have promised Rule 511 hearings — an opportunity for public participation and comment — for all the proposed pads on Lowry Ranch as they roll out over the coming months. Ordinarily, ECMC spokeswoman Kristin Kemp said, a 511 hearing is only held upon the request of a community.

A preview of what’s ahead for Southshore residents may come from Erie, some 40 miles to the north. There, a fierce community battle exploded last year over Civitas’ plans to drill 26 wells in the vicinity of a planned residential neighborhood in the fast-growing town.

State regulators asked Civitas subsidiary Extraction Oil and Gas to try to find an alternate location for its wells, known as the Draco pad. When the company said a different site was infeasible, however, the ECMC approved the project in late March.

Weld County, where the company plans to actually sink its wells, has topped Colorado’s counties for population growth in recent years and is expected to continue doing so. Foote, the environmental lawyer, said it’s more than likely there will be fights like the ones in Erie and Aurora as neighborhoods at the edge of Colorado’s mineral wealth deposits continue to take root.

“Each new well pad adds to the cumulative impacts of the drilling,” he said. “It reinforces the argument that people have been making for years — that you shouldn’t be putting these things close to homes, or close to each other.”

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