PARACHUTE — From his deck, Bob Arrington can hear the rustle of aspens and the chirp of birds. He can see the golf course; Battlement Mesa, still spring green, to the south; and Roan Plateau, pink and tan, to the north. Soon he may also be able to see a drilling rig — right near the sixth hole.
Denver-based Antero Resources plans to drill 200 wells at nine sites in this Garfield County development of homes, schools and stores that takes its name from the soaring mesa.
“Drilling here doesn’t make sense, but, at a minimum, we want to make sure it is done in a way that protects our health and safety,” Arrington said.
For two years, the residents of Battlement Mesa, located just across Interstate 70 from Parachute, have challenged the Antero proposal — seeking a health-effects study, looking for ways to mitigate drilling impacts and preparing a lawsuit to protect property values.
As oil and gas companies begin to push into Denver suburbs — in Douglas, Elbert and Arapahoe counties — the battle 200 miles to the west may be a test case on whether drilling and suburbia can coexist.
Drilling in developed areas is not only a Colorado issue, as new technologies have unlocked shale oil and gas reserves around the nation.
About 2,000 wells have been drilled inside the city limits of Fort Worth, Texas, and a battle between an Akron, Ohio, suburb and a driller has spilled into court.
“All our state statutes have been written to accommodate drilling in rural areas, not urban ones,” said Libby Williams, president of the Fort Worth League of Neighborhoods. “But we now find ourselves surrounded by drilling.”
In Colorado, drilling has also been mainly a rural exercise, and the state’s regulations reflect that, said Tresi Houpt, a former Garfield County commissioner and former member of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
“But companies go where the resource is, and when that is in a developed area, you are establishing an industrial setting where there are homes and schools,” Houpt said.
Home to about 5,000
Battlement Mesa was started in 1980 by Exxon Corp. to house workers on its shale oil project. The project was shut down in 1982, and in 1988, a development company bought the land but not the mineral rights.
“When we bought the land, we knew that the mineral rights were severed,” said Eric Schmela, president of the Battlement Mesa Co. “Everyone who has bought homes here knows that.”
The development — with its golf course and swimming pool — was marketed as a retirement destination and a bedroom community for families in the region. It is now home to about 5,000 people.
Arrington, 73, a retired mechanical engineer, moved from Glenwood Springs to a $400,000 Cape Cod-style house in Battlement Mesa three years ago.
“I was told that drilling was unlikely, nothing to worry about,” Arrington said.
From the edge of his deck, Arrington can already see a Williams Cos. rig just outside the development.
Williams, Arrington said, has informed him that one of its directional wells will go right under his property.
Antero, Williams and EnCana are all drilling at sites within a half-mile of the development.
It is not a new phenomenon in Garfield County, which in the past decade was the most heavily drilled in Colorado, according to state data.
The Battlement Mesa community is trying to cope in a variety of ways. Among the steps that have been taken:
• A renegotiated surface-use agreement with Antero requires the use of gathering pipelines to cut down on truck traffic and other actions to reduce noise and dust.
“Everything we did was to minimize impacts and preserve lifestyle and surface values,” Battlement Mesa’s Schmela said.
• Antero held more than 30 community meetings to discuss the plan and agreed to explore the use of electric-powered drill rigs, to cut the number of drilling pads to nine from 10 and to install air monitors, the company said in an e-mail.
• Homeowners are preparing a class-action lawsuit to safeguard health and to seek compensation for any loss of property values.
Nevertheless, so many issues remain that residents created the Battlement Concerned Citizens, said Paul Light, 78, co-chairman of the group.
“We aren’t arguing the companies don’t have a right to access their mineral rights,” said Light, who moved here from the Philadelphia area eight years ago. “We just want to be protected.”
Some conditions added
The state oil and gas commission — in consultation with the county and drillers — has already added “residential and high-density conditions” to drilling permits on the development’s perimeter.
The EnCana rig, just south of the development, for example, is required to use sound walls to dampen noise, and low-noise, low-visibility flares with emissions controls to prevent air emissions from affecting residents.
“These are best practices, and we use them on a regular basis,” said Doug Hock, a spokesman for EnCana.
Still, the potential pollution exposure that may come with drilling in populated areas is not well understood, said Roxana Witter, a professor at the Colorado School of Public Health in Aurora.
“We have a fairly good sense of the emissions coming from natural gas activities, but not how much of that people are exposed to,” said Witter, the lead author on a Battlement Mesa health-impacts assessment.
The draft assessment concluded there was sufficient information to show the industry produces “large amounts of air pollutants” and recommended 70 protections that could be added to the special-use permit that Antero must get from the county before it can drill.
Antero objected to the assessment, the company said in its e-mail, arguing there was “a predetermined assumption” that gas operations are harmful to human health.
The assessment also failed to take into account the mitigation measures Antero had voluntarily adopted, the company said.
In April, Antero’s attorney sent a letter to the commissioners saying that adding such conditions was the purview of the state, exceeded the county’s powers and “would be unlikely to withstand legal challenge.”
The county has spent $250,000 on the assessment, but the commissioners voted not to complete the study.
“It was becoming a political football,” said Commissioner Tom Jankovsky, a Republican.
Jankovsky said that the draft will be a guide in looking at water, traffic, noise and air-quality issues when considering Antero’s permit application.
“Air quality is the one I have the most concern about,” Jankovsky said.
Air quality has already been an issue in Battlement Mesa, as odors drifted into the development from an Antero well last spring.
“We started to notice this petroleum smell early in the morning or late at night,” said Bonnie Smeltzer, 83. “One night, it was so strong, I thought I was dreaming, but I wasn’t.
“I got out of bed, closed all the windows and pulled the covers over my head.”
In July, the oil and gas commission issued a notice of alleged violation to Antero for the odors. The case was closed when Antero took steps to address the odors.
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912 or mjaffe@denverpost.com
