Category Archives: Environmental damage from O&G

CO state regulatory agencies, Environmental damage from O&G, Water & Fracking

The quest begins: where is the data on water and fracking?

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This is request I made to the Colorado Department of Water Resources today:

Hello DWR:

I have a report from CO DNR (Dept of Natural Resources?) that writes about water and fracking, circa January 2017. Please see attached.

It refers to a “Colorado Water Diversions table”, and shows a line in the report where there is a breakdown of water use, with one line for “hydraulic fracturing.”

I have tried finding this report on your website to no avail. I cannot remember how I found this report, and it is unfortunate that it does not contain any other identifying information, such as who or what office authored the report.

I am basically a concerned citizen that volunteers for a non-profit, and we are trying to find the answer to two simple questions: 1) how much water goes into fracking? (preferably on a county basis), and 2) where does the produced water go?

I am hoping someone in your office might be able to help me.

Thanks,
Rick Casey
webmaster: larimeralliance.org

Water_Sources_and_Demand_for_Hydraulic_Fracturing_2017_January
Environmental damage from O&G, Injection wells

An affected neighborhood in Larimer County: Heathfire

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Although I had created a map of the known injection wells in Larimer County last year (see this page on the website), I had never yet gone to see any of them.  So today I decided to do that. I picked one location from the map that looked easy to drive to:

The injection well I picked

I also discovered that if you input a lat/long location into Google Maps (latitude first), it will put a pin there, which made things easy….so off I went.

Turns out this location is in the Heathfire neighborhood, not far from Terry Lake, a few miles north of Fort Collins. It was somewhat of a shock to see this obviously somewhat old facility of oil and gas equipment, rusty and antiquated-looking — with two pump jacks in constant motion — surrounded by expensive, clean, modern homes; but there it was:

Entrance to injection well site

As I drove through the neighborhood, I was able to see more of the facility from different angles:

Entrance sign identifies Prospect Energy as the operator
View from a little further down the street
And a little further down the street

 

Evidently, this neighborhood grew up around this O&G facility, as the homes look much newer than the rusty equipment.

I have heard from others who have lived here that there are sometimes quite strong fumes that come this equipment. While I don’t know what that means, this is one of the injection well locations that we are going to be studying…stay tuned!

 

COGCC, Environmental damage from O&G, SB-181

Comments on COGCC hearing on financial assurance

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These are comments I made during live commentary at the public COGCC meeting on March 31, 2021: 

Good evening Commissioners,

I am Doug Henderson, I live in Larimer County. I am speaking for the Larimer Alliance for Health, Safety and Environment, a coalition that represents thousands of Larimer County residents.

Oil & gas development has many financial costs that are externalized and avoided by the industry –

  • O&G operations collide with residential areas and neighborhood — so people suffer and get sick

from these operations and emissions, with big costs to their lives, families, and communities

  • property values decline, causing losses to homeowners
  • communities become embroiled in fighting against O&G,

costing residents, local governments, and public agencies untold millions

  • air and water get polluted, with huge costs now and into the future
  • billions of gals of toxic waste gets pumped underground –

its false to pretend this won’t have costly consequences

  • many spills, explosions, and fires occur,with costs to emergency services, people’s health, 

and to the environment

  • and the list also includes thousands of old wells and sites left by operators, for taxpayers to pay to clean up.

It is time that O&G operators are required to pay their way, to cover all their costs, from start to finish, to operate when and where it is genuinely profitable, not because it is subsidized by externalizing costs to others, to local communities, to local and state governments, and to taxpayers.

At this point, taxpayers are already facing the cost of plugging and cleaning up thousands of orphaned wells in Colorado, which will run to hundreds of millions. The O&G industry is unwilling to pay to clean up after itself.

It is this Commission’s responsibility to make sure that going forward, the O&G industry acts responsibly, and that operators are capable and responsible for fully covering costs.

COGCC must require full-cost bonding, set at a level that provides real financial incentive to properly shut down, plug, and abandon wells, and to fully reclaim and remediate sites. Every well needs to bonded. Inadequate bonding creates incentive for operators to escape properly shutting down and cleaning up sites.

Allowing blanket bonding must eliminated – in some cases now, the effective bond is under $1000 per well.

COGCC also should get serious about a mechanism for the O&G industry to pay for cleaning up orphaned wells and sites in Colorado – so taxpayers won’t be left with clean-up costs.

The industry claims to be responsible toward the public and the environment.

COGCC needs to be sure the industry and operators walk their talk – from start to finish, including cleaning up after all their operations and all sites, current, future, and past, instead of leaving it to taxpayers.

We thank the Commissioners and staff in COGCC who have genuinely embraced reform in oversight of O&G development in Colorado, including protecting the taxpayers from undue financial risk and cost.