There was a good news/bad news article in the Colorado Sun earlier this week (Feb 24, 2026):
How much is seven square miles of inhabited properties, still polluted from a four day bath of toxic spewing in April 2025, worth? Apparently not all that much. A fine of $1.7 million to Chevron (which had an net income, i.e. profit, of $17.6 BILLION in 2024) would be little more than pocket change to them.
If that kind of grates you the wrong way, as it did me, you are not alone…and here is the testimony of another Front Range resident who expressed her outrage in this way (name withheld to protect the incensed):
Crumbs!!!
When are we going to stop crouching under the table of Oil/Gas/State Regulators while begging for crumbs?
Chevron’s fine for the “Galeton Geyser” that spread toxic chemicals as far away as four miles (as detected by CSU mobile monitors called out to the site that day in April 2025), will not be remedied by 1.7 million. Let’s not forget that the spokesmen for Chevron, at an emergency Galeton Town Hall meeting, assured the public that there’s no danger here, as the well was still spewing 100 feet in the air, in windy conditions, that lasted FOUR DAYS. Mobile air monitors from CSU were called to the scene that day and found high levels of toxins (think benzene, etc.) as far as four miles away. Chevron called the CSU monitors “poor methodology.”
As I raged about this injustice (yes, I’m calling out BOTH the ECMC and Chevron), I was reminded by another activist that “The SUNCOR spill several years ago that contaminated the Commerce City area profusely was fined something like over $9 million. An additional grant received in 2000 was for $1.8 million. So Chevron got off quite cheaply in Galeton.”
If the Galeton Geyser didn’t get the ECMC to act with equal justice, or recent health studies (McKensie) that support previous health studies of the negative impacts of living within six miles of an oil and gas complex don’t move our regulators to action, then we can be sure that they’ll do little if anything for the daily spills, leaks, road damage, and clogging infrastructure we already experience in towns like mine in Ault. Yet even when we do protest permits, the ECMC fails us, and when we later capture the pollution these permits bring on OGI images, only a third of complaints get any action. Why? Intended loopholes from bogus regulations and complicit regulators who refuse to stand up to the fossil fuel industry. Three years of data (2022, 23, 24) prove this case in Ault.
Now we witness a slap on the wrist by the ECMC toward Chevron. I’d like to slap them all (ECMC and Chevron) across the face for this injustice . . . but a slap is not enough.
The ECMC, by its very name (Energy Carbon Management Commission) serves the Industrial Carbon Complex, not the people of Colorado who pay their salaries. I can only hope that we get a new governor and revamp our state agencies, particularly by firing current state regulators, to best serve the public and protect our environment from the onslaught of dirty oil and gas development across Colorado. There’s no such thing as clean well pads. “Best Practices” is a myth used by industry to keep drilling the cheapest and fastest way possible. And setbacks won’t save us either. Don’t be duped by a new playground at your local school courtesy of oil and gas. If a fracking operation is within six miles of that playground, those children and locals are at risk.
Show some brass, ECMC!
Let’s Educate, Organize, Resist . . . Vote out the current government, fire its regulators, and ban the permits!
I must confess I feel the same way…and we will still need to continue our struggle against these state regulatory agencies who have kowtowed to this industry for far too long.
