A nonprofit sportsmen’s group Thursday released a report detailing 10 years of oil and gas spills in the three counties in Northwest Colorado that include parts of the heavily drilled Piceance Basin.

The Bull Moose Sportsmen’s Alliance released an analysis (pdf) detailing nearly 1,000 spills of wastewater, oil and other fluids between 2001 and 2010 – or a rate of about 100 a year. The data came from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), which regulates oil and gas drilling in the state.

Garfield County saw 3.5 million gallons in spilled fluids compared to 2 million gallons in Rio Blanco County and .13 million gallons in Mesa County. Only about half of the fluids are ever recovered in cleanup operations.

According to the report: “About 91 percent of the oil and gas fluids spilled in the three counties from 2001 to 2010 was wastewater, also known as produced water. That water can contain salt, oil and grease, along with naturally occurring radioactive material and inorganic and organic compounds.”

Equipment failure was cited as the leading cause for the spills, with about 49 percent of the 992 spills blamed on faulty equipment and another 23 percent of the spills blamed on human error.

“A lifelong resident of Colorado, I have vivid memories of hunting and fishing with my dad in the Piceance Basin,” said Gaspar Perricone of the Bull Moose Sportsmen’s Alliance.

“We have seen firsthand the devastating effects of these spills and accidents. In addition to groundwater contamination, rigs, roads and production facilities have significant impacts on wildlife migratory patterns and fish habitat.”

In an interview earlier this month with the Colorado Independent, COGCC Executive Director David Neslin said investigating and resolving the state’s backlog of spill complaints is a top priority.

“Our goal is to work down the backlog by the end of June such that by the end of June all of our active enforcement cases would be no more than one year old,” Neslin said. “We’re working very hard to achieve that objective.”

Many of the most high-profile spills have been dealt with in recent years, resulting in record fines against the companies responsible.

A young buck in West Vail on Friday. (Photo by David O. Williams)

“The National Wildlife Federation earlier this year released a report really documenting the impacts of spills onshore, and they’re pretty staggering,” Gale said. “They make the BP incident [in April in the Gulf of Mexico] look like a really rare and isolated event.

“Here in Colorado the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission [the state agency that oversees oil and gas drilling] has documented approximately 1,600 spills just between 2003 and 2008, so we’re looking at a pretty important issue to focus our energy on as we look at the ways that oil and gas is developed on public lands,” Gale added.

Tisha Schuller, president of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association, told the Colorado Independent in a prepared statement that the industry here generally agrees that environmental protection is a top priority for its member companies.

“The oil and gas industry in Colorado has adapted to the most stringent set of state regulations in the country [amended and enacted in 2009]. Because we live and raise our families in the same communities within which we work, environmental protection is a tremendous priority for our companies and our employees,” Schuller said.

“While the [NFW] poll doesn’t acknowledge Colorado’s tough regulations, we concur that environmental protection is an industry and citizenry priority. As we all have a stake in environmental protection, we all also have an economic interest in the health of one of Colorado’s greatest job and revenue generators.”

The new bipartisan NFW poll was a telephone survey of 462 Coloradans of different backgrounds and political persuasions. It asked the respondents to choose between two statements.

“We poll for Democrats in partisan races,” said Dave Metz of the public opinion research firm Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates, “and we partnered with Public Opinion Strategies, which polls for Republicans in partisan races, to make sure that the research had a bipartisan perspective.”

Despite ongoing research indicating a majority of Coloradans want more regulation of the state’s natural gas industry, not less, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes continues to insist the state needs to roll back the amended and environmentally more stringent drilling regulations.

GOP candidates have consistently blamed the regulations for the ongoing natural gas bust in the state, although many industry observers attribute the downturn to the recent global recession.

In his first television ad airing today, Maes says, “We need to start by rolling back the job-killing regulations that forced the energy industry out of our state.”

Democratic candidate and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has said he thinks some of the regulations should be tweaked but that he does not favor a complete overhaul of the new rules.

The NWF’s Gale said the 1 million members of his organization will be heartened by the sentiments of Coloradans who value protecting critical wildlife habitat in the face of growing demands for domestic energy production.

“I’ve got a 15-month-old daughter that I have to look in the eyes at the end of the day to say that I did everything I could to give her the same opportunities I’ve had on public lands, whether she decides to hunt and fish or not,” Gale said. “She deserves the right to go catch a brook trout in the same little stream where I learned to catch a brook trout.”

Gale also pointed to an August deal between the state, environmentalists and nine major oil and gas producers agreeing to comprehensive wildlife mitigation plans in Northwest Colorado. Announced by Gov. Bill Ritter, Gale said the accord shows how much Colorado values protecting its natural heritage even as energy demands grow.

Here are the statements presented to respondents in the NWF telephone survey:

33 percent agreed with this statement:

The oil and gas industry continually strives to build upon its record of safety and to develop the advanced technology necessary to supply Americans with the energy they need — safely, efficiently and with the least environmental impact possible. Adding new regulations or slowing down permitting will only end up costing jobs and raising prices.

62 percent agreed with this statement:

Oil and gas drilling can be done safely, but not if we simply trust oil and gas companies to police themselves. Whether drilling occurs in our oceans or here in Colorado, accidents happen. In fact, in Colorado there have been nearly 1,000 spills and accidents since 2008. It’s simply common sense to end industry shortcuts and require careful, independent review to hold oil companies accountable before permitting drilling.

5 percent disagreed with both, agreed with both or were unsure.

34 percent agreed with this statement:

The oil and gas industry continually strives to build upon its record of safety and to develop the advanced technology necessary to supply Americans with the energy they need – safely, efficiently and with the least environmental impact possible. Adding new regulations or slowing down permitting will only end up costing jobs and raising prices.

62 percent agreed with this statement:

We can no longer allow oil and gas companies to decide for themselves whether or not to use the best equipment or safest drilling practices. We’ve seen what happens when safety decisions are left to the companies in the Gulf of Mexico. Here in the West, we’ve seen drinking water contaminated with cancer causing chemicals. It’s time to hold the oil and gas industry accountable and make sure drilling practices are mandatory rather than voluntary.

4 percent disagreed with both, agreed with both or were unsure.

However, the Pitkin County commissioners are – depending on your point of view – either “moving cautiously” or dragging their feet on imposing more stringent land-use regulations that would strengthen water quality standards, require more detail in the drilling application process and address wildlife habitat, air quality, noise and visual impacts.

Already tentatively approved, the new county rules were put off for consideration by the board of commissioners from this week until Aug. 3, according to the paper. The county’s head planner, Cindy Houben, says the potential for litigation is one of the factors slowing down the process.

Oil and gas representatives at a hearing in March reportedly made some veiled threats about potential litigation if the county moves ahead with updating its land-use powers in the wake of year-old state drilling rules.

“We’ll be one of the first out of the gate with new regulations, so I’m sure there’s going to be some vulnerability there,” Houben told the Times. “We don’t want to just fold and not do things. We also don’t want to purposely step into something that isn’t worth the fight.”

There is, however, precedent for counties using land-use tools to regulate oil and gas drilling, which is normally the purview of the state. Neighboring Garfield County, for example, will hold land-use hearings for a proposed 200-well project in the Battlement Mesa community, and some activists there want the county to increase its drilling oversight. Gunnison County also has had success regulating some aspects of oil and gas drilling.

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Rep. Bradford, R-Colburn (Rocky Mountain News/Flickr)

State Rep. Laura Bradford says ranchers and landowners in and around Grand Junction and Mesa County are enraged by new, more environmentally stringent drilling regulations keeping them from fully developing their oil and gas mineral rights.

“Our stance is the erosion of private property rights has gotten to the point that the pitchforks are about to come out here,” Bradford, a Republican from Collbran, said of the political ramifications of the drilling regs that went into effect in April. “Don’t underestimate some of these old-time, family… farmers and ranchers. The tension is ratcheting upwards about the frustration with the erosion of private property rights.”

Specifically, Bradford, the freshman lawmaker who last November ousted presumptive House Speaker Bernie Buescher, a popular Grand Junction Democrat, is upset about wildlife-protection provisions of the new rules. The stunning defeat of Buescher, now Colorado’s secretary of state, was virtually the lone bright spot for Republicans who suffered widespread defeat at the polls in 2008.

But frustration over the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) rules and overall anger stemming from the anti-business policies of the Democratic governor and Democrat-controlled statehouse could propel Republicans back into power, Bradford said, at least on the Western Slope.

A caucus of Republican lawmakers Bradford calls “the pro oil-and-gas coalition” fought to eliminate several paragraphs of the 176-page rules and regulations, she said, because they gave the state Division of Wildlife too much power to restrict drilling on private property in order to preserve wildlife habitat.

“It was a great disappointment to end the session not having had the opportunity to discuss those specifically, just those few, and look at ways that we could either adjust them, push them, or move them out,” Bradford said.

“Outside of the state we have suffered and our reputation has been tarnished and bruised by this governor, by the legislation that he not only endorsed but ultimately signed that is eroding what we once had as a very open arms, open door policy of welcoming businesses to this state,” added Bradford, who owns a medical equipment company and whose husband ranches atop the Grand Mesa east of Grand Junction.

But other ranching lawmakers say the State Legislature did the right thing imposing some of the most demanding drilling regulations in the nation. State Rep. Kathleen Curry, a Democrat from Gunnison, has helped the oil and gas industry carry some legislation, but she supported the COGCC regs.

“The way the rules work is it sets up a process for that discussion to occur to try to find a better location so that you don’t eliminate that critical wildlife habitat,” Curry said of restricted surface occupancy areas that require alternative locations for drilling pads to avoid disturbing critical wildlife habitat. The Division of Wildlife must approve alternative locations, and their decision can be appealed.

In the case of sage grouse, a bird environmentalists have sued to have listed under the Endangered Species Act, Curry said it’s in the best interests of the ranching community to avoid disturbing their habitat and having the bird listed.

The topic of what one landowner described as a “takings,” or regulatory land grab by the Division of Wildlife that prevented him from developing mineral rights on his property in North Park, came up at a contentious royalty-rights meeting Curry attended earlier this month. She said it was a hostile and decidedly counterproductive environment.

“I think it is an indication, though, of the future,” Curry said of what will likely be the dominant issue on the campaign trail in 2010. “This was a ‘heads up, Rep. Curry, every time you set foot in public, you’d better be able to explain what you’ve done [regarding the drilling regs] and the reasons for it,’ so in a way this was good, because now I know.”

Curry said blindly pandering to one interest group at the expense of another won’t fly in the coming election, which already appears to be taking shape 16 months out.

“It’s just a diverse region, the whole Western Slope, and you do run the risk if you take one position that’s fairly extreme on one side then you lose the support of a big voter group on the other side,” Curry said, adding Republican gubernatorial candidate and former U.S. Congressman Scott McInnis kept things civil at the same meeting, where some in the crowd called Curry and others “Demon-crats.”

“Congressman McInnis was very gracious, and he did not take the bait on any of that,” Curry said. “He would run a good campaign, and it’s the 527s [tax-exempt political issues groups] that take it to a level that the candidate wouldn’t do.”

Bradford said much will depend on the economy leading up to the November 2010 elections.

“The central issue, depending on what happens in the next 14 to 16 months, is going to be jobs and the economy,” Bradford said. “So this plays into that in the respect of how many jobs did we lose because of the regs, and nobody knows that quite honestly, and neither side is ready to try to estimate that.”

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Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, made one last-ditch attempt to water down the new Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission regs, which give more weight to public safety, wildlife, water- and air-quality issues in the formerly frenetic natural gas boom in Weld County and on the state’s Western Slope.

The GOP rallying cry that the new regs – in the works and intensely negotiated since 2007 – are a major job-killing mistake that will send industry off to much friendlier states rang hollow with the Democratic-controlled state Legislature, which is not surprising.

Industry observers and lawmakers like Rep. Joe Rice, D-Littleton, saw right through the economic argument that the pending regs were costing jobs, mainly because the industry is scaling back around the nation in lockstep with plummeting energy prices in the wake of the global economic downturn.

But with even some moderate Republicans like Sen. Al White, R-Hayden, jumping on the jobs bandwagon, it’s clear the state GOP leadership will revisit this theme again and again leading into the 2010 election.

Most industry observers agree that the degree to which the economic argument will resonate with voters in the battle for control of the governor’s office and the state Senate will depend largely on the success of Gov. Bill Ritter’s “New Energy Economy” and the overall state of financial affairs a year from now.

The Colorado River cuts through a mesa. (Photo/Wolfgang Staudt, Flickr)

Hunters in pickup trucks you’d expect to see plastered with “Drill here, drill now” bumper stickers instead sport the “Save the Roan” rallying cry. Ski-area executives whose industry in some cases was built with oil money can’t buy enough wind energy nor contribute fast enough to campaigns to raise oil and gas severance taxes.

The ongoing natural gas boom in Garfield County, where there are nearly 5,000 active wells and another 1,000 coming online each year, not only features strange bedfellows — hunters and anglers teamed with Prius-driving environmentalists — but also pits two of Colorado’s most lucrative multibillion-dollar industries.

Some say the outdoor recreation and tourism trade and the massive second-home real estate market that it spawned cannot coexist with unrelenting pressure of the natural gas boom fueled by the nation’s thirst for increased domestic energy. Others say there’s more than enough room for both in the more than one-third of the state owned by the federal government.

Garfield County, where oil-and-gas drilling has exploded 39 percent since 2000, is at the epicenter of that increasingly contentious debate. Scenically situated between Eagle County to the east (home to Vail and Beaver Creek ski areas) and Pitkin County to the south (Aspen and Snowmass), its eastern edge has long been a bedroom community for the state’s top outdoor recreation destinations.

But it stretches all the way to the Utah border, and its ruggedly beautiful hillsides choked with ponderosa pine and sagebrush are loaded with huge reserves of natural gas and oil shale. Now the small towns and communities — Glenwood Springs, New Castle, Rifle, Parachute, Battlement Mesa — that used to be on the fringes of ski industry and real estate boom are struggling with a crush of heavy truck traffic, housing shortages and environmental concerns brought on by the energy boom.

“The problem is the damage that’s done to the landscape and the roadless areas that suddenly now are accessible, which should be wildlife sanctuaries and wild-land sanctuaries,” said New Castle Mayor Frank Breslin, whose town of 3,500 is outnumbered by the amount of wells in the county. Breslin adds that the energy boom is now heavily influencing the local political landscape.

“If we expect Garfield County to protect our air, water and open spaces, it is essential that we elect commissioners who don’t owe a big favor to the oil and gas industry,” he said in a release announcing a press conference he attended Tuesday with three other local mayors to protest energy-funded 527 ads in the county commissioner race.

However, former Republican Rep. Scott McInnis, who’s originally from Glenwood Springs and reportedly contributed $10,000 to one of those 527 groups — Western Heritage — says the two industries easily can coexist because of the vast expanses of land in question and the cleaner and far less intrusive drilling technology in use today.

McInnis, who now works for a Denver law firm and has lobbied on behalf of the oil and gas industry, argues the relatively high-paying jobs are critical to the economic vitality of the perennially depressed Western Slope — at least outside of the booming ski towns.

“What I find is the people who fight this the most is the people who are fortunate enough to already own a home or don’t need a job or already have a job that isn’t dependent on the [energy] industry,” McInnis said.

“If the industry pulled out tomorrow, they’d be just as well off as they are today. There’s not a lot of those people out there,” he added. “Shut Vail Resorts down tomorrow and see what happens to Vail. Shut down the Hot Springs Pool tomorrow and see what happens to Glenwood.”

Other politicians say there are just as many people, if not more, who are concerned about environmental degradation and safety in Garfield County as there are industry advocates pushing for new jobs and more wells.

“There’s definitely a population that wants to see natural gas drilled period; they think it’s great for the economy,” said former Steamboat Springs town councilman Ken Brenner, a Democrat who’s running against Republican Rep. Al White for the state Senate seat representing the area. “But even those folks acknowledge that we should try to do it responsibly and that it’s important to make sure there’s a safe working environment for people who are employed by the industry.”

Brenner said he’s heard from many people living around the Roan Plateau (the subject of an ongoing lawsuit by environmental groups over recently permitted natural gas drilling) who feel state drilling regulations currently being crafted by Gov. Bill Ritter’s administration should be even more restrictive.

“I’ve met with the heads of sportsman’s groups and they’re not opposed to drilling — they just want it done in a different way than it’s being done now, and really they’re asking for more than the Ritter administration has settled for,” Brenner said. “The Ritter administration, I sense, has probably given the industry pretty much what it wanted, but that doesn’t appear to be enough.”

That debate has been taken up at the national campaign level, where U.S. Senate hopeful Bob Schaffer, a former oil and gas executive who strongly advocates for less regulation on the Western Slope, argues his Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, has greatly contributed to higher energy prices by fostering intense environmental restrictions. Schaffer says outdoor recreation and oil and gas can coexist.

“Democrats tend to be the party that says we can’t do it because they say so,” Schaffer said. “That’s the sweet spot of public policy that we ought to strive for, and most rational and reasonable sportsman, and I’m one of them by the way, understand that we can do both.”

But Jason Sorter, a Colorado field representative for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which represents a number of sportsman’s groups, said the more than 100 new oil and gas leases allowed under a new state roadless management plan could dramatically impact prime hunting and fishing areas.

“What we’re mainly concerned with is the preservation of the hunting and angling heritage of Colorado,” Sorter said. “I myself am a hunter and angler and a third-generation Colorado native, and what I hope to see come out of this roadless process is that the same opportunities that I have had growing up here are available to my kids and grandkids.”

Similarly, ski industry and resort development executives have been quietly throwing their weight behind Ritter’s new-energy economy, promoting renewable energy while funding campaigns to extract more money from the oil and gas industry.

Harry Frampton of East West Partners and Slifer Smith and Frampton Real Estate, who developed most of Beaver Creek and at one time was the president of Vail Resorts, contributed $10,000 to A Smarter Colorado, a group pushing for higher oil and gas severance taxes to fund higher education, renewable energy and wildlife habitat protection (Amendment 58).

Frampton, whose company developed Denver’s Riverfront Park and is also redeveloping Denver’s Union Station, could not be reached for comment, but others in the resort and recreation industry have become increasingly concerned about global climate change and its impacts on winter sports. Rob Katz, CEO of Vail Resorts, purchased wind energy credits to offset 100 percent of the power consumption of the company’s five ski areas and is currently planning the nation’s first green-built base village.

“There are folks who are concerned about whether this is a political agenda, and one of the things that I’ve talked about a lot is that our company needs to do the right things to help prevent climate change without getting involved in a political debate about climate change,” Katz said in an earlier interview. His company contributed $500,000 to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August.

Even McInnis, a former skier and big backer of the industry, agrees global warming makes renewable energy a top priority in the coming years, but he said it’s too soon to pursue that agenda at the expense of the traditional energy sector.

“They’re absolutely right, of course you do [need to transition to new-energy economy because of global climate change],” McInnis said. “But my difficulty is you need to do it in coordination, in a parallel path with the current energy needs that we have. We can’t go cold turkey. If we think we’re in an economic crisis now, just shut off the valves of oil and gas.”