David V. Goliath: Colorado Towns Take On Gas Giants To Rein In Fracking

By Tom Kenworthy on October 30, 2013 at 11:59 am

Merrily Mazza, right, asks Lafayette, Colorado voter Kat Goldberg to support a ballot question that would ban drilling for oil and gas in the community.

CREDIT: Tom Kenworthy

LAFAYETTE, COLORADO — On a recent Saturday, buoyed by picture-perfect autumn weather, Merrily Mazza was knocking on doors in her adopted community on Colorado’s booming Front Range north of Denver. The Chicago transplant and retired McGraw-Hill executive is running for city council in next week’s city election and she’s looking for votes.
But her own campaign was not her first priority that day. Her primary assignment was chasing down potential supporters of a ballot measure that would establish a “Community Bill of Rights” in Lafayette — and ban oil and gas drilling within city limits.
Mazza and volunteers like her in Lafayette and three other Colorado cities that will next week determine the fate of ballot initiatives to block oil and gas drilling are at the forefront of what is fast becoming an epic battle. At issue is whether communities have the authority to regulate drilling and fracking within their borders or whether that power rests solely with the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
At one of Mazza’s first stops, on South Carr Avenue, Kat Goldberg answered the doorbell. Hearing Mazza’s pitch against the oil and gas extraction technique known as fracking, Goldberg said: “I’m not keen on it. I have three kids and I’d like the environment to be sustainable for my kids and their kids. I don’t think fracking is a good thing to be doing.”
The recent unprecedented flooding in Colorado, which resulted in oil and gas spills totaling more than 40,000 gallons, has intensified concerns among residents and activists about the impact of oil and gas drilling and the state’s ability to safely regulate it.
Less than a year after the Colorado oil and gas industry’s trade association sued the city of Longmont over a similar ban on fracking, and only a few months after the state government run by Gov. John Hickenlooper joined the association in suing that city, activists in four communities in Colorado are nonetheless pressing ahead with ballot initiatives that would ban or impose moratoria on drilling and fracking.
The looming November showdown in those communities reflects mounting concern over a boom in oil and gas development closing in on suburbs and cities along Colorado’s Front Range, the heavily populated region that abuts the foothills of the Rockies stretching from Colorado Springs to Fort Collins. In Weld County, to the east of the four communities that will vote on anti-fracking ballot measures, there are now more than 20,000 oil and gas wells, about 40 percent of the state total.

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