April 7, 2025 — A Denver 7 news story gives a good summary of what happened:

A mixture of water, oil and gas was shooting up into the air at least several stories high.  It was likely visible from miles away; which clearly disturbed some of those interviewed in the news story.  About a dozen families were told to evacuate for air safety reasons in the Galeton area. There was no other information available at this time. We do not know what was being emitted, or how hazardous the emitted gas might be; but the fact that a dozen families were told to evacuate is not a good sign. Additionally, the public schools in Galeton will be closed on Tuesday.

After contacting the Larimer County office, we were informed that the Air Pollution Control Division will be sending a mobile air monitoring unit; but it was not there as of end of day Monday.

We believe this type of event is possible at any time, as long as there are active O&G wells in operation. This scene certainly looked like active drilling was occurring, judging from the equipment visible.

As long as this type of event is possible, it demonstrates the need for continuous, high quality air monitoring, linked to a real-time warning system. We cannot depend on verbal or manual actions from the local operator to warn us; we need a system that is more fail-proof than that, and which can quickly analyze an air sample to determine how hazardous the emission event is.

The Larimer Alliance will bring this to the attention of the county commissioners, who recently told us that “they did not feel a Boulder AIR monitoring station was needed at this time.”

Really? We wonder how bad an event that must be before one is “needed”!