A natural gas rig at the entrance to Battlement Mesa in Garfield County on Colorado's Western Slope (David O. Williams photo).

“This rule is the product of some pretty intense negotiations among all parties,” Earthjustice attorney Mike Freeman said. “No one got everything they wanted in this rule, but overall we think the rule is an important step forward for Colorado.”

The Western Colorado Congress (WCC) late last week urged the COGCC to hold off on finalizing the new disclosure rule if it didn’t include pre-disclosure of chemicals before a frack job, which involves the high-pressure injection of mostly water, sand and a small percentage of often undisclosed chemicals into oil and gas wells to free up more hydrocarbons.

The new rule does require companies to notify landowners before a frack job so they can conduct baseline water testing. However, companies won’t have to disclose the chemicals used in the frack job until 60 days after it’s completed. But while environmentalists didn’t get pre-disclosure, the new rule does require the disclosure of all chemicals and the concentrations being used.

“The rule requires the disclosure of all chemicals and the concentration of all chemicals, not just those that are required to be disclosed under workplace safety rules,” Freeman said, so landowners will be able to conduct pre-frack baseline testing and then up to 60 days later compare those results to the full range of chemicals and the concentrations used in the frack job.

“I’m not aware of any other state with a disclosure rule that requires that level of information to be provided,” Freeman added. “The issues WCC raised are valid ones and I respect the reasons why they are proposing them. We ultimately decided that the benefits from this rule were important enough to support the rule even if it didn’t have every element that the environmental community would want.”

Asked by one of the commissioners to justify the 60-day disclosure window, COGCC director David Neslin said that FracFocus — the website run by the Groundwater Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Commission that will be used for Colorado’s chemical disclosure – mostly only includes disclosure of hazardous chemicals listed on Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS). That’s less than half of all the chemicals used in the fracking process.

“We’re extending this now to all of the chemicals;” Neslin said of what will be listed for Colorado on FracFocus starting in April. “We’re essentially doubling, if you will, the number of chemicals that are going to have to be addressed, and we’re including not just the identity of the chemical but the concentration as well.”

Disclosure of such a comprehensive list of chemicals will take time, he added.

“So we wanted to ensure that there would be sufficient time, that these new disclosure requirements can be effectively implemented,” Neslin said. “The timing is an issue that we may be able to revisit in a year or two as companies get experience with this expanded disclosure regime.”

Another bone of contention for environmental groups was the so-called trade-secret loophole that allows companies to apply for disclosure exemptions for proprietary reasons. Freeman says that under the final rule a reasonable compromise was reached.

“We didn’t get everything we wanted in the way of safeguards on trade-secret claims, but the final rule provides much more substantial safeguards than what was in the draft rule,” Freeman said. “Companies are going to have to submit this Form 41 and sign it under oath, providing some facts justifying their trade-secret claim. And it also provides language describing how members of the public can challenge a trade secret claim if they should choose to do so.”

The forms will be subject to Colorado Open Records Act requests, and members of the public can file a lawsuit if they are not satisfied with the response from the COGCC or the information provided by oil and gas companies.

Finally, the WCC was concerned that the information available on FracFocus will not be readily searchable by the public based on types of chemicals or the location and date of a frack job. Under the new rule, FracFocus has a year to rectify that situation.

WCC officials did not immediately return calls requesting comment on today’s decision.

Industry representatives were pleased with today’s decision.

“I do want to affirm that the Colorado Oil and Gas Association and its members support the rule,” Tisha Schuller of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association told the commissioners. “The rule that just passed is something that you can be proud of. I’m confident that Colorado can be proud of, and I too look forward to an engagement that now has a new model to follow.”

Earthjustice attorney Jim Angell told the Colorado Independent that last week’s decision by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting a 2008 Wyoming federal court decision and backing the Clinton rule undermines Colorado’s contention that it needs its own rule because of legal uncertainty.

“Really, for all intents and purposes this is the certainty we’re going to get in this region, and what’s really going on is the state [of Colorado] wants its rule and is using alleged legal uncertainty as an excuse for its continued support for it,” Angell said.

The proposed Colorado Roadless Rule, first floated in 2005 when the Bush administration set aside the Clinton rule and later allowed individual state rules for the management of roadless federal lands, contains too many road-building exemptions for logging, coal mining and oil and gas development, conservation groups contend. But Colorado has stayed the course because of various legal challenges to the 2001 Clinton rule.

“This ruling does not preclude further litigation, which could continue to create uncertainty,” Colorado Department of Natural Resources Executive Director Mike King said after last week’s appeals court decision. “As a result, we will continue working to finalize the Colorado rule so we can provide clear and appropriate direction on the management and protection of national forest roadless areas in Colorado.”

But Angell said very few legal options remain open.

“I suppose the other side can ask the entire court to take the case en banc or they can seek [U.S.} Supreme Court review, but given this opinion and the fact that it aligns perfectly with the Ninth Circuit review [in 2009], both of those are extreme long-shots,” Angell said. “But if that is really the certainty they wanted, then it would only be a short wait to resolve that process.”

There are 4.2 million acres of roadless federal lands in Colorado, and King says the Colorado rule is based in large part on the 2001 rule – with some key differences.

“Starting in 2005, Colorado has been engaged in an extensive public involvement process to develop consensus on a rule that makes sense for the various needs and uses of our forests while also finding ways to provide strong protection of these lands,” King said.

“That process has benefitted from updated backcountry inventories for true roadless characteristics, the identification of high-value fish and wildlife habitat, and developing narrowly-tailored accommodation of activities critical to local economies that also includes wildfire protection for mountain communities.”

The only other state to petition the federal government for a state-specific rulemaking process was Idaho. The Idaho rule has been finalized and put into place for management purposes but is being challenged on appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court.

Although it’s certainly true that in the post-Citizens United-era more corporate money than ever sloshes into increasingly expensive political campaigns and that Big Oil donates generously in races coast to coast, Gardner nevertheless seems to be sailing into new territory.

More than a year from Election Day, Gardner has raised more money from oil and gas than did his Republican predecessor, former US Representative Marilyn Musgrave, during the entire heated 2008 campaign season. The industry contributed roughly $44,000 to Gardner this quarter and $32,000 last quarter.

Oil and gas is solidly on track to give Gardner more money this election than it did last election, and last election the industry was good to Gardner: its representatives gave him $177,000 and made oil and gas the top-contributing industry to his 2010 campaign. That’s as much as Musgrave raised from the sector for all three congressional races she ran in the district. Democrat Betsy Markey, who defeated Musgrave in 2008, got a negligible amount from oil and gas, and Republican Bob Schaffer, who represented the district before Musgrave, pulled down only roughly $23,000 total from oil and gas for all three of his House campaigns.

According to Gardner’s Federal Election Commission financial reports, he has raised nearly $900,000 total so far this year and has taken thousands from British Petroleum, Exxon, Chevron, Halliburton, Anadarko Petroleum Corp, as well as from oil and gas associations. Over the course of his career as a state and federal lawmaker, depending on how you count, Gardner has also taken directly and indirectly somewhere between $300,000 and $450,000 from Koch Industries, the oil and gas conglomeration headed by right wing lightning-rod magnates Charles and David Koch.

Committees Gardner has authorized to spend on his behalf include those run by Halliburton, Marathon Oil and Williams Companies. The last two are major gas drillers in Colorado, and Halliburton, a contract service provider for the industry, has become one of the leading companies behind the controversial extraction practice called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, where undisclosed mixtures of water, chemicals and sand are blasted into the earth to free up gas. Many believe the practice is contaminating ground water in Colorado and in other heavily drilled states such as Wyoming, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York.

A resource-rich district

In a release Tuesday, Gardner 2012 opponent Democratic state Senate President Brandon Shaffer began tapping out what is sure to be a steadily rising drumbeat narrative in the race.

“This campaign will be difficult, fighting against the special interests’ favorite incumbent, but it’s increasingly obvious that Northern Coloradans are fed up with all the hot air coming from Washington and are ready for straight talk and real Colorado solutions.”

Shaffer reported that his campaign raised $180,000 in the third quarter, with donations from more than 900 individual Coloradans, adding that the average individual contribution he received amounted to $153.78 and that 98 percent of the 900-plus individual donors to his campaign live in Colorado.

Gardner spokesperson Rachel Boxer has played down concerns about Gardner’s ties to the oil industry. After last quarter’s numbers appeared, she told the Greeley Tribune that the congressman’s ties to energy companies just make sense.

“[Energy production] is a big part of… the Fourth Congressional District. Gardner believes developing American-made energy is a good way to create jobs. It’s a good way to wean ourselves off foreign oil. And it’s a way to jump-start the economy.”

In fact, Weld County in the northeast corner of Gardner’s district has seen a drilling boom over the last few years atop the Niobrara shale formation, which spreads from Colorado into Wyoming, Kansas and Nebraska. Weld is now dotted with hundreds of new wells and will see hundreds more drilled in years to come—and that will be true no matter who CD4 constituents elect to represent them in Congress. Indeed, although Gardner attacks even longstanding clean air and water regulations as “job killers” designed by bureaucrats to “shut down the energy industry,” the gas boom in Weld has come despite stiffer environmental regulations put in place in the state by Democratic Governor Bill Ritter.

Drilling for jobs

That kind of evidence on the ground in the Fourth District, however, isn’t likely to alter Gardner’s vision.

He has aggressively adopted the House Republican line— taken up in Tuesday’s debate by GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry– that the best way to create jobs and cure the plagued economy is to increase domestic energy production, or put another way, to “drill baby drill.” In fact, the list of bills presently stuck in the Senate that House Republican leaders tout as the party’s job plan consists mostly of drilling-licensing and regulation-thinning proposals that Gardner voted for and that Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists decry as an historic attack on the environment.

Critics see the proposals less as a jobs plan and more as a thinly veiled giveback to oil and gas campaign donors.

As has been widely reported but without much effect, licensing and regulations aren’t the problem they’re being made out to be: oil and gas companies right now are sitting on thousands of drilling leases all over the country, and regulations, including the new rules in Colorado, have not prevented the same companies from conducting major new operations.

Citing the need to create jobs, however, Gardner last spring voted for more than a hundred bills (pdf) that would block or lift regulations on air and water pollutants including mercury for the benefit of cement-making, mining and drilling companies.

“This is fear-based politics,” Colorado Conservation Voters Executive Director Pete Maysmith told the Independent. “A small number of GOP politicians and their Tea Party supporters are holding captive politicians of all stripes. It’s become Republican Party orthodoxy to attack regulations but that is just ideology in that much of it is not based in reality.

“Providing basic protections for the environment is a bedrock principle for Coloradans. This is such a great place to work and play. We have a long history of hunting and fishing. It’s who we are. There’s an ethic that we have to protect this beautiful state. We may disagree on how to do that but to run roughshod over regulations is just not sensible.”

Fort Collins-based Clean Water Action Director Gary Wockner said Gardner already has established himself as perhaps the most anti-environmental member of Congress in the state’s history. He told the Independent his group has knocked on tens of thousands of doors in the district to draw attention to Gardner’s positions, pointing in particular to Gardner’s repeat votes in favor of diluting the forty-year-old Clean Water Act.

“There is no outcry [in the Fourth District] to attack the Clean Water Act,” Wockner said. “Nobody is talking about the Clean Water Act up here. It’s a well-established law that forces polluters to clean up after themselves. No business or organization or any other entity I know of here sees the Clean Water Act as causing trouble. This is coming from Gardner alone.”

Offshore Colorado

Gardner’s oil and gas advocacy, however, already extends well beyond the district and has led him into deeply controversial territory.

Most notably, Gardner last June introduced the Jobs and Energy Permitting Act of 2011, which seeks to open up greater sections of the U.S. coast to oil drilling, and particularly sections of the Arctic Ocean off of Alaska.

Shell Oil has been working for a decade to win permits to conduct major operations in the pristine Arctic Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Shell spokesperson Kelly op de Weegh told the Independent that it was Shell’s case that reportedly spurred Gardner, a representative from a landlocked district, to act. She said members of the GOP-controlled House Energy and Commerce Committee including Gardner “were particularly interested” in Shell’s efforts to secure permits.

“Key committee members, including Congressman Gardner, determined that legislation was appropriate to settle some of the more troubling issues and to ensure that future permit applications are processed in a more expeditious manner.”

In an email, Op de Weegh denied that Shell wrote the bill for Gardner.

“As the legislation was developed, Shell and other industry supporters provided input as requested by Mr. Gardner and others.”

A main reason for the delay in permitting, according to testimony provided to the Energy and Commerce Committee by Anchorage-based EarthJustice attorney Erik Grafe (pdf), is that pertinent research on the largely unstudied region and its unique qualities has yet to be completed. He points out that the significance of that research has been underlined in the year since the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. He referred to the National Commission report published on offshore drilling in January 2011 that strongly recommended more specific scientific study of natural environments and emergency response preparedness in any region being considered for new drilling, particularly the remote, freezing, stormy, dark Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

Grafe added that another main reason for delays in permitting was Shell’s repeat attempts to sidestep air-pollution rules by not submitting full data or by seeking to win classifications that would sidestep longstanding air pollution standards for the aging exhaust- and particulate-spewing fleet of icebreakers and drilling support ships it plans to move into the region.

Grafe told the committee that the regulatory streamlining proposed by Gardner’s bill would create the same kind of loopholes that led to the Deepwater spill.

Little of Grafe’s testimony– about the region, about Shell, about the nature of the lives of the native people who live there– has been heard in the Fourth District.

“One thing I can attest to is that a majority of Coloradans support increased energy production,” Gardner said in explaining why a Colorado Congressman was introducing the bill. He said the bill would create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

He also lamented that regulatory processes were more challenging in the United States than they were in Saudi Arabia.

“Production off the coast of Alaska could provide a million barrels of oil a day – comparable to what we currently import from Saudi Arabia. Unlike Saudi Arabia, this domestic production is blocked by a convoluted permitting system in place that is difficult if not impossible to navigate.”

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For more stories in our series “Campaign Cash: Outing the Corporations,” click here. This report was produced as part of a collaborative investigative effort to expose the influence of corporate money on the political process by members of The Media Consortium, in partnership with the We the People campaign. To read more, visit CampaignCash.org or follow #CampaignCash on Twitter.

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The environmental law firm Earthjustice today filed a notice of intent to sue (pdf) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for not adhering to the Clean Air Act and identifying communities endangered by ozone air pollution.

Based on the EPA’s own air-quality analysis, many communities in Colorado exceed the 2008 ozone standard of 75 parts per billion (ppb), including the Front Range cities of Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Greeley and Loveland.

Denver-based WildEarth Guardians filed a similar lawsuit against the EPA in late August and is gearing up to sue the EPA for not implementing other parts of the 2008 ozone standards.

Identifying the worst cities in the nation for ozone pollution is the first step in implementing mitigation measures, such as requiring better scrubbers on smoke stacks at power plants. The EPA has now missed two deadlines in a formal process called “designating nonattainment areas” – the latest on March 12.

“These delays are intolerable when people are breathing dangerous levels of ozone in these cities,” Earthjustice attorney David Baron said in a press release. “The longer the EPA puts off getting these cities on the cleanup track, the more lives are at risk.”

Earthjustice is representing the American Lung Association, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Parks Conservation Association and Appalachian Mountain Club.

“This delay jeopardizes the health of millions of Americans, as breathing smog-polluted air can lead to coughing and wheezing, restricted airways, hospitalization and for some, death,” said Charles D. Connor, president and CEO of the American Lung Association.

Today’s lawsuit comes hard on the heels of last month’s decision by the Obama administration to rein in tougher ozone standards proposed by an independent group of scientists and backed by EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.

In 2008, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASA) recommended compelling states and counties to enforce an ozone level of 60 to 70 ppb compared to the current level of 75 ppb set during the Bush administration. Jackson earlier this year said her agency would seek to set the lower standard ahead of a regularly scheduled review in 2013.

President Obama last month sided with industry in allowing the 2013 review to go forward and not accelerating the process. That decision drew the ire of both health care officials and conservation groups.

In a petition filed on behalf of 114 state and national groups, the environmental law firm EarthJustice is urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require natural gas drilling companies to disclose the chemicals they use.

Bloomberg reports that the groups also want EPA to require toxicity testing for the chemicals used in fracking.

The EPA is studying the effects of fracking on drinking water amid questions about the safety of the technique, in which millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are forced into rock to free trapped gas and oil. Results of the U.S. study aren’t expected until 2014, according to the agency. New York state may lift a ban on fracking later this year.

“Thousands and thousands of wells are being drilled each year using these chemicals,” [EarthJustice attorney Megan Klein] said yesterday. “We want the public to fully understand the risk of these chemicals being injected near their homes, schools and hospitals.”

By 2035, 46 percent of U.S. gas will come from shale, up from 14 percent in 2009, according to estimates of reserves by the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration.

Major manufacturers of fracking chemicals include Schlumberger and Halliburton, which have resisted EPA requests for information on fracking chemicals.

Without information about the chemicals used in fracking it is difficult to establish whether the practice is damaging groundwater.

Other environmental groups have dubbed Mica’s measure a “dirty water bill,” and argue that it would essentially rewrite the Clean Water Act — removing the EPA’s authority to object to state-approved permits and revise state water quality standards.

“This is not about the state versus the EPA. This is about clean water versus dirty water, plain and simple,” says Earthjustice senior legislative counsel Joan Mulhern, in a press release.

Among those to vote against the bill was Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., who offered a failed amendment that would have exempted water that are sources of public drinking water and provided flood protection for communities.

“Earthjustice applauds Congressman Bishop for taking action to protect our valuable water sources that provide drinking water, flood control and other important values to people and communities,” said Mulhern. “While the majority of the T & I committee voted to reverse decades of progress that was made since the Clean Water Act was passed, we thank those who voted with Congressman Bishop and against this destructive bill.”

Filed in U.S. District Court by Earthjustice on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Wilderness Workshop and the Wilderness Society, the lawsuit accuses the BLM of violating the National Environmental Policy Act.

Graham’s penstemon. By Susan Meyer

The groups charge that the BLM’s Colorado River Valley Field Office signed off on new wells in the last few years by saying the air pollution analysis was covered in a 2006 environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Roan Plateau. But many of the new wells, according to the lawsuit, are more than 10 miles from the Roan Plateau.

In a separate case impacting oil and gas drilling on Colorado’s Western Slope, a U.S. District Court judge late last week ruled that the U.S. Interior Department must reconsider its decision rejecting Endangered Species Act protection for a wildflower found only in parts of Colorado and Utah and threatened by oil and gas drilling, oil shale production, cattle grazing and off-road vehicle traffic.

The wildflower is the Graham’s penstemon, which was rejected for Endangered Species Act protection during the Bush administration. The court found that the Bush administration’s decision not to list the flower was “arbitrary and capricious.”

“The court’s decision makes it clear that FWS (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) cannot set aside science and avoid full consideration of the multiple threats that incrementally push a species closer to extinction,” said Meg Parish, attorney for the conservation groups.

The HD Mountains in southern Colorado were reportedly named after an old cattle brand, not the more contemporary “High Definition” television brand. But a plan by BP America and other oil and gas companies to drill natural gas in the low-elevation roadless area has brought into crystal-clear focus the debate over drilling for gas on public lands deemed “roadless” by the Clinton administration in 2001.

The so-called Clinton roadless rule was quickly set aside by the Bush administration, and the U.S. Forest Service and BLM issued more than 100 oil and gas leases throughout the 4.4 million acres of federal lands in Colorado that were designated as roadless areas. The pristine HD Mountains 20 miles east of Durango near Bayfield – part of the larger San Juan Mountain Range – is one of those areas.

The Clinton roadless rule has been tied up in federal court for years, and the state of Colorado submitted its own roadless plan, which many conservationists say allows far too many exemptions for coal mining, logging and ski area expansion.

Late last week, lawyers for Earthjustice – a Denver-based environmental law firm – made final arguments in a June challenge of the Forest Service approval of the HD Mountain drilling plan. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver may issue a decision in a matter of weeks, or it could take up to a year.

A coal-bed methane drilling proposal by BP America, XTO Energy, Elm Ridge Exploration Company, Exok and Petrox Resources was first submitted for the area in 2000, originally calling for 57 well pads and 38 miles of new roads. San Juan National Forest officials pared that down to 27 well pads and 11 miles of new roads.

Mike Freeman, an attorney for Earthjustice – which represents the San Juan Citizens Alliance, Oil and Gas Accountability Project, Colorado Environmental Coalition, Colorado Wild and The Wilderness Society in the appeal – says that’s still too much impact for one of the last low-elevation roadless areas in the state.

“Roadless areas that are at that elevation are really pretty rare in Colorado,” Freeman told the Colorado Independent. “Most of them have been developed. And because it’s low elevation and roadless, it’s really kind of an island of refuge for wildlife in that part of the state that depend on this important block of pristine wild land for their habitat.”

Even drilling opponents say Forest Service officials have addressed some of their concerns – for instance making the “heart of the roadless area (Ignacio Creek) off limits to coal-bed methane drilling because of concerns about landslide hazards, slope stability, erosion, and watershed impacts.” But that ban could someday be lifted, so no drilling at all is their preferred alternative.

“In a region peppered with tens of thousands of gas wells, there must be places where drilling is simply not allowed — regardless of what resources lie beneath the surface,” San Juan Citizens Alliance Executive Director Megan Graham said in a release.

Freeman last week argued the Forest Service simply isn’t following its own rules and guidelines.

“In adopting the [drilling] plan, they’ve ignored the requirements of the forest plan for managing the area,” Freeman said. “The forest plan imposed a host of different requirements that protects the old growth forest that would get cut down and the wildlife that depends on that habitat and protects the rivers and streams in the [HD] Mountains. The decision here violates the forest plan standards for all of those.”

The HD Mountains are home to stands of old-growth ponderosa pines, in some cases dating back more than 300 years.

Officials with the Pike-San Isabel National Forest in southern-central Colorado touched off a powder keg of controversy recently when they issued a Motor Vehicle Use Map (MVUM) that conservationists say includes more than 500 miles of illegal roads and tracks – or “rogue” trails – formed by all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) or motorcycles over the years.

The groups filed suit last week in U.S. District Court alleging the U.S. Forest Service failed to properly vet the roads for environmental impacts, including their potential effect on endangered species and other recreational activities such as hiking and biking.

Represented by the environmental law firm Earthjustice, the groups include the Quiet Use Coalition, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Center for Native Ecosystems, Wildlands CPR and The Wilderness Society. The groups also say the roads were added without any public input.

Critics claim that the more than 800 trails, roads and tracks will only add to a USFS maintenance and upgrade backlog on the existing network in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest, which is in the top 10 most popular national forests in the United States. The Forest Service is currently $16 million behind in just maintaining existing roads, the groups claim.

“I’m really upset because this forest means so much to me and my family,” Quiet Use Coalition President Alan Heald said in a release “Everyone knows that this forest’s management and enforcement of [off-road vehicles] has been lackadaisical for decades. But now, instead of utilizing the new rules to rein it in, they are attempting to officially lock in the decades of illegal use without a public and environmental process.”

Heald is an avid hiker who says he has dealt with years of off-road vehicle trespass problems around his family’s mining claim in the Pike-San Isabel.

Off-road vehicle groups in other parts of the state have battled with lower-impact forest users over inclusion of new public lands in wilderness proposals in the White River National Forest, where the Hidden Gems proposal sparked heated debate in recent years.

A watered down version of that proposal was proposed by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, in the last session of Congress. Its fate remains uncertain in the current Republican-controlled House.

And for years now Colorado has been working through a laborious process to craft its own rules for managing federal public lands designated as “roadless” areas. The state is seeking certain exemptions for ski area expansion and extractive industries such as gas drilling and logging.

Polis and DeGette, along with Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., co-sponsored the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act in 2009, only to see it languish in the overall gridlock over energy policy and climate-change legislation. Dubbed the “Haliburton Loophole” for the oil services company that perfected the process, fracking was granted an exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act during the Bush-Cheney administration in 2005.

It involves injecting water, sand and undisclosed chemicals deep underground to fracture tight geological formations and free up more natural gas. Haliburton and other companies say they must keep chemical formulas secret for proprietary reasons and that the process is safe. Critics say fracking has led to contamination of drinking water.

The Interior Department is weighing a proposal to require chemical disclosure in all fracking operations conducted on public lands through the oil and gas leasing process.

Earthjustice Legislative Associate Jessica Ennis called that plan “a crucial step in pulling back this veil of secrecy. The support for the public’s right-to-know, championed by [Hinchey, DeGette and Polis] and echoed by their colleagues is invaluable — as is their tireless work to restore drinking water protections for communities all over the country that have been placed in harm’s way by rushed and irresponsible gas development.”

The fracking debate has grown increasingly heated on Colorado’s Western Slope, where property owners say well water is being impacted by the process.