The state House moved forward Tuesday with a bill [HB15-1038] intended to make Colorado’s water markets more flexible.
The measure would make it easier for some farmers and ranchers to transfer part of their water rights to other uses. If they found ways to conserve water in their agricultural operations, they’d be able to sell the excess to cities or other users.
“Currently you have to use your entire water right or you stand a chance of losing it. So there’s no incentive to conserve,” said Democratic Representative Jeni Arndt of Fort Collins.
Arndt said the goal is to find new ways to address the state’s growing need to for water.
The bill would limit the number of flexible water rights available statewide. The House approved it with bipartisan support. Western slope lawmakers, though, are concerned about its potential impact on water markets.
The measure now heads to the state Senate, which rejected a similar proposal last year.
Storm pattern over Colorado September 2013 — Graphic/NWS via USA Today
From the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment:
Nine Colorado community drinking water and wastewater systems will receive a total of $4.6 million in grants to assist with projects helping them recover from the September 2013 flooding. This funding is provided under HB14-1002.
These grants provide funding for planning, design, construction, improvement, renovation or reconstruction of wastewater treatment works and public drinking water systems that were affected, damaged or destroyed as a result of the floods. Grants were issued in counties where Gov. John Hickenlooper declared a disaster emergency.
Justin Whitesell of the Wildland Fire Management Section at the Division of Fire Prevention and Control is also watching the conditions.
“‘We’re average’ still means that we have potential for wild land fires, that doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods,” Whitesell said. “You can still have a High Park Fire even though it’s showing average. You’re going to see the average number of fires.”
Firefighters and meteorologists try to predict how bad the season will be.
“It’s a crap shoot, it really is,” Whitesell said. “We all gear up almost the same way every year.”
FromTheDenverChannel.com (Alan Gathright, Jennifer Kovaleski):
A coalition including conservationists and neighborhood activists is asking Denver’s mayor and City Council to block fracking in the city and the river valleys that supply its drinking water.
The “Don’t Frack Denver” alliance on Tuesday called for elected leaders to impose an immediate moratorium on fracking in the city.
Opponents want to prevent “fracking wells being sunk into an area where Denver draws nearly 40 percent of its drinking water supply,” Sam Schabacker, regional director of Food & Water Watch, told an afternoon rally outside Denver’s City and County Building.
He’s talking about the Platte River Basin, a watershed that also “supplies thousands of jobs and an immense about of economic activity for the recreation industry.”
“Out in northeast Denver, residents that live in communities like Montbello and Green Valley Ranch are faced with the risk of having fracking wells put next to their homes or [where] they send their children to school,” Schabacker said. He asserted that contamination from fracking chemicals could place people at “increased risk of things like cancer, birth defects, lower birth rates.
Whether local governments can regulate fracking is the subject of debate. A task force appointed by Gov. John Hickenlooper is considering how much control local governments should have.
Hickenlooper, a geologist and the former mayor of Denver, has argued the state should regulate drilling.
In response to the alliance’s call for a fracking moratorium, Mayor Michael B. Hancock’s spokeswoman Amber Miller issued this statement:
“Mayor Hancock hears their concerns loud and clear and will continue to work toward a shared goal of preserving our environment and quality of life here in Denver. The Mayor is keeping a keen eye on this issue, and eagerly anticipates the recommendations from the Governor’s Oil and Gas Task Force before any action would be considered on a municipal level. Understanding the Task Force is working on a responsible balance, the Mayor asks for the community and stakeholders to remain patient and allow a thoughtful process to take place.”
Backers of the new campaign include nature photographer John Fielder, local affiliates of Food & Water Watch and the Sierra Club, three microbreweries and others.
At the rally, Fielder expressed concern about potential oil spills and protecting Colorado’s beauty.
“We want to make sure that they hear us, and hear our voices and that is that South Park is the last place we want to see oil and gas exploration in Colorado,” Fielder said of the high plain where the Platte River flows through Platte County. It’s a popular area for trout fishing and other outdoor recreation.
The Bureau of Land Management issued this statement about the South Park drilling site:
“The Bureau of Land Management Royal Gorge Field Office will be conducting a Master Leasing Plan for South Park as part of its upcoming Resource Management Plan revision. The purpose of a Master Leasing Plan is to provide BLM managers a way to strategically plan for oil and gas leasing and development and address potential resource conflicts. The BLM anticipates starting the public planning process this summer, in which public participation plays a vital role. “
Oil and gas representatives Tuesday assailed a campaign to ban new fracking operations in the state capital, with one pro-industry group equating the effort to “declaring war on Denver’s economy.”
Activists behind “Don’t Frack Denver” countered that they want to ward off the threat of expanded fracking in a city where oil extraction near homes is much less common than in some suburbs.
The push by environmental and community groups, activists and businesses received no immediate commitment from Denver Mayor Michael Hancock or the City Council.
It spurred Vital for Colorado, a pro-industry business advocacy group, to issue a blistering statement that referred to the activists as “anti-science extremists.”
“Groups that peddle fear, instead of facts, are out to hurt Colorado’s economy and out to reduce the tax base that supports our schools, parks and libraries,” said Peter Moore, the group’s board chairman.
But with fracking operations planned or setting up just outside far northeast Denver, the activists say they’re right to worry. Environmental group Food & Water Watch is coordinating the effort, The Denver Post reported in Tuesday’s print editions.
A Hancock spokeswoman said he understood the activist coalition’s concerns, but she said he wouldn’t consider backing any local action until a state oil and gas task force looking at regulatory issues publishes its recommendations. Those are due Feb. 27.
Councilman Chris Herndon, who represents northeast Denver, echoed Hancock’s comments.
A moratorium also could be in murky legal territory, given recent state court rulings that have overturned other cities’ fracking bans. Those are on appeal.
The most noticeable fracking in Denver occurs at Denver International Airport, which has 70 active wells leased out to oil and gas companies.
The activists also asked Hancock and the council to voice opposition to potential fracking leases on federal land in South Park near the headwaters of the South Platte River, a major source of drinking water for the metro area. Those could be years from winning approval, though, since the Bureau of Land Management has hit the pause button while it begins extensive studies that it says will consider environmental safety.
About three dozen activists Tuesday delivered letters to the mayor’s office and to City Councilwoman Susan Shepherd.
The signatories included environmental, community and social justice groups, businesses — including two microbreweries concerned about water quality — and nature photographer John Fielder.
Pro- and anti-fracking forces sparred over science, safety, air quality and water quality.
Fracking involves injecting water, sand and chemicals to break up underground rocks, releasing oil and gas. The industry says it has been safe for six decades and is subject to intense federal and state regulations that keep it from harming the environment.
But Rossina Schroeer-Santiago and other residents of Greenwood Valley Ranch, where Hancock lives, have watched oil companies lease ground nearby in Aurora.
“I want protection from these airborne hazards — not just for myself, but as a mother, for my children and for the other families in the community,” Schroeer-Santiago said. “Don’t frack my community.”
A spokeswoman for Green Valley Ranch’s developer, Oakwood Homes, told The Post this week that it has no plans for mineral exploration in the neighborhood.
Colorado’s fracking wars arrived at Denver city hall Tuesday, with a coalition of 25 groups that included some of the standard bearers of the anti-fracking movement in the state delivering a statement calling for Mayor Michael Hancock and the City Council to ban the use of hydraulic fracturing within the city limits.
“We think it’s just a matter of time before they start fracking in Denver,” Sam Schabacker, the western region director for Food & Water Watch, who’s been working on the fracking issue in Colorado for the last few years, told the Denver Business Journal.
The Don’t Frack Denver coalition includes photographer John Fielder, Food & Water Watch; Greenpeace, Kids Against Fracking, Mercury Café, MM Local, Mo’ Betta Green Marketplace, Padres & Jóvenes Unidos, Rosenberg’s Bagels, Sierra Club – Denver Metro Network, Slow Food Denver; and the WildEarth Guardians.
And if the coalition is looking for a fight, the chairman of Vital for Colorado, a coalition of more than 35,000 Coloradans, businesses, civic leaders and trade organizations that support the oil and gas industry, says the organization is ready.
“We cannot let anti-science extremists destroy Denver’s economy over hype and environmental hysteria,” said Peter Moore, a Denver attorney and Vital’s board chairman, noting that fracking has been done in Colorado for decades and fracking fluid has never been discovered in underground water supplies.
“Groups that peddle fear, instead of facts, are out to hurt Colorado’s economy and out to reduce the tax base that supports our schools, parks and libraries. Extreme environmentalists are declaring war on Denver’s economy and thousands of Coloradans are ready for the fight,” Moore said…
On the one hand, fracking already has occurred in Denver. Denver International Airport owns 76 oil and gas wells, all of which have been fracked, a spokesman said.
The 76 wells have generated between $5 million and $7 million a year in revenue for the airport since 2010, money that’s used to pay for airport operations, according to the airport’s figures.
On the other hand, the group’s concerns Tuesday focused on Green Valley Ranch in northeast Denver, the home of Mayor Michael Hancock.
No drilling has taken place and no drilling is planned on the Denver side of that community, according to Wendy Aiello, a spokeswoman for the Oakwood Homes developer of the community.
ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) owns mineral rights near Green Valley Ranch, but they’re on the Aurora side of the Denver-Aurora border.
“However, we do not have any plans to drill there in 2015,” a company spokeswoman said Tuesday…
Food & Water Watch, based in Washington, D.C., wants the nation to shift to greener, renewable energy sources, Schabacker said.
“We think we need to move away from these forms of extreme energy extraction and need to be moving toward renewable energy,” he said.
“This ‘Don’t Frack Denver’ is asking for a moratorium on fracking in the Denver city limits to protect Denver’s residents, and also asking for Denver to ask the BLM {Bureau of Land Management] to not allow fracking in the water shed,” he said.
The group wants the BLM to halt plans to explore a master plan for leasing and drilling in the South Park area, a project the federal agency launched in response to environmental groups’ criticisms of previous efforts to explore the area for oil and gas.
Schabacker said the coalition worries that if the BLM finishes its plan and leases the South Park area for oil and gas operations, and if oil and gas companies drill for oil, then a spill could happen that contaminates the South Platte River, which supplies water to Denver.
“There will be an accident and spills into Denver’s water supply,” Schabacker said. “The question is what will it cost, and what are the implications for Denver’s residents and businesses who rely on that water.”
Karen Crummy, spokeswoman for an oil and gas advocacy group called Protecting Colorado’s Environment, Economy, and Energy Independence, said the new Denver anti-fracking group is “looking for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “has never found a case where fracking has contaminated groundwater, but this shows what happens when extreme, Washington-D.C. groups come into Colorado: they scare the heck out of people by peddling propaganda to further their agenda,” Crummy said.
Saguache Creek FromThe Denver Post (David Migoya):
A bill that aimed to offer relief to taxpayers who bought into the early days of Colorado’s conservation easement program and were blind-sided years later by hefty penalties was defeated in committee Tuesday.
The bill, SB-130, by Sen. John Kefalas, D-Fort Collins, met with stern opposition from state revenue officials who said taxpayers who purchased millions of dollars worth of easement tax credits were on their own, and the state shouldn’t have to fix their errors.
“This bill would place the government in the middle of a financial transaction between two private parties, and that is an area we should not occupy,” said John Vecchiarelli, Colorado’s director of taxation at the Department of Revenue. “Those responsible should be held accountable and the people of the state should not have to provide that relief.”
The Senate Finance Committee voted 5-0 to defeat the measure despite acknowledgments of testimony from taxpayers who were forced to pay as much as 10 times the original amount of their income tax bill.
“It’s our obligation to pay taxes so government works, but don’t do it in a way that makes me feel robbed,” said Julius Medgyesy, who runs Front Range Cancer Specialists in Fort Collins. “We’ve done nothing wrong in trusting a government program.”
At issue were millions of dollars in tax credits given to landowners in return for preserving their property from future development. The tax credits could be sold and taxpayers bought them at a discount and used them against their personal tax liability.
The first years of the program were not policed by the state and credits were claimed on donations whose underlying appraisals were grossly inflated — some by as much as 166,000 percent, state officials said.
Credit buyers learned of the abuses and poor appraisals years after they’d already used the credits, only to learn they had to pay the state their original tax debt. Worse, the landowners they’d bought the credits from no longer had the cash to repay the buyers and their land was now virtually worthless, stuck in the conservation easement forever.
“We are left taking bankrupt or broke landowners to court to collect money that’s no longer there,” testified Mark Heiden of Fort Collins. “What’s been fair to the credit buyers? Nothing. I’ve paid 150 percent to the state of what my normal tax liability would have been. The landowners got my money and spent it. The state got the rest.”
Senators said they struggled between an obvious injustice and the state’s liability to cover the taxpayers’ losses.
“This was a troubling afternoon of testimony,” said Sen. Mike Johnston, D-Denver. “We have those who supported (a program) and got short-changed on their investment, and that’s unfortunate and catastrophic. But the challenge is I can’t fit it into the precedent of the state’s obligation to correct it for them.”
A bill that would ban the production, sale, and promotion of any personal care product containing microbeads moved forward Tuesday at the State Capitol.
State Representative Dianne Primavera (D-Broomfield) and State Senator Nancy Todd (D-Aurora) introduced HB15-1144, which would be implemented over several years to take full effect in 2020, with penalties for violations as high as $10,000.
The House Public Health Care and Human Services Committee, which Primavera chairs, voted Tuesday afternoon to approve the bill.
In May 2014, the CALL7 Investigators were first to expose concerns over microbeads in Colorado water. That investigation confirmed the plastic particles — which are found in some toothpastes, face washes, body washes, shampoos, eyeliners, lip glosses and deodorants — had made their way through state filtration systems and into the South Platte River. The CALL7 Investigators sent water samples from the South Platte to a specialized lab in Marietta, Ga., which found microbeads made of polypropylene, a type of plastic. The toxic particles can be consumed by fish, and ultimately, by humans…
In 2014, Illinois became the first state to ban microbeads. At least five other states have either pending or approved legislation banning or significantly minimizing their use.
The Federal Drug Administration has approved microbead use in personal care products, but some dental professionals say they’re concerned not only about the impact on the environment, but on the consumers who use products containing microbeads…
In September, Procter & Gamble, which manufactures Crest toothpaste, confirmed plans to remove microbeads from most of its products within six months — and from all of its products by March 2016. Johnson & Johnson, L’Oreal, and Colgate have made similar commitments. Primavera said Johnson & Johnson approached her to propose HB15-1144.
