AURORA | City Council members formalized a long-gestating oil and gas committee Monday amid protests from east Aurora residents over the potential for more fracking near their homes.
During the Monday, Sept. 21 regular council session, Aurora City Council members approved the ordinance to create a formal oil and gas committee on a vote of 8 to 2. City Councilwoman Mollly Markert opposed the measure because she said she did not like what she considered to be biased language in the ordinance. Councilwoman Sally Mounier also voted against the measure.
The ordinance establishes a special group of residents, industry officials and other stakeholders to mull and advise the city council on oil-and-gas-related matters affecting Aurora and have an educational forum on O&G industry activity in the city. The committee will include five residents appointed by council, of which two will come from “the areas most affected by oil and gas” drilling in Aurora. The committee will also include three industry representatives from companies registered with the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), and three surface or property owners in Aurora who hold mineral rights.
The panel is only advisory, and city council will still decide whatever issues on drilling and fracking it can not reserved by the state.
The terms for each of the committee appointments will be three years, and members would be limited to a maximum of three consecutive terms.
The desire for an oil and gas committee grew as the debate over energy exploration across Colorado has grown in recent years, with large increases in the amount of drilling over the past three years.
During a public comment period preceding the ordinance vote, Nicole Johnston, a resident of Aurora’s Adonea subdivision near E-470 and Sixth Avenue Parkway, took issue with eight well permits submitted by ConocoPhillips near her neighborhood.
“Last year when this was a mineral rights issue, ConocoPhillips hosted an open house that had lots of different displays and cheese platters. It was nice, but there wasn’t one voice giving us one answer,” she said. “That is what neighbors want. We want more information, we want an opportunity to see, to hear concerns, to have our concerns addressed by ConocoPhillips.”
Last year, dozens of residents mostly from the Adonea and Murphy Creek neighborhoods expressed concerns over the drilling amendments and the city leasing mineral rights to ConocoPhillips in nine locations. According to city documents, ConocoPhillips is leasing 648 mineral acres in Aurora for $486,000.
The eight ConocoPhillips well permits Johnston took issue with have been filed for sites near Mississippi and Powhaton, less than a mile from Murphy Creek, close to the Adonea and Traditions neighborhoods.
Johnston has even organized a forum for the city’s at-large candidates to be held September 28 as part of the Ward II town hall meeting because she said she wants residents to know where candidates stand on the issue, adding that she believes the city has not adequately addressed residents’ concerns about the hazards of nearby wells.
The Colorado Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether cities can ban hydraulic fracturing, stepping into a high-stakes battle over whether local governments can impose tougher oil and gas rules than the state.
The court agreed Monday to hear cases from Longmont and Fort Collins. Longmont voters banned hydraulic fracturing in 2012. Fort Collins voters approved a 5-year moratorium in 2013.
Aurora has not banned fracking, but on several levels Aurora has expressed an interest in having a say in how it’s regulated in the city.
Lower courts overturned the restrictions after the Colorado Oil and Gas Association filed suit, saying regulation is the state’s prerogative.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, injects a high-pressure mix of water, sand and chemicals underground to break open formations and make it easier to recover oil and gas. It’s a widespread practice that led to an energy boom.
Opponents worry about health and environmental effects. The industry says it’s safe.
The Associated Press contributed to this story
Sadly state law pre-empts community law. Sadly mineral rights trump surface rights. In other words, democracy scars the hell out of the oil and gas industry, and the legal system in Colorado has been fashioned by corporate interests to favor extraction regardless of the consequences. That being the reality, we need, and cocrn.org (local) with the help of celdf.org (national) has submitted a Community Rights Ballot Initiative to the legislature. Amending the state constitution is the only answer, and the oil and gas people will fight with all their money and power to fill the air with lies about the wonders of fracking. One hundred thousand signatures will be needed starting next February to be voted upon in 2016. Rep. Jared Polis had 250,000 signatures before folding to the idea that big oil could come in and destroy his agenda. Get on board.
Excellent. I hope the Committee pursues factual information, not hysterical Environmentalist hyperbole, and recommends policies that support fracking and other safe, proven extraction techniques.
….right behind your house.
Fine with me. There’s minimal risk, since we’ve been fracking in this country for over 60 years. I think they’ve got the bugs worked out, RBluhm’s paranoia notwithstanding.
you THINK they’ve got the bugs worked out? Not really. But hopefully a couple of rigs will set up in your
backyard so you can enjoy the vibrations, smell of rotten eggs, lights in your bedroom at night, and
thousands of truck trips to and from. Maybe you’ll get really lucky and they will have a spill right
by your bedroom window. Two spills a day is normal. They haven’t used horizontal fracking for 60
years – only about 6 or 7. And maybe it will be a 4 rig drill pad that will frack for four months or so.
50,000 fracking wells with 17 inspectors, so basically they “police” themselves.
And do you speak from experience or propaganda?
So, do you work in the oil fracturing business, Aaron D? You sound like a mouthpiece echoing the same propaganda that the industry has been spewing since they got out here.
Not even remotely.
Funny thing, when each side accuses the other of engaging in propaganda. Obviously then, only one side can be correct, and how to determine that is the question. I’ll stick with the side of verifiable facts, not emotional manipulation and lack of critical thinking skills. Fracking is safe, effective, and beneficial.
there was a fire at a fracking site in Greeley last week – Anadarko says it will take weeks to figure out what happened.
Previously there was a HUGE fire that took days to put out in Greeley when the chemically laden water tank caught
on fire. The black smoke could be seen for miles, and fracking tanks were propelled in the air for 50 feet.
Doesn’t sound too safe to residents of Greeley and outlying areas.
So, Anadarko doesn’t know the cause of the fire, but you assert it must have been from fracking? Fracking fluids are mostly sand and water, which are usually not known to be flammable. Incidents happen all the time in all industries, despite the best efforts toward safety. I think you’re making coincidences into causes. With the appropriate safety measures in place, and Colorado has strict safety requirements, there’s little risk from fracking, and great benefits for all.
speak from listening to residents of Adonea, Colorado who are living under tremendous adverse effects of
fracking rigs in their community.
Well, I commend you for having a source. Adonea is a development within Aurora, not a separate city. This commission will likely address Adonea’s concerns. What are the tremendous adverse affects? Are these actually the results of fracking? How many residents are affected versus those who are not or don’t care?
Are you confident that the techniques that were used 60 years ago are the same as those being employed today? And were they being done near schools and residences then? Personally, I get concerned when there are a rash of fracking-related earthquakes in Oklahoma, the first in recorded memory.
Actually, based on the common trajectory of technology, I would think fracking – horizontal or otherwise – is even safer and more efficient today then when it was started. A connection between fracking and earthquakes has not been shown. Correlation is not causation.
You are aware that California had leases with oil-gas companies, and even had a well in school yard in Los Angeles area, and all along the coast. And you are aware, I hope, that this is a National Security Issue. These folks yell and scream about their health and safety, and do they realize we have had troops in the middle east for these many years to keep that oil and gas coming out of the middle east, for whole planet earth. Russia now is drilling and selling oil and gas, and paying other countries not to frack or develop their assets. Their whole economy is built on that, and is reason they are expanding back into the other Russian countries, that separated from them in past.
I hope you realize Putin has submarines and ships planting flags in the Artic Ocean, trying to claim all of that area, while our president blocks Keystone Pipeline. Buttet is making lots of money transporting oil-gas in and across Canada, and across the border to nearest place where they can get it into the pipelines in our country or refineries. But are killing and burning out towns and villages where trains or trucks wreck.
What about the health and safety of our military sons and daughters. Is that not important to our pansy Colorado neighbors, who moved here from somewhere else. Brought their bad habits with them. And wonder why we have problem with that? Mother Nature fracks this earth all the time.
Aspen, Colorado announced that it will be running on 100% renewal energy by the end of the year, making it the
third city in America to do so. Burlington, Vermont and Greenburg, KS which decided to make the move after it was
devastated by a powerful tornado in 2007. . . so there is hope that we won’t be dependent upon polluting
fossil fuels forever.