Anti-Hydraulic Fracturing Activists Qualify Measures for Ballot Count

Activists were energized last year after the Colorado Supreme Court struck down two citywide hydraulic fracturing bans in Fort Collins and Longmont, ruling the city laws were preempted by state law. The Colorado secretary of state has confirmed that the signatures were turned in by the deadline. A random sample of 5% of the signatures will be sampled for validity. “Fractivists” who support the measures include Earth Guardians, Vibrant Planet, and Frack Free Colorado, among others. On a recent presidential campaign visit, Hillary Clinton said she supports the right of local governments to limit hydraulic fracturing.

Various editorials by the Denver Post note that the initiatives have the potential to not only cripple oil and gas drilling, but eliminate it. Setbacks between oil and gas wells and an occupied structure or area of special concern would bar development of nearly all of the surface area in the state’s top five producing oil and gas counties. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC), which regulates the industry, reached that conclusion after mapping the impact of Initiative 78. If passed by voters in November, it would put energy development off limits in 85% of the surface area in Weld County, the state’s largest oil and gas producing county, and in 95% of the surface area of the combined top five producing counties—Weld, Garfield, La Plata, Rio Blanco, and Las Animas.

According to COGCC, the biggest reason for the dramatic impact on drilling is that the measure’s definition of an area of special concern includes lakes, rivers, perennial or intermittent streams, creeks, irrigation canals, and riparian areas, which are found in profusion in every county. “The word ‘extreme’ is used too loosely in today’s political rhetoric, but it clearly applies to a measure that effectively chokes off oil and gas development in the state and its associated jobs and tax revenues, while undermining America’s reliance on its own resources,” observes the Denver Post. “Reasonable people can disagree over whether local communities deserve more authority in the siteing of wells, or whether current setbacks are adequate. As it turns out, however, Initiative 78 has little to do with those debates.”