Monthly Archives: June 2026

City of Fort Collins, Environmental damage from O&G, Local government (city & county), Prospect Energy

How ‘good trouble’ & local activism go together

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This post is about how local activism works, with an excellent recent example of it. I hope it inspires others to do the same.

Ms. Christina Swope is whom I’m talking about, and she is determined to make an impact in local environmental policies adopted by the Fort Collins city council.  If you would like to contribute to the mighty task of dealing with climate change, and assisting in changing the energy basis of our economy to clean, renewable energy, this is where the rubber meets the road.  She deserves more support, and I hope some of you reading this will find ways of doing just that.

I have included a recent post by her below, which she widely circulated last week, but to which I did have time to respond to until now.  She describes her recent experience of serving on a city citizen board about local air quality.

For those not aware, FoCo’s city government seeks citizen input on a wide variety of topics (see ‘City Seeks Volunteers to Serve on Boards and Commissions’, 12/3/25). I have not served on any of them myself, but have observed several others’ experience with them. Such boards can be frustrating, because while the city offers them as an opportunity for citizen input, the boards have no power over changing actual council policy; and I have observed concerned citizens get frustrated with these boards, and with council, by making decisions that run contrary to what sound science and good judgement would recommend.

The only solution to this is to keep trying — and to seek the help of others in the community to voice their concerns to their council members. Find out which city council district you live in (see here), and then contact your council representative (see here).

It ain’t rocket science….

And like John Lewis said, don’t be afraid to cause “good trouble”….I applaud Christina’s efforts on the Air Quality Board and “asking a lot of annoying questions”. Good job at causing good trouble, Christina!

June 18, 2026

Hey guys,

So I am on the Air Quality Advisory Board for the City of Fort Collins and on Monday we had a presentation from folks from both the city and the county about a new project they’re working on. I learned a lot from having industry experts in air quality and regulation in front of me and the ability to question them. For some of you on this list, this might be old news, but I figure there’s enough of us fracking newbies in this effort that it might be helpful to you as it was to me.

The project they were presenting about was this: there’s only about 50 fracking wellheads left in Larimer County. We’re mostly on the edge of what’s worth drilling in our basin anyway. Ten are within city limits. The company who used to own many of them, Prospect Energy, was a chronic rule breaker and shoddy fixer. Eventually, there was a leak of fracking water, almost 8000 gallons of brackish, benzene riddled water in a snooty neighborhood (they’re a suburb by the country club) and they got shut down. [Editor’s note: This was in the Hearthfire neighborhood, just north, but outside of, city land, which had a long, sordid history with Prospect Energy.]

The city and the county actually argued for and WANTED those wells to be placed into an orphaned status by the state. This surprised me. I actually have been very confused by the verbiage of the industry for a long time. We, as anti-fracking activists, want wells to be “capped and abandoned.” Abandoned sounds like a bad word but in industry speak it seems to mean “properly closed because it was no longer considered worth the money,” NOT just a dangerous thing nobody is taking accountability for. Contrarily, orphaned wells are “turned off” but NOT properly capped and sealed. So they can keep leaking for ages.

So why would the county regulators WANT the wells in Larimer to be “orphaned”? Apparently, its some kind of formal designation that prevents those wells from being sold to other companies who would try to continue to drill and profit off of them. Our city has made it clear we don’t want drilling in our back yard, so we were happy to prevent that and finally shut these suckers down.

However, we all know that this state is drowning in orphaned wells with leaky heads that are on a never ending list of things to be fixed some day by a team of 2 people, maybe 10 years from they day they were turned off. [Editor’s note: the cost of shutting in low producing, likely-to-be-abandoned O&G wells in Colorado is around $8 billion; the entire state budget is around $40 billion, just to give you some idea of how much the O&G industry is shunting off onto the public the mess that it has created over the decades. –Rick]

That’s where this grant comes in! They are going to be asking city council next month to approve some ticky tacky verbiage/redundancies in local statute so that the state/ECMC can grant the money they would normally spend fixing these now orphaned wells (ten years from now when they get to it) to the city and county. The city and county can hire a 3rd party service to do almost everything the state would normally do: plug the wells and remove the service equipment and minor site remediation. Now the people in this hoighty toighty neighborhood don’t have to wait on the ECMC’s overburdened staff to get around to properly sealing these leaky wells ten years from now.

If this works well, it could be a model for other communities and developers to actually get orphaned wells taken care of without the chokehold of an understaffed ECMC.

During this presentation I annoyingly asked a LOT of questions and learned some more.
1) I asked about zoning. Why is it with other industries, we have “industrial zoning” and “business zoning” and “housing zoning” but with fracking its fine that we have people living literrally on top of mining sites? The answer seemed to be “money and lack of planning”
2) I learned that “capping” a well isn’t just sawing the top off and putting a lid on it. They tend to do at least 2 concrete tubes of at least 40 ft length that are strength/seal tested, and those concrete fills are often separated by a few hundred feet for the redundancy, and there is extra consideration near water tables (i was not satisfied with their answers as to the safety of the water in those water tables but they at least have rules about it
3) I also learned that when a site is being closed by the state, well-heads/equipment areas often have had “small leaks” and soil contamination so it is a rule they remove a certain squarefootage of soil from around the wellsite (i think it was like 5 ft deep and 3 feet arround?). For this grant to work, if there are any big spills, the state still has to take care of removing the contaminated soil, replacing it and testing it, over and over again until it’s “clean.” I have no idea where they take the contaminated soil.

Anyway. It was a sliver of hope for me that my county/city might be just about fracking-free soon, AND that we have a new tactic for orphan wells and community recovery.

see you soon
Christina

General Environmental Reference

REPORT ON EARTHWORKS FRACKING ACTION TOUR AROUND WINDSOR JUNE 6

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Earthworks OGI Camera Set Up for Field Observation

On June 6, the Larimer Alliance co-hosted an Earthworks Fracking Action Tour with 350 Colorado and Green Latinos

We hosted a tour group of twelve to joing Andrew Klooster, Earthworks Colorado Field Advocate, on a tour of two active oil and gas operations outside of Windsor, Colorado. Andrew demonstrated their Optical Gas Imaging camera, which uses FLIR branded infrared photography to make emissions from oil and gas facilities visible.
Following the observations at the active sites, our group took a look at the proposed Century site where Verdad Resources is planning a 22-well pad with associated infrastructure in near proximity to residential areas and schools. Although nominally outside of the 2,000 foot legal setback from homes and other vulnerable structures, we all know the emissions and other deleterious effects of such an operation will range much farther than that.  
Emissions observed from the flaring stack on the left. Nominally an enclosed combustion device, this one’s igniter was not working, so the burning of extraneous methane was not happening.
Even when operating properly, emissions can still be observed from oil and gas operations
The image seen above, showing emissions from the combustion stack of a separator unit, was captured the day before our tour. Upon our arrival on site, he focused again on the same stack and saw the emissions were still happening. He explained that the separators are what will divide what is drawn up from a wellbore into oil, the "produced water" or waste fracking fluid, and extraneous methane deemed unusable. Each separator has a flaring device which burns off the methane, which is a greenhouse gas even more problematic than carbon. In this instance, the igniter for the flare is not functioning, so the methane is just drifting off into the atmosphere. . . it disperses fairly quickly, but is more pervasive. 
Andrew explained he encounters this frequently, and brings such instances to the attention of the operators and Colorado's Air Pollution Control Division. However, the operators feel no obligation to respond to his reports of such violations until the regulatory agency leans on them, and they are given a grace period to respond before it is actually treated and fined as a violation. Beyond that, the combustion processes in the flaring devices are imperfect at best, so you are still getting both carbon and unburned methane out of these stacks. 
He also observed some emissions from the tank battery on site that held produced water. This site was going to get a violation report presented to the APCD. The enforcement processes are slow, and the division relies on the companies to self-monitor and report as their staff is stretched thin across all the 45,000 plus active wells in the state of Colorado. Andrew also made clear that the air pollution monitoring is only brought on line when the well goes into production. Emissions of all sorts from the bore and the equipment used in drilling and hauling away waste are not monitored during the drilling phase.
Andrew Klooster of Eathworks setting up his OGI camera at first field observation site
Everyone on the tour had the opportunity to view the emissions through the OGI camera
Andrew is a ready font of information on the processes, and what he encounters when making his observations.
The second site observed was viewed from the sidewalk right outside a residential neighborhood. While nominally beyond the setback limit, that is still clearly too close for comfort!
Following the tour we met to discuss what we had learned at Peculier Ales in Windsor
Well, this was actually before the tour, but we were on the front porch of Peculier Ales.

We had been by the site of the proposed Century pad on the West side of Windsor, at the intersection of County Road 15 and Harmony Road. We had a few concerned Windsor residents on hand for this expedition, and they are seeking support for their efforts to stop this 22-well monstrosity from going in near their homes and schools. Sandra Duggan of 350 Colorado gave us a briefing on their Safe and Healthy Colorado communications program as well as the upcoming Here and Now Tour in support of their Make Polluters Pay campaign. This is seeking to establish a state level climate superfund to get polluters of all sorts to pony up for the damage to our health and environment they have caused. Patricia Garcia Nelson spoke to the continued efforts of Green Latinos to rein in the egregious pollution of the Suncor refinery in Commerce City, as well as pushing back against ongoing oil and gas development around our state, and the harm it brings to disproportionately impacted communities.

Stay tuned for more updates on activity centered on the Verdad Resources proposed Century well pad. Their application has been filed with the Energy and Carbon Management Commission. Although we are outside the legal jurisdiction in Weld County, local residents who wish to counter this will need our support. And as we all know, those emissions don’t just stay in Weld!
CO state level politics, ECMC, Environmental damage from O&G, General Environmental Reference

Erie Protectors get some help — from The Guardian

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It has taken some time — about 20 years — for the efforts of Christiaan van Woudenberg and the Erie Protectors (see erieprotectors.com) to finally gain some traction in the mainstream media; but that landed with authority in this recent article in The Guardian, an established international newspaper with an historic reputation for hard hitting investigative journalism:

There are thousands of dirty old drill sites in Colorado. The state gave oil firms a $1bn pass

 

I invite you to read the article for its informed recounting of an under-reported issue: the cost of cleaning up the huge backlog of abandoned or low producing O&G wells in Colorado. This has been a known issue among the activist community for years, but has been overshadowed by other political events (to say the least). Nonetheless, it points to the obvious: there is growing political awareness of the need to get the O&G to pay its fair share of the environmental costs to all of us; and to pull back the curtain of darkness over the regulatory agencies that have been covering this up and blocking much needed action.

I first met Christiaan several years back, after I had moved to Fort Collins; but I could relate to deep seated frustration and anger over how his dream house neighborhood had been turned into a nightmare by nearby fracking activity. I lived in nearby Lafayette, about 10 miles south, from 2004 to 2018, and knew that the town of Erie had a split personality: half of it is in Boulder County and half in Weld County. The two counties, as most locals know, are diametrically opposite in their local political leadership over O&G development — and fracking. Unfortunately for Christiaan, his house is in the Weld County side, but which misfortune he had no idea of when he and his family moved there in 2007.

So it was with deep understanding and sympathy that accompanied my learning of Christiaan’s story; and I have deeply admired his commitment and skills and tenacity that he has brought to this struggle. He has not given up, and has provided additional encouragement to the dozens of other committed activists who are fighting an uneven battle against the O&G industry in Colorado in the years since.

What the above article documents is how the state agency that regulates O&G — the ECMC, or Energy Carbon and Management Commission — is deeply corrupt, and continues to coddle and protect this industry that has outlived its economic purpose, but which tenaciously clings to its economic life through deceit, subterfuge and outright lying to the public.

How long will the people of Colorado put up with this? How can they allow such blatant shunting of costs from those who are causing the pollution onto public taxpayers? This is what this report reveals, in all its lurid detail, how the ECMC, knowingly and with full awareness of what they were doing, failed to collect over $1 billion in fines from the O&G industry, which was rightfully owed.

To put that in perspective, the entire state budget for Colorado is around $40-42 billion. If the ECMC had been doing its job, this past year’s budget cuts that had to be made, around $850 million to $1 billion, would have been greatly alleviated if they had forced the O&G to cough up what it should paid — after, of course, the industry has paid for the remediation of the thousands on under-producing O&G wells have been properly plugged and cleaned up.

How long with the good people of Colorado allow themselves to be deceived by the ECMC? We should be demanding that our state legislators hold the O&G industry to account, and make them pay for the cost of abandoned O&G wells. As well as paying for better monitoring programs that should be in place for telling us how badly we are being poisoned.