The Protect Public Welfare Oil and Gas Operations bill significantly changes the playing field for the extraction industry in Colorado, and for the most part, it does so for the better.
Mayors, city councilors, county commissioners, should have a say about the location of industrial operations. However, like all land use decisions, these elected officials should also have to respect property rights.
It’s a balancing act.
Current law tips the scales heavily in favor of the oil and gas industry, leaving residents who are moving into the resource-rich Denver-Julesburg Basin with little say over where wells are drilled.
Senate Bill 181, as it was introduced, tips the scales too far in the other direction, and it could allow local governments to implement strict rules that become de facto bans on the industry.
But Speaker of the House KC Becker and Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg tell us they are committed to amending their bill to strike the right balance.
The Boulder Democrats said Thursday their intent is to allow site-by-site analysis of proposed wells so local communities can decide how to reduce adverse impacts to residents while not arbitrarily banning the development of a privately owned resource.
Fenberg has already offered amendments improving the bill and he has said additional amendments will come on the floor of the Senate next week.
It’s reasonable for local communities to control permits for drilling on a site-by-site basis, protecting the health and safety of residents.
It is unreasonable to allow communities to block large swaths of land from development based on objections to the continued use of fossil fuels to power our homes and run our cars. One only needs to watch a video of the vocal anti-fracking residents who attended a recent town hall meeting for Fenberg and Becker in Boulder to know where this is headed in some places.
Those who aren’t rattled by claims that the oil and gas industry would pull out of Colorado if Senate Bill 181 passes as it was introduced should consider what it’s like to live through a bust — jobs drying up in a town that families can’t leave because their houses are no longer worth anything.
It should scare Coloradans when Dan Haley, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association and former editor of The Denver Post editorial pages, tells lawmakers that this bill could slowly strangle a multi-billion dollar industry.
And, aside from predicting doomsday, Haley has raised some valid concerns about the legislation.
The bill does not call for an “indefinite permitting moratorium” as some have claimed but it would grant sweeping power to the head of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to deny permits that he deems problematic during what is going to be a very long rulemaking process. Guardrails should be put on that power.
Fenberg and Becker aren’t the only ones who must compromise. It’s in the oil and gas industry’s best interest for SB 181 to become law.
This evolving legislation is far superior to the nearly unworkable Proposition 112 that voters rejected at the ballot last fall. Only a significant change to the landscape will prevent voters from taking the nuclear option in the next statewide election.
There is much to like about Senate Bill 181. Now let’s perfect it and get it into law.
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