County extends public hearing of proposed amendments to gas regs

Meeting continued to August 2

The Gunnison County commissioners’ public hearing of the proposed amendments to the county’s Regulations for Oil and Gas Operations on Tuesday, June 14 had a little bit of everything, from protest theatrics to a “celebrity geologist” and a lot of community input. The only thing missing was a decision on the expanded rules.

Over the last year, the county—through the Planning Commission and staff—has held a dozen work sessions to revamp the county’s rules governing oil and gas development, which has mainly been confined to the North Fork Valley and areas near the Paonia Reservoir.
The potential for real impacts to resources that travel far beyond the county’s boundaries, like water and fruit grown in the Valley, forced the commissioners to look at impacts to water and human health. As a result, the proposed rules that came out of the process would tighten the regulation of gas operations operating near water and make contamination detection a priority.
More than 50 people packed the room; many of them spoke to the commissioners during the two-hour hearing.
And while nearly everyone who spoke at the public hearing was in favor of the county-proposed regulations, many had taken up the recommendations put forward by High County Citizens’ Alliance (HCCA) public lands director Matt Reed that would require companies to tell the county what chemicals were used in the completion of the well within 45 days of the time hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations wrapped up.
The other recommendation was to collect a fee from gas companies that would be used to hire inspectors who could check local infrastructure and operations to make sure the regulations were being followed. Reed’s concern is that the state, which has just 14 inspectors to cover thousands of wells across the state, will not be able to check the operation before it goes online or very often thereafter.  
In his statement to the commissioners, Reed applauded the work the Planning Commission has done over the past year saying, “The Planning Commission has achieved a balance between resource development and protection of human health and the environment. Across the U.S. we’re witnessing on an almost daily basis examples of an unchecked gas industry polluting our waters, lands, wildlife and human health.”
Reed told the commissioners that the question of how to balance resource extraction with environmental protection is theirs to answer now that the Planning Commission has made its recommendation.
“Natural gas production is an intrusive, toxic business and we’re just now starting to see its widespread and pervasive impacts. You, our county commissioners, represent the people and ecosystems of Gunnison County. You have the ability today to put the environment on equal footing with gas developers.”
For Crested Butte resident Larry Mosher, “This is an outstandingly ridiculous situation for us to be in, to be trying to keep an industry from poisoning our water and our air and not really being able to do it because we’re stuck relying on the state… I look on the state as not being impartial to our interests.”
Mosher attributed a share of the problem with natural gas development to former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney, who effectively made hydraulic fracturing fluids, among other things, exempt from “our primary environmental protection laws.”
It is primarily because of those exemptions, Mosher said, that we have a “problem to begin with, this fracking problem… Now we’re in a situation of having to defend ourselves from having an industry come in and inject highly dangerous and toxic chemicals into our ground and we don’t seem to be able to stop them at all.”
The next to speak was Weston W. Wilson, an environmental engineer formerly of the Environmental Protection Agency, who gained fame as a whistleblower in the documentary film Gasland, which touched on the EPA’s lack of investigation into the claims gas development was affecting people’s drinking water.
Speaking on behalf of citizens’ group Gunnison County United, Wilson told the commissioners and crowd “The operation of modern horizontal drilling and fracking uses a large volume of water… Fracking can have some recycled water, but what we recommend is identifying the estimates of quantity and source of water being used.”
Wilson also passed along a recommendation that the public be able to attend site visits to gas facilities and “when possible coordinate those with visits by Colorado oil and gas officials.” He also echoed Mosher’s recommendation for more disclosure.
“Let me make one point about the way Colorado now does that,” Wilson said. “The companies are now required to keep on site a record of the chemicals used. But it’s not available to the public; it’s available to medical professionals in case of emergencies.” He recommended the county adopt a requirement similar to what Wyoming has in place that requires chemicals used in fracking be reported at the time they’re injected.
“There’s a large problem with this industry and that is identifying a pollution source if ground water is contaminated,” Wilson concluded. “What we recommend is a strict liability… that says if a groundwater well is within a half-mile of a frack well, then that operator is liable.”
He also encouraged the county to adopt the state’s “green completion rule” for any well drilled in the county. Green completion, Wilson said, are techniques that would minimize the release of natural gas and oil vapors to cut back on the “volatile organic compounds that are released from the pits.”
In a follow-up comment, Wilson said, “To the maximum extent possible fracking fluids should be benign, they should be as ‘green’ as they can be. It wasn’t until the EPA subpoenaed Halliburton that the following week Halliburton came out with a recipe for green fracking fluid.”
Some of the recommendations Wilson had for the commissioners, or at least the goals they envisioned, were repeated throughout the hearing, from a call to conduct more baseline studies to concern over some of the things that might come back to the surface with the produced water, like radioactive material. Concern over the environment ruled the day.
Then, just before Brad Burritt stood to share some thoughts from the group Citizens for a Healthy Community, which is encouraging the commissioners to adopt the proposed amendments, and to talk about his sons who represent a sixth generation in Delta County, something out of the ordinary happened.
Crested Butte resident Jackson Melnick got up from his chair and, a little hunched over, approached the commissioners’ table with a handful of white roses. He bowed before handing each commissioner a rose, while the crowd chuckled, but he said nothing.
Dressed in a dark dinner jacket, he turned with one rose left that he held against his chest with both hands. Then he lay down on the floor in front of the commissioners’ table for the rest of the meeting.
Another Crested Butte resident, Jeremy Rubingh, stood up to explain what Melnick had not. “I’m not going to speak for Jackson here, but this suggests to me that we’re attending the next generation’s funeral or something here. I think that’s an important thing to think about.”
Melnick stayed silent through statements made by longtime activist Sue Navy and former Crested Butte councilman and HCCA president Billy Rankin and a half-dozen more until Planning Commission chairman Ramon Reed had nearly completed his comments and was being asked to take a seat by commissioner Hap Channell. Then Melnick screamed out, as if in pain. Channell jumped out of his seat.
A sheriff’s deputy was put in the hall in case the disruptions continued. A final outburst came as Eric Sanford, SG Interests’ I Ltd. land and operations manager, was making a statement in defense of the industry.
After telling the commissioners the regulations they have, and those being considered, are preempted, and more preempted, Sanford said, “It’s easy for those outside the industry to say that these regs are not obstructionist to our operations… but that’s simply not true. Why would we object to them if they didn’t prevent us from doing our job?”
At that point Melnick screamed, “Money!” and a chuckle ran through the crowd. Sanford responded to the outburst saying, “Actually, the young man’s right. Everybody does something for money. We’re all here because of money. It may be an unpopular industry, but everyone here has had a job to make money.”
The commissioners looked less than impressed with Melnick’s input. After hearing a few more comments, they continued the public hearing to at least August 2 without making a decision about the proposal.
The extended continuation of the public hearing should give the county and state a chance to negotiate the role both entities can have in the regulations of oil and gas operations.
As the crowd mingled in the room after the hearing, people worked around Melnick and stepped over him as he continued lying on the floor.