Face The State Staff Report
Fresh off their victory over Colorado's once thriving timber industry, environmental activists in recent years have set their eyes on a new target: The state's oil and gas industry.
Activists have fought tooth and nail during the past six years to delay drilling on Colorado's oil rich Roan Plateau.
jeffk/Flickr
To energy officials like Kathy Hall, the western slope representative for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, the strategy by environmentalists unfairly targets energy production without also considering the positive impact it continues to have on the state’s economy. “They just like to fight something because it makes them feel holy,” said Hall, who worries that without oil and gas Colorado will follow the rest of the nation into recession.
"DEATH BY 1,000 CUTS"
According to Tom Troxel, director of the Intermountain Forest Association, Colorado’s timber production decreased from 96 million board feet in 1991 to 18.2 million board feet in 2003, amounting to an 80 percent drop overall. Troxel says the drop was “death by 1,000 cuts” as special interests lobbied to increase the number of federally protected forest acres.
As accessible supply dwindled, local sawmills began closing as early as 1981, leaving hundreds of people without jobs. Eric Sorenson, owner of Delta Timber, one of the few mills left in Colorado, estimates that about half of the workers who were laid off by the timber decline left Colorado for similar jobs in other states, while the other half were able to switch industries.
Sorenson says that contrary to what environmentalists would have the public believe, people in the timber business are concerned with responsible cultivation and forest sustainability. As it turns out, he says, responsibly thinning out of the wilderness is good for the forest’s overall health. He believes that the conservation efforts to stymie logging have resulted in destructive forest fires and a pine beetle epidemic that is killing off lodgepole pines at an alarming rate. In 2002, drought and overgrown woods resulted fires that torched 7.2 million acres across Colorado.
“At least with logging you can control where the activity takes place,” Sorenson said.
THE NEW TARGET: NATURAL GAS
With the timber industry successfully regulated, environmental interests have refocused their efforts on Colorado’s growing oil and gas industry.
The Western Colorado Congress is one such group fighting to curb oil and gas development in Colorado. Its Web site says, “New draft rules would protect our environment and human health in new ways. Government officials need to hear that we support the draft rules and want them to be even stronger."
"The rules are being changed thanks in large part to more than eight years of lobbying work by WCC and its affiliate members."
Rich Alward, a Grand Junction environmental consultant, ecologist and new addition to the COGCC, says the environmental community is creating surprising alliances with hunting, fishing and ranching interests in the state. He says their collective efforts have given them a political voice like never before.
Hall, the energy industry representative, believes such new coalitions are a driving force behind efforts to rewrite the rules and regulations for oil and gas in the state.
“Very strong environmental extremists make a lot of money off demonizing anyone they can,” said Hall. “Now that the timber industry has been destroyed they have found a new target.”
Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter supported legislation to change the composition of the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Republicans say the new rules and regulations being put forth by the commission threaten to derail the state’s energy industry and harm state programs that depend on oil and gas revenues.
BALANCE ACHIEVABLE?
New regulations coupled with a severance tax hike is already impacting the state’s energy economy. Millions of dollars are being diverted to neighboring states that have more friendly regulatory climates.
Alward believes that Colorado needs to strike a balance that won’t destroy industry or the environment, but concedes that compromises concerning the “14 sides of the issue” have been hard to reach.
“We’re trying to figure out what responsible development means," he said. “We want to foster a productive industry while protecting other values.”