An energy boom in Silt, Colo., for better and worse
Lloyd and Rita Jane Moore have a long list of grievances against the gas companies that have been drilling on their land for the past five years.
An access road cuts through their pasture, making it impossible to irrigate the field. The waste tanks leak, the promised "reclamation" has yielded nothing but weeds, and the trucks and drills create a constant drone of noise. Perhaps worst of all, their well ran dry.
"The sight, sound, noise, and odor pollution will last for 20 to 40 years," says Mrs. Moore. "When we moved from Mead [Colo.] to here we got more land and we thought we'd sell this place later and retire.... How are we going to sell the place with no water?"
Unlike some buyers, the Moores knew when they bought their 37 acres in 1993 that they didn't own the mineral rights - a common situation in the West known as a "split estate." But no one had drilled gas for years.
Now, nearly 3,000 wells are operating in Garfield County, most of them drilled in the past six years, with thousands more planned. And opposition is building among an unlikely coalition of environmentalists, conservative property-rights advocates, ranchers, county commissioners, and mayors. It's a sign that the West no longer embraces energy booms the way it used to.
"I've never seen it like this," says Pete Kolbenschlag, the western slope field director for the Colorado Environmental Coalition. "Conservationists have been concerned about these things for any number of years, but now it's all sorts of people."
The reasons for opposition are as diverse as the people: the split-estate issue, threats to wildlife or pristine areas, damage to the recreation industry, and concerns about the local water supply. Many locals emphasize that they don't oppose drilling; they just want more oversight, more fairness to property owners, or a slower pace.
"I like my standard of living, same as everyone else, but I don't like the way they're doing the drilling now," says Bob Elderkin, a retired Bureau of Land Management (BLM) employee who now raises Arabian horses. Mr. Elderkin has drafted a list of 10 ways that gas companies could act more responsibly, such as limiting the number of rigs and using more "directional drilling," a less damaging method of drilling multiple wells from one pad. "I've always considered myself a conservative Republican. I guess I'm not acting that way."
To be sure, many residents in this lonely land of mesas and sagebrush - what one mayor jokingly calls the "banana belt" of Colorado because of its unseasonably warm weather - still support the drilling because of the money it's bringing in.
"If it wasn't for gas, the county would probably be bankrupt," says Carl Bernklau, a local rancher who owns his mineral rights and gets between $20,000 and $30,000 a month in royalties for the wells on his property. He's been able to work with the companies to minimize damage, he says, pointing out places where holding tanks are tucked behind ridges, on less arable land. "It's a boon to the whole area."
In nearby Rifle, the Winchester Motel has a no-vacancy sign on a Thursday night, and the Brickyard Square restaurant is bustling. "Without the oil and gas industry, we would not be in the boom we're in," says Timothy Fifer, the restaurant's owner, as he rushes to restock the bar and fill some orders.
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