Planning Commission recommends changes to gas regulations

County Commissioners to hold public hearing June 14

After starting the process of amending the regulations that govern oil and gas development in the county just over a year ago, the Gunnison County Planning Commission officially passed on its recommended amendments to the Board of County Commissioners for review and possible adoption.

Meanwhile, the county is facing a lawsuit that takes direct aim at the Gunnison County Regulations for Oil and Gas Operations that the amendments would complement. If the suit were successful, the dozen meetings and hours of testimony and discussion engaged in by the Planning Commission up to this point would be for little more than the commissioners’ own understanding.
But a conclusion to the lawsuit is months away and the regulations are still in effect until a court says otherwise. So the commissioners will take up the proposed amendments at a public hearing on Tuesday, June 14 to listen to the community’s comments regarding the operations, which have multiplied quickly over the last decade.
Ironically, the amendments got their start from a request by SG Interests I Ltd., the plaintiff in the lawsuit, in May of last year. The company was hoping to have a reference to protective buffers around water bodies removed from the regulations, or, at least, get the buffer reduced from 500 feet to 300 feet.
The company’s timing put them in front of the Planning Commission as the state of New York was considering a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, and as other states and members of the local community were raising questions about the safety of fracking and the industry’s track record. As a result, what SG got out of the amendments was something more than they bargained for.
The Planning Commission granted its request to reduce the protective buffer around water bodies to 300 feet, but added a requirement that any operation that close to the water be a fully enclosed system. Operations farther away have less stringent regulations to comply with.
The protection and continued monitoring of water quality takes top billing in the proposed amendments and was one of the commission’s original aims in taking on the amendments.
The newly detailed Water Quality Monitoring Plan that is part of the amendments would establish a baseline study to give regulators some idea of what is occurring naturally in the water and at what levels. Once the baseline is identified, anyone with an interest will be able to test samples and know if the water quality has changed.
As commissioner David Owen says in his own comments on the amendments, “After all, once an oil and gas operation unintentionally pollutes the water of the county, it is too late to regulate.”
He points out that the planning commissioners had heard repeatedly that accidents do happen, pits leak, liners are punctured and spills happen. He also explains why not disclosing the components of fracturing fluid, which have been exempt from reporting requirements in the Clean Water Act since 2005, is contrary to the effort to defend water quality.
“I do not see how the county, or any agency for that matter, can fashion regulations to adequately protect the public health, safety and environment when we do not even know what we are trying to protect against,” he says,
For that reason, the amendments would add new language to the regulations that would require gas developers to disclose all of the chemicals used in their operations, as well as any potential for the chemicals to affect health or the environment and other data the company might have on the fluids being used.
The county also wants to be sure that the company is ready to respond to any emergency that might come up at any of the gas operations and has made that a requirement in the proposed amendments.
In his comments, Owen says, “In the end, we recommend numerous changes to the Gunnison County Regulations for Oil and Gas, which reflects a compromise between what the oil and gas stakeholders want and what the environmental and agricultural communities want.”
With rumblings from a public contingent pushing to see hydraulic fracturing banned outright in the county (something the county has been clear in saying it doesn’t have the authority to do) and a lawsuit taking issue with the county’s assertion of authority, a balance through opposing extremes might be just what the county has.
The commissioners will hear from the public on Tuesday, June 14 on the amendments and then decide if the right balance between interests has been struck before taking action on the Planning Commission’s proposal.