Residents of Routt County in northern Colorado – an area not known for its oil and gas development — are gearing up for a major natural gas boom in the Niobrara Shale Formation. Activists are seeking guidance from more heavily drilled parts of the state as Shell and other companies eye gas extraction in the scenic Yampa River Valley.

“There are some new proposals for oil and gas development in the Niobrara Shale Formation around Steamboat, and they want to get themselves caught up [on regulations] and not be caught with their pants down the way other jurisdictions have been,” former Garfield County oil and gas liaison Judy Jordan told the Colorado Independent.

Former Garfield County oil and gas liaison Judy Jordan.

The Community Alliance of the Yampa Valley hosted a forum on oil and gas development late last month, inviting Jordan and members of Colorado’s conservation community to speak about their experiences in other more intensively drilled parts of the state.

“The audience was interested in hearing about any lessons learned from across the state, including proactive mitigation strategies, public health analyses, water quality and quantity protections, and public comment opportunity,” said Frank Smith, director of organizing for Western Colorado Congress.

“Also, the county was encouraged to consider applying its 1041 authorities to better protect the Yampa River system, since that water is vital to many stakeholders and it’s being targeted by thirsty entities — upstream and down.”

Jordan was on staff when Garfield County rejected a request by attorneys for Battlement Concerned Citizens to invoke 1041 powers that have been used successfully in the past by counties seeking to acquire more local control from the state over major infrastructure projects such as water diversions and power lines.

La Plata County weighed using 1041 powers in the 1990s but opted instead for its own set of oil and gas drilling regulations. Now El Paso County has imposed a drilling moratorium in order to consider a set of local regulations – a move reportedly opposed by state regulators and oil and gas industry officials.

Jordan also was on staff in Garfield County – one of the top two most drilled counties in the state – when the commissioners decided not to finalize a University of Colorado Health Impact Assessment that showed the potential for significant public health problems in the face of increased natural gas production. She recommended to Routt County residents that they push for advance baseline sampling of domestic water supplies.

“Most of the contamination we found was naturally occurring. It’s methane; it’s created naturally,” Jordan said. “The question is whether the methane contamination that we see in domestic wells would have arrived if there hadn’t been oil and gas development. I think it’s unlikely that it would have, but it’s difficult to make the case because basically you’d have to go in and examine different [gas] wells and no one would ever give us access to that kind of information.”

State regulatory officials disagreed with an independent consultant hired by Garfield County who found elevated levels of methane in groundwater supplies in areas where drilling had increased dramatically.

Jordan was fired by Garfield County in July – she says because of industry pressure.

Shell has long had interests in northern Colorado, aggressively pursuing water rights in the Yampa River Valley. But in the past the company has been primarily focused on its oil shale research and development in Rio Blanco County.

A Shell official last month told the Colorado Independent the company will consult community members as it moves forward with any natural gas drilling proposals in Routt County.

“Any future operations there will adhere to our global onshore operating principles, including those around footprint, community consultation, water, air, and overall safety,” Shell’s Kelly op de Weegh said.

Follow David O. Williams on Twitter. ]]> http://coloradoindependent.com/101583/routt-county-residents-leery-of-gas-boom-tap-experts-from-gas-patches-around-colorado/feed 1 http://coloradoindependent.com/52158/colorado%e2%80%99s-most-productive-coal-mine-is-also-its-most-dangerous http://coloradoindependent.com/52158/colorado%e2%80%99s-most-productive-coal-mine-is-also-its-most-dangerous#comments Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:09:48 +0000 David O. Williams http://coloradoindependent.com/?p=52158 The Foidel Creek Mine in Routt County is one of Colorado’s most productive coal mines, churning out more than a quarter of all the coal mined in the state. But it’s also one of the state’s most dangerous mines, accounting for nearly a third of Colorado’s coal-mining injuries in 2009.

Of the 88 coal-mining injuries in Colorado last year, 29 of them occurred at the Foidel Creek Mine between Oak Creek and Hayden, according to the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety’s “Monthly Coal Detail Report (pdf).”

The Foidel Creek Mine was the only Colorado coal mine that landed on a Mine Safety and Health Administration list of 57 problem mines subject to a surprise inspection earlier this month in the wake of the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion that killed 29 miners in West Virginia on April 5.

The busiest mine in the state with more than 500 miners working any given month (no other Colorado mine reported more than 400), Foidel Creek, operated by Peabody Energy’s Twentymile Coal Company, has been hit with more than $600,000 in fines for various safety violations since January 2007.

MSHA officials in a release last week said the inspection blitz targeted “coal mines whose history of underground conditions indicated a significant number of violations and/or conditions that may include problems relating to methane accumulations, ventilation practices, rock dust applications and inadequate mine examinations.”

Those are thought to be the conditions that contributed to the explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, W.Va., where owner and operator Massey Energy has since come under fire for an creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in its workforce.

“The purpose of these inspections is to provide assurance that no imminent dangers, explosions, hazards or other serious health or safety conditions and practices are present at these mines,” Joseph A. Main, assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health, said in a release. “Just last week, we pledged to the president that we will do whatever it takes to make sure another tragedy like the one that claimed 29 miners’ lives at Upper Big Branch never happens again.”

But never-again vows have followed other mining tragedies, according to TCI sister-site the Washington Independent.

In Colorado, however, where criticism of the coal industry is centered more on environmental concerns than safety issues, Twentymile is working hard to improve its record at Foidel Creek, according to spokeswoman Beth Sutton.

“Structural changes were initiated at Twentymile, including dedicating additional staff resources for safety and compliance training and accident prevention to improve results,” Sutton said in an email to the Colorado Independent. “We have achieved significant progress, which includes an 80 percent improvement in Twentymile’s safety rate through the first quarter, and a 54 percent annualized improvement in citations. We’ll continue these efforts working toward our safety vision of zero incidents of any kind.”

In 2009, Twentymile was hit with 621 citations at the Foidel Creek Mine, ranging from $100 up to more than $40,000, many of which are still be contested. Reasons for the fines range from accumulations of coal dust and other combustible materials to improper methods of measuring methane and oxygen levels – factors cited as likely causes of the Upper Big Branch explosion, although the MSHA has yet to determine a definitive cause.

So far in 2010, Foidel Creek has been cited 79 times in the first quarter of the year – a pace of approximately 320 violations for the year. In the days following the surprise MSHA inspection on the weekend of April 17-18, Foidel Creek was hit with another 14 citations between April 19 and April 21.

“On any given day this past year, we had an average of seven MSHA inspectors at our facilities nationwide,” said Sutton, who works for Twentymile parent company Peabody Energy. “Inspections are routine and frequent. We continue open dialogue with the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and the company is achieving record safety results.”

An MSHA spokeswoman in Washington did not return a call requesting comment.

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An unadorned coal bed

Coal-bed methane production involves extraction of gas from coal seams and is a much shallower form of natural gas production than deep-well drilling common in places like Garfield County. An ongoing survey by the CGS reveals deep faults connecting with coals seams in Moffat County that could communicate with groundwater supplies, according to the Daily Press.

CGS officials cautioned that their findings don’t preclude production but instead indicate any company trying to develop coal-bed methane in that area of northwestern Colorado should engage in extensive study of the potential impacts. Moffat and Routt counties are helping share the study’s $121,000 price tag.

In southern Colorado, particularly in Huerfano County, coal-bed methane production has led to dangerous buildup of the gas in some local drinking-water wells, prompting the city of Walsenburg to clarify that its municipal water supply is still safe.

And environmentally tougher Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission drilling rules that went into effect last spring specifically addressed concerns about coal-bed methane production and hydraulic fracturing – a drilling process that involves high-pressure injections of water, sand and undisclosed chemicals to fracture tight geologic formations and free up more gas.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of wells for coal-bed methane can be problematic. COGCC executive director Dave Neslin said the state drafted new Rule 608 to deal specifically with that type of fracking.

There is no imminent coal-bed methane boom in Moffat County, according to the Daily Press, but county officials are trying to be proactive, drawing praise from the CGS. The last large-scale attempt was three years ago by a Michigan company in an area just outside of Lay, which is directly west of Craig.

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Edit note: The original version of this piece included the following sentence: “Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of wells for coal-bed methane can be problematic, prompting the state to draft Rule 608 to deal specifically with that type of fracking, according to COGCC executive director Dave Neslin.” But Neslin never said fracking for coal-bed methane can be problematic. Neslin only said new rules now govern that kind of fracking, as should be clear from the new version of the paragraph. The author conflated the two parts of the paragraph and regrets the error.

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Poudre Canyon (Jim Frazier, cc Flickr)

Ken Neubecker, president of the state counsel of Colorado Trout Unlimited and a member of the Colorado River Basin Roundtable, points out that already 64 percent of the upper Colorado River above Hot Sulfur Springs in Grand County is diverted across the Continental Divide to the Front Range population centers of the state.

With the State Demography Office forecasting Colorado’s population to jump 50 percent over the next 25 years from current levels of around 5 million to more than 7.6 million, Neubecker and others say there needs to be a major shift in land-use planning, water conservation efforts and energy policies to head off looming disaster for the Colorado and other state rivers.

Drought by a thousand cuts

“In the long run, especially if you’re going to take the climate change thing seriously, the fossil fuels have got to just come to an end,” Neubecker said of commercial oil shale production and its potential impacts on the Colorado River basin. “[Former Vice President] Dick Cheney made the comment that the American way of life is not negotiable. Well, in a hundred years it’ll be drastically negotiated if we don’t do something now.”

Residential development alone has dramatically impacted the upper Colorado, Neubecker said, referring to a plan by the Denver Water Board to divert even more of the Fraser River in Grand County through the Moffat Tunnel to the Front Range. A key tributary of the Colorado, the Fraser already sees about 60 percent of its flow diverted east of the Continental Divide.

“They’re sort of making light of the true nature of the cumulative impacts on the whole Colorado basin,” Neubecker said. “Essentially, the whole upper Colorado, from Dotsero up, is suffering a death from a thousand cuts, and everybody who makes a cut says, ‘Oh, mine won’t hurt; mine’s too small to be significant.’”

But all the cuts are condemning the river to a permanent drought-year status that adversely impacts riparian areas, degrades aquatic habitat and results in too much sediment building up in the river’s channel, Neubecker said. Couple those impacts with contamination from natural gas drilling and other industrial and agricultural uses, and the Colorado and other Western Slope rivers are in big trouble, others say.

People get to drink that stuff

“That’s one thing in this whole oil and gas industry that kind of gets short shrift is these drinkable or potable aquifers,” said Bob Elderkin, a biologist and retired oil and gas specialist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management who now lives near Silt.

“When something happens and you have [a chemical spill] — and you’re going to have it because we’ve got people involved with [drilling] and people are fallible — that aquifer is polluted with a bunch of stuff, and unless they’re required to go in and pump that out and mitigate the problem, that stuff stays in that aquifer until it eventually surfaces wherever it’s going to surface.

“Most of that stuff either ends up in the White River or the Colorado River, and either way a lot of people are going to get to drink it.”

Routt County Commissioner Doug Monger, whose northwestern Colorado county sits at the epicenter of any future oil shale boom, applauds Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for recently tightening Bush administration research and development leases and requiring more accountability.

Oil shale and nuclear industry water gulpers

He said residents of impacted communities and Americans in general need to know if oil shale is economically and environmentally realistic. The former president of Colorado Counties Inc. has his doubts.

“I hope America can’t come here and trash out my country here to support the current industry,” Monger said of existing oil shale technology, which requires between three and five barrels of water per barrel of oil. “They talk about 500-megawatt power plants to commercially extract this oil shale with Shell’s technology, and all of the rest of the water out of Yampa and White river systems, as well as some further water out of the Colorado River system, which basically obligates all of the rest of the water in the Colorado Compact that we have.”

The 1920s Compact that Arizona Sen. John McCain last year so famously — and disastrously — suggested should be renegotiated, dictates Colorado must send 3.88 million acre feet downstream a year no matter how the state divvies it up for local use. Oil and gas companies have been snapping up water rights in the Colorado basin since the 1940s, but the big knock on oil shale has been how much power it takes to extract petroleum from shale rock and sand.

Some have suggested nuclear reactors could solve the energy demands of full-scale commercial oil shale production, but Neubecker scoffs at that notion.

“[Nuclear] uses twice the water [of fossil-fueled-based power plants], and I don’t think Sen. [Mark] Udall gets it, because he’s a big proponent for nuclear power,” Neubecker said. “I’m all for nuclear power east of the Mississippi because they have the water, just so long as they have to store the waste in their own backyard, not ship it out here for storage. We’re not the country’s trashcan.”

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The Yampa River on Colorado's Western Slope. (Photo/notanyron, Flickr)

According to the Steamboat Pilot and Today newspaper, the town of Yampa’s board of trustees last week voted unanimously to join any organized legal efforts to block the water grab by Shell.

The paper on Sunday reported that Shell, which filed for 375 cubic feet per second on Dec. 30, wants to build a 45,000-acre-foot reservoir in Moffat County for use in future oil shale development. The Denver Post first broke the story in early January.

Late last month Moffat County commissioners met with the board of commissioners for Routt County (home to Steamboat Springs) to discuss jointly opposing Shell’s water rights application and sharing potentially massive legal fees. Moffat County officials said they plan to follow their land-use board’s suggestion that the county file a formal protest.

According to the Pilot and Today, Moffat County Commissioner Tom Gray was skeptical about the move: “I don’t think there’s a leg to stand on to say this isn’t a valid use of the water.”

But Gray added that a recent meeting of the Yampa/White Basin Roundtable, a coalition of stakeholders along the river drainage, sparked a degree of alarm about the impacts to the river such a claim might have in the long term. “There is a huge concern up and down the river about this filing,” he said.

A report prepared for the Yampa/White Basin Roundtable last fall and first reported by the Colorado Independent indicated the Yampa and other rivers such as the Green and the Colorado in northwest Colorado could not support a full-scale oil shale boom.

What ensued has not been made public, but a second state patrol car had to be called and now the sheriff faces charges of DUI and prohibitive use of a weapon, Class 1 misdemeanors, according to The Steamboat Springs Pilot.

Maybe it’s stress-related or something – the Wall joins a list of other Western Slope law enforcement officials in trouble. Sexual allegations are pending against the Aspen Police chief and the Delta Police chief recently resigned abruptly after one year in office.

Feds Taking Over Possible Embezzlement Case
A “substantial” amount of money has been taken from the Alamosa Housing Authority, according to the district attorney’s office and the Alamosa Police, and since the case involved federal funds, the case will be forwarded to the U.S. Attorney’s office The Valley Courier has reported.

Charges of embezzlement are pending against the Alamosa Housing Authority director Patricia Martinez and others may be involved. The housing authority operates under U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) jurisdiction. The director has been with the authority for 18 years and is now on paid administrative leave.

The board of directors for the housing authority assured HUD residents that their housing vouchers are not in danger because of the investigation.

Let’s hope the actions of one individual did not leave anyone out in the cold.

Failed Commissioner Recall Mired in Lawsuits
This past summer there was a recall attempt against Montrose County Commissioner Bill Patterson.

Petitions were handed in, but since the Montrose County Clerk ruled that most of the signatures were not valid, the recall failed to get on the ballot. The Patterson Recall Committee has since filed a lawsuit against the clerk stating that she applied state laws that were unconstitutional.

But wait, there’s more.

In a Montrose Press story, Patterson’s attorneys have filed a complaint with the Colorado Secretary of State noting the recall committee might have violated the Fair Campaign Practices Act by failing to report campaign contributions and expenditures as required under statute. They claim the Patterson Recall Committee is listed with the SOS as an issue committee; therefore it must disclose contributions and expenditures under Colorado law.

The Patterson recall was first announced in May by state Rep. Ray Rose, R-Montrose, who is now stepping down from his seat in part because of the heat from his association with the backfired recall attempt.

It seems the only parties benefitting from the Montrose mess are the lawyers.
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