Broomfield leaders said yes to a controversial oil and gas drilling operation involving 84 wells planned for northern Broomfield, but only after 7-1/2 hours of testimony and discussion at a meeting that went into the early morning hours of Wednesday.
The close 6-4 vote, giant crowd and marathon meeting were illustrative of what has become a festering issue in this northern suburb.
Specifically, city leaders approved an agreement — formally known as a memorandum of understanding — with Extraction Oil & Gas Inc. that places limits and conditions on company operations at several proposed drilling sites along the Northwest Parkway.
Because oil and gas permits are ultimately issued by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, municipalities have only limited influence on energy operations within their borders.
Councilman Mike Shelton said that if Broomfield didn’t approve the agreement with Extraction, the company could decide to forge ahead with its project according to less stringent state rules that provide fewer protections for area residents.
That puts Broomfield “between a rock and a hard place,” he said.
“We’re almost forced to say yes — and if we say no, we lose control,” Shelton said.
Other council members said they needed more time before voting and even attempted to negotiate several aspects of the agreement with Extraction officials from the dais. But the company said it had put its best offer on the table.
“We’ve given as much as we can and tried to make this work,” said Extraction senior vice president Eric Jacobsen, noting that negotiations with the city had been ongoing for nearly a year.
Ninety people signed up to speak at the meeting that began while the sun was still shining Tuesday evening. The crowd was so big that city officials had to open two overflow rooms.
One of those in the audience was Jodi Devine, a Broomfield resident who expressed frustration about the number of wells being proposed in the city and the possible impacts developing them could have on those living in nearby neighborhoods.
Devine was joined by many of her fellow residents in urging the council to postpone a vote on the agreement until several major issues — the most significant being the proposed location of the wells — could be resolved.
“Why are we putting the health, safety and welfare of our citizens at risk?” she asked.
A large contingent of Adams County residents also went to the meeting to urge Broomfield city leaders to hold off on a vote. A couple of Adams County commissioners told the council that the recent decision by Extraction to move several of its well pads — containing 49 wells — to just north of neighborhoods on the Adams side of the county line was troubling.
Commissioner Steve O’Dorisio said the wells would be too close to nearly 200 homes in North Star Estates and Mustang Acres neighborhoods, with those residents getting little say on Extraction’s plans. He said the wells should be moved to land north of the Northwest Parkway — “in the least impactful area.”
“Shoving them up against our residents isn’t the right thing to do,” he said.
Megan Townsend, an Adams County resident who lives just 1,000 feet from where the wells would go, said she felt “sucker-punched” when she learned last month that her house would be in close proximity to Extraction’s operations.
But company officials held firm at the meeting, saying that they could not move the wells further north for a variety of reasons.
While the Broomfield City Council heard plenty of concerns about drilling in this city of 65,000 on the edge of the highly productive Denver-Julesburg Basin, many speakers supported the deal the city had hammered out with Extraction. They noted that the company had made numerous concessions it didn’t have to under state law.
Those include agreeing to use quieter, state-of-the-art drilling equipment; installing pipelines to cut down on truck traffic and on-site storage; adhering to setbacks that go farther than what state law mandates; and removing old wells and storage tanks in neighborhoods on both sides of the county line.
“If oil and gas development is done properly, it’s good for our region,” said Adams County resident Matthew Zielinski.
He and others pointed out that Extraction would be entering into one of the most rigorous operational agreements with a Colorado city — one that the company had no legal obligation to enter.
Broomfield city attorney Bill Tuthill reminded the council that it had no power over Extraction’s ultimate right to drill — that authority rests solely with the state. The city only the opportunity to craft a mutually agreeable and voluntary deal with the energy industry that serves both sides, he said.
The gathering Tuesday is just the latest illustration of the clash between oil and gas development and suburban homeowners north of Denver, who find themselves living on top of millions of cubic feet of mineral deposits to which energy companies are increasingly attempting to gain access.
Many worry that the giant drilling rigs that hydraulically fracture underground rock to access oil and gas — using sand, water and chemicals in a noisy weeks-long operation — will disturb the peace and endanger their health.
The meeting took place at the end of a day of mounting tension, with some residents starting up an online petition on The Action Network urging the council to vote down the agreement with Extraction.
A letter from four members of the city’s 12-member oil and gas task force, which was formed in February to help the city negotiate operational agreements with energy extraction firms, began circulating Tuesday. It urged the council to refrain from voting on the agreement.
Tom Yeager, a member of the task force who signed his name to the letter sent to Broomfield’s council, said Extraction’s wells originally were sited north of the parkway before being moved close to the Adams County line last month.
“We think it’s unfair to Adams County because we had good (well) locations that were changed at the last minute,” he said. “It surprised many of us on the task force — and it surprised Adams County.”
The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is scheduled to hold a hearing on the spacing of Extraction’s proposed wells next week.
