Tag: setbacks

Colorado Democrats have introduced a bill in the State Legislature that would require hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells to be set back at least 1,000 feet from any school or residence.

There was widespread praise Tuesday for a hard-fought compromise deal that led to Colorado’s groundbreaking new hydraulic fracturing chemical disclosure rule, but environmental groups and some politicians have already started pushing for more regulation of the state’s booming oil and gas industry.

Western Slope oil and gas watchdog groups this week questioned whether the new board members appointed to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) last week by Gov. John Hickenlooper will lean too heavily toward industry and Front Range concerns.

Garfield County public health officials believe a relatively untested type of health impact study could be a valuable tool in assessing the risks of natural gas drilling in the heart of the Battlement Mesa retirement community on Colorado’s Western Slope.

A group of citizen activists in the Western Slope retirement community of Battlement Mesa is hoping a type of health-impact study used successfully in the oil fields of Alaska’s North Slope can help them curtail pollution, traffic and noise from a looming natural gas drilling plan in their Garfield County town of 5,000. They have their work cut out for them. In conversations with the Colorado Independent, citizens say they have little faith that county commissioners elected to protect public health but backed by oil and gas money will put residents' interests before those of the energy companies.

A potentially precedent-setting fight over how close natural gas drilling should come to homes in the Western Slope community of Battlement Mesa may ultimately be decided by Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, according to the director of the state’s oil and gas conservation commission.