Facing millions of dollars in fines, dozens of violations, legions of complaints from homeowners as well as local governments, oil and gas operator Prospect Energy on Wednesday had its right to do business in Colorado canceled.

The Energy and Carbon Management Commission endorsed a settlement agreement between the commission staff and the Highlands Ranch-based company. Prospect Energy also has an agreement with Larimer County and Fort Collins to clean up sites.

As part of the agreement, $1.7 million in ECMC fines will be waived, with what funds the company has going toward securing and cleaning up its sites. Prospect Energy was fined for illegal flaring, spills and failing to do well-integrity tests.

Prospect Energy’s 59 wells will end up in the ECMC Orphan Well program and will eventually be plugged and abandoned by the state.

Under the agreement, Prospect Energy’s owner, Ward Giltner, must obtain commission approval before owning or operating any future oil and gas properties in Colorado. Giltner did not reply to email and telephone requests for comments.

The company, however, still faces $337,000 in fines from the state Air Pollution Control Division for air emission violations. In 2022, the division ordered one of Prospect Energy’s sites closed until dangerous emissions could be curbed.

“This is an exceptional and rare course of action,” APCD director Michael Ogletree said at the time. “This is a unique situation that calls for extraordinary measures to ensure we are protecting public welfare.”

Division inspectors found emissions of volatile organic chemicals and hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs, on repeated visits to the company’s Krause facility tank battery.

“These issues have been going on for more than four years,” said Matt Lafferty, Larimer County principal planner. “The county and the city filed a formal complaint to push the ECMC.”

Prospect Energy operates mainly low-producing wells — 49 in Larimer County and 10 in Fort Collins — and several tank batteries for collecting produced water and oil. The wells date as far back as 1928.

“We have an old, outdated oil field that has seen the end of its life, and I am sure it is hard for owners to let go because they still make a little money,” Lafferty said.

Still, the passage in 2019 of Senate Bill 181, which made protection of public health, safety and welfare as well as the environment the priority in regulating oil and gas operations, has put pressure on small operators and low-producing fields, Lafferty said.

For example, Lafferty said, in 2020 the state adopted rules severely limiting flaring, the practice of burning off gas from oil and gas wells, and it created another violation for Prospect Energy.

“Once that ball started rolling on Prospect Energy, it was clear it didn’t have the resources,” Lafferty said. “Everyone is starting to take action. The snowball got pretty big.”

“This isn’t an oil and gas thing,” Lafferty said “It is a health and safety issue.”

Andrew Klooster, the Colorado field advocate for the environmental group Earthworks, first documented emissions from Prospect Energy, using an infrared FLIR camera, in 2021. Klooster said exasperated residents had contacted his group.

“People were complaining of odors, headaches, nausea,” Klooster said. “Krause tanks had holes in them because they were so old and decrepit,” he said, adding that even when they were replaced, emissions from hatches continued.

“An operator that was not interested in complying”

Klooster said over the years he has made 29 visits to Prospect Energy facilities finding repeated violations, with a big point of concern the Fort Collins Meyer tank battery, where in recent years the Hearthfire development — with homes going for $1 million or more — has been built.

“The refrain the county has been hearing from us and the community is that this was an operator that was not interested in complying with the air quality regulations,” Klooster said.

Meanwhile, ECMC inspectors were also logging a string of problems and began issuing violation notices in 2020. The company racked up 14 penalties adding up to $1.7 million.

Prospect Energy provided the ECMC staff with financial documents showing that it could not pay the fines, Caitlin Stafford, a senior assistant attorney general representing ECMC staff, told the commission.

Commissioner Trisha Oeth said she was “unhappy” with the company completely avoiding paying a fine. Stafford said it is the “hope the operator puts whatever remaining money they have to put the last bit of compliance.”

“It’s not the best outcome,” ECMC Chairman Jeff Robbins said, “but the only likely outcome.”

Prospect Energy still faces the air pollution fines. Under an agreement with the state air pollution division, the company was going to pay in installments, but failed to pay starting in March, according to Zachary Aedo, an agency spokesperson.

“On Tuesday, Aug. 13, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit on behalf of the division seeking compliance from Prospect Energy and its manager Ward Giltner with the terms of the enforcement agreement,” Aedo said in an email.

Under the terms of a separate agreement reached with Larimer County and Fort Collins, Prospect Energy will shut in all its wells and then hire an independent inspector, approved by the local governments, to check that none are leaking.

Any leaking wells will be repaired within 21 days. In addition, the company will remediate a flowline spill in the Country Club Reserve neighborhood east of the Fort Collins Meyer tank battery, and remove the surface equipment there and from the Krause facility to the north within 90 days.

Lafferty said that Prospect Energy hopes to recoup some money by selling off the equipment. He also said that the county’s inspector will participate in the third-party inspection of the shut-in wells.

“It has been a saga,” Klooster said. “Prospect gets out of paying some fines, but for the residents it is worth it for the peace of mind it will bring.”

A controversial plan to drill up to 166 oil and gas wells near Aurora Reservoir was approved by the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission on Wednesday with the caveat that the operator, Crestone Resources, electrify its operations.

The requirement to electrify the company’s drilling and production operations would cut down on air emissions and noise — two concerns raised by area residents — making the plan “much more approvable from a comprehensive cumulative impacts perspective,” ECMC Chairman Jeff Robbins said.

Crestone, which is a subsidiary of Denver-based Civitas Resources, had submitted a so-called comprehensive area plan, or CAP, for 166 wells on 32,000 acres, including the state-owned Lowry Ranch.

CAPs were added to the state regulations to allow for regional planning and better assessment, and coordination and management of cumulative impacts from large-scale drilling plans.

The Lowry Ranch plan, however, drew strong local opposition. A May commission hearing at the Arapahoe County fairgrounds drew about 300 residents, who gave more than three hours of testimony — almost all in opposition.

When Crestone received an oil and gas lease from the Colorado State Land Board for Lowry Ranch’s 26,000 acres in 2012, there were hardly any homes in the area. Now, there are an estimated 12,000 homes.

Crestone has already drilled and fracked 17 horizontal wells on the ranch and plans to drill the new wells from two existing pads and eight new ones by 2029.

A group of more than 500 residents formed Save the Aurora Reservoir. The group was granted the right to participate in the commission’s hearings as an “affected person” and hired an attorney to make a presentation and question Crestone witnesses.

Jaime Jost, Crestone’s attorney, called STAR “an activist group trying to stop oil and gas drilling in Colorado.”

STAR argued, using expert witnesses, that gaps in the plan left residents unprotected and that it did not properly calculate the cumulative impacts of all the drilling, wells, truck traffic and ongoing operations.

“We are devastated by the commission’s decision,” Marsha Goldsmith Kamin, STAR’s president, said. “This is without doubt the wrong decision for the health, safety and environment of our community.”

Despite STAR’s challenge, the commission found Crestone had substantially complied with the CAP requirements, even as commissioners expressed frustrations with gaps in the plan.

“I still do think that it does meet our rules and is approvable,” Commissioner Mike Cross said. “I hope it would be clear to the operator doing this, that minimum checking the boxes is not what we are looking for.”

Commissioner John Messner disagreed, saying that “on many fronts” the plan lacked the “commitments and evidence” to show that it avoided, mitigated or minimized potential cumulative impacts.

In July, Julie Murphy, the commission’s director, had recommended approval of the drilling plan saying it had met “all applicable requirements.”

Commissioner Brett Akerman voiced concerns about gaps in the plan. “Make no mistake about it, I do think there is an approvable CAP, if not immediately, before us nearby,” he said. Ackerman proposed sending the plan back to Crestone for more work.

Robbins, however, said that the commission could not send the plan — which substantially complied with the state and local regulations — back to Crestone unless it could give the operator detailed guidance on what additions would be required.

Akerman said that one of his concerns was that the proposed line of pad developments — even though well beyond the state’s required 2,000-foot setback — remained “very close to residences.”

The comprehensive area plans are not a final approval, Robbins said. For each well pad Crestone will have to seek approval of an oil and gas development plan, OGDP, and that would be the appropriate time to take up pad location, as well as other issues raised in the hearing, including noise mitigation, fire safety and wildlife protections.

“At this point we are feeling the ECMC is going to scrutinize every one of the OGDPs so we are not giving up,” STAR’s Goldsmith Kamin said. “We are going to keep pushing.”

The state Energy and Carbon Management Commission cut a key proposed protection for disadvantaged communities facing oil and gas drilling after a sustained pushback from the oil and gas industry, according to environmental groups participating in the rulemaking.

The commission staff Friday issued a new draft of the so-called cumulative impact rules removing a requirement that oil companies seeking to drill within 2,000 feet of homes in a disproportionately impacted community get the approval of those residents.

“The fact that so many in the industry lined up against this shows how big an issue this was and that the ECMC staff completely caved,” said Mike Freeman, an attorney with the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice.

Tearing out that vital protection, which was sought by environmental groups, just a month before hearings begin gives a big advantage to the oil companies, the activists say.

 “It’s really disconcerting,” said Ean Tafoya, director of Colorado GreenLatinos. “The onus was on the companies to do the right thing. It seemed really disingenuous to the work that everybody collectively did to get to that.”

The commission said in a statement to the Sun that “given the vigorous debate on this issue in parties’ prehearing statements, staff decided to provide an alternative in this draft so that parties can provide their thoughts on one or both approaches in their responses.”

The commission said the Aug. 2 draft  includes “robust protections” for residents of Disproportionately Impacted Communities or DICs.

These include a more rigorous analysis of proposed locations near homes, schools and childcare facilities and targeted data for each location and best management practices to limit impacts.

“By requiring this information, ECMC will have a better understanding of community concerns earlier on in the permitting process,” the commission said.

“The fact remains that they removed the 2,000-foot setback requirement from the August draft,” Freeman said.

The state does have a requirement that drilling pads be set back 2,000 feet from homes, schools, child care centers and high occupancy buildings.

But an oil and gas operator can drill inside that buffer if it can show it can provide “substantially equivalent protections” as being 2,000 feet away — such as enhanced recovery systems or zero-emissions equipment — or by getting approval of the homeowners or businesses inside the buffer.

In 2023, 19 of the 71 oil and gas development plans approved by the ECMC were inside the 2,000-foot setback, according to the agency’s 2023 cumulative impacts report. In 2022, 26 drilling plans were inside the buffer.

The proposed cumulative impact rules, set for a hearing in September, initially had a requirement that approval of residents inside the setback was essential — without it, drilling could not start. 

The legislature in 2019 directed the commission to assess the cumulative impacts of oil and gas operations, with particular concern for disproportionately impacted communities —  ones that are low income, of color, have vulnerable populations or have disproportionate environmental burdens.

In an annotated version of the revised draft, the commission staff said the setback provision was cut after “robust stakeholder discussions and feedback in the parties’ prehearing statements.”

In those prehearing statements, Colorado’s top oil and gas producers and the major industry trade groups objected to the provision.

The proposed rule, Chevron Corp. said in its prehearing statement, “would essentially prohibit new oil and gas development within DICs … and should be stricken entirely.”

Chevron went on to say that other parts of the proposed rule, such as requirements for enhanced systems and state-of-the-art technologies, provide “special and robust protections” for the impacted communities. 

On the Western Slope many operating areas are designated disproportionately impacted communities not as a result of environmental issues but because they are low income communities, the West Slope Colorado Oil and Gas Association, a trade group, said.

“These lower income areas often are dependent on oil and gas revenue, particularly for schools and special districts,” the association said. “Allowing one DIC member veto power over new development harms the revenue potential for DICs as a whole and lets the voice of one negatively impact the finances of many.”

The industry arguments are “meritless,” Earthjustice’s Freeman said. “What is really going on here is the industry does not want to have a level playing field with communities so they are getting the commission to do their dirty work.”

The late overhaul of the rules in favor of oil and gas industry demands is a betrayal of a hard-fought compromise in the 2024 legislature, the environmental groups say. Activist groups threatening even more restrictive statewide ballot votes or legislative bills — such as outright bans on new fracking wells, or a mandatory summer “pause” for drilling operations during the worst of the ozone season — agreed to drop their efforts. In exchange, the legislature passed bills capping nitrogen oxide emissions and boosting closures of low-producing oil wells. Greeng groups also got a new per-barrel fee on oil and gas production to be used for transit projects and other pollution reduction. The oil and gas industry said at the time it was giving up its own ballot measures defending natural gas-fueled home appliances. 

While navigating those compromises, both sides were participating in the yearslong rulemaking at the ECMC on cumulative impacts and protections for disproportionately impacted communities. Environmental groups wanted more community protections in part because they’d given up ground in the spring’s “grand compromise.” 

“Environmental justice should require consent,” said Rebecca Curry, policy counsel in the Colorado office of Earthjustice. “They just totally took it out of the rules.” 

The September rulemaking hearings will come at the end of a particularly brutal ozone season. There have been 42 state-issued ozone action alerts so far in 2024, with extremely high temperatures cooking oil and gas and transportation fumes into a stew toxic for human lungs. Distant and Front Range wildfires worsened the ozone and particulate pollution with steady plumes of smoke over the metro area. 

Colorado’s Northern Front Range counties are under an EPA mandate to bring ozone under the 2015 70 parts per billion cap within the next few years, or face more sanctions. Metro area gas stations are already required to sell slightly more expensive reformulated gasoline that is less volatile and creates fewer ozone emissions. Regional Air Quality monitors show the Front Range has violated those EPA standards numerous times already in 2024.

Arapahoe County residents who live near Aurora Reservoir on Tuesday won the right to intervene in state hearings and challenge a plan to drill 166 oil and gas wells on the nearby, state-owned Lowry Ranch.

The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission unanimously voted to permit Save the Aurora Reservoir, a grass-roots group, to participate in the hearing over the objections of the oil and gas operator Crestone Peak Resources.

The ECMC granted “affected person” status to the group. It is the first time the commission has granted that status to residents in an approval hearing for an oil and gas comprehensive area plan or CAP.

The affected-person status is primarily for people living within 2,000-foot state setback for drilling operations or those demonstrating a unique impact from the proposed oil and gas  operation.

“I believe courts look at standing more from the perspective to allow standing if there are allegations of injury,” ECMC Chairman Jeff Robbins said. “I would allow STAR.” The three other commissioners agreed.

In its petition, 12 STAR families outline their concerns about the impacts of the proposed oil and gas plan on air quality, the use of the reservoir and surrounding area for recreation and their children who go to school within the drilling area.

“A list of concerns does not equal standing,” Jamie Jost, an attorney for Crestone, told the commission. “None of the listed STAR members is within 2,000 feet. … None of them are even within 3,000 feet.”

Mike Foote, STAR’s attorney, said that the petitioners all live and recreate in the area, with some having children and jobs in the CAP.

“There is something that is not right about it,” Foote said, referring to the CAP. “It is not protective.”

Crestone Resources, a subsidiary of Denver-based Civitas Resources, one of state’s largest oil and gas producers, is proposing a comprehensive area plan to drill up to 166 horizontal wells on 32,000 acres of state and private land.

The CAPs were added to the commission’s revised rules as a way to better assess, coordinate and manage the cumulative impacts of large-scale drilling plans.

As part of the Lowry Ranch CAP, Crestone has committed to using a suite of “best management practices” to reduce emission and wastes and lessen impacts on the surrounding areas.

Julie Murphy, the ECMC director, has recommended that the commission approve the CAP.

About 26,000 acres of the 32,000 acres in the Crestone CAP are state holdings overseen by the Colorado State Land Board.

In a presentation to the commission, Christel Koranda, the land board’s minerals director, said that Lowry Ranch was the single biggest generator of revenues among the board’s holdings having already yielded more than $200 million in payments and is projected to provide another $300 million in the coming years.

There are more than a dozen different leases on the ranch already including ones for agriculture, solar energy and oil and gas drilling. Crestone already operates 17 wells on the ranch and has paid $73 million in royalties and $137 million in bonuses, according to the land board.

The hearing, which began Tuesday, is scheduled to conclude during a second session on Friday.

Residents around Aurora Reservoir who are fighting a large-scale oil and gas drilling operation are trying to use an untested maneuver — seeking to be declared “affected persons” — to get their voices heard by state regulators.

The affected-person designation is mainly for people living within 2,000 feet of a drilling operation or those demonstrating a unique impact from the oil and gas development.

But members of the grassroots group Save the Aurora Reservoir, or STAR, in their petition to the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission argued that the health, wildlife and traffic impacts extend beyond 2,000 feet. STAR has 330 members.

The ECMC is scheduled to hold a day-long hearing Tuesday and rule on Crestone Peak Resources’ proposed Lowry Ranch Comprehensive Area Plan, which would drill up to 166 wells from nine pads on 32,000 acres straddling Arapahoe County and the city of Aurora.

The comprehensive area development plans, or CAPs, were added to the commission’s revised rules as a mechanism to better assess, coordinate and manage the cumulative impacts of drilling. 

In 2022, the ECMC, formerly the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, approved a Crestone Peak CAP for 151 wells on 20 pads in a 55-square-mile area in Aurora.

The commission at the start of the Crestone hearing will decide whether STAR’s petition meets Rule 507, the state regulation defining affected persons.

Public commenters before the commission are limited to three minutes. If STAR’s petition is successful the group could get three hours to make a presentation, cross-examine Crestone witnesses and offer a rebuttal closing argument.

Birders, hunters, cyclists, dog walkers all could have legal standing

Crestone, a subsidiary of Denver-based Civitas Resources, one of the state’s largest oil and gas producers, is opposing STAR’s petition. “STAR failed to comply with the requirement of Rule 507 and has provided zero legal position for its request as an association with standing,” the company said in a filing.

Mike Foote, STAR’s attorney, said that commission has more broadly drawn the circle for affected persons, noting that the commission said a hunter or a birder concerned about preserving deer or birds in an area slated for drilling could have standing.

“A mountain biker may have a unique interest in avoiding surface disturbance in an area of public lands where she frequently bikes,” the commission said in the statement of purpose for its rules.

The 12 STAR families, petitioning the ECMC, bike, jog, and walk their dogs around the reservoir and through parts of the CAP. Some swim and boat on the reservoir and others work or have children going to school within the drilling area.

The home of Jason and Shannon Randels,  according to the petition, is 3,500 feet from one of the proposed drill sites.

“The Randels chose their lot on South White Crow Way specifically for its proximity to the reservoir, the wildlife, the views, and the peacefulness of the surrounding area,” the petition said. “They were not aware of looming oil and gas development at that time.”

The battle lines between STAR and Crestone are between the operator’s efforts to show it has reached out to the community and to limit the impacts of its drilling plan and the grassroots group’s stance that under any circumstances there will be widespread impacts on hundreds of homes. 

Drilling beneath the Lowry Landfill Superfund site has been removed from the plan

In its prehearing statement, Crestone noted that after consultations it has removed two sites and trimmed 1,440 acres from the plan. After the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency voiced concerns, the company agreed not to drill beneath the Lowry Landfill Superfund site.

It has also increased the setbacks for five pads, in one case adding 2,356 feet to the buffer, bringing it to nearly 4,500 feet.

Crestone already operates 17 horizontal oil and gas wells from six drilling pads in the CAP and two of the nine drilling pads it proposes to use already exist. The drilling would begin in this year and last until 2028. Production from the wells could last 25 years.

The company has also committed to a series of so-called best management practices to reduce the impacts. These include: continuous air monitoring, the use of pipelines to transport oil and gas from the sites (cutting down on truck traffic), and using cleaner burning engines.

Crestone said in a filing it is also working to electrify its drilling and production activities but cautioned that “electrical connections are dependent on Xcel Energy’s capacity, load and timing.”

“Crestone anticipates electrification during the production phase with a high degree of certainty, lower certainty for drilling phase,” the company said.

“We’re known as an early adopter of new technologies and innovative practice,” Richard Coolidge, a Civitas spokesman said in an email. “ We’re always exploring opportunities to recycle and reuse produced water and remain committed to finding solutions that will work for the unique challenges in our state’s geology.”

Coolidge said the Civitas will also have to meet the regulations adopted by Arapahoe County last November, which include a 3,000 setback from existing or planned reservoirs and a 3,000-foot buffer from homes and buildings, platted lots and water bodies.

The regulations also require air and water testing and groundwater and surface water quality plans.

In a cumulative impacts analysis submitted to the ECMC, Crestone’s consultant concluded that “the maximum annual emissions during production operations for each facility identified in the CAP are not expected to exceed the current major stationary source thresholds” for pollutants under state and federal regulations.

The ECMC director Julie Murphy has recommended the commission approve the CAP.

STAR in its planned presentation and filings disputes many of Crestone’s claims. It notes that the impact of truck traffic was never adequately assessed and that while pipelines would be used for products, produced water, which comes up from a well with the oil and gas, would be trucked away.

For 155 wells each producing 20 million gallons of produced water, that added up to 310,000 truck trips through the CAP, STAR said.

 And while air emissions may not exceed regulatory thresholds, in 2025 the operations would put about 1,800 tons of ozone-causing pollutants into the air plus 54,000 tons of carbon dioxide, the prime greenhouse gas, according to Crestone’s consultant.

“It is widely understood that living near oil and gas development can cause negative health outcomes,” the STAR petition said. “Increases in ozone precursor chemical emissions can also lead to higher ground-level ozone levels.”

STAR also raised questions about the quality of Civitas operations saying that in the first quarter of 2024 the company paid $332,500 in enforcement action penalties to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and has 10 open enforcement cases.

While Crestone agreed not to drill under the Lowry Landfill, STAR said the drilling plan could put horizontal wells under people’s homes. “The densely populated neighborhoods of Aurora and Aurora Reservoir deserve at least as much protection as a Superfund landfill,” the STAR presentation said.

Colorado agencies were awarded $328 million in grants by the federal Environmental Protection Agency to launch a host of programs to cut greenhouse gas emissions from homes, commercial buildings, landfills, mines and the transportation sector.

The Denver Regional Council of Governments will receive $199.7 million and the Colorado Energy Office was granted $129 million.

“Our guiding mission is ensuring all people in Colorado have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to live healthy lives. These grants — unprecedented in their funding — bring us and Coloradans closer to achieving these goals,” EPA Regional Administrator KC Becker said in a statement.

Colorado has a statutory goal and a roadmap to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in 2030 and 90% by 2050 compared to 2005 levels.

Becker, who served as speaker of the state House of Representatives, was the prime sponsor of the 2019 legislation mandating the greenhouse gas reductions.

The Colorado Energy Office programs will seek to reduce emissions from landfills, coal mines, and large commercial buildings and transportation.

One key element will be to deploy advanced methane monitoring to improve emission regulations for coal mines and landfills. Some of the money will be used for a competitive grant program to help large commercial buildings cut emissions and some will go to local government initiatives.

“Local and Tribal government actions are crucial to this effort, and this funding will ensure that they can adopt and implement key policies to help us achieve net-zero emissions by 2050,” Will Toor, executive director of the Colora Energy Office, said in a statement.

“This money will also help large building owners reduce their energy usage and associated emissions,” Toor said.

Between 2025 and 2030 the state energy office programs are projected to cut the equivalent of 4.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas and a total reduction of 25 tons by 2050.

DRCOG’s “Zero Emission Building Initiative” will focus on, according to the council’s grant application, “residential and commercial building sectors and increase energy and resource efficiency, with an emphasis on low-income and disadvantaged communities. “

The program will provide free home retrofits and upgrade services for low-income and disadvantaged populations and free energy advising to residential, multifamily and commercial building owners.

It will also offer rebates and incentives to accelerate the adoption of energy efficiency and electrification measures, and create a building policy collaborative to advance ambitious building policies at the local level.

Among the initiative’s goals are electrifying weatherproofing more than Front Range 60,000 buildings and addressing workforce gaps by providing job training for 3,800 new workers and upgrading skills for 1,000 existing workers.

The program is projected to cut the equivalent of 6.9 million tons of carbon dioxide between 2025 and 2030 and a total of 148.2 million metric tons by 2050,

“This federal grant will enable us to take bold, visionary steps to reduce climate pollution and protect the health and well-being of our residents,” Jeff Baker, an Arapahoe County commissioner and DRCOG board chairman, said in a statement.

The Colorado awards were among 25 awards totaling $4.3 billion the EPA made through its Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program, which was created under the Inflation Reduction Act.

The largest single grant — $450 million — was made to a coalition of five New England states for a “heat pump accelerator” to put heat pumps in 500,000 single- and multi-family residences in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine. 

The price tag on Xcel Energy’s $12 billion Clean Energy Plan — which is facing supply chain problems and uncertainty over tariffs — may have to rise, the company said in a Colorado Public Utilities Commission filing.

The utility asked the PUC for a 75-day delay in submitting a key solicitation for a clean energy project to “address material changes” in projects included in its state-mandated Clean Energy Plan.

The commissioners granted the extension, but voiced concerns over what the delay portends.

“It looks like they are contemplating price and cost increases, which causes me a lot of concern,” PUC Chairman Eric Blank said. “I am really nervous about what is going on here. … This filing causes me a lot of angst.”

While it is not clear how much costs could increase, a 10% rise would lead to customers paying an added $1.2 billion in rates, Joseph Pereira, deputy director of the Colorado Office of Utility Consumer Advocate, said in an interview.

“This is another example of a long, long string where the company takes a bid or proposes something and then we see massive cost overruns,” Pereira said. The UCA represents residential and small commercial customers at the PUC.

Xcel Energy, in a statement to The Colorado Sun, said it is working with developers of utility-scale solar projects to determine if project bidders need to increase their prices or change their proposed operating dates.

“We are doing everything possible to minimize project costs for customers while working with stakeholders to shorten delays to meet our clean energy goals,” the company said.

Under a 2023 state law, utilities have to create a clean energy plan that shows how they will cut their greenhouse gas emissions 80% from 2005 levels by 2030.

Xcel Energy submitted a $15 billion plan in December 2023, proposing 7,100 megawatts of new generation and storage, to achieve its targets. That plan was almost double in cost of the one the utility initially proposed in 2021.

The PUC, concerned about the price and whether the utility could manage all the projects in it, trimmed the proposal, approving  a $12 billion plan witn 5,800 megawatts of new resources.

“The imperative to decarbonization is an excuse for any costs,” Pereira said. “We have to say you must decarbonize affordably.”

In its request for the added time, Xcel Energy cited supply chain problems, an April petition by U.S. solar manufacturers to extend tariffs to Southeast Asian solar cell makers and a May directive from the Biden administration to increase tariffs on China.

“We’re experiencing both delays and cost challenges implementing the approved Clean Energy Plan portfolio,” Xcel Energy said.

“Global supply chain issues are delaying the delivery of critical equipment like transformers, high demand for construction labor is driving up the project’s costs and two recent trade actions by the U.S. International Trade Commission have impacted the development of new solar and storage projects,” the company said.

This isn’t just an Xcel problem

The U.S. is facing an unprecedented shortage of transformers with delivery wait times of up to two years, according to a study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

“Utilities needing to add or replace them are currently facing high prices and long wait times due to supply chain shortages,” Killian McKenna, a NREL researcher, said in a statement. “This has the potential to affect energy accessibility, reliability, affordability — everything.”

Another concern is the repeated delays in moving ahead with the Clean Energy Plan and  impact that is having on prices and contracts, according to the Colorado Solar and Storage Association, or COSSA, a trade group.

Xcel Energy requested three delays in submitting the plan, filing it 80 days beyond the initial deadline, according to a PUC filing, and Wednesday was granted another 75-day delay.

“While COSSA has taken no position on this specific request, the longer these filings are delayed, the more risk this places on solar developers who are required to hold their prices,” Mike Kruger, the association’s CEO. “It is unfair to continue to put risk on solar developers when it appears the issue is with Xcel.”

Commissioner Megan Gilman also expressed concerns about the risk of a delay. “It seems to be a somewhat reasonable extension,” she said, “but I also worry that past that extension we will not get ourselves in trouble with timing” in executing the clean energy plan.

Xcel Energy has dragged its feet in setting up a state mandated program to connect home solar arrays and should be ordered to get the program moving, according to a complaint filed with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.

The complaint by industry and state agencies outlines a three-year battle to get Xcel Energy’s subsidiary, Public Service Company of Colorado, the state’s electricity provider, to file a solar tariff, a document that sets out fees, deadlines and interconnection procedures and a connection timeline.

“Unfortunately, this regulatory delay continues, and it continues to the benefit of Public Service and the detriment of interconnection customers,” the complaint said.

The complaint was filed July 2 and a day later Xcel Energy circulated a draft tariff among parties, including the complainants. The tariff, the company said, is slated to be filed Friday.

In a settlement – that included groups and agencies filing the complaint — Xcel agreed more than eight months ago to file the tariff and timeline.

“We believe we have followed the intent of the settlement agreement and the orders of the Public Utilities Commission on implementing and tracking customers’ requests to interconnect distributed energy,” Xcel Energy said in a statement.

The complaint — by the Colorado Solar and Storage Association, a trade group, the Colorado Office of Utility Consumer Advocate, the Colorado Energy Office and the PUC’s staff — asked the commission to order Xcel Energy to file the tariff this week.

“Customers on Public Service’s system who would like to interconnect solar and storage resources have been plagued by interconnection delays,” the complaint said. “Public Service has exacerbated those delays through its inaction and its failure to adopt interconnection timelines in tariff as required by Commission rule.”

In February, Xcel Energy told the PUC, in a filing, that it would clear up a 4,000-application backlog by mid-March. 

Some of the delay, the company said, had been caused by incomplete connection applications from developers and homeowners.

Reasons for rejecting applications are “trivial”

However, Mike Kruger, Colorado Solar and Storage Association CEO, said in a PUC filing last fall that “applications are being rejected during the Completeness Review step for trivial reasons, including customer middle initials missing, inversion of numbers in a customer address, or using short-hand in line drawings submitted for engineering review.”

In 2024, Xcel Energy said it has achieved a 99% record of hitting connection timing milestones for thousands of interconnection requests.

There is no independent record of those interconnections. “There is no guarantee that the company is tracking appropriate records of interconnection delays since the interconnection tariff is not yet in effect,” the complaint said.

The PUC adopted interconnection rules in 2021, but it took a commission order in February 2023 to get Xcel Energy to file a tariff sheet and an installation timeline. The company, however, did not file all the required material.

In October 2023, Xcel Energy agreed to a settlement — which included the groups filing the complaint — on a plan to implement tariffs, timelines and refunds for tardy installations. The settlement still hasn’t been implemented.

“Regulation only works when companies comply with commission orders and rules,” said Joseph Pereira, deputy director of UCA. “The company has basically ignored the order.” The UCA represents residential and small commercial customers in PUC proceedings.

When concerns were raised with Xcel Energy before the complaint was filed, Pereira said “we were told they were having computer issues and tracking issues and that’s what is creating the inability to meet the order.”

“Either they are antisolar or they have operational issues affecting customers. Either way customers are burdened and they need to comply with the order,” Pereira said.

Under the settlement agreement Xcel must have a way to refund the fee homeowners pay upfront if the utility doesn’t connect the solar array within a set time.

For example, in an example included in the settlement if the company has 50 days to connect an array and it takess 70 days $204.88 of a $250 fee would be refunded. If the installation took 251 days the refund would be $268. The refund program has not yet been implemented.

The tariff to be filed Friday will have a refund mechanism and performance incentives to encourage the company to meet the installation timelines. 

The complaint asks the commission to direct Xcel Energy to issue refunds to all customers who experienced interconnection delays since Feb. 1 of this year.In response to customer complaints about installation delays, the legislature in 2023 passed a bill that also gave the PUC the power to fine Xcel Energy $2,000 a day for interconnection delays.

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It seemed like a good idea. Put a large solar array on 640 acres of sagebrush and cedar about 30 miles northwest of Telluride. There was already a transmission line running through the property and only some cattle poking around in the shrubs and trees.

The Colorado State Land Board, owner of the parcel, had made siting renewable energy facilities a priority and even amended the lease on the Wright’s Mesa land to give solar panels precedence over cows. What could possibly go wrong?

And so, on a May evening last year, Seattle-based OneEnergy Renewables held a community meeting at the public library in Norwood, the mesa’s only town, to unveil a plan for thousands of solar panels and a 500 megawatt battery.

Norwood is home to about 550 people and all told there are about 2,000 folks living on the 30,000-acre mesa, so when more than 200 people packed the library and another 50 tuned in on Zoom, it was clear something was up.

The tenor of audience comments ranged from concerned to irate. “We’re not laughing. We’re pissed,” one resident said, according to a press report.

“They thought there would be support,” said Art Goodtimes, a former San Miguel County commissioner and 40-year resident of Wright’s Mesa. “I think they miscalculated.”

Thus began the Battle of Wright’s Mesa.

While it might appear this is yet another knee-jerk, not-in-my-backyard reflex, how the community — old-timers and new arrivals — came together and the questions they raised make Wright’s Mesa more than just another NIMBY tale. 

On that May night, Vivian Russell, a Mesa resident who runs an afterschool program for San Miguel County teenagers, was at the library with a clipboard taking names and numbers as folks filed in.

“It was presented as a done deal,” Russell said. “It felt like a land grab.”

The Divide

The mesa, sitting at 7,000 feet, is land of juniper and pinyon pine, broad vistas and star-studded skies. In the morning, the sun rises over Colorado’s San Juan Mountains and in the evening, it sets behind the LaSalle Mountains in Utah.

At night the Milky Way hovers in the inky sky above, as Norwood is one of the world’s 38 certified Dark Sky International communities.

Dominating the plateau to the south is the 12,614-foot Lone Cone, an almost totemic presence for those on the mesa. A green apron of grass, aspen and oak wrap around the base and the mountain’s broad shoulders are draped with dark spruce forest from which a rocky, snow-coated summit rises.

“There is a saying among ranchers that if you are in the shadow of the Lone Cone, you’ll be all right,” said Scott Synder, a third-generation mesa rancher.

The Lone Cone provides all the mesa’s water, which for eons came down naturally through a small valley called the Divide. Thickly forested and rich in game, the Divide was a Ute hunting ground.

The first settler, Edwin Joseph, set up his homestead in 1886 near the Divide. (Joseph purchased the land for $100 from F.E. Wright who had staked the first land claim.)

The local yarn of the Yellow Bonnet Truce — and a yarn it seems to be — is that the Utes burned out Joseph twice. On the third try, Mrs. Joseph had returned from Grand Junction with a new yellow bonnet.

Chipeta, the wife of Chief Ouray, was so taken with the bonnet that in exchange for it the Utes agreed not to raze the Joseph homestead again.

The proposed OneEnergy solar project was not far from the Divide.

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“There have been some tensions.”

The names on the Russell’s clipboard turned into the Protect Wright’s Mesa Community Coalition, which tapped Mesa residents with expertise on subjects such as wildlife biology and fire safety to produce a 327-page impact statement.

Colorado is committed to building a lot of wind and solar generation. By one estimate solar generation must quintuple to help meet the state’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 50% in 2030 and 90% by 2050.

While recognizing the value of clean energy, the mesa coalition raised the question of whether other values need to be sacrificed for it?

The fight over the solar project also begat a story of how the Old West and New West, which often grate on another, found common cause.

The traditional ranching community has been joined on the mesa by a new generation of “regenerative” and organic farmers as well as Telluride workers who can’t afford to live in Telluride.

“There have been some tensions,” said Goodtimes, who was Colorado’s first Green Party county commissioner and is the emcee and poet laureate of the Telluride Mushroom Festival. Back in the day, a mesa welcome for hippie arrivals, such as himself, he said, included a cowboy beatdown.

Today some families send their children to school in Telluride — a 45-minute commute — rather than have them attend Norwood’s dilapidated school. The school board voting to allow trained teachers to carry guns might have been another impetus.

But when it came to utility-scale solar, everyone united. Old West ranchers skeptical of solar joined forces with New West residents wary of an industrial-size operation in a rural area. “It was galvanizing here on the mesa,” Goodtimes said.

The question the mesa coalition posed is this: What is the balance between clean energy, agriculture, small town values, and preserving wildlife and those vistas that make Colorado, Colorado? 

“It is up to the developers to show the Western Slope that it can be done.”

The questions the residents of Wright’s Mesa are asking are being raised across the Western Slope, which has some of the best solar radiance in the state and is becoming a prime destination for big solar projects.

Five Western Slope counties — Delta, Rio Blanco, Mesa, Montrose and San Miguel — imposed solar moratoriums while they worked on solar land use regulations.

“A lot of rural communities, especially those on the Western Slope, weren’t entirely prepared for how fast it’s going to happen,” said Adrienne Dorsey, vice president at the nonprofit COSSA Institute, which works with solar developers and communities. 

The institute is a sister organization of the Colorado Solar and Storage Association, a trade group.

Moratoriums tend to follow the first proposal for a big solar project or even the hint of one, said Kate Doubleday, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “There’s been a chicken-and-egg aspect to it,” she said.

A NREL study found 39 of the state’s 64 counties had solar land-use regulations and 28 counties have some form of ground-based solar installations, which could range from a community-scale solar garden to a utility-scale installation.

On the Western Slope, the first big flap was in Delta County, where commissioners attempted to block a 100 MW solar project but couldn’t because they had no solar regulations. Moratoriums in Delta and neighboring Montrose County quickly followed. 

Solar developers have turned up in La Plata, Montrose, Dolores, Montezuma and Garfield counties with a variety of customers and financing plans.

Tri-State bought a 110 MW solar installation developed in Dolores County, by JUWI Solar and the 80 MW Delta solar project being built by Guzman Energy is supplying power to the local cooperative, the Delta Montrose Electric Association.

In other cases, developers may build a project and bid to provide electricity to utilities seeking to buttress their portfolios.

Since the NREL study, Delta and Mesa counties have completed their new regulations and lifted their moratoriums. Montrose County will likely lift its solar freeze in the fall.

“We are ready to go if they come this way,” said Delta Commissioner Don Suppes. One big concern of western counties is the preservation of agricultural land and whether solar and farming can coexist. “It is up to the developers to show the Western Slope that it can be done,” Suppes said.

Colorado isn’t alone. The Sabin Center for Climate Law at Columbia University counted 395 local governments in 41 states with regulations on ground-based solar projects. The restrictions, the center said, “could have the effect of blocking a renewable energy project.”

This past legislative session, Senate Bill 212 passed with the aim of aiding and standardizing local solar codes. An early draft included language limiting local governments from blocking commercial solar on agricultural land.

That did not go over well with a host of local governments. “We beat that back,” Norwood Mayor Candy Meehan said. “They turned it into a study, so it could still come back.”

San Miguel County has a moratorium because of the fight on Wright’s Mesa and now it has a 49-page draft solar regulation, which would block large-scale solar on the mesa.

“It’s about managing where it goes,” said Anne Brown, a San Miguel County commissioner, who has been working on the regulations.

San Miguel and Ouray counties also have their own regional climate action plan seeking a 50% cut in greenhouse gas by 2030.

“We have very strong environmental values in our community and I know we want to participate in renewable energy development,” Brown said. “At the same time, we are not comfortable giving up our precious agricultural land.”

The state-owned land at issue is 560 acres that for the past 40 years has been leased to the Mex & Sons ranch for grazing and recreational hunting.

Neal Snyder started ranching on the Western Slope in the early 1900s and came to Norwood, where his son Raymond, nicknamed Mex, and his grandsons Monte and Scott continued the family’s ranching tradition.

The ranch is a cow-calf operation, with about 1,000 pairs, with the calves being sent on to feedlots before slaughter. The cattle summer up on the Lone Cone and other mountain pastures, while alfalfa for winter feed is grown in the fields around Norwood.

Come the fall, the cattle are brought down from the high country. The calves are shipped by truck and the cows journey down on a 30-mile, old-fashioned cattle drive with cowboys on horses and townsfolk riding along.

That’s how the Snyders have done it for more than a century.

The state parcel, on a road leading up to the Lone Cone, offers grazing for the Snyder bulls in the winter and a recreational hunting ground for deer and elk. The Farmer’s Water Company’s Gurley Ditch, the water supply for Norwood, runs through the middle of the property.

Snyder never heard a word from OneEnergy. The State Land Board staff informed the ranch the solar clause was being exercised and the land would be leased to OneEnergy.

OneEnergy’s plan was to combine the state tract with private land creating a nearly 1,000-acre site with 640 acres of solar panels.

“The State Land Board issued a three-year renewable energy planning lease to OneEnergy,” Kristin Kemp, a spokeswoman for the board, said in an email. “There is no update or change from the State Land Board’s perspective,” adding that the next steps are at the county level.

“I am not against solar,” Scott Snyder, 67, said. The ranch, he said, is in negotiations with a solar developer on some acreage it owns in the western part of the county, off the mesa. “Anyone who can make a little off their land should be able to do it.”

“It is just that this is right on our front door,” he said. “What if they put a big solar array in front of the Flatirons?”

Snyder said he was heartened by the broad community opposition to the project including support from his newest neighbors. “We are seeing some growth and new ideas coming in,” he said. “They’re not all bad.”

“The mesa has held true to its roots.”

Among the newcomers, at least by Snyder family standards, are Tony and Barclay Daranyi, who, 21 years ago, built a house, with hay bale insulation, and started the Indian Ridge Farm on 120 acres about 3 miles from the Snyders.

The Daranyis practice “regenerative agriculture,” which aims to enrich soils. At its peak, the farm raised organic grass-fed poultry, turkeys and hogs and a biointensive vegetable garden.

Tony Daranyi was a co-founder of Telluride’s newspaper the Daily Planet, and after selling his interest, he and Barclay set out on a new chapter seeing farming as a way to contribute to the community and the environment. Looking for land, they found their way to the mesa.

“Our guiding principle when we moved here was that we were not going to rock the boat,” Tony Daranyi said.

The farm has a 10 kilovolt, 52-panel solar array that provides all its electricity. The issue isn’t solar or no solar, but of scale. “Nine-hundred acres of an industrial solar project on our relatively small agricultural mesa was ridiculously too large,” he said.

In the years since the Daranyis arrived, some of the stores and restaurants in town have closed. “There are just fewer places to go,” Barclay Daranyi said.

It has, however, become a more diverse community. The most recent arrival: marijuana growers. Still, Tony Daranyi said, “the mesa has held true to its roots. It is an agricultural community.”

And both ranchers and new generation farmers were united when it came to the OneEnergy project. “We found a commonality with our neighbors in a love of place,” Tony Daranyi said.

The farm is also water rich with its own ponds, water rights and well rights and field irrigation. All vital on the mesa. “We have lots of sun, lots of good weather, not much water,” he said.

“This isn’t a done deal.”

Water is a major worry for John Bockrath, the Norwood Fire Protection District chief. When the department’s 17-person crew (including 14 volunteers) goes to battle a fire in the 845-square-mile district, it must bring its own water.

The department’s four-pump trucks can carry 5,450 gallons. “There is also a collapsible reservoir that can hold 2,000 gallons, if I can get it,” Bockrath said.

The department has no water of its own. “When there is a fire, ranchers come to fill the trucks,” said Bockrath, 62, who moved to Norwood after a long career with the Chicago Fire Department.

This is no small sacrifice. “There’s a saying among ranchers,” Mayor Meehan said, “you can take my wife but not my water.” OneEnergy’s estimate that it would need 5 acre-feet of water, or 1.7 million gallons, she said, was another strike against the project.

Mostly, the department battles naturally caused wildfires, but it brings its own water even when fighting a house fire in Norwood, with its aging water system.  “If I hooked up to one of the fire hydrants, I’d blow a water main somewhere in town,” Bockrath said.

“Solar panels don’t burn, the lamination between solar cells could burn, but a bigger risk was the 500 MW battery,” he said.

Battery fires at solar installations are uncommon, but they do occur. In the past few years, there have been fires in Arizona, California and New York State.

“A small rural fire department like ours really doesn’t have the resources to fight an industrial fire,” Bockrath said.

The department’s one paid paramedic and emergency medical technician field about 400 calls a year, many from accidents on Norwood Hill, the steep, winding climb that is the only route to the mesa from the east.

The prospect of an estimated 300 workers commuting up and down Norwood Hill during project construction also raises the specter of more road accidents.

Bockrath put all these issues and concerns into one section of the coalition’s “cultural and ecological impact statement.”

In addition to Bockrath’s public safety section, there were chapters on potential environmental and wildlife impacts, and the possible effect on the mesa’s dark sky designation and impacts on adjacent farm fields.

In its presentation in May 2023, OneEnergy said stands of pinyon pine and juniper around the perimeter of the project and the Gurley Ditch would be excluded from the built area — creating a wildlife corridor.

The company also said it was “in conversations” with a local rancher to graze 200 sheep on the site. When Terri Snyder Lamers, whose family runs the biggest sheep ranch on the mesa, saw the scale of the solar project, she told OneEnergy they weren’t interested.

“There might be places it would work, but not in southwest Colorado with 15 inches of rain a year,” Lammers said. “We are too arid.”

The Farmer’s Water Co. included a letter in the impact statement opposing the project and adding that project “does not lend itself to agrivoltaics operations due to a lack of available water at the site.”

The upside of the project, as presented at the meeting, was $8.2 million in taxes to San Miguel County and $9 million lease payments that go to a state program for schools.

None of that money  — or the electricity from the solar array — went directly to the mesa. The company was offering $50,000 in community donations.

“When it is all impacts and no improvements for the community, it makes people feel like we are a dumping ground,” Meehan said. 

OneEnergy did not respond to a Sun request for comment.

The COSSA Institute’s Dorsey said “the Wright’s Mesa developers thought that they were doing their due diligence, contacting county authorities … inadvertently they didn’t engage the community.”

The institute is promoting early dialogue between developers and communities and asking developers to understand the needs a community may have and how they can help address them.

“With a goal of quintupling solar to meet the state’s climate goals, it’s going to take us all working together, ” Dorsey said.

If the San Miguel County solar regulations pass, a project the size of OneEnergy’s will not be permitted on the mesa, but the battle is not done, the mesa coalition’s Russell said.

The current draft would allow solar installations of up to 50 acres and that is still too large for Russell. The size of these “medium-scale” systems is one of the last points of contention, said Brown, the San Miguel County commissioner. 

The planning commission’s final review is set for July 11. The coalition will be there as it has been for every planning and commission meeting. And then there is always the chance that way over on the other side of the Continental Divide, in Denver, the state will try to change the rules.

“There is still the threat of things going sideways,” Russell said. “This isn’t a done deal.”

So, the folks remain vigilant and united. “The Old West and New West are getting more nuanced,” Goodtimes said. “It’s not black and white, or red and blue.”

“We do need solar power and there may come a day when we run out of options and we need to put it here and we have to get used to looking at solar panels,” he said, “but this should be the last place to put them, not the first.”

The controversial Lowry Ranch oil and gas development project received a boost from state regulators Monday, but the residents in the drilling area are vowing to fight on, saying that it is far from a done deal.

Crestone Peak Resources is proposing to drill 155 wells from eight locations in the 32,000-acre area straddling Arapahoe County and the city of Aurora. Crestone is a subsidiary of Civitas, one of the largest oil and gas producers in the state.

Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission director Julie Murphy recommended that the proposal —  which is being done as a Comprehensive Area Plan or CAP — be approved.

The drilling plan has sparked strong community opposition with the grassroots group Save the Aurora Reservoir, or STAR, numbering some 1,000 residents, according to organizers.

An ECMC public hearing at the Arapahoe County Fairgrounds May 16 drew hundreds of residents and more than three hours of testimony from homeowners, teenagers and a mother with a toddler in her arms.

The CAP process was added to the ECMC rules to promote regional planning in the siting and development of oil and gas resources. 

A staff review “determined that this CAP complies with all applicable requirements of the Commission’s Rules and recommends approval by the Commission,” Murphy said.

Murphy cited the large number best management practices Crestone included in the plan, including using low-polluting engines, electrifying operations and drilling, and avoiding construction in Mule Deer Severe Winter Range between Dec. 1 and April 30.

On high ozone days the company said it would reduce truck traffic and eliminate the use of volatile organic chemicals on its sites.

“Over the past 20 months since Civitas first submitted its Lowry Ranch Comprehensive Area Plan to the ECMC, we’ve had robust discussions and meetings with stakeholders,”’ Rich Coolidge, a Civitas spokesman said in an email. “We feel this CAP application epitomizes the best-in-class standards.”

STAR members disagreed. “We are very, very disappointed with the decision,” said Randy Williard, who was speaking as a homeowner not a STAR spokesman. “Adding 166 wells in this area puts the ECMC in violation of its mission.” 

ECMC was formerly the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. The commission’s mission was changed in 2019 to protecting public health, safety, welfare and the environment by Senate Bill 181.

What the original drilling plan contained

The plan originally called for 166 wells, but in Murphy’s recommendation it was down to 155. 

The full commission doesn’t necessarily follow the director’s recommendation. “So there is an opportunity to make our case,” said Brian Matise, another STAR member, also speaking for himself.

Matise noted that there are at least four cases where the commission rejected drilling plans, often over a director recommendation.

The commission, in 2022, rejected a plan by Kerr-McGee to drill 33 wells within 2,000 feet of homes in Firestone.

Last February, the commission rejected two plans: one because it was close to homes in Broomfield and Erie, and the other because it was in high-priority pronghorn habitat in Weld County. 

Another proposal in Weld County that had a director’s recommendation was also rejected over wildlife concerns in 2023.

“The commission hasn’t heard our expert testimony,” Matise said.

STAR is petitioning the ECMC for the right to join the July 30 hearing on the CAP as an affected party.

“That would give us the ability to file pre-hearing statements and make a presentation to the commission just like Crestone,” said Mike Foote, STAR’s attorney. The commission will rule on the request at the start of the hearing.

One of the parties in the case is Arapahoe County, which is the affected local government.

“Arapahoe County received the ECMC recommendation on Monday and are reviewing the document through the lens of our previous comments,” Anders Nelson, a county spokesman said in an email.

“It’s important to note Arapahoe County updated its oil and gas regulations in 2023 to provide additional health and safety requirements,” Nelson said. “These regulations are more restrictive than the state’s.”