Garfield County Commissioners are considering whether to allow a permits for a drilling proposal in Battlement Mesa. Commissioners have gotten hours of public testimony this week, and are taking another look on Thursday.
Wednesday was day two of Commissioners taking in presentations, passionate pleas from homeowners, considering details on everything from current air monitoring to traffic patterns. “It’s a rare opportunity to have this type of hearing for oil and gas development purposes,” said Former Garfield County Commissioner Tresi Houpt on Wednesday. “You can try to mitigate as much as possible to protect the interests of these surface property owners. But you really won’t have great success unless you move these pads as far away from residential areas as possible.”
Houpt said even though she voted for allowing wells near Battlement Mesa during her tenure, she believes that doesn’t mean the County should approve drilling inside the development’s formal boundaries.
And drilling inside the planned unit development, or PUD, is what Denver and Houston-based Ursa Resources is hoping to do. The company is asking the County for special use permits, which would mean the company could build up to five pads, at a total of two hundred wells. A pipeline would also be put in. The first round would have two pads in an open area near neighborhoods.
The group Battlement Mesa Concerned Citizens is hoping to convince Commissioners to turn down that proposal. “But if that does not happen, we’re committed to trying to require the most stringent conditions of approval possible,” says Dave Devanney, co-chair of the grassroots group. Those conditions include making sure sand isn’t used in fracking, requiring complaints be sent to the state regulating body, and other elements.
Garfield County Commissioners are revising the conditions of approval and will review them on Thursday, while still taking public comments. If they decide to approve Ursa’s plan, the company has another round of review. “We continue with the state permit applications,” says Ursa Vice President of Business Development Don Simpson. “And we’ll go through the state process for approvals." Ursa has submitted at least one application for the Battlement Mesa proposal and will file another soon.
