Category Archives: CO state level politics

Below is an email I sent out to the general listserv for Larimer Alliance volunteers on November 18, 2022, which enclosed an email that I had sent to all Fort Collins City Council members that day, expressing my concerns over the proposed oil & gas regulations for the city — which seem to have suddenly come out of nowhere — but are being pushed by the Mayor and Council for rapid adoption — but with which the Larimer Alliance has grave concerns. We hope we get this message out to the broader Fort Collins community before a public meeting of the Council on Dec 20, 2022, which should be the time that we show up and express our concerns (if not our outrage?) over this.

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Hello Larimer Alliance volunteer:

We have a problem! Please see below an email I just sent to the Fort Collins Mayor and City Council.

The Larimer Alliance needs to show up en masse at the December 20 council meeting to express our strong disapproval of new proposed oil and gas regulations — which have appeared out of nowhere, but would dramatically change the potential for oil and gas operations to take place — within city limits!

If you want to express your opinion on the matter to the mayor and Council, which I strongly urge you to do, send your own written message to: cityleaders@fcgov.com

–Rick

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November 18, 2022

Dear Mayor and City Council members:

I am writing to submit some comments I sent to the Planning and Zoning Commission Hearing that took place on Thursday, November 17, 2022. I wanted to attend in person, but the inclement weather conditions forced me to stay home.

I would like to state my qualifications to address this issue. I have lived in Colorado since 1981, and in Fort Collins since 2018. I currently reside in Council District 3. I am a full time employee at HP Enterprise as an IT engineer, and have been teaching a course in environmental economics at Front Range Community College since 2009. I have been involved in environmental activism in the Front Range since 2012, and am currently the webmaster for the following websites concerned with environmental quality in Colorado, both locally and statewide:

larimeralliance.org,

larimerallianceblog.org,

focosustainability.org,

colivableclimate.org,

ncalf.org

I would like to comment on the draft Oil & Gas Regulations that are under consideration by the Council.

First, it is with surprise and dismay that I learned that these proposed regulations are trying to be rushed through for approval by the Council with so little public discussion or awareness. This suggests, unfortunately, there is some strategy behind this, for whatever reasons, and that whoever authored these regulations does not want them to be subjected to public discussion. So my first ask would be for the Council to please extend this rushed approval process, and let there be a full public discussion of these highly significant regulations, which could impact us for years.

The next opportunity for public comment on this is at the council meeting on Tuesday, December 20, the height of the winter holiday season. This is hardly an opportune date to encourage public attendance. I would urge the mayor and Council to schedule a second opportunity for public input soon after 2023 New Year’s holiday is over.

It was truly shocking to see how many loopholes have been created in these regulations for the oil and gas industry. If I were to express this in commonly understood vernacular, these loopholes are “big enough to drive a Mack truck through.” What do I mean by that, exactly?

Buried in these loopholes is the ability of O&G operations to get zoned into ANY part of the city! Examining the details of “allowed use” means that things like well drilling, O&G operations, seismic exploration, or the production and transport of O&G products can get approved — anywhere! at the discretion of the director of the program. I find this totally unacceptable, and would ask that a new set of regulations be developed without such sweeping loopholes. We cannot allow for the O&G industry to exploit such loopholes and think they can pursue O&G operations within the city.

As the leaders of our city government, you would probably like to hear some positive suggestions of how to help the situation, and not just hear complaints. So here is a positive suggestion that can help with these regulations: please provide strong financial assurances for any regulations pertaining to possible O&G operations in the city.

I would strongly prefer that NO O&G operators ever seek to develop any fossil fuel resources within the city limits, given our global warming situation. However, since that may be unrealistic, I would like to suggest the following: develop strong financial assurances rules that would anticipate and prevent small operators from coming in, chasing lower value reserves, and then walk away from their drilled wells, without properly providing the financial reserves to properly plug and abandon the well should it prove uneconomic.

As you may be aware, this is a huge problem for the entire state right now, with a potential $8B (yes, BILLION) liability facing the state of Colorado, which is more than a fourth of the state’s entire budget in 2022 of about $36B. Therefore, establishing strong financial assurance rules would be a straightforward way to assure the public that the city council is sincere about protecting our local environmental quality from that kind of risk. That particular risk is an unsavory aspect of past behavior by the COGCC (Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission), who should be blamed for creating this problem, which we strongly need to acknowledge and throw off as a relic of the past.

In closing, it was a disappointment to see that there was no virtual attendance possible at this meeting by the Planning & Zoning commission. Perhaps that could change in the future, particularly during the hazardous winter driving season.

Very Sincerely, — Rick

City of Fort Collins, Larimer County Planning Dept, Local government (city & county), SB-181

FC city council considering O&G regs that would leave little room for new drilling

November 10, 2022 Rick Casey Leave a comment

AS NEW DISCUSSION OVER LAND USE PLANNING heats up between the city council and the community, I thought posting this past article in the Coloradoan would be of interest.

As one of the subtitles of the articles states. “New regulations would leave no space in city for new wells to be built”. That is because proposed changes of 2,000 foot setbacks from “occupiable buildings, parks, trails or natural areas” would leave so feasible drilling sites within city limits; and the proposal allows for no exceptions or loopholes.

This does not address the 10 existing operating wells inside city limits, or any abandoned wells, which is another matter.

So this article has been posted for reference, although the Coloradoan may have a paywall requiring you to be a subscriber to read it; just leave a comment if that’s the case.

Fort Collins moves toward oil and gas regulations that would prevent new drilling in city

Coloradoan, Oct 26, 2022

Air quality monitoring, AQCC, CO state level politics, Environmental damage from O&G, Ozone pollution in Front Range

I EXPRESS MY COMMENTS/OUTRAGE TO THE AQCC

August 18, 2022 Rick Casey Leave a comment

The following are my humble comments to the AQCC about the review of Colorado’s SIP (State Implementation Plan) about our air quality before their public meeting on August 18, 2022:

Dear Colorado Air Quality Control Commission:

I would like to submit these written comments as an individual, but I wish the record to show that:

…I have been teaching environmental economics at Front Range Community College since 2009, and continue to teach it

…I have been the webmaster for the following environmental activism organizations for the past several years:

> Larimer Alliance

> Fort Collins Sustainability Group

>Colorado Coalition for a Livable Climate

>Northern Colorado Alliance for a Livable Future

I am sure you will hear many in-depth stories and analysis at today’s hearing from others who will want to persuade you with the overwhelming scientific evidence of just how bad the air quality is in the Front Range due to ozone; and that the majority of the evidence points more to oil and gas (read: fracking) activity than to vehicular exhaust.

Two Personal Stories

I agree with that conclusion, but want to share with you two personal stories that illustrate just how destructive this lightly regulated industry is. I personally knew each of the persons in these videos that I made myself.

The first video is an interview with Wendy Leonard made Janurary 1, 2013:

Wendy Leonard speaking on her family’s experience with fracking

Wendy is a professional nutrutionist. In her interview, she tells the story of how her four young kids starting get sick with untreatable gastro-intestinal disorders, which started after fracking operations began near their residence in Erie. No doctor could diagnose them well enough to cure the disorder. So she and her husband decided to move to Louisville. Her kids immediately recovered. Despite this, they have since decided to move out of state, where there is no fracking, to remove her family from its harm.

Next is Rod Bruske, a brief video I made of him in the Boulder County Courthouse, just before he was going to testify at a public meeting about fracking, made in December 2012. He lives, still, with his family on rural property on the Boulder-Weld county border:

Rod Breuske speaks out

Rod describes how the health of his family had deteriorated, and their quality of life essentially destroyed, by fracking operations near his property, from the heavy truck traffic, loud, constant noise, and air pollution bad enough to sicken his family and his livestock. I don’t know how Rod is doing these days, but I imagine he is toughing it out still on his property, like the tough farmer that he is.

The morale of these stories is this: the VOCs (volatile organic compounds) produced from fracking, coming from prehistoric geological formations deep under the earth and never meant for contact with living human beings, are poorly understood in medical science; but can have an immediate reaction in people by reacting with their nervous system from immediate skin contact. There are many anecdotal stories like this; again, few of which are systematically recorded in this lightly regulated industry. But each story is a testament how this industry should have been more closely regulated from the start (were it not for the Halliburton Loophole).

It is not difficult to find many such stories in the Front Range. There is no definitive record, but they must surely register in the hundreds, if not thousands. All of which is nearly completely unaccounted for by regulatory agencies such as yours.

What should be done?

In my opinion, the AQCC needs to support the creation of regional network of air quality monitors that are continuously sampling the air, analyzing it in real time, and creating an official data of record that can be used in a robust array of regulatory needs — and defensible in court if necessary. And then using this data for robust enforcement action to stop the pollution at its source. That is the only real solution. All the public notices exclaiming about ‘bad ozone days’ are not doing us one bit of good about reducing the sources of harm.

Such monitors are the only way that we are going to learn about the true sources of our ozone precursors, what is causing them, and where they are located. The only company with such technology at the moment is Boulder AIR. I’m sure you must have heard of them, as they have at least five, maybe six, monitors, which I believe are in Boulder, Longmont, Erie, Broomfield, and perhaps Commerce City.

What is really unbelievable is that the state of Colorado does not consider the data being collected by Boulder AIR to be “real” data! I find this simply preposterous, and am really outraged as a tax-paying, concerned citizen that the air quality regulators in my state are so blind as to make such statements, and expect the public to be ok with this. We are NOT ok with this! The data collected by Boulder AIR monitors is vastly superior to anything that the state is collecting; because the number of monitors that the state has to detect ozone precursors is precisely ZERO! They not only collect readings on ppb per billion of over a dozen chemicals, they do it in real time, and they publish their results on a public website within minutes of collection (subject, of course, to later possible data corrections, which seem rare and minor). And then the data are kept in storage indefinitely in the cloud for future research or reference.

How in the world can you expect the public to trust regulatory agencies that don’t know better data when it is so blatantly obvious? Until the state air quality regulators admit this, and starts measuring our ozone precursors, and publicly producing that data, your credibility will continue to be about where your current data are: namely pretty damn worthless and near zero in quality or credibility. The state only collects readings on ozone after it is formed, and does not even have the capability of collecting data on ozone precursors. This is a shameful dereliction of duty that calls out for correction when the technology for doing so has already been proven for years.

Please start investing in some real time, continuous air quality monitors and publicly publishing that data. Then we might start believing in you.

Sincerely,

Rick Casey

Fort Collins

webmaster: larimeralliance.org, larimerallianceblog.org, focosustainability.org, colivableclimate.org, ncalf.org

Air quality monitoring, Environmental damage from O&G, Larimer County Commissioners, Local government (city & county), Prospect Energy, SB-181

DEAR COUNTY COMMISSIONERS: WE HAVE THE POWER!

May 27, 2022 Rick Casey Leave a comment

Inspired by the May/June newsletter from the Poudre Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club, I sent the following email to our Larimer County Commissioners. Why? Because I, and the rest of the Larimer Alliance, are of the fervent belief that the Commisioners HAVE NOT BEEN ENFORCING THE LAW as written in SB-181. It seems that the Commissioners have been under the impression that they do not have the legal authority to regulate existing O&G operations — this is emphatically not the case, in our humble opinion!

See my email below for my reasons why:

Dear Commissioner Kefalas,

Dear Commissioner Stephens,

Dear Commissioner Shadduck-McNally:

I would like to call your attention to the May/June newsletter of the Poudre Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club (attached).

In there, it asserts, on sound legal grounds, that our county administrators have full authority under SB-181 to regulate existing oil and gas operations — no matter how long they have been in existence.

That being the case, I would urge the commissioners to take stronger action to protect county residents from existing operations, such as longtime leaky tanks in northern Fort Collins belonging to Prospect Energy. For far too long, this operator has been getting by on inadequate repairs and flimsy excuses, while all the while continuing to expose local residents to the poisonous fumes escaping from them, and fouling the ambient environment.

Just read/watch the first hand experience of Von Bortz, who lives in enough proximity of the Krause facility to suffer from its air pollution:

Oil company hasn’t replaced leaking tanks near Fort Collins despite months of complaints

I hope the commissioners will take this suggestion in a positive manner, and know that we, the citizens of Larimer County, are only trying to enforce SB-181 in the spirit and letter of the law in which it as written and intended — and not reinterpreted in some way to twist it to protect the oil and gas industry.