This was the dilemma state oil and gas regulators faced: A proposed oil and gas development was overseen by Weld County, but the impacts would be on residents in the town of Erie, which had no direct say over the plan.
The solution: Go back to the drawing board and look at another site where Erie, not Weld County, would be able to approve and call for changes to the Extraction Oil and Gas drilling plan.
The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission found itself juggling issues of jurisdiction, balancing oil and gas development with new suburban neighborhoods and its own priorities on how to protect residents from the impacts of drilling.
Their solution on Nov. 15 was a temporary stay on Extraction’s application and urging the company to consider an alternative site for the Draco pad within Erie, enabling the town to more directly oversee the drilling plan.
A subsidiary of Civitas Resources, one of the large operators in the state, Extraction proposed drilling up to 26 wells, which would extend 5 miles underneath Erie from a 19-acre location at the edge of Weld County.
Commissioner Brett Ackerman described the site, which is on a dairy, as a “narrow peninsula of Weld County nearly surrounded by Erie.”
Still, the local government with the power to require conditions for approval is Weld County.
In-town neighbors galvanize
More than 100 letters in opposition were filed by Erie residents and a grassroots organization — the Flatiron Meadows O&G Monitoring Group — was formed to oppose the drilling plan.
Faced with the opposition and the lack of town oversight, the commission stayed the plan and advised Extraction to work with Erie on an alternative site in the town, which the company had initially rejected.
“Somebody said this is a chess game, and it’s absolutely correct, and I am disappointed that we had to even learn to play chess, but it worked our favor,” said Sami Carroll, founder of the monitoring group.
There are five homes within the state’s 2,000-foot protective setback on the proposed Weld County site. The occupants have signed waivers to allow the drilling to go forward.
The Southern Land Co. has plans to subdivide the site and build a housing development that would have 72 homes within the 2,000-foot setback. There are also tentative plans for a park and school in the same zone.
Extraction’s goal is to have all the wells drilled and pipelines in place before the homes are built, but ECMC commissioners raised the question of whether there could be an alternative site with fewer impacts.
“I understand potential homeowners will purchase homes with the pads already in place,” Ackerman said at the commission’s Nov. 15 hearing.
“The question I ask myself laying in bed at night is whether or not that puts us in a position where we have adequately minimized the impact to those future homes and planned developments?” Ackerman said.
Under the commission rules, the “mitigation hierarchy” is to first avoid adverse impacts, then minimize adverse impacts and then finally to mitigate any remaining adverse impacts.
“The operator does have the burden to demonstrate it has complied with the mitigation hierarchy and I am not convinced that has occurred here,” commissioner Trisha Oeth said.
Plan looked good to regulators. The location, not so much.
The commissioners did compliment Extraction on the quality of its plan. It has a series of best management practices, or BMPs, dual electric drill rigs to cut the drilling time, 32-foot-high sound walls to cut noise, a so-called quiet fracking unit and pipelines to take away produce water, oil and gas, which would cut truck traffic.
“They really are the best-in-class BMPs and I appreciate that, but I do find that the mitigation hierarchy was not properly followed,” commissioner John Messner said.
Extraction was directed to work with Erie to see if an alternative location, called Option 4, could be used. The company had rejected it because it would require rezoning from agricultural-residential to industrial and includes a remediated toxic waste site — the former Neuhauser Landfill.
In a presentation, Extraction noted that a developer had spent years trying to get the area rezoned for a large housing development only to be rejected.
“We anticipate facing similar challenges if we were to propose an oil and gas location adjacent to a historical Superfund site,” Jeff Annable, an Extraction manager, told the commission.
David Frank, Erie’s energy and environmental program specialist, said the landfill, while it did need a cleanup for chemicals, was not technically a Superfund site.
“Rezoning may be difficult, may be uncertain but that is not the standard here,” Oeth said.
Commissioner Michael Cross, however, said that the questions over rezoning and the presence of the landfill “were valid reasons to eliminate Option 4.”
If there was a drawn-out and unsuccessful rezoning process, Cross said, and Southern Land Co. went ahead with its development there was a risk the proposed site would no longer be available because the houses would have been built.
“So, I do have some concerns with that, and so I did not have issues with the operator choosing to move forward with the proposal,” Cross said.
The stay of the application gives Erie an opportunity to become the local government overseeing the drilling, but if the review and rezoning do not work out, Jeff Robbins, the commission chairman, said he is “comfortable the current location is ultimately approvable.”
The commission has repeatedly wrestled with issues of oil and gas operations in Erie. In January, the commission rejected an application from Extraction to add 18 wells to an existing 27-well pad southwest of the proposed Draco pad, in part because of new housing developments in Erie and Broomfield.
Still, Ackerman said “residents should reasonably expect the potential to further oil and gas development when choosing to live in the midst of already existing oil and gas production.”