Oil and gas firms warn County of constant litigation

“I’m here to lay the cards on the table”

The natural gas companies operating in the North Fork Valley have made it clear that if the Gunnison Board of County Commissioners maintain their current course toward adoption of amendments to the regulations for oil and gas development, they’ll find themselves in a state of “perpetual litigation.”

After months of working through the amendments, the county commissioners this week heard another list of changes to the language being proposed before SG Interests land manager Eric Sanford, who has consistently voiced his company’s objections to the regulations, laid out an ultimatum.
“I’m here to lay the cards on the table,” Sanford started. “We took a break from our current litigation with the County to see where this process is going to go. I think it’s going in the opposite direction of where it needs to go.
“Adoption of these regulations, or similar regulations, will lead to perpetual litigation. You can smile, smirk, grin, whatever you want to do, but that’s a fact,” he continued. “SG asked for a discernable set of consistent regulations, consistent with state and federal law. That’s all we asked for. That’s all we were looking for. Instead we have a draft in front of us that creates more subjective standards, allows for more discretion in the process. It goes the opposite direction of what a good set of regulations should go in.”
Sanford told the commissioners, county attorney David Baumgarten and county manager Matthew Birnie about SG’s up front approach to its differences with the county’s position that they can regulate gas operations. SG, last year, failed to convince a district judge as much. But they aren’t done trying.
Sanford repeated SG’s grievance that “these regulations attempt to regulate through the back door and through the side door what can’t be regulated through the front door. The law of preemption still applies.”
And he had another statement to make. “There is one thing that has gone unspoken of here, and that is that the county has retained private counsel throughout this process to help develop these regs and probably help defend them in future and current litigation,” Sanford prodded. “I think the voters of this county deserve to know how much the county is spending on that. Because these regs … will create perpetual litigation and if I were a resident of this county, I’d want to know that.”
The commissioners, as they often do during Sanford’s threats of litigation, maintained a stony silence before thanking him for his comments.
The process of amending the regulations for gas operations has even strained the relationship the county has with Gunnison Energy Corporation (GEC), which has generally been relatively supportive of the County’s authority over gas development.
“We’re trying to support the regulations and we’ve been trying to do that from the get-go. We’ve also tried not to pick at them and comply even when we thought there were preemption issues. We’d just try to ignore those. We also supported the [Intergovernmental Agreement/Memorandum of Understanding] process with the state,” GEC president Brad Robinson told the commissioners. “I thought part in parcel of that process was a good faith effort to try and track the state’s regulations as much as possible and not have different requirements and avoid redundancy. I am concerned because it doesn’t look like we’ve done that.”
Robinson pointed out the county’s setback regulations from water bodies. “For some reason, Gunnison County is trying to use the setback requirements that are more restrictive than virtually every other agency anywhere in the United States,” he said. Other concerns from Robinson and members of the public were taken in letters to the commissioners. Planning Commission chairman Ramon Reed spent more than 30 minutes going through a long list of semantic changes, some of which had already been made or denied after some discussion.
Matt Reed, public lands director at High Country Citizens’ Alliance pointed out a few semantic changes he’d like to see in the amendments and implored the commissioners to apply the same level of scrutiny to air quality as they have to water quality.
“I think it’s ripe for discussion. I understand the compressed time frame for this late stage,” Reed said. “But I think sometime there needs to be a discussion of including some provisions for air quality in these regulations. I’d prefer if they were added sooner, rather than later.”
“The intent is to get at least those conversations that we’ve had over the finish line,” Baumgarten responded. “It’s not our intent not to discuss other issues in the future.”
The finish line, no doubt, is closer. But it will come sometime after another work session to further discuss the proposed amendments scheduled for July 10.