Battlement Mesa

According to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, Dr. Aaron Wernham of the Health Impact Project, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, said “We think this is the sort of work that counties should be doing.”

As first reported by the Colorado Independent, a citizen activist group called the Battlement Concerned Citizens appealed to county health officials to apply for a Health Impact Assessment grant to study air and water quality, as well other impacts such as noise and light pollution, before approving a plan by Denver-based Antero Resources to drill up to 200 natural gas wells in the unincorporated Western Slope community of 5,000.

Garfield County health officials see the value in such an assessment – a first for a Colorado community faced with a major drilling project – but state officials, who also must approve Antero’s drilling plan, were noncommittal on the possibility of a health study.

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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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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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