Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper says he understands citizen concerns about neighborhood gas drilling but maintains that passing local laws restricting the activity is the wrong way to address the problem.
“The fracking ban votes reflect the genuine anxiety and concern of having an industrial process close to neighborhoods,” Hickenlooper said in an email to the Independent. “Yet local fracking bans essentially deprive people of their legal rights to access the property they own. Our state Constitution protects these rights.
“A framework exists for local communities to work collaboratively with state regulators and the energy industry. We all share the same desire of keeping communities safe.
“These bans may or may not result in new legal challenges from mineral rights holders, individual companies or others. No matter what happens we won’t stop working with local governments and supporting regulations that can be a national model for protecting public health and safety.”
It’s the same position the governor has held for years, as oil-and-gas drillers have spread across the Front Range.
As the industry taps enormous reserves of valuable methane in a hydraulic-fracturing boom and encroaches on farm and residential land, citizen patience has grown thin — and so has faith that state and local lawmakers can effectively stand up to the powerful oil and gas industry.
Residents in Longmont, Boulder, Lafayette, Fort Collins and now Broomfield have bypassed lawmakers and used the ballot initiative process to impose moratoriums on drilling as well as outright bans within city limits.
Hickenlooper, a former oil-industry geologist, has drawn sharp criticism for his opposition to the bans. He believes it is the state’s responsibility to regulate the industry and that a patchwork of varying regulations will tangle up a major state industry unnecessarily. He has become the face of an ongoing unpopular lawsuit to lift Longmont’s ban.
Political observers watching the tide shift in liberal northern Colorado say Democrat Hickenlooper has real work to do to reassure voters before the 2014 election.
It is doubtful that Hickenlooper “understands citizen concerns about neighborhood gas drilling;” or that he “share(s) the same desire of keeping communities safe” If he did, he would not continue to facilitate that industrial development in residential neighborhoods and call it collaborative process. Make no mistake: john Hickenlooper will continue to use everything in his power as governor to support the moneyed interests of the oil and gas industry and to subvert the collective will of voters in communities that have passed bans on fracking and, that will be his legacy: He stood up against the common good.
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Josh,
I find it amusing that the cities and counties that have instituted bans have very little or absolutely no drilling in their jurisdictions.
So to claim that Hickenlooper is facilitating drilling in Fort Collins, Longmont, Broomfield and Boulder is disingenuous at best.
These fracking bans are political actions that are completely removed from reality.
[…] than 380 local bans have passed according to Food and Water Watch. Governor John Hickenlooper has opposed the bans. He says he’s sympathetic to residents but that it is the state’s responsibility to regulate […]
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