AURORA | A spat over drilling near new homes in Colorado — an issue getting more attention following the fatal explosion of a northern Colorado home earlier this year — could put the brakes on a massive development in northeast Aurora.
If constructed, The Aurora Highlands would span 2,900 acres southeast of Denver International Airport near Interstate 70 and the E470 toll road. In later phases, the sprawling development would encompass nearly 5,000 acres and could one day be home to 23,000 families.
When the developers behind the project — who have built similar huge master-planned communities across the southwest — announced their plans this spring, city leaders heralded Aurora Highlands as a game-changing project that could forever change the desolate plains in northeast Aurora.
But now the project could be nearing a snag.
That corner of the city, along with much of the undeveloped plains of eastern and northern Colorado, has seen ample drilling activity in recent years, and oil and gas interests own significant stretches of surface mineral rights in spots where they one day hope to drill.
Last spring, a home near Firestone exploded, killing two people. State investigators later said a nearby gas line caused the explosion, a finding that has lead to consternation among homeowners and home buyers about how close wells sit to new homes.
Carlo Ferreira, the developer behind Highlands, said he is hoping to work out an agreement with the drillers.
“Our ultimate goal in developing this comprehensive drilling plan is to provide long-term planning for both the oil & gas companies, the future development of Aurora and the citizens of The Aurora Highlands. Balancing the rights of the mineral rights holders with the rights of residents to live in a healthy, safe environment is our top priority,” he said in a statement this week.
Media reports last week said oil and gas drillers with rights in the area rebuffed requests from Highlands developers to alter their plans, likely setting up a showdown between the sides before state regulators.
Aurora City Councilwoman-elect Nicole Johnston, who before being elected to council early this month had advocated for stricter rules on drillers, said the conflict between Highlands and oil interests highlights an ongoing tension between homeowners and the extraction industry.
“A person’s home is most people’s biggest investment of their lifetime. If people have a choice to live where oil and gas extraction is in their backyard or it is not, which will they choose?” she said. “Rubber-stamping and allowing whatever the oil and gas industry wants over the rights of property owners is another example of why we need local control over these issues.”
She said citie’s like Aurora need to worry more about those homeowners.
“If we want to have Aurora develop in a smart and sustainable way, let’s start prioritizing what is best for our community and our quality of life over industry interests,” she said.
Aurora has hardly been the hotbed of oil and gas development that Weld County and some other regions of the state have been in recent years. What little development that Aurora has seen has been limited to swaths of land east of the E-470 toll road, and even that has been minimal compared to neighboring Weld.
Still, the otherwise barren plains to the east of the city’s center have seen some energy development in recent years. And going back decades, a handful of wells — many of which proved dry when developers first explored them — dot the landscape.
As of May, there were 113 known wells located within Aurora city limits, according to city data.
There are 40 different oil companies who lay claim to the various wells spread throughout Aurora, according to city data. The majority of the firms only own one well in the city. Burlington Resources Oil & Gas controls the vast majority of Aurora-based wells with 31. The next company on the list, Bison Exploration, controls 18 wells in Aurora.
Anadarko, the oil giant that agreed to halt operations at 3,000 wells in Colorado following the Firestone blast, does not operate any wells in Aurora, according to the city.
On top of the 113 wells within Aurora city limits, there are an additional 165 known wells within 1,000 feet of city boundaries. Nearly one third of those nearby wells are “dry and abandoned.”
Kara Mason contributed to this story