As Battlement Mesa residents prepare for more review of a possible drilling proposal within their unincorporated town, some are worried they’re stuck in a situation they didn’t know to avoid-- and don’t know a way out of.
Bob Robertson and his wife are sitting at their kitchen table. Their home is in one of the more modest neighborhoods in Battlement Mesa. And like many other residents, the wildlife and the views are a big reason they live here. "I don’t know if you saw it or not but we’ve got about a dozen deer playing golf on the course right now," Robertson says with a laugh.
His wife, Bernita Grove, goes by Bernie. “We look out on the Battlements out there, on the east, Mt. Callahan on the west, and then we have the ridges and the mesas downvalley. We get these, oh my god, the most gorgeous sunsets.” Bernie bought this house in 2004, and Bob joined her there. She’s a retired principal from Broomfield, and he’s from Grand Junction. This November afternoon they’re eating cookies and drinking coffee, and hanging out with their adopted chihuahua mix.
“This is not a fancy house,” Grove surveys their home from the coffee pot.“ We’ve priced stuff in Grand Junction and Fruita, and we couldn’t afford it." The couple already have oil and gas pads nearby, and they’re worried about a possible more than fifty wells being developed inside the Battlement Mesa boundaries. That could be the first of two phases proposed by Ursa Resources.
The couple say it’s hard to believe that won’t affect their property values. They have a townhouse here as well as their home. “We’re getting it double sided," says Robertson. "So the truth of it is,” interjects Grove, “if our property values go into the toilet, we really are— where do we move? You can’t buy on the front range god knows, because of those prices." “And we don’t want to move,” exclaims Robertson. "We don’t want to move,” continues Grove, “but if we have to, we want to go some place we’d like to be, and that would take a little more money than we’re probably going to be able to realize.”
Sue deWinter lives in Battlement Mesa with her husband, Bill, in a neighborhood down the road. She’s pointing to a layout showing where the new well pads could go. "Now, when we purchased, had we seen that map, there’s no way,” says Sue, “well, I don’t think anyone would have purchased here, had they seen that map…Which just kinds of goes on to people aren’t going to purchase here when they see those pads being drilled and potentially other pads right on the golf course."
Franci Candlin purchased her townhouse two years ago, in yet a third neighborhood. There are about a dozen total villages here. “I frankly feel trapped," she says, during an interview in September. Her property is right next to where a proposed pipeline would go. “I have to disclose if I sell this property, I would have to tell a prospective buyer... I think I have a property that can’t be sold.” Both Candlin and the deWinters say they did their did their due diligence before buying in Battlement Mesa, and that they were not made aware of specific agreements about what can be drilled there.
Several people interviewed for this story referred to someone they knew who recently tried to sell their home, but the buyer backed out after finding out about Ursa Resources’ drilling proposal. That person declined to be interviewed by Aspen Public Radio, saying they wanted to tell Garfield County Commissioners first about their experience.
Eric Schmela is President of Battlement Mesa Company, and has heard about that incident. But he doesn’t think it’s part of a trend. “I don’t associate the decline in home values at all as a relationship with this natural gas proposal,” he said in an interview earlier this month. “I wish all this would come in get drilled, get producing and move on, because I think the stigma of the project is far more damaging to the community that the actual project will be."
There’s been a lot of talk about whether homeowners weren’t paying attention when they bought their homes. The first document outlining what drilling is allowed was created in 1990. That’s called a Surface Use Agreement or SUA. But it wasn’t entered into county records for nine years, in 1999. The deWinters bought their house between those dates, in 1994, so there was no record of that agreement.
“I think that certainly now, and since SUA revision that I was a part of, it’s very, very clear what exists and what can happen,” says Schmela. He’s not sure why the original document wasn’t on record, saying that was before his time. In the last approximately ten years, he’s negotiated at least four new or amended versions of the Surface Use Agreement. Once again, one was filed late, a year and a half after being created.
Energy company Ursa Resources puts the issue more bluntly. Vice President of Business Development Don Simpson says it’s naive of residents to think there wouldn’t be drilling inside Battlement Mesa, regardless of whatever legal documents they saw before buying a home or townhouse there. In an interview last week, Simpson said the sheer number of wells near Battlement Mesa, and the presence of oil and gas overall, should have been indication enough that Battlement Mesa should not be an oasis from that development. He believes potential homeowners were foolish to think drilling wouldn't happen in neighborhoods, because mineral owners have a right to extract from the ground. Drilling in similar unincorporated areas on the Front Range has been ground zero for conflict between communities and oil and gas operators.
Simpson also says his company’s interest in drilling within the Battlement Mesa boundaries is not connected to potentially losing leases in the Thompson Divide. The BLM and Forest Service have opened the door for those mineral rights to be permanently withdrawn.
Garfield County Commissioners are visiting the proposed drilling sites in Battlement Mesa on Friday, December 4th.
Editor’s note: See below for the link to our previous story about the impact of possible drilling in Bttlement Mesa.
