U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and the rest of Colorado’s majority Republican congressional delegation are all wet for voting along with the GOP-controlled House to pass the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act by a margin of 239-184 on Wednesday, according to the bill’s many outraged opponents.

“Rep. Gardner has once again made an extremist vote that increases profits for polluters at the expense of the public’s health and the environment” said Gary Wockner of Fort Collins-based Clean Water Action. “Rep. Gardner says he supports jobs, but he’s only voting to support corporate polluters’ profits.”

U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner.

“It is time for the EPA to give Congress some straight answers about the consequences its regulations have on jobs and the economy, without knowing that information how can we judge whether a regulation is necessary or harmful?” Gardner said in a recent release.

The Clean Water Collective Federalism Act of 2011, sponsored by John Mica, R-Fla., would amend the 40-year-old Federal Water Pollution Control Act (more commonly known as the Clean Water Act) to prohibit the EPA administrator from revising current water quality standards or mandating new ones for a pollutant if a state already has standards in place, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

That could be disastrous for Colorado waterways, according to Wockner, especially in Gardner’s own district. Clean Water Action fears less federal oversight could lead to an “increase in the levels of selenium, cadmium, lead, zinc, copper, manganese, E. coli bacteria, mercury, and fecal coliform in northern Colorado’s lakes and streams, including Horsetooth Reservoir, Carter Lake, the South Platte River, the Cache la Poudre River, and the Big Thompson River,” according to a release.

“Rep. Gardner’s extremist vote to increase water pollution could undermine the health of northern Colorado citizens,” Wockner said.

All three Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation voted against the bill, but Gardner joined fellow Colorado Republican House members Doug Lamborn, Mike Coffman and Scott Tipton in bucking the Obama administration, which earlier in the week promised a veto in the unlikely event the bill makes it out of the Senate.

“The Administration strongly opposes H.R 2018 because it would significantly undermine the Clean Water Act (CWA) and could adversely affect public health, the economy, and the environment,” stated an Obama administration press release.

National environmental organizations were similarly outraged by the House passage of the bill, calling it the “Cooperating with Polluters Act” and blasting it for undermining “enforcement of water quality standards and protection of waters and wetlands from discharges of dredged and fill material.”

“H.R. 2018 endangers our nation’s rivers, lakes, bays, wetlands and streams that are so vital to our health and economy,” said Piper Crowell, clean water advocate for Environment America. “Specifically, if this bill became law, it would undermine the progress that has been made to protect cherished places like the Chesapeake Bay, the Everglades and endangered areas like those affected by mountaintop removal (coal mining).”

The festive holiday ad running in Politico and the National Journal Daily (pdf) was produced by the Pew Environment Group and 11 other groups, including the Colorado Environmental Coalition. It’s aimed at maximum wildlife, water and climate protections and the strongest possible plan from the Obama administration as it nears release of new forest management rules under the National Forest Management Act (NFMA).

That law governs most Forest Service activity, and the new rules could be ready as early as January. The original NFMA rules were developed in 1982.

“President Obama has an opportunity to present the American public with a legacy that will stand the test of time: strong protections for our national forests,” Jane Danowitz, U.S. public lands program director for the Pew Environment Group, said in a release. “If well-protected, our national forests will be the gift that keeps on giving – providing clean water for millions of people, a safe home for fish and wildlife, and a natural resource for future generations.”

A new U.S. Department of Agriculture report found that national forests and grasslands are responsible for 223,000 jobs in rural areas and contribute $14.5 billion a year to the U.S. economy.

Sixteen Colorado conservation groups joined in the campaign, sending a letter last week to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (see below), who said “developing a new planning rule provides the opportunity to manage national forests and grasslands for the benefit of water resources, the climate and local communities.”

Thousands of holiday cards requesting better forest planning rules have been sent to the White House as a result of the campaign.

Dear Secretary Vilsack,

Sweeping new national forest management rules set to be released by the Obama administration in early 2011 provide a unique opportunity to continue the conservation legacy of President Theodore Roosevelt, who had the foresight to protect these treasured lands more than a century ago. Because of this vision, America enjoys 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands – including 14.5 million acres in Colorado. These are public lands that provide vital protection for fish and wildlife and clean drinking water for millions nationwide.

Today, our national forests and the wildlife and water resources they support, including those in Colorado, face unprecedented threats that even a visionary leader such as Roosevelt could not have anticipated. Our forests, wildlife and watersheds, which require comprehensive restoration to remedy the effects of mismanagement, also face new challenges associated with climate change and encroaching development.

The new National Forest Management Act regulations must effectively protect and restore our national forests as we face the challenges of the 21st century. They must serve to anchor Forest Service management by giving the agency clear non-discretionary direction, as has been the case with the current regulations which were developed in 1982. At the same time, the new regulations must use sound and current science to safeguard healthy fish and wildlife populations and their habitats, and secure safe, clean water by creating management standards to protect and restore streams, rivers and watersheds.

We see the development of these comprehensive national forest management rules as one of the most important environmental actions that the administration will take during this term. The course set by these critical rules will determine the future of our forests, wildlife and watersheds for generations to come.

We look forward to working with you to develop a new framework for managing our national forests in this century of which President Roosevelt would be proud.

Sincerely,

Josh Pollock
Conservation Director
Center for Native Ecosystems

Pete Maysmith
Executive Director
Colorado Conservation Voters

Elise Jones
Executive Director
Colorado Environmental Coalition

Bryan Martin
Director of Conservation
The Colorado Mountain Club

Ryan Demmy Bidwell
Executive Director
Colorado Wild

Caitlin Balch-Burnett
Colorado Outreach Representative
Defenders of Wildlife

Veronica Egan
Executive Director
Great Old Broads for Wilderness

Matt Reed
Public Lands Director
High Country Citizens’ Alliance

Tom Sobal
Director
Quiet Use Coalition

Roz McClellan
Director
Rocky Mountain Recreation Initiative

Megan Graham
Executive Director
San Juan Citizens Alliance

Christine Canaly
Director
San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council

Hilary White
Director
Sheep Mountain Alliance

Jean C. Smith
Associate Director
Wild Connections

Suzanne Jones
Regional Director
The Wilderness Society

Peter Hart
Conservation Analyst/Staff Attorney
Wilderness Workshop

Oil and gas drilling near the Roan Plateau. (Photo/Ecoflight.info)

Former Republican and current American Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo said last month, “There are no jobs in the green economy. There are plenty of jobs in taking oil and gas out of the ground.”

Denver mayor and Democratic candidate for governor John Hickenlooper, a former geologist who was laid off in the 80s and went into the restaurant business, says he would tweak a couple of the new, more environmentally friendly drilling regulations that went into effect last year, but that he by no means favors a complete overhaul.

A new survey reluctantly released last week from the heart of the state’s natural gas patch in Garfield County indicates Hickenlooper is more in step with local sentiment than either Maes or Tancredo.

Conducted on behalf of the educational health-care nonprofit Western Colorado Area Health Education Center (WCAHEC), the phone survey of 2,300 Garfield County residents found the majority had serious concerns about the environmental and public health impacts of natural gas drilling in the area.

Fully 68.5 percent of those surveyed said they were either somewhat concerned or very concerned about their air quality as the result of natural gas drilling; 72.4 percent felt the same way about water quality; and 68.1 percent were somewhat or very concerned about the traffic impacts of the oil and gas industry.

The phone survey had sparked some intrigue in the most heavily drilled county in the state leading up to a critical county commissioner election and the finalizing of a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) conducted by the Colorado School of Public Health in Battlement Mesa on behalf of the county.

There was some concern the poll was being conducted by the industry in an effort to undermine or delay the HIA, but it turns out the $12,000 WCAHEC survey was funded by a nonprofit environmental group called the Western Conservation Foundation.

WCAHEC Executive Director Carol Giffin-Jeansonne stressed in her cover letter releasing the survey last week and in an awkward teleconference with reporters that the poll “was not a scientific study, and from my view, has not the substance to make it worthy of news time.”

Giffin-Jeansonne intends to use the information to see if her organization can work with Garfield County public health officials to better educate area residents about the potential health risks of natural gas drilling. She expressed surprise on a call with reporters that the survey would in any way be politicized, despite the fact energy production has been a key campaign issue all year.

“We believe strongly that energy development is an important component of our economy and communities in much of western Colorado and neither I nor Western AHEC has any desire to use this as some kind of instrument that portrays the oil and gas industry in a negative way,” Giffin-Jeansonne said, adding she has personal history, however, with the industry.

“I raised my children in New Orleans area, where oil and gas is the only key industry other than tourism, and I also know what occurs because there wasn’t an open and honest discussion about any health care impacts on the community,” she said.

Asked if she didn’t want to be construed as an enemy of the industry, whether that meant she was a friend of the industry, Giffin-Jeansonne said that depended on what was meant by “friend.”

“I consider them to be a friend in the sense that what they do benefits not only the economy but they also provide a needed resource,” Giffin-Jeansonne said. “Now in my fantasy life one day we’ll run our cars on water and water will always be plentiful. That is not the case. The case is that we are dependent on oil and gas for our vehicles, for heating our homes, and I see no profit to making them out as the bad guys.”

The recent phone survey, conducted in early October, produced results similar to previous polls in Garfield County and across the Western Slope.

Hickenlooper and McInnis

“Whichever Democrat is chosen [to run for governor]-– whether he’s chosen by the Democratic Party or the White House — [he or she will] have to defend the Democratic record on jobs or discuss how they believe the Democrats have been wrong,” Duffy told the Colorado Independent Monday. “So that’s a conversation they can have amongst themselves.”

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper tops a long list of possible Democratic replacements for Ritter, and is reportedly set to announce his candidacy today. The Denver mayor, who reportedly received a call from President Obama last week urging him to run, obviously has no real record on the controversial drilling regulations.

But that won’t stop McInnis, a former six-term congressman from the Western Slope and the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, from making the debatable argument that the new state regulations that went into effect last spring – and are among the toughest in the nation – have in part led to a natural gas slowdown that has cost Colorado jobs and revenue.

“What [McInnis] says a lot is the rules were the best jobs program in four years for Pennsylvania,” Duffy said, alluding to a gas boom in that state’s Marcellus Shale. “The exporting of jobs to Pennsylvania is obviously something he’s very concerned about and he’s trying to recoup some of those jobs as key to economic recovery.”

Pennsylvania myth; Colorado reality

But while Pennsylvania did see a huge surge in natural gas drilling permits in 2009, the number issued is still dwarfed by Colorado’s permitting activity, which despite the new regulations remained ahead of other major gas-producing states in the Rocky Mountain region, according to a story in Tuesday’s Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

And oil and gas companies operating in Pennsylvania are seeing increasing levels of regulation, including skyrocketing permit fees and tougher environmental rules dictating the disposal of wastewater associated with drilling. Concerns about water quality in the Keystone State now mirror what environmentalists have been saying for years about the potential impacts of the Western Slope drilling boom on the fragile Colorado River.

Political observers in heavily drilled Garfield County – home to McInnis’s old hometown of Glenwood Springs – say any Democrat will do when it comes to mitigating the impacts of the ongoing natural gas boom.

“The prospect that McInnis could win and put [state Sen. Minority Leader and former McInnis staffer] Josh Penry in charge of the Department of Natural Resources is going to drive Gas Patch activists and environmentalists to support Hickenlooper’s – or any Democratic – gubernatorial campaign,” said Leslie Robinson, an oil and gas activist based in Rifle.

Robinson praised Ritter’s tenacity in pushing through the new regulations, which give more weight to air and water quality, public safety and wildlife habitat when state regulators are reviewing drilling permit applications. Overall, surveys show support for increased regulation of the industry on the Western Slope.

“Hickenlooper doesn’t have to stick his head out too far beyond, ‘I’m going to see how the new drilling regs work,’” Robinson said. “People forget the new rules are only six months old and have not been tested or barely practiced.”

That’s a sentiment echoed by some in McInnis’s own party.

“The rules that were put in place are in existence and we need to see at this point in time where those rules work and where they don’t work,” state Sen. Al White told the Colorado Independent last week.

“If [the regs are] too pinchy in some spots, then we can make appropriate adjustments,” added White, whose district includes much of GarCo’s “Gas Patch. “The industry spent a lot of time worrying about the new rules and now it’s time to find out what the realities are of additional costs of doing business for the industry and see if we can make changes as necessary.”

New drilling projects; old election campaigns

No major comprehensive drilling plans (CDPs) have been tested under the new regs, but the first might be a proposal by Denver-based Antero Resources to drill up to 200 new wells in the unincorporated GarCo community of Battlement Mesa, where citizens are rallying to mitigate air and water quality impacts and increase setbacks for drilling rigs.

A 501c4 nonprofit group called Western Heritage, funded in part by McInnis and the chairman of Antero Resources, spent $20,000 advertising in support of Republican county commissioners John Martin and Mike Samson – both of whom won in a highly controversial 2008 race that saw unprecedented outside spending for a local campaign.

“Local Democratic Party members fully expect county races to be impacted by 527 and 501c4 organizations [political groups named for sections of the tax code], similar to the ones that McInnis was involved with in the 2008 elections,” Robinson said, referring to a re-election bid by lone Democratic county commissioner Trési Houpt, who’s also a Ritter appointee to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

“However, the GarCo Dems have one advantage in the 2010 election — they live in McInnis’ old hometown. There are many personal ‘Scooter’ stories, gossip, and rumors floating around, some not too flattering. Up here, his campaign may spend as much time putting out fires as trying to start them.”

Duffy said the GarCo commissioner’s race isn’t even on the radar of the McInnis campaign these days.

“Haven’t even given that a thought,” Duffy said. “As you might have noticed it’s been a little hectic the last couple of weeks, but as far as I know we haven’t delved in there yet. Obviously, he’ll support Republicans.”

Asked how McInnis, as a partner in the Denver law firm Hogan & Hartson, which does a considerable amount of work for oil and gas firms, avoids being labeled a shill for the industry, Duffy said McInnis has also worked on renewable energy projects for the firm; as a congressman helped create national parks; and uses solar power at the sheep camp on his Grand Junction ranch.

“It’s a political year,” Duffy said. “With some of the folks, if he walked on water, they’d say the guy can’t swim.”

–
* Image note/request: Scott McInnis recently updated his look. The Colorado Independent asks any readers in possession of digi-snaps of the new McInnis to please send them to us at the tips address below with whatever name you would like credited.

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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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According to a press release from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and a story in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, penalty settlements totaling $680,000 will be paid by Enterprise Products Operating LLC, Berry Petroleum Co., and Marathon Oil Co. for the incident last year.

The state, which will put the money into its Water Quality Improvement Fund, will use the funds to improve water quality in the Parachute area through the “planning, design and construction of stormwater and domestic wastewater treatment facilities.” State officials said the companies did not use best-management practices to prevent pollution, although none of the companies admitted wrongdoing in the settlement.

Impacts on water quality as a result of natural gas drilling have been a hot issue all summer in Colorado, with most of the debate centering on the practice of hydraulic fracturing.

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Last year, the mayors of Colorado towns like New Castle and Rifle complained loudly about the impacts of drilling on quality-of-life issues like water, air and wildlife habit. Now, according to ProPublica, New York City mayoral candidate William Thompson is taking on Mayor Michael Bloomberg over the potential contamination of the city’s water supply by gas drilling upstate.

“I am also concerned that the City and the Water Board have been extremely lax in responding to this threat,” Thompson told ProPublica, adding the mayor should be more vocal about a pending city report warning that “nearly every activity” associated with gas drilling could contaminate the city’s drinking water supply. Bloomberg’s office responded the mayor was withholding comment until the full report comes out in December.

According to ProPublica, the city-commissioned report runs counter to the state’s environmental assessment paving the way for a major New York gas boom.

Bloomberg spokesman Marc LaVorgna told ProPublica the mayor is very concerned about maintaining the quality of the city’s water supply.

“This is not a fringe issue for this administration,” LaVorgna said. “This is a mayor that adamantly orders tap water every night he dines out.”

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In Grand Junction on Thursday, an energy researcher told an audience attending the Mesa State College Energy Management Symposium that longer permit periods for natural gas exploration and production on public lands and greater gas reserves in other states could hurt Colorado in coming years.

“Exploration is shifting to other areas,” Evergreen-based Bentek Energy CEO Porter Bennett said Thursday, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “It could be ominous for the Rockies.”

But even as debate raged on Capitol Hill Wednesday and Thursday with the introduction by U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., of his CLEAR Act (Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources Act), Colorado Congresswoman Diana DeGette’s FRAC Act continued to grab the spotlight as a potential jobs killer in Colorado.

While CLEAR would create a new Interior Department agency to revamp and oversee oil and gas leasing on public lands, FRAC would remove a 2005 Safe Drinking Water Act exemption granted the natural gas industry by for the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or injecting wells with water, sand and chemicals to free up more gas.

An Oregon consulting firm recently produced a critique of a report by the American Petroleum Institute that found the FRAC Act would result in a 10-percent drop in domestic natural gas production over the next five years. The ECONorthwest critique concluded the API report was exaggerated and failed to consider the economic benefits of environmental regulation.

“Developing energy and protecting the environment is not an either/or scenario,” Amy Mall of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Boulder told the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent. “We strongly believe clean solutions are readily available, economical, and sometimes even profitable for industry. The FRAC Act is a common sense approach, especially when drinking water and human health are at risk.”

Colorado Oil and Gas Association spokesman Nate Strauch countered jobs will be certainly be lost if pending federal legislation goes through: “Any time you’re overburdening the industry with regulation, there’s no question there’ll be economic impacts. A lost job is not a statistic to [the 70,000 gas industry workers in Colorado]. It’s their livelihood.”

Still, a recent phone survey conducted in the heavily drilled Third Congressional District found two-thirds of the voters favor greater federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing. Gubernatorial candidate and state Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, didn’t like those numbers, reportedly responding, “I’ll bet 95 percent of voters also wish unemployment wasn’t at a 65-year high.”

Natural gas is being touted nationally by U.S. Sen. Mark Udall and Gov. Bill Ritter as the cleaner-burning “bridge fuel” that will wean the state off coal-fired power and fill in nicely when the sun isn’t shining for solar power plants or the wind isn’t blowing for wind farms.

But, according to an in-depth story by veteran Colorado journalist Allen Best in the Summit Daily News on Friday, state geologist Vincent Matthews has his doubts about both natural gas as a way to break our coal addiction and carbon dioxide sequestration as a means of offsetting the higher greenhouse gas emissions of coal-fired power plants.

Shale plays so prevalent in the latest gas boom stop producing very rapidly, according to Matthews, meaning more than three times as many wells were needed in 2008 to produce just as much gas as 1995. “You have to drill more and more just to stay even,” he told Best. So while reserves may be statistically impressive, production requirements are rising.

“It’s just like oil shale. What difference does it make that the U.S. Geological Survey has increased the estimated reserves of oil shale from one trillion to 1.5 trillion barrels. We haven’t gotten one drop from it yet.”

Best also reported that no less of a coal-power expert than Jim Rodgers, CEO of mega-utility Duke Energy, called natural gas the “crack cocaine of our industry” during a speech in Boulder last week. Rogers is a homeowner in the Vail Valley and a major investor in wind energy on Colorado’s Eastern Plains.

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment Wednesday questioned the accuracy and methodology of a New York Times series on Clean Water Act violations after the Colorado Independent and Colorado Ethics Watch on Tuesday questioned the state’s lack of responsiveness in the Times report.

Called “Toxic Waters: A series about the worsening pollution in American water and regulators’ response,” the Times story indicated the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment failed to provide data requested as part of a story detailing federal water-quality violations and the lack subsequent enforcement.

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment spokesman Mark Salley e-mailed this response Wednesday:

“Contrary to the New York Times Sept. 13 article about the nation’s clean water laws, the Water Quality Control Division at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment was among the states that provided information to the reporter about compliance with the state’s regulation of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

“NYT reviewed Clean Water Act data available to them — and the public — on the U. S. EPA’s ECHO website, but the Department was not privy to how the Times queried the database. At the time of the NYT’s inquiry, we advised the Times that the EPA website was not providing accurate enforcement data. EPA has subsequently addressed the problem with ECHO data queries.

“The Department provided correct enforcement and penalty information to the reporter in May and June. However, the reporter did not incorporate the information into the final article, and the “Toxic Waters” website the New York Times created acknowledges that State data are not included. A quick look at the site shows obvious errors.

“For example – the Times’ database shows that the waste water treatment plant serving the Town of Del Norte was last inspected on August 9, 1983. In fact, this facility was inspected on July 28, 2004 and October 17, 2007. Information related to these inspections is available in the EPA’s database; therefore, it is difficult to know the source of the data used by the Times. This is not an isolated incident as all of the facilities on the Times list have been inspected within the last five to six years, many of them several times in that period.

“Also, the Times’ article does not distinguish the seriousness of the identified violations. Colorado responds to non-compliance through well established escalation criteria designed to ensure that significant non-compliance is addressed within a reasonable time frame. Many of the violations identified in the Times’ article were for violations that were subsequently resolved through permit modifications or amendments and therefore negated the need for any formal enforcement.

“In Colorado, penalties are typically assessed in a secondary phase of the enforcement process, once a clear path to compliance has been established. This is done in order to focus a facility’s attention on a prompt return to compliance, rather than contesting the magnitude of its possible penalty.

“The Times’ article fails to recognize that upon the detection of non-compliance, resolution may take several months (or years) due to the time needed to perform root cause analyses, implement capital improvement engineering design and construction schedules and the unique constraints of financing wastewater treatment improvements, especially those related to government agencies or private nonprofit entities.

“These factors are all exacerbated by the fact that most dischargers cannot simply “shut the discharge off” until improvements are made.

“A critical aspect overlooked and not addressed by the Times’ story is how the regulated community reacted to its non-compliance. An important point to keep in mind is that it’s not just the fact that non-compliance occurred, but rather how the non-compliance was resolved or (most importantly) if indeed it was resolved.

“The Water Quality Control Division at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has many duties, including administering the state water quality and drinking water programs, which includes the regulation of discharges of pollutants into the state’s surface and ground waters; the regulatory oversight of the public drinking water program; the monitoring and assessment of surface and ground waters; and the review and approval of site location and design of domestic wastewater treatment works.

“Overall, 97 percent of Colorado residents who drink water from public water systems have water that meets all health based standards. That’s well above the EPA target of 90 percent and above the national average.”

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According to the Times series, “Toxic Waters: A series about the worsening pollution in American water and regulators’ response,” the feds in the last five years have largely allowed industry and others to contaminate water supplies with impunity, and states are even less effective in policing polluters.

The exhaustive Times report details more than 506,000 violations of the Clean Water Act since 2004 by more than 23,000 companies and other facilities, including 2,122 in Colorado (see handy interactive map for a violation near you). Between 2004 and 2007, the Times reports, violations increased by 16 percent, but less than 3 percent resulted in fines of other punishments.

Top violators in Colorado? Lightner Creek Mobile Home Park in Durango (22 violations) and King Mountain Ranch near Granby (17). But there are plenty of energy companies, including coalbed methane facilities, on the Colorado list.

Most of the Times introductory story on Saturday dealt with coal mining and production in West Virginia, but in Colorado the recent debate on water quality and energy production has raged around a natural-gas production process called hydraulic fracturing, which injects water, sand and chemicals deep into the ground to force gas out of tight subterranean formations.

Federal legislation called the FRAC Act has been introduced by U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis to remove a Safe Drinking Water Act exemption for the practice granted by Congress during the Bush administration. Garfield County commissioners have been asked to take a stance on the bill because the area is home to so much gas production and numerous cases of alleged contamination of water wells, and because a new EPA study in Wyoming may have found a connection between fracking and well-water contamination near Pavillion.

The Times report finds water-pollution enforcement was especially bad during the energy-friendly years of the most recent Bush administration.

“For the last eight years, my hands have been tied,” an anonymous EPA official tells the Times. “We were told to take our clean water and clean air cases, put them in a box, and lock it shut. Everyone knew polluters were getting away with murder. But these polluters are some of the biggest campaign contributors in town, so no one really cared if they were dumping poisons into streams.”

The previous three EPA chiefs, not surprisingly, would not comment for the Times piece. When the exemption for hydraulic fracturing – a practice perfected by Haliburton – was granted in 2005, part of the justification was an EPA study on the practice that found no problems and later was deemed inadequate and politically motivated by several scientists, including an EPA whistleblower.

Obama administration EPA chief Lisa Jackson told the Times she intends to step up enforcement, but the agency also hedged, issuing a statement saying the Times reporting doesn’t distinguish between significant and minor violation and that as a result “conclusions may present an unduly alarming picture.”

OK, consider us unduly alarmed.

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