Ahead of Tuesday’s election, a proposed amendment that would enshrine Coloradans’ “right to natural gas” in the state constitution has organizations and political leaders split across fossil fuel-rich Garfield County.
Amendment 82 was brought to the ballot primarily by the conservative political nonprofit Advance Colorado. The group spent millions of dollars — gathered from undisclosed donors — on a campaign to collect the over 124,230 voter signatures needed to put the proposition on the ballot.
If approved by 55% of voters, the amendment would add to the state constitution that “consumers have a right to purchase natural gas for cooking or heating in their homes and businesses throughout the state. Distributors and utilities have the right to sell natural gas for homes and businesses.”
The proposal could limit the ability for state or local governments to enforce existing or future regulations on natural gas, according to the state’s nonpartisan Ballot Information Booklet.
Statewide, environmental groups like Earthjustice have rejected the measure as an attempt by the fossil fuel industry to uproot Colorado’s regulations on polluters, as well as state and local efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Democratic lawmakers fear that its passing could negate a 2024 deal between the oil and gas industry, environmental groups and lawmakers that introduced stricter air quality regulations. The parties also agreed to a new production fee on oil and gas that would fund public transportation and wildlife habitat conservation with a projected annual revenue of $138 million.
Conservative groups, however, have largely supported Amendment 82. Advance Colorado argued in a report that “natural gas is one of the cleanest energy sources available today.” It states that the lawmakers’ regulations on the industry have increased the cost and limited the supply of natural gas, despite the fact that nearly 70% of homes in the state rely on the resource for heating. “The continued use of natural gas can give assurance to citizens who are concerned about the rising cost of living for their basic needs,” the report read.
A split in Garfield County
Garfield County municipalities have historically built much of their budgets around natural gas industry operations.
But in recent years, that dynamic has started to shift. Especially in the Roaring Fork Valley, as the region sees demographic and political shifts and broader advancements in green energy alternatives.
Glenwood Springs, the county seat, became the seventh city in the United States to transition its grid to 100% renewable energy in 2019. Five years later, the city further divested from natural gas in its Energy and Climate Action Plan, mandating a 60% reduction in municipal emissions by 2035 by targeting natural gas use directly.
In Carbondale, town trustees formally opposed Amendment 82, reinforcing its mission to only rely on renewable energy sources and have all buildings have net-zero emissions by 2050.
In the race for an open seat on the Garfield Board of County Commissioners, both the Republican and Democrat candidates have rejected the county’s past monetary reliance on natural gas production.
That’s a shift away from current and former commissioners’ repeated stance that the state’s regulations are an example of Front Range overreach, and that localities should maintain the freedom to use local resources.
Recent years have seen Garfield County spend over $1.5 million fighting state oil and gas regulations in court. The industry also continues to be a large contributor to the county’s budget, with production accounting for holding about 44.2% of assessed values in 2025.
“[Natural gas] is one of the few products that GarCo exports,” said outgoing Commissioner Tom Jankovsky, who told the Aspen Daily News that he personally supports the amendment. “It is an important commodity for property tax and employment in GarCo.”
The county is facing a budget shortfall for the second year in a row due to declining revenues primarily driven by reduced revenue from oil and gas drilling.
Further downvalley, communities directly above the Piceance Basin — one of the largest natural gas reserves in the continental United States — largely stand with Garfield County’s support of the industry. Parachute and Rifle have historically favored natural gas companies with friendly zoning, permitting and transportation rules.
The Williams Companies’ plant in Parachute serves as the anchor for the company’s natural gas processing in the region, where it runs 336 miles of pipeline and has a gathering capacity of 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.
Both municipalities, as well as Glenwood Springs and Garfield County, are part of the Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado a supporter of Amendment 82.
“Although regulations do not expressly ban natural gas statewide, their cumulative effects raise concerns about its long-term availability,” reads a statement from the group. “AGNC believes constitutional protection is necessary to preserve consumer choice as state policies increasingly restrict natural gas use.”
All of Garfield County’s municipalities are members of the Garfield Clean Energy collaborative. The collaboration isn’t climate-focused or anti-natural gas; rather, it broadly aims to maximize the county’s energy efficiency, primarily by helping residents, businesses and municipalities to consume less power and secure rebates and funds for energy-saving infrastructure projects.
But the nonprofit leading the collaboration, Clean Energy Economy for the Region, took a stance against Amendment 82. Alice Laird, CLEER’s executive director, said in a statement the proposal is “unnecessary and undermines local control.”
“It would prevent local governments from passing clean energy building codes or regulating data centers,” Laird said. “It also uses vague language that can be used to challenge all kinds of health and safety regulations and air pollution limits.”
She added that buying and selling natural gas is already legal and doesn’t need constitutional protection.
The Basalt-based Community Office for Resource Efficiency similarly works across Pitkin, Garfield and Eagle counties, partnering with businesses and communities to slow the “pace of climate change.” The organization, like CLEER, opposes Amendment 82.
“Amendment 82 is about more than consumer choice,” said Tara Stitzlein, CEO of CORE. “It would provide unprecedented protection for one energy source and the companies that sell it, and threaten the local process that seeks to advance clean energy sources and climate action.”
Stitzlein said that statewide ballot measures aren’t a typical lane for the organization, but this measure “was important enough to us to speak out in more of an educational capacity.”
It’s unclear the degree to which Amendment 82 would affect local regulations discouraging natural gas use, as well as the operations of organizations like CLEER and CORE.
In 2020 and 2024, the oil and gas industry sponsored two ballot initiatives with similar language to Amendment 82. Both times, the measures were withdrawn from the ballot in a compromise with environmental groups, who removed their competing initiatives from the ballot.
Drew Shaw is a Report for America corps member covering public lands in Garfield County for the Aspen Daily News.
