In a letter to the president, the two Colorado Democrats, along with Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y, ask Obama to support the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, which would require the disclosure of chemicals used in the natural gas extraction process called “fracking.”

In his State of the Union speech last month, Obama emphasized natural gas as a key resource in his “all-of-the-above” strategy to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil and to make the United States a global leader in clean energy. Obama followed it up with speeches at Buckley Air Force Base and another in Nevada in which he called the United States “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”

Rep. Diana DeGette

“With hydraulic fracturing expanding across the country, it is more important than ever we ensure the economic benefits of natural gas do not come at the expense of the health and safety of our families,” DeGette said Thursday.

DeGette, Hinchey, and Polis also requested an expansion of an ongoing Environmental Protection Agency study of hydraulic fracturing, which received a congressional hearing Wednesday so charged Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Josh Fox of “Gasland” ended up in handcuffs.

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently embarking on the first, independent and comprehensive study of the risks that hydraulic fracturing poses to drinking water,” their letter states. “Unfortunately, media reports indicate that some in the oil and gas industry are seeking to narrow and even undermine this important study. This must not be allowed to happen. We urge you to maintain a strong commitment to the research that is under way by providing the necessary resources and support. We also urge you to consider expanding this research to cover hydraulic fracturing’s impact on air quality and human health.”

The House members also questioned the shale gas statistics cited in the State of the Union address.

Rep. Jared Polis

“We also believe it’s critical to have an accurate understanding of exactly how much shale gas lies beneath the surface,” their letter states. “Much has been said about our country’s potential supply of shale gas. Some in the industry have claimed we have an ocean of natural gas buried beneath our surface. Despite these claims, independent estimates about shale gas reserves reveal great uncertainty. In fact, just this week, the Energy Information Administration slashed its estimate of technically recoverable resources of U.S. shale gas by half. Furthermore, the United States Geological Survey’s estimates released last year are even lower. This is an enormous swing and it should be a caution to those who claim these new shale gas fields are the silver bullet to our country’s energy challenge. We must take care to ensure that any ‘bridge fuel,’ doesn’t instead prove to be a bridge to nowhere.”

On Tuesday, in the lead up to a hearing on a controversial federal study of water contamination from natural gas drilling, residents in the Pavillion, Wyo., area voiced unwavering support for the EPA.

“The Pavillion area was heavily drilled for natural gas,” said John Fenton, an alfalfa farmer. “No consideration was given to well spacing or to the impacts on the people or the environment. Our land and the land of our neighbors has been damaged and devalued. The water has been contaminated and the air fouled. Our health has also been attacked, my wife is losing her sense of smell and her sense of taste, my youngest son has developed seizures and I suffer chronic headaches and fatigue.”

Fenton was one of three landowners from the Pavillion area to speak to the press in a teleconference the day before the hearing over the EPA’s draft report, which has been criticized by gas industry executives, Wyoming officials and some members of Congress.

At the hearing, GOP lawmakers questioned the integrity of the EPA’s draft report, alleging it “jumps to conclusions” in making connections between fracking and water contamination. EPA officials clarified the scope of the draft report and explained the uniqueness of the Pavillion gas field.

“We make clear that the causal link to hydraulic fracturing has not been demonstrated conclusively, and that our analysis is limited to the particular geologic conditions in the Pavillion gas field and should be assumed to apply to fracturing in other geologic settings,” James B. Martin, EPA’s Region 8 administrator in Denver, testified. “It should be noted that fracturing in Pavillion is taking place in and below the drinking water aquifer and in close proximity to drinking water wells — production conditions different from those in many other areas of the country.”

The EPA on Tuesday issued more than 600 new pages of data to support its draft report.

Fenton praised the EPA for paying attention.

Louis Meeks’ well water contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead and copper, according to the EPA’s test results. When he drilled a new water well, it also showed contaminants. (Photo by Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)

“When the people of the Pavillion area began to notice negative impacts to their water they looked to the state and industry to provide answers and help to remedy the contamination,” he said. “However there was no help from the state of Wyoming or the natural gas industry. The people of the Pavillion area were told that there was no way the natural gas drilling and fracking operations in the Pavillion area could have caused damage to the water. When industry did admit that problems existed they blamed the impact on the landowners saying that they lacked proper hygiene or that they had contaminated the wells themselves.”

“During the entire time we’ve known our water is bad, we contacted our elected officials, the Wyoming Governor, Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, and the BLM, who administer the Tribe’s minerals under our property, asking for help. They continually said our water was fine,” added landowner Louis Meeks. “While reading the EIS for the Wind River Gas Field Development Project, I saw Region 8 EPA Greg Oberley’s name and called him to ask for EPA’s help. Several of our impacted neighbors also contacted the EPA. After site tours of the Pavillion area, we were invited to go to Denver to explain the problems we were having with our water. We welcome and are thankful for the help that the EPA has given us.”

The EPA is extending the public comment period on its study into March and it also sent out a request for peer review. Martin and other officials stressed that the study is not final.

In the meantime, natural gas prices are plunging due to a surge in supply. Several oil and gas companies recently announced plans to close off natural gas wells, pull out rigs and slow spending.

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David Neslin

Neslin worked closely with environmental groups and industry to develop the nation’s strongest chemical disclosure law for hydraulic fracturing.

“We thank Dave Neslin for his work as director of COGCC,” Colorado Conservation Voters Director Peter Maysmith told the Colorado Independent. “While we did not always see eye to eye, he played a valuable role in shepherding through important reforms that will better protect Colorado’s air, land, and water. There is more to be done to protect our environment and the communities where drilling is happening and we look forward to working with a new director to build on making Colorado a national leader in oil and gas protections.”

Neslin plans to continue to work productively with several local governments on regulatory issues as the potential for energy development grows along the Front Range.

“Leading this agency through a time of dynamic change in energy development in Colorado has
been a challenging, exciting and rewarding experience,” Neslin said in a prepared statement. “I look forward to continuing the work of building collaborative, productive solutions to energy and natural resources issues in a new forum.”

A state official said Neslin plans to join the Denver law firm Davis Graham & Stubbs on March 1.

About a dozen local twenty-somethings waved signs reading “Keep Our Water Pure,” “Rig Free For You And Me” and “Stop Frac’ing Colo” that television cameras carried live when Shaun White twisted and tumbled through the air on his way to his fifth-consecutive men’s snowboard superpipe victory.

Anti-drilling demonstrators make a statement as snowboarder Shaun White flies by. (Photo by Eric Allen)

The ESPN Winter X Games provided an ideal venue, the activists said, to educate an extremely large and youthful crowd about fracking — a method of extracting natural gas and oil by breaking rocks with a pressurized mixture of fluids. The protestors specifically sought to raise awareness of the threat of drilling in the nearby roadless area of Thompson Divide and energy plays on the other side of the Elk Mountains in the North Fork Valley.

The mission went off without a hitch until about 15 minutes before the superpipe finals came to an end. That’s when private security tried to shut the demonstration down.

“ESPN said they ‘couldn’t’ air footage with our signs. They were told to make us stop, but they really couldn’t do anything about it,” said Nick DeVore, a professional telemarker who grew up in Aspen.

More than once, private security guards tried to physically remove DeVore and his signs from Buttermilk Mountain, where the Winter X Games were held, but he stood his ground. After the competition was over and the awards ceremony began, Pitkin County sheriff’s deputies approached DeVore, informed him that he was on private property and that he could avoid arrest if he left the grounds immediately. He did. But not before lifting his “Don’t Frac It Up” sign high for all to see.

The crackdown on environmental activism put ESPN in a curious spot as Winter X Games athletes such as Gretchen Bleiler and Seth Wescott regularly use their fame to educate fans about climate change, recycling and sustainable living. Bleiler and several other pro riders even visited Capitol Hill last fall to defend the Environmental Protection Agency. The Winter X Games protest came just three days before today’s House sub-committee hearing on the EPA’s hydraulic fracturing research.

“ESPN does not allow advocacy signage regardless of message,” ESPN spokesman Danny Chi said.

In the end, the peaceful demonstrators succeeded in not only getting their anti-drilling signs television exposure, but news organizations captured their messages in still images splashed on the Internet and in newspapers from coast to coast. It was such a success some of the same activists plan on picketing U.S. Bureau of Land Management offices along the Western Slope beginning next week.

Untitled from Eric Allen on Vimeo.

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House Bill 1176 (pdf), which has been assigned to the House Local Government Committee, is sponsored by Democrats Matt Jones, Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, Sue Ryden, Nancy Todd and Roger Wilson.

“The [Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission] must require setbacks of at least 1,000 feet from any school or residence but allow a surface owner who is not located in an urban area to request a shorter setback than would otherwise apply,” reads the bill’s summary.

Current COGCC rules call for setbacks of 150 feet in rural areas and 350 feet in urban areas, but Jones says that’s not far enough away in densely populated Front Range areas where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is an essentially industrial process close to homes and schools.

“If three football fields from a school is good enough for medical marijuana, it’s good enough for oil and gas fracking,” Jones told the Colorado Independent earlier this month, comparing drilling setbacks to pot shops near schools. Jones also would like to see counties and municipalities take a more active role in regulating oil and gas drilling.

Republican state lawmakers Ted Harvey, Kevin Grantham and Scott Renfroe have introduced a bill aimed at stopping what even Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper has called a potential “patchwork” of local regulations overseeing stepped up drilling activities.

“The bill specifies that the regulation of oil and gas operations is a matter of statewide concern, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has exclusive jurisdiction to regulate oil and gas operations, and local regulation of oil and gas operations is preempted by state law,” reads the summary of Senate Bill 88 (pdf).

With regard to setbacks, COGCC director David Neslin told the Colorado Independent that such a bill is unnecessary because the vast majority of oil and gas wells already comply.

COGCC Director David Neslin

“Outside of Weld County – which is a different situation because you’ve had oil and gas and residential development growing up together there over the past 30, 40 years – in the balance of the state 90 percent of the wells are 1,000 feet or more from the closest building,” Neslin said.

Mike Chiropolos, lands program director for Western Resource Advocates, said setbacks are a valid issue with oil and gas booming in the Niobrara Formation beneath the state’s more densely populated Front Range.

“Even if it’s 90 percent, what about the 10 percent?” Chiropolos said. “You don’t want to leave those folks out in the cold. One Colorado family getting sick, one Colorado resident getting sick or having an avoidable negative experience because of a well being unacceptably close to a home is one too many.”

He added that new directional drilling techniques allow wells to be drilled 1,000 feet or even a quarter of mile away from homes and schools as opposed to predominantly vertically drilled wells in the past.

HB 1176 would require that “best management practices for new technologies be established by rule prior to use of the new technologies.”

As for greater local control of oil and gas drilling, Neslin disagrees with Jones, who recently told David Sirota on 760 AM in Denver: “If you want to not have a patchwork, you need to look at subdivision home building, cement plants, power plants. All of that is regulated by local governments. Local governments do land-use control all the time. This fits into that.”

Neslin recently told the Colorado Independent: “I don’t think it’s in the public’s interest or the state’s interest to wind up with a patchwork quilt of different regulatory regimes. I don’t think we want to Balkanize the regulatory program in that way.”

He added that oil and gas drilling is very different from other land uses.

“I would respectfully disagree with the representative that oil and gas wells are just another development activity like a subdivision or a cement plant,” Neslin said. “The state has decades of experience regulating [oil and gas] activity. Local governments have little such experience. So I just think there’s a fundamental difference there.”

But a bill like SB 88 blocking counties and municipalities from exercising any land-use control over drilling activity goes too far, says National Wildlife Federation attorney Michael Saul.

“That was basically the rule that the oil and gas commission passed in 2003 and then the Colorado Court of Appeals struck down in the Board of County Commissioners of La Plata County versus COGCC case,” Saul said. “It sounds to me like [SB 88 is] just an attempt to rewrite that decision.”

Saul says La Plata County in southwestern Colorado, where British Petroleum has been active for decades, has some of the most stringent local land-use regulations overseeing oil and gas drilling. There, the operator seems to have figured out how to work with county regulations without state preemption becoming an issue, he says.

“We’ve got 20 years of case law interpreting the existing state of the law on preemption and counties have learned pretty well how to follow that law,” Saul said. “Operators have been successful in navigating the permitting systems in those counties that have done so.

“Certainly there’s been a lot of successful drilling in La Plata County, which is arguably the most comprehensive [local] regulator.”

The local control question will likely continue to be litigated, but the issue of setbacks – which some critics say the COGCC punted during revision of the oil and the regulations in 2007-08 – will be the subject of a new round of stakeholder meetings.

“[Neslin] announced to the commission [last week] that COGCC will be convening stakeholder meetings on the issue of setbacks,” Colorado Department of Natural Resources spokesman Todd Hartman said.

“This is designed to get facts on the table, listen to all sides and determine whether changes are necessary or not. The meetings won’t begin with a preference for change or no change, but to educate all parties and see what adjustments — if any — to make.”

“If three football fields from a school is good enough for medical marijuana, it’s good enough for oil and gas fracking,” Jones told the Colorado Independent, referring to setbacks between oil and gas rigs and homes, schools and other public buildings.

Current state law requires that oil and gas rigs are set back at least 350 feet away from homes and public buildings in urban areas and 150 feet away in rural areas. It also requires medical marijuana dispensaries to be 1,000 feet from schools, and liquor stories to be 500 feet away.

U.S. Attorney John Walsh last week sent letters to 23 medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado that are within 1,000 feet of schools, telling them to shut down by Feb. 27 or face criminal prosecution. He cited concern for the health of nearby school children.

The issue of setbacks from oil and gas drilling has been unresolved since the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) punted on it during an 18-month revision of state drilling regulations in 2007 and 2008. Conservation and citizen activist groups have been calling for a new rulemaking on the issue ever since.

A middle school in Longmont has become the poster child in the fight for expanded setbacks. Testing of a natural gas well 350 feet from the school in 2006 and 2009 found levels of benzene much higher than state standards.

Fracking — the process of injecting water, sand and chemicals into oil and gas wells to free up more hydrocarbons — has come under increased scrutiny by Colorado counties and municipalities as drilling takes off in the Niobrara Shale formation beneath the state’s Front Range. Halliburton on Thursday announced it’s building a $20 million sand facility in Windsor to support fracking operations in the area.

State Rep. Matt Johes, D-Louisville

Jones is undaunted, telling radio talk show host David Sirota on Thursday that he knows the bill faces an uphill battle but that he expects to get a fair hearing. Jones also said Hickenlooper’s concern about a “patchwork” of regulations is unfounded.

“That horse has left the barn,” Jones said. “If you want to not have a patchwork, you need to look at subdivision home building, cement plants, power plants. All of that is regulated by local governments. Local governments do land-use control all the time. This fits into that.”

Fracking, Jones added, is just another industrial land use that local governments should have more control over.

“With fracking, when they come in repeatedly to re-frack a well, it’s changed the activity from just simply drilling a well to a repeated activity, and it’s more of an industrial activity now,” Jones said.

Both Gunnison and La Plata counties have had varied degrees of success regulating oil and gas drilling, implementing local rules that have been backed up by court decisions. However, the state contends it has a legislative mandate to regulate oil and gas drilling, with its rules preempting most local regulations.

Colorado oil and gas industry officials have expressed nervousness about increased local oversight. State oil and gas officials could not be reached for comment.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) has long contended its oil and gas drilling regulations trump any county or municipal rules and that the state attorney general may ultimately have to decide any such conflicts. The COGCC contends its supremacy stems from a state legislative mandate.

This month’s Gunnison County ruling comes as lawmakers consider legislation that would give more authority to cities and counties as oil and gas drilling – and its commonplace hydraulic fracturing of wells – picks up in the Niobrara Shale formation along the state’s populous Front Range.

Activists today announced a new Twitter hashtag (#CoFracking) to make it easier to follow such legislation and any news about local versus state control of oil and gas drilling.

On Jan. 3, Gunnison County District Judge Stephen Patrick issued an order on cross motions for summary judgment in a case brought by the oil and gas company SG Interests, which last summer sued Gunnison County. The company claimed the county could not regulate certain aspects of its operations because of preemption by state and federal regulations.

Thompson Divide (courtesy of the Thompson Divide Coalition).

“This is a huge win for the Colorado public and its local governments, acknowledging that preemption is not assumed,” writes Sonia Skakich-Scrima of the activist group What the Frack. “In effect, local governments can proceed to argue that closed-loop systems that capture all gases and emissions, sound barriers, non-toxic frack fluids and other mitigating measures do not present ‘material obstructions’ to the state’s interests, but rather that they ‘materially harmonize’ the local government need to control land use and protect public health and safety with the state’s interest in oil and gas extraction.”

However, Governor John Hickenlooper, in his State of the State address last week, warned against too many local regulations, saying, “… the state can’t have 64 or even more different sets of rules.” Colorado has 64 counties.

Industry representatives are also nervous about too much local control. The same day as the Gunnison County ruling, Tisha Conoly Schuller, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA), posted a blog entitled “Why Public Meetings Make Me Nervous.” She said she empathizes with the concerns, fear and anger of local citizens living near oil and gas drilling.

“So much emotion deserving of empathy,” Schuller wrote. “So much misinformation and little to no opportunity to correct it. The impotence of seeing scared citizens and uncertain decision makers taking in so much inaccuracy drives the blood to beat in my ears. In three minutes, how can I inspire them to look further, question the information, and participate in the conversation about responsible energy development?”

SG Interests is also at the heart of an ongoing debate on the Western Slope about drilling in the Thompson Divide area.

Colorado oil and gas regulators say holding ponds like this one in Pennsylvania cause much more groundwater contamination than hydraulic fracturing (www.industrialscars.com photo).

WRA now wants the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) to implement recommendations (pdf) made in October by a group called the State Review of Oil & Natural Gas Environmental Regulations (STRONGER) suggesting minimum surface casing depths for oil and gas wells that are fracked.

It’s been suggested that the failure to properly case and cement natural gas wells to depths below the groundwater aquifer may have been to blame in Pavillion, Wyo., where a report last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) linked fracking chemicals to well-water contamination.

“[STRONGER] recommends that the COGCC work with stakeholders to review how available information is used to determine minimum surface casing depths and how those depths assure that casing and cementing procedures are adequate to protect fresh groundwater,” the October STRONGER report reads.

COGCC director David Neslin said on Tuesday that fracking chemical “disclosure is not our first line of environmental defense. It’s important for transparency, it’s important to build public confidence, but our first line of environmental defense is the integrity of the wellbore. It’s the work that our engineers and environmental staff do in reviewing the permit applications.”

Neslin has long said that disclosure won’t stop spills caused by bad cement jobs of wellbores, pipeline problems or leaks from holding ponds that store fracking and other fluids. On Tuesday he said another line of environmental defense is “groundwater sampling, baseline sampling that we require our operators to do, and the prompt response that our field inspectors make when complaints or allegations of impact arise.”

WRA, however, would like to see another rulemaking on both the STRONGER recommendations and “a mandatory program for baseline testing, monitoring and tracers to protect our water quality.”

“Baseline testing can help eliminate the he said, she said arguments over contamination so that we can focus on keeping people safe,” WRA’s Chiropolos said. “One sick person is one too many. The [COGCC] should continue to be proactive in 2012 in order to protect Colorado families and our water.”

There are approximately 45,000 active oil and gas wells in Colorado, which is in the top five nationally for natural gas production and top 10 for oil. Huge reserves in the Niobrara Shale formation on the state’s populous Front Range have sparked a wave of drilling speculation and local fears about the impacts of fracking.

“Colorado citizens are justifiably worried about the practice of fracking and deserve full confidence that the state is protecting the quality of their air, water and soil,” said Josh Joswick, energy issues organizer of the San Juan Citizens Alliance. Joswick was a La Plata County commissioner when local drilling rules were implemented in that gas-rich area of the state.

Increased drilling activity on the Front Range from Colorado Springs all the way north of Denver to the Wyoming state line will occur where far more Coloradans live than on the sparsely populated Western Slope.

“This [disclosure] compromise means there is no free pass for drilling firms,” state Rep. Deb Gardner, D-Longmont, said in a release. “There is now a greater degree of checks and balances.”

Calls for more COGCC rulemaking on issues ranging from surface casing depth to increased baseline water-quality testing to greater setbacks for oil and gas rigs from homes and public buildings will likely increase along with the drilling.

The WRA Tuesday also called for “increased residential setbacks from the current minimum levels — 150 feet for rural areas; 350 feet for urban areas.” That’s an issue that some observers say was never properly resolved during the last significant revision of the state’s oil and gas drilling regulations.

Those revisions in 2007 and 2008 were so sweeping – including some of the first rules in the nation dealing with fracking – that they required the approval of the State Legislature after months of sometimes bitter debate.

Colorado’s senior member of Congress, Democrat Diana DeGette of Denver, has been trying for years to compel the public disclosure of fracking chemicals at the national level. Her Fracturing Responsibility and Chemical Awareness (FRAC) Act would remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the fracking process that was granted during the Bush administration in 2005.

She praised the new Colorado rule Tuesday, but also pointed to the Pavillion case.

“The fact that we have a proven case of a connection between hydraulic fracturing and the contamination of an aquifer underscores just how important it is that we take cautionary steps to protect our communities’ water supply,” DeGette said. “That is why I continue to encourage members of Congress to pass my FRAC Act, so communities across the country will have transparency in the drilling process as well.”

EnCana, the Canadian company drilling in the Pavillion area, has disputed the EPA’s findings, and Republican lawmakers and industry trade groups have questioned the agency’s methods and motivations.

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.”

Louis Meeks’ well water near Pavillion, Wyo., contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead and copper (Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica).

“EPA’s highest priority remains ensuring that Pavillion residents have access to safe drinking water,” Jim Martin, EPA’s regional administrator in Denver said in a press release. Martin is the former head of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. “We will continue to work cooperatively with the State, Tribes, Encana and the community to secure long-term drinking water solutions.

“We look forward to having these findings in the draft report informed by a transparent and public review process. In consultation with the Tribes, EPA will also work with the State on additional investigation of the Pavillion field.”

Pavillion is within the Wind River Indian Reservation. Residents there have been warned not to drink the local well water, and the Canadian oil and gas company EnCana has been supplying clean drinking water. However, the company disputes that fracking has led to well water contamination.

At the request of area residents, the EPA has been testing two deep water monitoring wells.

“EPA’s analysis of samples taken from the agency’s deep monitoring wells in the aquifer indicates detection of synthetic chemicals, like glycols and alcohols consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids, benzene concentrations well above Safe Drinking Water Act standards and high methane levels,” the report states.

“Given the area’s complex geology and the proximity of drinking water wells to ground water contamination, EPA is concerned about the movement of contaminants within the aquifer and the safety of drinking water wells over time.”

The EPA also conducted new sampling of drinking water wells in the area.

“Chemicals detected in the most recent samples are consistent with those identified in earlier EPA samples and include methane, other petroleum hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds,” the EPA reports. “The presence of these compounds is consistent with migration from areas of gas production. Detections in drinking water wells are generally below established health and safety standards.”

Republican politicians have already started attacking the EPA’s ongoing investigation in Pavillion, but the agency is taking great pains to point out that geological conditions are different all around the country and that what’s true in the Pavillion case may not apply to other areas where fracking is suspected of tainting groundwater.

“The draft findings announced today are specific to Pavillion, where the fracturing is taking place in and below the drinking water aquifer and in close proximity to drinking water wells – production conditions different from those in many other areas of the country,” EPA officials said in a release.

Anti-drilling activists in Colorado have also pointed to a 1984 EPA report on fracking in West Virginia as evidence that the process can contaminate drinking water supplies with carcinogenic chemicals. But the Pavillion case represents the most clear-cut contemporary example.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper this summer said with certainty that fracking fluids don’t communicate with groundwater, but he still ordered a new chemical disclosure rule to be drafted. That rulemaking process is still under way.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okila.

“This statement appears to contradict statements by you and other members of the federal government about hydraulic fracturing and drinking water contamination,” Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, wrote to Jackson.

In fact, the EPA recently released a report finding a solvent called 2-Butoxyethanol (2-BE) in domestic well water in the Pavillion area, and 2-BE is a common constituent of fracking mixtures. The EPA did not conclude definitively that the 2-BE in local well water came from EnCana fracking operations, but is expected to release a more conclusive report soon.

“Because of these contradictory statements, I am concerned that EPA has pre-determined that hydraulic fracturing is the cause of contamination in their Pavillion investigation and the agency is trying to make the data conform to that conclusion, instead of engaging in an open scientific inquiry,” Inhofe wrote.

The EPA has been investigating the Pavillion case since 2008 and has been engaged in extensive well water sampling in the area since 2009. Area residents have been instructed not to drink their well water because of elevated levels of benzene, and EnCana’s deal to sell its drilling operations in the Pavillion area recently fell through, in part because of the EPA findings.

Colorado citizen activists have pointed to the Pavillion case and EnCana’s well blowout in the West Divide Creek area of western Colorado as compelling evidence in favor of full public disclosure of fracking chemicals during an ongoing Colorado rulemaking on the topic.

Jackson, speaking at a recent event in Denver, stopped short of saying hydraulic fracturing – which involves the high-pressure injection of water, sand and chemicals into wells to free up more oil and gas – can lead to direct groundwater contamination. But she did echo widespread citizen concern.

“Natural gas is key to moving to a ‘Clean Air, Clean Jobs’ agenda, but we want it to be extracted in an environmentally sound way,” Jackson said in Denver, referring to landmark legislation switching coal-fired power plants over to cleaner burning gas. “With fracking, it’s a water issue, too. How we store the water that comes up carrying heavy metals, how the [fracking solutions] shot into the ground may be affecting groundwater.”

An Inhofe spokesman told the AP that the senator “is the leading advocate for hydraulic fracturing in the United States Senate and has had concerns about the Obama administration’s war on natural gas. And so he therefore takes his oversight responsibility seriously, and that’s why he’s been looking closely at the actions of the EPA in Wyoming.”

Besides its Pavillion probe, the EPA is also conducting a more comprehensive study of the impacts of fracking on drinking water, including a retrospective examination of fracking in southern Colorado.

An older EPA study of fracking has been sharply criticized for failing to comprehensively examine all of the potential impacts of the process before it was granted an exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act in the 2005 Energy Policy Act that was passed during the Bush administration. Colorado Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis have been working to reverse that exemption, dubbed the “Halliburton Loophole” by its many critics.

Inhofe has drawn criticism in recent years for deeming widely accepted climate change science a hoax. During the 2010 U.S. Senate race in Colorado, Republican Ken Buck stirred heated public debate by embracing Inhofe’s beliefs.