Not that long ago, nurse Cliff Willmeng would have reacted to a question about hydraulic fracturing with a blank stare.
Fracking, oil shale, drilling: those were words used by geologists, not an emergency-room worker.
But a notice in his hometown paper in Lafayette about mothers protesting a well site outside Red Hawk Elementary School inErie transformed the 44-year-old Chicago native and father of two.
Willmeng now has a record: trespassing on the road outside that school after being confronted by an oil company security guard.
And he and his like-minded allies have a new, unflattering label, the Tea Party of the Left. Also known as “fracktivists,” the group, like their conservative counterparts, is sworn to certain principles — even if those beliefs cost their side of the aisle the election in November.
“I’ve always said it’s OK to be disliked by the right people,” Willmeng said. “If the Democratic Party has become so isolated from its constituents, it might want to reconsider its business plan.”
The ferocious battle over fracking — the method used to extract natural gas — is being fought across the country, bolstered by the movie “Gasland,” which portrays the industry in an unflattering light, and the sight of drilling rigs across the fence from school grounds.
But the skirmish in Colorado is unique on several fronts and brings with it the potential for enormous political consequences.
For example, Gov. John Hickenlooper — though a Democrat, the party most seen as being friendly to environmental causes — cannot count on fracktivists’ support. The former geologist who is friendly to the oil and gas industry once infuriated the left when he told a U.S. Senate committee he once drank fracking fluid to show it was safe.
Meanwhile, Hickenlooper has taken extra heat from Republicans for being unable to broker a compromise with the legislature for a special session to try to stop proposed oil and gas ballot measures that critics say will cripple Colorado’s extraction industry.
Instead, Hickenlooper announced last week he will work to defeat the measures if they make it on the November ballot, saying they “risk thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in investment, and millions of dollars in tax revenue.”
Then there is the Polis factor.
The ballot measures — dealing with setbacks, local control and other issues related to drilling and fracking — are bankrolled by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, a Boulder Democrat who used his vast wealth in 2004 to help turn Colorado blue. Now there are fears his money could turn the state red, with the ballot measures hampering Hickenlooper and Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Udall in their tough re-election bids.
“It’s certainly not that most Coloradans are against new drilling technologies like fracking,” Polis said, “but they just want to make sure there is some level of protection for their health and safety that currently doesn’t exist.”
Owens, Romer support
Two former governors, Democrat Roy Romer and Republican Bill Owens, star in a campaign ad paid for by opponents of the proposed ballot measures.
“Fracking has a 60-year track record here,” Owens says. “We’ve got some of the toughest regulations and enforcement you’ll find anywhere.”
Colorado holds the distinction of developing the second well ever drilled in the United States, in 1862 near Florence. But for decades, the mining industry was out of sight, out of mind for most Coloradans as the population along the Front Range exploded.
“That’s just not the case anymore. That’s why in large part this has become such a hot-button issue,” said Pete Maysmith, executive director of Conservation Colorado, a statewide group that works on climate change, water and the wilderness.
“Now you’ve got moms — and dads for that matter — who are waking up and seeing a drilling rig just over their back fence or when they drop the kids off at the neighborhood school.”
Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, has made it possible to extract natural gas in areas once unreachable with conventional technologies. The process pumps millions of gallons of sand and water and trace chemicals into a well to crack the hard shale and release oil and gas.
“What you’ll hear consistently is that fracking has been around for a long time, but the industrial process 60 years ago absolutely does not look like it does today,” Willmeng said.
“In the last few years, you have communities that have identified this process as a threat to their health, safety and welfare.”
“Politically angry”
Polis has been accused of getting involved in the fracking fight after finding a drilling operation last year across from his vacation property in Weld County. But the congressman approached an oil and gas company in April 2012 when he learned the firm would drill near Red Hawk Elementary the next month.
“I realize that the regulatory framework for fracking operations is still in the ‘wild west’ phase, where almost anything goes — within limits,” he wrote the company.
“But I can guarantee that situation will not last forever. Communities throughout the area encompassed by the gas fields here are quickly moving from nervous, to concerned, to activated and are heading in the direction of being politically angry.”
Just a few months earlier, Longmont residents learned that a well near a middle school was found to have higher-than-allowed benzene levels for at least three years, at one point measuring almost 100 times the state limit.
That bolstered fears among fracktivists who worried about drilling near schools and residential areas.
In August 2012, the Longmont City Council approved new oil and gas regulations. The Hickenlooper administration joined in a lawsuit against the city, saying the rules were contrary to state law. That November, Longmont citizens passed a measure banning fracking in the city.
The following year, in November 2013, voters in Fort Collins, Boulder, Lafayette and Broomfield also passed fracking bans.
The anti-fracking folks made their sentiments known at the Democratic Party state assembly in April, shouting at Hickenlooper and Udall when they mentioned energy. “Don’t frack Colorado!” one person hollered.
Two months later, they added Polis to the list of politicians they are frustrated with because he was working with the governor to try to find a compromise on the ballot measures, the Colorado Observer reported. The activists made their displeasure with Polis known at a screening of the anti-fracking film “Dear Governor Hickenlooper,” at the Boulder Theater.
“I believe that involving multiple stakeholders and coming up with a negotiated solution that isn’t perfect for anyone but that everyone can live with was worth trying,” Polis said, when asked about the criticism.
“Some of my constituents want to ban fracking. They are a small minority but were probably heavily represented at that film.”
Chants and threats
Former state Sen. Josh Penry of Grand Junction, a Republican active on energy issues, said he was amazed by the behavior of anti-fracking activists at a Boulder County Board of Commissioners meeting in late December 2012 to discuss oil and gas regulations. The board accused the activists of creating a “bullying atmosphere” with their chants and threats and developed a security plan for its next meeting.
“We’re talking about Boulder County,” Penry said, of the liberal bastion. “Conservatives have their whack jobs, but the Democrats have theirs in spades, and no one — not a single one of them — has the guts to call them out.”
Four years ago, Penry led the fight in the Senate for the passage of a landmark clean-air bill aimed at upgrading aging Front Range coal-fired power plants to run on natural gas.
The battle created bizarre allies. Penry worked against a majority of Republicans and with environmentalists and then Gov. Bill Ritter, the Democrat whom Penry had repeatedly railed against on energy issues.
“I told my friends in the energy industry, ‘Don’t get used to this because you’re next on the menu,’ ” Penry recalled. “And now they’re going after natural gas.”
Lynn Bartels: 303-954-5327, lbartels@denverpost.com or twitter.com/lynn_bartels
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