Aurora and Arapahoe county get the attention of oil companies and anti-fracking activists

AURORA | A growing checkerboard of mineral rights and new oil and gas leases in urban, populated areas of Arapahoe County and Aurora has made the area a focal point for the state’s pro- and anti-fracking activists.

“If it’s done right, it’s a boon to our economy and the state,” said former Aurora City Councilwoman Polly Page, who last fall formed AREA, or Arapahoe Responsible Energy Advocates. Page is also a former Arapahoe County Commissioner and Republican appointee to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.

The group of 19, co-chaired by Aurora RTD Board Member Tom Tobiassen, is a collection of past and current Aurora and Arapahoe County elected officials, business leaders, public safety officials, public health officials, education leaders, mineral rights owners, and residents.

AREA holds monthly public meetings in the city where the goal is to educate residents on the benefits of fracking and what state regulations exist to make it safe, Page said. AREA also has a Facebook page with a little more than 300 likes.

Page, who was appointed to Aurora’s Oil and Gas Committee in December, said the group is pro-drilling, but it’s also pro-regulation.

“I don’t want (oil rigs) to be 2,000 feet from homes because it would prohibit a lot of drilling. I think it is reasonable to have a setback and do things right,” she said.

She said she supports the nine recommendations submitted in Feb. to Gov. John Hickenlooper by the state’s oil and gas task force. Those included giving local governments a consulting role in the location of large oil and gas facilities, such as wells and storage tanks, in urban areas.

Most Colorado wells use hydraulic fracturing or fracking, which pumps a high-pressure mix of water, sand and chemicals to break up underground formations and release oil and gas. Public concern about the health, safety and environmental effects has arisen around the process, prompting numerous attempts by activists to put a fracking ban on the state ballot.

On the other side of the debate is state Sen. Morgan Carroll of Aurora who praised a website launched in February by the nonprofit group Conservation Colorado. The website shows the locations in Arapahoe County and in the southwest Denver area where oil and gas leases have been filed in recent years.

Using data from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the website’s map shows a total of 187,000 active leases near neighborhoods, parks and schools in Arapahoe County.  The map also shows that 192,000 acres in Arapahoe County contain mineral rights owned by oil and gas companies. The two largest lease and right holders in Aurora are Texas-based companies Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and ConocoPhillips.

“While not every lease will be developed, the fact these leases were so recently filed and that the oil and gas industry owns the mineral rights under so much of Arapahoe County is clearly a warning sign for elected officials and residents,” said Carroll in a statement following the website’s launch. “Our state government exists to protect our citizens, but right now our local governments don’t have the tools to exercise their rights to determine where oil and gas development occurs or how close it should be to our schools, homes and open spaces. I am concerned the governor’s Oil and Gas Task Force will miss an opportunity to support true protections that will give more certainty to industry while giving local governments their rightful say in what occurs within their borders.”

AREA emphasizes that most leases are not active, Page said. According to the group, there are 219 active wells in Arapahoe County with 140 that are producing. They add that development is taking place primarily in Eastern Aurora and unincorporated areas of central Arapahoe County rather than in Aurora’s urban core.

In December, residents of Aurora’s Adonea subdivision near Interstate E-470 and East Sixth Avenue Parkway, where numerous well sites are planned by ConocoPhillips, were upset that the city’s planning department granted the company waivers to build the vapor towers without going to the full city council for approval.

The Aurora City Council voted unanimously in December to allow oil and gas companies to build 31.5-foot vapor towers, and to defer to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for regulations concerning setbacks, noise and spill containment. Another change to the regulations included no longer requiring oil and gas companies to obtain building permits for well pads.

Margaret Sobey, a resident of Murphy Creek, said at a regular city council meeting where the new regulations were approved that she was not worried about the city changing regulations to comply with the state, but she was concerned by what she saw as a “broken” public input process.

“The city doesn’t have many teeth as far as the oil and gas industry is concerned. Some of these changes completely obliterate any control we have over anything,” she said at the meeting.

Local control remains a point of tension surrounding fracking. The governor’s task force was also unable to push through proposals that give cities and counties the power to make their own rules. The recommendations didn’t get the necessary two-thirds vote by the 21-member panel to become a recommendation.

Aurora has been unique in its approach to oil and gas regulation. 

“I am not aware of any cities that have such a group,”  said Nancy Prince, a local government liaison with COGCC who serves as a resource for understanding state regulations at the committee’s meetings.

The committee is in the process of making changes so that it has to post meeting minutes, be more visible on the city’s website, and include more room for public comment. City council members decided in February not to require oil and gas waivers to go to the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission for review.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.