Over 400 people attended a public comment meeting in East Arapahoe County on Thursday, September 11, to urge the state’s Energy and Carbon Management Commission to reject a proposed well pad for the controversial Lowry Ranch fracking pad. The proposed site of the operation is close to an Aurora neighborhood and the Aurora Reservoir.
The ECMC greenlit the Lowry Ranch Comprehensive Area Plan (CAP) in 2024.
The recent hearing is part of an ongoing effort by Civitas to develop its oil and gas project (OGP) called Lowry Ranch in unincorporated Arapahoe County. Civitas has proposed up to 166 new wells at eight new or expanded well pads. This hearing is for the State Sunlight-Long well pad which would have 32 fracking wells located roughly 3,300 feet — less than a mile– away from the Aurora Reservoir. This would make the Sunlight-Long pad the largest residential fracking operation in Colorado.
The plan includes drilling roughly 7,000 feet under the reservoir and on the surrounding land, which has drawn fierce opposition from those living in the neighborhoods around the reservoir and their allies.
Aurora residents have formed a neighborhood environmental group to push back against the measure known as Save the Aurora Reservoir, or STAR.
Sunlight-Long would be the third of eight new proposed projects by Civitas, the two previous fracking operations were approved by the ECMC.
Although the ECMC has moved Civitas’ proposal forward, the company still has to submit an oil and gas development plan (ODP) for each of its proposed wells for them to be approved.
Although the proposed well complies with Colorado regulations that mandate a 2,000-foot setback on oil and gas drilling, as well as county land code requirements of a 3,000-foot setback from homes, nearby residents worry that the current location and nature of the operation pose health, safety, and environmental risks to the surrounding area.
Speakers at Thursday night’s hearing stressed their health concerns, the well-being of their children, and the effects of biodiversity in the area.
Jason Wu is a high school chemistry teacher who lives in South Aurora said he was particularly concerned about the increased risk of childhood cancer. Wu expressed his concerns to the board and spoke with the Colorado Times Recorder after his comment.
“We’re located pretty close to where the Sunlight-Long pad will be, about 5,000 feet or so,” Wu said. “My main concern is the childhood cancer risk. There is a lot of recent evidence that has come out of studies in Pennsylvania. You see that there is growing evidence that even with eight miles of a fracking pad, there’s an uptick in cancer.”
There have been several studies examining residential fracking from Yale and the University of Colorado Anschutz that have found that children living within eight miles of oil and gas well sites are two to three times more likely to develop leukemia and bone marrow cancer.
These studies indicate that because these sites continuously emit air and wastewater pollutants, like benzene and radionuclides, which contribute to increased risk.
“If you look at Pennsylvania, where they have done a lot of fracking in residential areas, there is an uptick in cancer rates,” Wu said. “That’s what these studies are saying. There’s more cancer out there and we don’t want that to happen in Colorado. If we can prevent one more place from becoming like that, that’d be great.”
Wu said that he had taught children diagnosed with leukemia and that it was heartbreaking. He brought his young child with him to the meeting.
Other community members expressed concerns about transparency and whether Civitas would agree to basic safety procedures.
“I’m currently a Southshore [neighborhood] resident, and I say currently because we’re moving because of the Lowry Ranch CAP and because of the OGP, after OGP being approved,” said Jason Ephraim. “We see what happens up in Weld County and despite our efforts to voice the risks to the reservoir, my family doesn’t feel safe being here with this development.”
“What I struggle with is if you look at the application in its current state, since the Maverick-Mineral Partners litigation ensued, all references to the CAP have been scrubbed from the OGDP application, at least from the last time I looked at it,” Ephraim said. “One thing that we were assured was that since State Sunlight-Long is part of the CAP and therefore would have the electrification condition of approval placed on its production and drilling phase and that it would be grid powered. But when you look at the applications submitted at the county level, there’s no mention of it other than if the producer can meet our timetable.”
Efraim said that the inconsistency in the proposal indicates to him that Civitas never fully committed to the conditions of approval put in place at the county level.
Another Aurora resident, Nathan Lyon, said he opposed the new well pad and the Lowry Ranch development more broadly.
“The current Sunlight-Long location is unacceptable and, despite making it all the way to this phase of the process show, should not be viewed as acceptable for approvable by this commission,” Lyon said.
Lyon then listed off a variety of reasons, including that the proposed site was the home to several key animal species, like the black-tailed prairie dog, northern leopard frog, and burrowing owls. Additionally, Lyon warned that the site being less than a mile away from the Aurora reservoir and within two miles of a residential area made the impacts of a possible spill devastating.
Many residents pointed to several recent spills associated with fracking in Colorado that caused oil and benzene to leak into local water supplies and coat nearby homes with caustic chemicals. Namely, a Chevron-owned well pad near Galeton suffered a major “blowout” earlier in the year, sending nearly 4 million gallons of liquid into the air and coating the neighborhood in oil and benzene.
The Chevron spill is the largest spill in Colorado in the last decade and the ECMC said a full clean-up may take 5 years at a minimum.
“We’re so glad to have more than 300 citizens in attendance tonight at a public hearing,” said Kristen Kemp, the Community Relations Manager and Press Officer for the ECMC. “The Energy Carbon Management Commission hosts these special hearings at which the sole purpose is to receive public comment and this particular hearing is regarding what’s called an oil and gas development plan at Lowery Ranch.”
“The ECMC has some of the nation’s strictest oil and gas permitting regulations in the country and that includes setbacks, which is essentially the proximity of a wellhead to another object,” Kemp said when asked if proximity to the reservoir was being taken into account. “Only applications that objectively comply with our rules can proceed to what’s called a complete application, not approved but ‘complete’, and that’s the phase of this oil and gas development.”
Arapahoe County Public Works and Development gave conditional approval for the well pad back in May. The applicant, Crestone Resources, which is a subsidiary of Civitas, still must get final approval for State Sunlight-Long from the ECMC.
The site is about a mile away from two elementary schools and within a two-mile radius of over 10,000 households, according to STAR.
STAR and others concerned about residential fracking are now fighting each site application individually, citing concerns over health, possible water contamination, and threats to wildlife.
Civitas officials have promised to take precautions like adding air monitoring and sound barriers that they say will protect residents.
Civitas has spent the past two years getting approval from the state for oil-and-gas drilling.
So far, Arapahoe County and the ECMC have approved the State La Plata South pad application which includes 17 wells. Drilling has already begun on that site.
Three other applications from Civitas (the State Harvard-Yale, State Wetterhorn-Handies, and Secret Stash well pads) are currently complete and under review by the county and the commission.
Arapahoe County and the ECMC have put information up online for people to review about the well pad applications and the project.
