There was a rare display of real community unity facing a threat from the O&G industry last Monday night, November 3, 2025, at the Windsor Community Center. What had been planned as a simple “show & tell” by Verdad Resources about their plans for a huge drilling operation (22 wells off one drillpad) in their community was transformed into a room of local residents banding together to tell them how much they did not want any drilling in their community, thank you very much.

The public meeting was hosted by an O&G firm, Verdad Resources, who is required to give notice to all residences within a half mile radius of the proposed wellsite. Here is the first page of the announcement:

The remainder of the 17 page letter contained a detailed plan of the operations, from beginning to end, the current owners of the mineral rights, and other background information. (The complete pdf file is available here.)

Perhaps of most concern is the actual location of the wellsite. This was shown in a black & white aerial shot in Verdad’s letter, which included the latitude and longitude of the site. I used that information to to create this Google map of the location:

As you can see, this is about three miles north of the center of Windsor…1.5 miles east of Timnath Community Park…and there are a scattering of residences within a half a mile of the site, the required notification zone (see a poster photo below). Which is how I learned about it, through one of the local residents who received the above letter from Verdad, and who attended a meeting of the Fort Collins Sustainability Group. This was the Salon that took place on October 24, 2025, the Safe and Healthy Colorado Campaign webinar. Please see the video for that excellent presentation on the current campaign by 350 Colorado to create a safer and healthier Colorado by phasing out fracking by 2030.

I was curious enough to use the QR code in the letter. It took me to a form to enter my name and contact info, and when asked if I had any questions, I replied “Why are you building this so close to residences? ” but I haven’t heard back…oh well! 🙄

On the night of the meeting, I carpooled over to Windsor with a number of  fellow concerned citizens from Fort Collins. When we arrived, there was a line out the door for people filling out forms by hand with their contact info (so much for the advance registration… ). Once inside, it was a clear that a number of people  wanted to hear what Verdad had to say:

Arranged on tables were about five or six big posters with maps and information about the proposed drilling operation. As well, there were two large screen displays with glitzy corporate slides describing what a great company Verdad is, and how this would be done very safely, using the latest technology, etc:

After milling around for about twenty minutes, I, at least, had seen about all there was to see. The half dozen Verdad staff that were mingling with the crowd were there to answer any questions; but when asked if there would be a presentation of any kind, which would address the entire crowd, and allow for public Q&A (like most public events of this kind), the answer was, No, they were not planning to do that. Well, that’s that, I thought.

But then something unexpected happened. One of the locally notified residents, who lives within that perimeter boundary, took matters into her own hands. I’ll call her Ms. K, to protect her identity. Ms. K was not satisfied with Verdad’s “rolling forum” style of a meeting, and, since this was a public facility, and she was a local resident who paid taxes to support this community center, she thought there very well might be a public address system built into this room. She went to find out.

Turns out, she was right! And soon returned with community center staff who turned it on, and handed Ms. K a wireless mic — and that’s when the meeting really got started!

Once the real meeting started, people from the audience were only too happy to express themselves publicly, and share their views with the audience, and ask questions to the Verdad staff, who were then forced to reply:

Under more direct questioning from the audience about how application process the drilling application would proceed, we came to find out that a well informed person was in the house: Brett  Cavanagh, the director of Oil and Gas Energy Department for Weld County. Mr Cavanagh was able to answer some the questions from the audience. This would never have happened without Ms. K!

One burning question that came up was: what can local residents do to stop this operation from even happening? The answer from Mr Kavanaugh was: nothing. First, the application has to be filed with the state (i.e. the ECMC, Energy and Carbon Management Commission); only then protests can be filed. But, ultimately, the decision will be made by the five commissioners that head up the ECMC…who are appointed by the governor.

More detailed questions kept coming. This resulted in one of the Verdad officials grabbing a poster with a map on it, indicating such things as: where would the truck traffic go? Which local residents would be notified?

Another burning question was: how much water would this operation need? Where would it come from? This resulted in another Verdad representative stepping up to the mic, one who was familiar with their drilling operations:

In answer to the amount of water, the answer was 700,000 barrels per well. Given this critical piece of data, we can do the math on the total water impact:

700,000 barrels X 42 gallons/barrel X 22 wells = 646,800,000 gallons for all the wells

At 325,851 gallons / acre-foot = 1,985 acre-ft of water for all the wells.

One acre-ft is enough for approximately two families for a year. So, this 22 well operation will consume the amount of water for

1,985 * 2 = 3,970 families for a year.

If we approximate an average family at 3.15 (see here for the reference), this means:

3,970 families x 3.15 people/avg family =  12,506 people.

In 2024, the entire population of Windsor was estimated to be 44,769. So, by the above calculations, this one drilling operation of 22 wells is going to use same amount of water used by about

12,506 / 44,769 = .28

or about 28 per cent of the population of Windsor over a year…over one fourth of the entire city population!

And this is only covering this one operation. One wonders what would be the water consumption figure for the entire Weld County — with some 18,000 wells in operation.

As far as the source of the water, all the Verdad would say is that it would come from “agricultural and industrial sources.” One of the other attendees later commented how she had once seen legal documents showing how such water had been purchased at heavy discounts from the price paid by the public…like 10¢ on the dollar.

There were two other informative officials who spoke. One was a lady from the ECMC staff:

And another was a man from the local water board:

I don’t recall exactly what were their main points; but their answers did help to answer some of the questions of the audience in the moment.

At one point during all this, Ms. K asked the crowd directly “How many of you are opposed to this?” Hands shot up from all but a few of the people present.

But at other times in the back-&-forth Q&A session, two points were clear:

• Why must Verdad Resources drill in such close proximity to residential areas? Why can’t they drill farther away?
• Why were only some of the local residents notified? (Not all of those inside the notification perimeter were notified, but who spoke out quite strongly at the meeting.)

The representatives from Verdad and government agencies did not have answers for these highly relevant questions.

Since the “Estimated Timeframe” poster shows that Verdad expects to start construction in 3rd quarter 2026, then begin drilling in 4th quarter. At least the local residents have been given enough lead time to get their concerns before Weld County and the ECMC.

But this will only be the beginning of the story, I’m afraid. The O&G industry has a history of getting their way in this state…but perhaps that pattern is about to change.

Our hats are off to the courageous residents who took command of the meeting, and transformed a passive, corporate show-&-tell into a true display of community spirit. We at the Larimer Alliance stand with them, and wish them the best in their fight to keep this operation out of their community.