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.
Earlier this week, the Colorado Sun provided a valuable public service by keeping us updated on what’s going on at our favorite state regulator, the CDPHE, otherwise known as the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, and our other favorite bête noire housed within it, the APCD, or the Air Pollution Control Division:
I sent a letter to Mr Booth about this (reproduced in full below), in which I thanked him for the fine article, but at the same time expressed my dissatisfaction with what was missing from his report…which we at the Larimer Alliance have been repeating since oh, at least, 2020.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…🙄
The newsworthy bit was the backlog for air emissions permit applications has grown, which happened because of the EPA downgrading of our air quality in 2022 from “serious” to “severe”. This downgrading of the air quality triggered a section of the regulations that states that more, and smaller scale, point sources of air pollution would need to file for emissions permits, and start reporting them.
Which raises the interesting question: does reporting the amount of emissions means that the pollution gets reduced? I have long wondered about this question; but never got around to actually asking it of the CDPHE/APCD…until now. If I get a reply from them, I will be sure to share the results here.
However, I’m not holding my breath, as I have lived with the equivocating language coming out of these agencies — in which they will avoid, evade and obfuscate the question beyond recognition in order to avoid their civic duty to actually protect the environment — that I do not expect any change in their behavior until there is a drastic change in the politics behind it…which is why this activism continues.
Rather than reporting the facts and figures of the article, which you do for yourself, I will point out that the $20 million additional state funds that the Polis administration extended to these agencies in 2022, in order to allow them to deal with the increase in pollution permits, is probably not going to help matters. These agencies are not likely to change their spots anytime until forced to do so by political change. They will continue to avoid, evade and obfuscate ad nauseum.
What they could have done to really start to reduce our air pollution is actually start measuring it. In order to do that, they need to actually build the air quality monitoring equipment that can do this. The existing monitoring stations are not anywhere near capable of doing this. The existing monitoring stations mostly exist to allow the state to say they are measuring ozone; they do not exist to measure the ozone precursors, which come from two primary sources: 1) oil and gas operations, and 2) vehicular traffic. A tiny fraction of the state monitors can detect some of these ozone precursors; but these have been installed only recently, it would seem, as an afterthought, and are certainly not the purpose for which the overall system was designed.
In my humble opinion, just part of that $20 million would have been much better spent by standing up three or four Bouder AIR monitoring stations (see bouldair.com) and if and only if something would actually be done with the data — such as identifying where the precursors are coming from, identifying those point sources by combining regional monitoring with better on-site monitoring. Neither alone is sufficient for meaning pollution reduction. And none of this has any meaning or purpose unless the spirit of the law is enforced: by actually reducing our air pollution.
Even better would be to measure and transparently report how our environmental quality and health are improving — which is the real point of reducing our pollution, right?
In a word, simply informing the public how much we are getting polluted — and telling us to stay inside on bad pollution days — is not enough. We need hard data — quantitative and publicly transparent data — in order to believe our state agencies are actually helping to protect the environment and human health. Words are not enough.
[My letter to Michael Booth, reporter at the Colorado Sun, Feb 5, 2026 ]
I appreciated as well the excellent coverage of attorney Jeremy Nichols’s valid criticisms of the lack of action by the CDPHE when issuing their emission permits; they could be doing so much more than they are.
Speaking from years of observing this issue, I would like to point out a critical missing piece of the puzzle from this critique of the CDPHE and how it is addressing our air quality; namely, the measuring of it.
All of the figures mentioned (such as “…the amount of released nitrogen oxides, a key precursor to dangerous ozone, to 156 tons in 2023 from 276 tons in 2011…”) are based on models, not actual measurements. Those models are based on data. Those data are provided by the O&G industry. We are suspicious of those data, their models, and just about everything else the CDPHE does, who seem totally captured by the O&G industry they are ostensibly regulating.
At the Larimer Alliance, we have been advocating for years that the CDPHE needs to measuring our air quality through direct air sampling, and publishing those results in a prompt and transparent manner — which has been technically possible for years. But they have stonewalled us and other environmental advocates, safely hiding behind their bureaucratic walls.
I intend to post to our blog soon on this article, and will let you know when it is published.
As this blog reported earlier (“The fate of the Aurora Reservoir began today”, 11/20/25), the residential neighborhoods clustered around the southwestern corner of the Aurora Reservoir, containing several thousand residents, had banded together under the non-profit STAR — for Save The Aurora Reservoir. Faced with the prospect since 2022 of over 100 wells being drilled by Crestone Energy within several miles of their community, STAR organized, campaigned, raised thousands of dollars in funding, and hired the best attorney in the state to argue their case — Mike Foote, who helped write the law, SB19-181, under which this application was now to be judged by.
That law redefined the purpose for which the oil and gas industry is regulated in Colorado. In 2019. When the law was passed, that regulatory agency was called the COGCC, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which largely existed to “foster the industry.” Ever since it was created in the mid-20th century, ostensibly, a “balanced” approach, on paper, between the environment and development was supposed to be taken by the COGCC; but that was never the case in reality. SB19-181 changed that: the COGCC was renamed to the Energy Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) would by law prioritize protecting the health and safety of people and the environment above fostering the industry. Also mandated by the new law was the creation of a professional board of five commissioners, with a professional staff to support it, which would replace the previous volunteer board. However, as with many such laws, this qualitative rule was not backed up by any quantitative regulatory standard through which to evaluate the health and safety of people and the environment. Rather, it would depend solely on decisions that would be made by the five commissioners.
Would this new law really matter?
There was reason to doubt that the ECMC would take its new role seriously. It took some time before SB19-181 went into effect, due to the process by which a law which requires regulations gets translated into rules by which a regulatory agency interprets the law. It would take nearly two years for that to happen.
In the meantime, the COGCC continued to function, pretty much unchanged from its previous behavior of rubber stamping any new application for an O&G well. As far as I am aware, the COGCC never denied a single application, and it would allow 1,000 new O&G wells to get drilled each year since 2019. It really seemed like not much had changed. Some say this has been due to the political influence under Governor Polis, elected in 2018, who has been favorably disposed to the O&G industry, judging by his actions. Under the Polis administration, around 5,000 new O&G wells have been drilled in the state, the majority of them in the Front Range, scattered from south Denver to the Pawnee Grasslands north of Greeley.
So even after the ECMC came into being in 2022, there did not seem to have been much of a change in how things worked in how the public at large was affected by the O&G industry in the field. Citizens who have been sickened in their homes from breathing polluted air created by fracking operations, or had the quality of their lives destroyed by the noise from drilling, or the increased truck traffic in their area, and have complained loudly as individuals to the COGCC, were ignored.
The citizens of STAR had been anxiously waiting for their day in court, so to speak, since this hearing began on November 20. Would their efforts to protect their community pay off? Or would this commission behave like its predecessor did, and merely rubber stamp what the industry wanted to do, as in the past? One can imagine their apprehension.
The way that the ECMC works under hearings like this now, in the era of the internet and Zoom technology, is under much more public scrutiny than in the past. These public hearings are announced in advance, with the Zoom link published to allow literally anyone to view the proceedings. There is literally no room to hide for the 5 ECMC commissioners — which the reason that SB19-181 was created. Before that law was passed, the COGCC functioned as a body appointed by the governor from within the ranks of state employees, already serving in other capacities. There were a total of around a dozen people, comprised of a mix of backgrounds, including the CDPHE (Colorado Dept of Public Health & Environment) and the CPW (Colorado Parks & Wildlife). However, their role in the COGCC was simply advisory, and decisions were made a simple majority; of course, the O&G appointees outnumber the rest. Although ostensibly a “balanced” board, the COGCC clearly supported the industry throughout its history.
The Fateful Decision
ON THE DAY of the decision, Wednesday, December 10, I listened to the hearing itself…an arduous process…for about 45 minutes…but gave up at that point. Unless you were intimately knowledgeable with the case, the minutiae of detail was mindnumbing to follow. The meeting continued for another couple of hours.
Here is one screenshot, which pretty much conveys what the rest of the nearly 3 hr long meeting looked like:
ECMC commissioners address the STAR case
In this shot, Commissioner Brett Ackerman was speaking; each commissioner got their turn. He was quite articulate, speaking like a lawyer, and I recall him covering many detailed points. In particular, he pointed out how many emails he had received that were from the same form letter — which he said he did not consider very effective. He preferred to receive individually written letters, he said. Sounds like he does not know what activism looks like to most people.
In the end, I found out later, all the commissioners, except Commissioner Cross, who’s in the upper right in this screenshot, voted to stay the application from Crestone Energy. This was definitely a win for STAR, and Mike Foote, their attorney; the only better decision would have been a denial of the application. What a stay means is that the applicant, Crestone Energy, must develop a new plan which, as the commissioners stipulated, needs to have less potential impacts on the Aurora community. It did not appear that the commissioners gave any indication of what a new application must adhere to; so, we the public, are still pretty much left in the dark as to what will eventually happen. Will Crestone’s lawyers hobnob with the commissioners, out of sight of the public? Who knows…
The head commissioner, Jeff Robbins, pictured at the upper left, pointed out that around 300 people had attended the Zoom meeting. They definitely took note of how many people were watching — and commented that this had been the most viewed hearing in the ECMC’s short history.
The Aftermath
The next day (12/11/25), this article appeared in the Colorado Sun:
which said it all: STAR had won the day. But, boy, it had been a long time coming…
However, the story is not over; and it will depend on the new plan that Crestone Energy develops, and then proposes to the ECMC, likely sometime in 2026.
In case you missed it, there was an impressive event that happened recently with regard to environmental activism: a Letter To the Editor (LTE) about the danger of fossil fuels was published in three local papers — Greeley Tribune; Loveland Reporter Herald, and Longmont Call Times — simultaneously! This is an unprecedented accomplishment, which deserves some recognition.
The author, Carol Hawkins, has been part of the Larimer Alliance for some time; and during that time, has sought a resolution to her situation, but has come round to the same grim realization of others in the community: until the state regulators of O&G see the light, and begin to limit the issuing of new drilling permits, local residents are almost powerless to stop them. All that SB-181 accomplished, it would seem, it to guarantee at least as 2,000 foot setback from any new well.
Colorado faces a difficult choice, transition off fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy or continue to jeopardize our environment and health. Transition will cause economic and social disruption for workers and communities. Any “just transition” requires solutions that mitigate the negative consequences while simultaneously eliminating the deadly pollution caused by burning fossil fuels.
I have lived in Weld County since purchasing my house in 2017. I lived in Maine at the time, near the end of an ”unexpected journey” watching my partner die from Alzheimer’s. I decided to move back to Colorado where I had family and a history of living in the state since the early 1970s. I wanted familiar surroundings. I searched online and found the perfect bungalow, my retirement home, in Ault, a rural town in a good location between Greeley and Fort Collins. I had no idea of the influx of fracking about to come. Shortly after moving, I received a forced pooling notice. I went from grief and PTSD to a sense of doom. Fracking! What did this mean for my quiet life and my health?
The facts about fracking and the impacts were easy to find, but fighting the frack hasn’t been easy. Weld County, otherwise known as “Welled” County, remains the most polluted and fracked in the state. My neighbors, many who work in oil and gas, are mostly working class, and others are first-time home owners looking for affordable housing or long-time residents. Local government is staffed by those who appear unaffected by fracking. When wells were drilled next to the Highland School campus, located in the middle of town, I called the Ault Town Office and Weld County Oil and Gas to question why the drilling was so close to the school when SB 181 called for 2,000-foot setbacks. The Ault Town Office said that they had no knowledge of drilling near the school, although it was happening just down the street, and the Weld County Oil and Gas Office laughed off my reference to SB 181 with the comment “those rules are easy to get around.” And I’ve come to learn that he is right. All you have to do is look at the loopholes. One is home rule, the other is reverse setbacks.
I then turned to the state and began to protest permits, but soon learned that state regulators and the governor support the fossil fuel industry. However, outside of Colorado, a global consensus calls for a “just transition” away from fossil fuels. The planet is heating, driven by greenhouse gases from extracting and burning fossil fuels like oil and fracked gas. Agreements from COP28 called for net-zero emissions by 2050.
Current research, developed by analyzing efforts toward a “just transition” around the world, provides principles that guide policy development: governmental support, dedicated funding streams, strong and diverse coalitions, and economic diversification to address the short-term impacts and long-term needs of workers and communities.
Colorado must come together around this framework of principles for a “just transition,” but the transition from fossil fuels to renewables will still disrupt existing economies, and some communities may face economic hardship due to the loss of jobs and tax revenue from the fossil fuel industry. However, we must make the hard choice to experience the gains from a clean energy economy and healthy environment.
Colorado’s current environmental damage and health impacts are not sustainable and challenge communities reliant on oil and gas to make the hard choice — we need a “just transition” off of fossil fuels. Stop the permits and clean up the mess while supporting displaced workers and disproportionately impacted communities, like Ault.
[Carol Hawkins is a retired English professor who moved back to Colorado from Maine in 2017. She was served a forced pooling notice in 2018 and has been part of the resistance to fracking ever since. Her focus centers on health impacts and damage to our environment, with a particular interest in health care and job training for displaced oil and gas workers, along with support for disproportionately impacted communities like hers in Ault. Dr Hawkins noted that all three papers are owned by a single company, which could be a factor in her LTE appearing in all three simultaneously.]
