Citizen activists in the natural gas drilling hotspot of western Garfield County, Colo., apparently caught Halliburton employees on tape working in and around a cloud of hydraulic fracturing sand emanating from tanker trucks near a Williams natural gas well pad in Parachute last week.

Video (below) shot by Dave Devanney of Battlement Concerned Citizens appears to show Halliburton workers without respirators, although observers say breathing fracking sand can be very dangerous because it contains silica, according to a story in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

The Sentinel story quotes a Silt Mesa resident and former contract worker named Carl Mc Williams, who claims he was sickened by hydrogen sulfide while working on a Noble Energy gas well. Noble now acknowledges it is finding hydrogen sulfide in the majority of its gas wells on the nearby Piceance Basin, although the potentially deadly chemical was previously thought to be rare.

“They have been telling us all along that there is no H2S [hydrogen sulfide] in this area,” Devanney wrote in an email to members in which he also included a link to his Halliburton video.

David Neslin, director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, told the Sentinel the state is investigating the Noble hydrogen sulfide situation. Both Halliburton and Williams told the paper they’re looking into the fracking sand emissions.

The contractor Mc Williams worked for when he claims he was sickened in 2009 was fined $2,000 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. A Noble spokesman acknowledged the company has been regularly encountering the gas ever since then, using “biocides and other methods to eliminate it.”

“It’s a concern, but it’s not one that we’re inexperienced in dealing with,” a Noble spokesman told the Sentinel.

Residents of Garfield County neighborhoods impacted by natural gas drilling have been approached by a New York City firm that last year landed a $712.5 million settlement for workers injured in the World Trade Center cleanup.

A representative of Napoli Bern Ripka LLP will attend a meeting of potential plaintiffs Feb. 22 at the Glenwood Springs Community Center, according to an activist group fighting to mitigate drilling impacts. Also on hand will be attorneys from the Aspen law firm of Thomas Genshaft PC.

Dave Devanney, co-chair of Battlement Concerned Citizens, said there was so much interest in a possible “mass tort” lawsuit that a meeting originally scheduled for last month had to be postponed to this month to accommodate all the interested property owners. He added it’s not clear at this point who all the defendants might be or the basis for any potential litigation

“It appears that the scope of possible legal action may have been broadened beyond just [diminished] property values,” Devanney wrote in an email Monday. “Plus, the scope of possible clients may have also changed.”

Attorneys first began contacting residents of the Silt Mesa subdivision last month. Denver-based Antero Resources began drilling there last summer and had been seeking an increase in well density from one per 40 acres to one per 10. The company reportedly backed off that plan in a meeting with the county commissioners on Monday, also committing to a setback of 500 feet from an occupied building.

Antero has been working through a contentious proposal to drill up to 200 wells within the unincorporated community of Battlement Mesa – a former Exxon company town now occupied by more than 5,000 people, many of them retirees.

Antero bought up the mineral rights from Exxon and wants to drill on Battlement’s common property, meaning residents would not receive compensation via surface use agreements that typically pay private property owners for impacts when a company extracts minerals rights from beneath their land.

“We don’t have any cards in our hand; we don’t have any allies,” Devanney said. “What’s depressing is it’s not only the politicians who are supposed to be protecting public health, safety and welfare, but it’s also the regulators. The Colorado Department of Environment and Public Health seems to be on the Antero payroll. Not literally, but the relationship seems to be that tight.”

An Antero representative and state officials did not return calls requesting comment on potential litigation.

The Battlement Concerned Citizens (BCC) also are concerned oil and gas companies are trying to skirt a requirement that Garfield County must review and approve drilling plans in the community as mandated by the county’s original approval of Exxon’s planned unit development (PUD). Antero and another drilling company, EnCana, have filed for drilling permits just outside the community.

BCC officials presented a letter to the county commissioners Monday asking them to intervene with the state regulatory board that approves oil and gas drilling permits, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC). They want the county to ask the state to hold off while county health officials finalize a Health Impact Assessment evaluating the potential cumulative risks of natural gas drilling, including diminished air and water quality.

The New York firm of Napoli Bern Ripka also has experience in litigating natural gas cases, including an alleged hydraulic fracturing spill in Pennsylvania.

That controversial process has been the subject of a just-concluded congressional investigation and is currently being studied by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It involves injecting water, sand and undisclosed chemicals under very high pressure deep into gas wells. It’s currently exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act, but critics say it can lead to groundwater contamination.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Association, an oil and gas lobbying group, last week dropped its lawsuit challenging tougher new state drilling regulations. But Garfield County officials have said even those rules don’t adequately safeguard people living near natural gas rigs from the cumulative impacts of drilling.

Citizen activists on Colorado’s Western Slope are pointing to a Texas case of well-water contamination caused by oil and gas drilling activity as a prime example of what they want to avoid in this state and what regulators should be guarding against in heavily drilled Garfield County.

“This is what we are trying to prevent in Battlement Mesa,” said Dave Devanney of Battlement Concerned Citizens, referring to an “Imminent and Substantial Endangerment Order” issued last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in South Park County, Texas, just west of Fort Worth.

While the EPA didn’t specifically blame the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for flammable and bubbling drinking water coming out of the taps of two Texas homes, the federal agency did point to the process in its press release:

“EPA believes that natural gas plays a key role in our nation’s clean energy future and the process known as hydraulic fracturing is one way of accessing that vital resource. However, we want to make sure natural gas development is safe. As we announced earlier this year, we are in the process of conducting a comprehensive study on the potential impact of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water.

“In the meantime, EPA has made energy extraction sector compliance with environmental laws one of EPA’s National Enforcement Initiatives for 2011 to 2013. The initiative focuses on areas of the country where energy extraction activities such as hydraulic fracturing are concentrated, and EPA’s enforcement activities will vary with the type of activity and pollution problem presented.”

Oil and gas industry officials have long maintained that fracking – a process that injects water, sand and undisclosed chemicals deep underground to fracture tight geological formations and free up more natural gas – has never been proven to have caused a single case of drinking water contamination.

Opponents of fracking maintain that’s because the chemicals used in the process are kept secret for proprietary reasons and therefore can’t be traced. They want the federal government to compel companies to publicly disclose the chemical cocktail used in fracking. In the recent Texas case, the EPA cited elevated and dangerous levels of methane, which can cause explosions and fires, and benzene, which can be cancer-causing if ingested.

Industry officials in Colorado admit drilling activity has caused some cases of groundwater contamination, such as the Divide Creek Seep, but they blame faulty cement jobs in natural gas wells and other technological failures, not fracking, which they say is done deep underground and far from groundwater sources.

Texas-based Range Resources denies its activity led to the contamination, because its wells are in the “Barnett Shale formation, which is over a mile below the water zone.” But the wells are near the impacted homes, and in some Colorado communities, there’s a real fear that ramped-up drilling near increasingly dense residential areas will lead to similar cases.

Battlement Mesa, a community of more than 5,000 in unincorporated Garfield County, is faced with up to 200 new natural gas wells under a proposal by Denver-based Antero Resources. Residents there say the operator has proposed three new gas wells just outside the Planned Unit Development (PUD) in order to skirt county special use permit hearings.

Just last week, Battlement Concerned Citizens (BCC) won assurances from the three-member board of county commissioners that they would intervene with the state on those wells and request a permitting delay until an outside Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is completed.
“That was the best we could hope for,” BCC’s Devanney said. “They’re intervening; they’re going to call for a meeting; and they’re going to propose the [Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Committee] defer until after the HIA is done.”

The draft HIA, paid for by the county, is still being finalized.

“The comprehensive and complex nature of the comments received on the draft HIA has resulted in the need for further discussion between the [board of county commissioners] and the [Colorado School of Public Health] research team,” Garfield County environmental health officer Jim Rada said in an email. The board will again discuss the study at another meeting today in Glenwood Springs.

The BCC group last week also continued its push for the county to utilize its 1041 powers over gas drilling, which other counties have successfully used to direct infrastructure projects such as water diversion and power lines. Named for a 1974 bill, 1041 rules have never been used to regulate oil and gas drilling.

“It’s time for the county to step up to the plate and take more action to protect the citizens of the county here from the impacts of the intensity of oil and gas regulations, especially near residential communities, and hopefully they got that message,” BCC’s Ron Galterio said.

An Antero official did not return a call requesting comment.

Another Denver-based drilling company made headlines last week in the eastern part of the country.

Anschutz Exploration Company, owned by Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz, has been linked to contaminated wells in New York’s massive Marcellus Shale play, although a company spokesman disputed it was the result of their drilling activities, which did not include fracking.

Denver-based Antero Resources, the company involved in Battlement Mesa, recently announced its own new venture into the Marcellus Shale, acquiring a West Virginia company (pdf) with holdings in that state and Pennsylvania.

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Trési Houpt

The race was significant in the most productive natural gas-drilling county in the state because if one Democrat had joined fellow Dem Trési Houpt on the board, a number of key policy decisions favoring environmental and public health protections might have gone against the industry.

“Garfield was really ground zero in ’08,” said David Flaherty, CEO of Magellan Strategies, a Republican polling firm that conducted phone surveys in Garfield County leading up to the 2008 election. “If a Democrat had been elected, there definitely probably would have been some different policies passed or considered by the board of commissioners there.”

Tom Jankovsky

Had either Democrat Stephen Bershenyi or Steven Carter been elected in 2008, Houpt said things clearly would have been different the last two years, although she quickly added she’s forged a good working relationship with Samson, who has shown a real willingness to listen to public concerns about the impacts of gas drilling.

“There certainly are differences in priorities with the parties, and both John and Mike have been very up front about this,” Houpt said of the failure of Democrats to claim at least one seat in 2008. “Maybe there would have been support for the FRAC Act or the moratorium in the Divide Creek area – just a more cautious approach to energy development.”

The FRAC (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals) Act, sponsored by Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette, D-Denver, seeks to remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption granted the drilling process of hydraulic fracturing during the Bush administration.

There are serious concerns about the potential for groundwater contamination during the “fracking” process, but the Garfield County commissioners by a 2-1 margin voted not to support the legislation. Houpt backs the bill.

The West Divide Creek drilling moratorium was requested by Silt resident Lisa Bracken, who says cancer-causing chemicals and methane continue to seep into the creek near her property. She wants the commissioners to push the state to re-impose a previous drilling moratorium until the situation can be resolved.

Bracken, too, says Samson is a Republican who seems sincere about demanding responsible drilling practices and more state oversight. Still, the board declined to take up Bracken’s moratorium case with the state.

“[Samson], like myself, expects oversight from the state that was promised from the state,” Bracken said. “Martin is different story entirely. He does not seem to get what’s going on. He just seems to be adamant party-line, ‘drill, baby, drill,’ that kind of mentality that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Jankovsky’s campaign recently paid Magellan to conduct a phone survey on the race. He said Houpt is too liberal and there needs to be more of an emphasis on the high-paying jobs the industry brings to the county, adding, “oil and gas will probably be one of the defining issues of the campaign.”

Saying he’ll bring a more balanced approach to the board of commissioners regarding oil and gas issues, Jankovsky added he still hopes voters will be able to set partisan politics aside.

“It is a local election, and I hope people look at that from Tresi’s philosophy and my philosophy and not even so much looking at as what parties we represent, although people will do that,” Jankovsky said. “But it is a local election, so I hope people will look at us as candidates.”

Both Houpt and Jankovsky expect outside influences will try to sway voters in the nearly 3,000-square-mile county of more than 55,000 residents that stretches from Glenwood Springs in the east all the way to the Utah state line.

In 2008, the nonprofit Western Tradition Partnership, founded in Montana but with offices in Denver, spent money on mailers in support of Martin and Samson, both of whom denied any coordination with their campaigns and denounced outside influences.

Another 501(c)4 that campaigned in the race, Western Heritage, was funded by $10,000 each from current Republican gubernatorial candidate and former congressman Scott McInnis and Paul Rady, CEO of Antero Resources, a Denver-based drilling company pursuing a 200-well project in GarCo’s Battlement Mesa community.

A third nonprofit, Small Town Values, reportedly spent more than $7,000 on advertising for Samson and Martin. The group was registered to former Colorado Republican Party legal counsel John Zakhem.

Two 527 groups, so named for a section of the IRS tax code, insinuated themselves in the election, with both coming back to GOP strategist Scott Shires – an operative with a long history of questionable campaign tactics that have led to legal action. Shires failed to register one of the groups – the Colorado League of Taxpayers – and was fined $7,150 in the case.

Environmental nonprofits under the umbrella of the Western Organization of Resource Councils reportedly spent $15,000 campaigning in support of Democrats Bershenyi and Carter. WORC includes grassroots activist groups like the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance and Battlement Concerned Citizens, which are working to limit the impacts of Antero’s drilling plan in Battlement Mesa.

Garfield County exercises limited land-use authority over that drilling proposal because it maintained standing after approving the original PUD for the former Exxon company town that’s now home to more than 5,500 people. Once Antero submits a drilling plan, the county will begin a special-use permit hearing process.

Dave Devanney of Battlement Concerned Citizens says residents are nervous about the current political environment.

“The current political makeup [of the board], based on the recent decisions we’ve seen regarding the [Safe] Drinking Water Act and pit liners, it seems to us that their concerns are more with protecting the industry than safeguarding the citizens,” Devanney said.

“Our trust is that the commissioners, regardless of their political affiliation, are going to do what’s best for the citizens of Garfield County. We do recognize that the energy industry is very politicized and they’re going to do whatever they can to influence local regulators, and all we can do is try and do our best to influence them as well.”

A New Mexico reality Battlement Mesa residents are seeking to avoid (TexasMary, Flickr)

Residents of the unincorporated Western Slope community of more than 5,000 have been working hard to get out ahead of a plan by Denver-based Antero Resources to drill up to 200 new natural gas wells within town boundaries. The county retains special-use permit authority over the project because it approved the original plan for the former Exxon company town.

Garfield County officials have agreed to fund a Health Impact Study before drilling occurs, but a lawyer consulted by the Battlement Concerned Citizens questions the ability of the county to fully regulate oil and gas drilling if those health impacts prove too extreme. The state, via the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, has the ultimate regulatory authority.

Representatives of the BCC on Monday presented the findings of their attorney to the Garfield County commissioners and asked that the county consider exercising its 1041 powers granted under HB 1041, the Colorado Land Use Enabling Act of 1974. Those powers in the past have been used to stop major infrastructure projects such as the Homestake II water diversion in Eagle County – although that process took years and a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court.

Ron Galterio, co-chair of the Battlement Concerned Citizens – a subcommittee of the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance – said Antero chose Battlement Mesa primarily because it’s unincorporated and doesn’t have the regulatory teeth a municipality would have.

“We believe that Garfield County could fill that gap in local regulatory control under the provisions of HB 1041,” Galterio said. “In the case of Battlement Mesa, 1041 Powers would allow the authority of the county to rise to state level in its ability to regulate any development or activity, including oil and gas, that could affect the overall growth and development of the community.”

According to the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, Republican county commissioner John Martin expressed doubts about the challenges of pursuing 1041 regulation of oil and gas drilling, but Houpt, a Democrat, sought more information:

“While commissioner John Martin told Galterio that working with the 1041 powers is ‘not a really easy process’ and is ‘real challenging,’ commissioner Trési Houpt directed [county attorney Don] DeFord to look into the matter and report back to the commissioners at a future meeting,” the paper reported Tuesday.

Houpt also serves on the COGCC board, and a county exercising 1041 powers over oil and gas drilling would presumably usurp some of the state authority. However, Houpt pointed out that the county already regulates some of the surface impacts of drilling under its own set of regulations, although Garfield doesn’t go as far as La Plata County, which can actually approve the location of a well pad.

She acknowledged 1041 powers tend to typically be exercised in areas of rapid development in order to regulate infrastructure projects such as power lines or water diversion and storage facilities. They have not been used to regulate oil and gas drilling.

BCC consultant and water attorney G. Moss Driscoll of Carbondale said the county must declare Battlement Mesa an area of “state interest,” important to the county because of its potential for future population growth. Driscoll worked on the landmark Homestake II decision, which gave local governments control over development previously regulated primarily by the state.

“The resulting regulatory system would respect the authority of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission over oil and gas drilling, while allowing residents to ensure that the massive scope of Antero’s proposed operations does not permanently impair the community’s long-term growth and development,” Driscoll wrote in an analysis for the BCC.

Dave Devanney, co-chair of BCC, said his group remains confident the county is operating with the best interests of its citizens in mind.

“Of course this confidence — that Garfield County is concerned and being proactive in protecting our health, safety and welfare – is balanced with the extreme concern that we and all citizens of this country feel regarding the unprecedented environmental and economic harm currently happening in the Gulf of Mexico and even not so far away as Salt Lake City, Utah,” Devanney said.

“These concerns come at a time when the energy industry continues to try to eliminate or minimize the rules and regulations that regulators and legislators have imposed.”

Josh Joswick, a former three-term La Plata County commissioner who’s now the oil and gas issues organizer with San Juan Citizens Alliance, said there was some talk of La Plata trying to exercise its 1041 powers when he first came into office in the 1990s but the county decided not to go down that long regulatory road.

Instead it embarked on an equally grueling legal odyssey that resulted in industry and state lawsuits ultimately decided in La Plata’s favor by the Colorado Supreme Court. The county is widely regarded as having some of the most stringent local regulations for oil and gas drilling, but Joswick said 1041 could be a very viable new arrow in a county’s regulatory quiver.

Using 1041 would establish a precedent along the lines of the 1992 high court ruling in favor of La Plata, which Joswick called a “groundbreaking case because the Supreme Court ruled counties can exercise land-use authority when it comes to oil and gas development, but within certain parameters. The kicker on it is was so long as it doesn’t create an ‘operational conflict’ with the COGCC, but didn’t define operational conflict.”

La Plata interpreted the decision to mean the county could weigh in on surface activities such as roads and locations of well pads, but the COGCC would continue to dictate subsurface activities such as actual drilling, hydraulic fracturing and extraction of oil and gas.

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Colorado’s Western Slope drilling capital, Garfield County, recently refused to push for the reinstatement of a moratorium on drilling in an area near Silt where a creek was contaminated with methane and other toxins in 2004. A nearby landowner says the seep persists to this day. But county commissioners did ask the state to probe the matter more intensely and give greater credence to a county consultant who says the spill is drilling-related.

And in neighboring Wyoming, which just passed more stringent rules governing the drilling practice of hydraulic fracturing, the Casper Star-Tribune reports the state faces a looming deadline to plug dozens of abandoned coal-bed methane wells that produced more water than gas and have seriously impacted local property owners.

Meanwhile, officials in Utah over the weekend were trying to stem a leak from an oil pipeline in Salt Lake City that was threatening to contaminate the Great Salt Lake. The Chevron pipeline originates in Colorado.

With such regional incidents as a backdrop, Colorado Sen. Mark Udall today will hold a news conference at a gas station in Denver to tout a bill he’ll introduce to “ensure research and development is done on safety and spill prevention for oil and gas wells both onshore and offshore,” according to a release.

“The bill would retool an existing program, which Sen. Udall believes has been too focused on increasing production. He wants to make sure there’s a government program in place that addresses safety and accident prevention.” The news conference is scheduled for 1:45 p.m. at the Silco Gas Station at 295 S. Broadway in Denver.

Back on the Western Slope, Garfield County public health officials will hold a meeting at the Grand Valley Fire Protection District building in Battlement Mesa from 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday to provide on update on the only Health Impact Assessment currently being conducted in Colorado to evaluate the potential impacts of a major new drilling project in the area.

Members of the grassroots Grand Valley Citizens Alliance and the Battlement Concerned Citizens have been persistently advocating for the study ahead of planned 200-well project within the boundaries of the community of 5,000.

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County health officials, however, told the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent there was little cause for concern about elevated air pollution from the blaze, which was reportedly put out in about an hour-and-a-half and caused no injuries. Still, the fire may strengthen calls for a baseline health study in the area before drilling is allowed by the state and county.

“This is a prime example of why natural gas production in a residential community is a bad idea and endangers the health and safety of citizens,” resident Dave Devanney, a member of the Battlement Concerned Citizens, wrote in a letter to county environmental health department director Jim Rada.

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Members of Battlement Concerned Citizens (BCC) want a Health Impact Assessment conducted before state or local approval of an Antero Resources plan to put 10 well pads and up to 200 gas wells in the Garfield County community of Battlement Mesa, home to more than 5,000 people.

In the neighborhood: A resident oil well in Hobbs, N.M. (TexasMary, Flickr)

“It’s still, from our standpoint, very early in the process,” said Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) executive director David Neslin. “The process actually hasn’t even begun for us to be involved in authorizing drilling on Battlement Mesa.

“Antero has indicated it will develop a Comprehensive Drilling Plan under the [state’s] amended [drilling] rules. The amended rules set forth a process by which that will occur, which will provide lots of opportunities for the county and local citizens to be involved and for us to consult with the health department about any health-related concerns or issues, but that process hasn’t begun yet.”

Antero officials have indicated they hope to apply for both state approval from the COGCC and county approval via a Major Land Use Impact Review by the end of the year. Garfield County environmental health manager Jim Rada has said he’ll brief county commissioners on applying for a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) grant in the next few weeks. Rada has also talked to the state about a grant for the studies offered by two nonprofit groups.

“I can say that I am aware of the request,” Neslin said in an interview. “I’ve discussed it briefly with Jim Rada of Garfield County. We will certainly consider his request, and we will need to look into what it would involve and what information it would provide.”

Ron Galterio, co-chair of the grassroots activist group BCC, said their main objective is to have a baseline Health Impact Assessment conducted prior to any government authorization allowing oil and gas exploration or production operations within the Battlement Mesa Planned Unit Development (PUD).

“While we understand that the COGCC cannot take any action on such a request until applications for permits to drill are filed with their agency, we do desire to have an opportunity to have preliminary discussions with COGCC staff for advice and guidance on how to best protect the health, safety and welfare of our residents in the face of the looming proposal by Antero Resources,” Galterio said in an e-mail.

Galterio also said BCC members want the county commissioners to defer any necessary approvals until a health study can be conducted in the community, which is comprised of a large number of retirees who could be adversely impacted by any changes in air or water quality.

Besides being the first major CDP to be submitted under new, more environmentally stringent drilling regulations drafted by the COGCC and adopted by the State Legislature last spring, the Antero application could set a precedent for drilling operations in more densely populated communities, although similar drilling has occurred on the Front Range in Weld County.

“Whether it’s precedent setting or not, we understand the concerns that the people have, and the issue has been raised and it’s something we can look at through the CDP process,” Neslin said. Other issues such as greater setbacks for drilling rigs, which some Battlement Mesa residents hope the county will set, could conflict with state rules. Those conflicts may have to be resolved by the state attorney general, Neslin has said in previous interviews.

“Regardless of where drilling has occurred before, like in Weld County, there still has never been a baseline health study done for any community in Colorado in regards to drilling impacts,” said Leslie Robinson of the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance, of which the BCC is a subgroup.

“With no studies or follow-ups, for all we know, drilling chemicals could be killing people in Weld County. With a baseline health study in Battlement and subsequent health check-ups, we hope to take the mystery out of drilling chemical impacts.”

BCC activists also hope Garfield County will defer action on two special use permit applications for wells inside the Battlement PUD that have been operating without proper permits for nearly 20 years. Now owned by Williams Production RMT Company, the unpermitted wells were discovered last May when Antero announced its plans. The commissioners will review the application Dec. 14.

“The BCC hopes to convince the [commissioners] to defer action on these applications until the completion of a [Health Impact Assessment],” Galterio said. “We also are considering asking the [commissioners] to issue a cease and desist order for these two illegal operations until they are brought into compliance with county regulations.”

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According to the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, the commission set some fairly stringent conditions for recommending approval of special use permits for the wells, now owned by Williams Production RMT Co., but members of the local activist group Battlement Concerned Citizens (BCC) were far from pleased.

“We have been distressed since the May 27, 2009, meeting that announced plans for 10 well pads and up to 200 natural gas wells within our community,” BCC’s Dave Devanney wrote in a letter to the planning commission. “Our feelings of outrage and frustration were further heightened when we later learned that another operator, Williams Production RMT Company, had already been drilling within the PUD (planned unit development) – without the required Special Use Permit (SUP) – for nineteen years!”

According to the Post Independent, the wells were originally drilled by Barrett Resources Corp. in 1990 and should have obtained special use permits because the Battlement Mesa PUD – home to 5,000 people – falls under county jurisdiction. There is still active drilling from one of the well pads, while the other is in production mode, although it could see drilling in the future.

Members of Battlement Concerned Citizens were asking the planning commission to require the county planning staff to conduct an internal audit to see how many wells obtained “after-the-fact” permits and whether there should be changes to the permitting process to make sure it doesn’t happen again. BCC also wanted a plan for environmental monitoring of air and water supplies, as well as quarterly rather than yearly reporting by Williams.

BCC members told the Colorado Independent their requests were largely ignored, possibly because some of the planning commission members – volunteers appointed by the Garfield County board of commissioners – have existing business relationships with Williams.

According to the Post Independent, planning commission member John Kuersten revealed that his company does work for Williams, but he did not recuse himself from voting in favor of recommending approval of the special use permits. The county commissioners will likely make a final determination on the application on Dec. 14.

The BCC also wants the county to seek an outside Health Impact Assessment before approving Antero’s drilling plan.

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One of the 'million dollar views' Battlement Mesa uses to advertise itself (Photo: Battlement Mesa)

Jim Rada, Garfield County’s environmental health manager, told The Colorado Independent on Monday he has done some initial research into a Health Impact Assessment (HIA), which so far have been limited domestically to the oil fields of Alaska’s North Slope, and agrees with community activists that an HIA could fill some gaps in the county’s knowledge base.

A grassroots group of residents called Battlement Concerned Citizens is worried that a proposal by Denver-based Antero Resources to drill up to 200 natural gas wells from 10 well pads in the unincorporated community of 5,000 could lead to air, water, noise and light pollution and unduly jeopardize the health of an aging populace that retired to the former Exxon oil shale town for its healthy mountain lifestyle.

An HIA is an assessment of the potential impacts of a proposed development on local residents that is funded by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The assessments have become increasingly popular in Europe, Canada and Australia.

Other Battlement Mesa community groups have been pushing to establish 1,000-foot setbacks for drilling rigs in proximity to homes, instead of the state’s current 150-foot limit, in order to ease impacts. Air and water quality and rig setback concerns for an elderly population, or even young children, are all valid issues, Rada said.

“Those particular community issues do play into a potential decision to pursue a Health Impact Assessment,” Rada said. “There’s definitely community information that we don’t have readily available at our fingertips, such as what is the relative population of seniors in the community, the numbers of children in the community, where do the populations live relative to where the development activity will be going on?

“We don’t really have a good handle on that. So that’s definitely one area where we could use some help in terms of evaluating the impacts on the community.”

But Rada did say some aspects of what might be covered in an HIA are already being done by the county — namely an ambient air-quality study in the nearby Parachute area. Although that information has not been released to the public pending third-party review, Rada said it has been turned over to Antero for use in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-approved dispersion models for its proposed Battlement Mesa drilling project.

“We provided the ambient air-quality data that we’ve gathered over the last two or three years in the Parachute area, which I would believe would represent air quality that is currently not as good as what we would likely find in Battlement Mesa,” Rada said. “So it’s a little worse scenario.”

Because Garfield County approved the original Planned Unit Development (PUD) for Battlement Mesa in the 1970s, it maintains some level of project review authority even though oil and gas production is typically the purview of the state under the auspices of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Antero officials say they hope to submit a plan to both the county (called a Major Land Use Impact Review) and the COGCC (a Comprehensive Drilling Plan) by the end of the year.

Rada said some of what an HIA might accomplish has also been taking place in the form of community meetings, with Antero addressing concerns in both its state and county plans. Antero officials point to more than 10 meetings with various community groups.

“We have incorporated a variety of changes to our plans with the input we have been receiving and have taken other suggestions and concerns under advisement for further study in our execution of the project,” said Kevin Kilstrom, Antero’s vice president for production. “The input we have been receiving from the community will also help us refine our upcoming application for Major Land Use Impact Review with Garfield County.”

Rada said he hopes the county’s public health staff can meet with the county commissioners on the HIA issue and get back to Battlement Concerned Citizens by mid-December. “Being responsive to the citizens of the county that we represent is always a worthy thing,” he said.

Dave Devanney of Battlement Concerned Citizens said that during the natural gas boom that started in the late 1990s there was concern about traffic and noise and dust, but the drilling was outside of town and so residents took the good with the bad, enjoying low property taxes, more jobs and a general vibrancy to the community.

“So we kind of made our sacrifices then and we kind of felt we did more than our share, but now when they come and say ‘we’re going to put our rigs right in your back yards,’ we’re not happy about that and we’re going to do everything we can to see that our lifestyle here isn’t jeopardized further,” Devanney said.

Now the industry is once again in a bust cycle given the global recession and decline in gas prices — which has led to a much higher apartment vacancy rate and declines in student enrollment in the local schools — but Devanney said he knows the boom will return with a vengeance someday.

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