Greeley weighs proposal to add more fracking wells within city

[madamesilverspurs]

Today in Greeley, the city at the heart of Colorado’s Front Range “frack country,” a seven-member planning commission will consider a proposal by oil-and-gas company Synergy to add three more well-drilling facilities “and related equipment” to a site already being drilled in a scenic residential neighborhood roughly three miles from the city center. Synergy is one of the companies working the booming business in natural-gas extraction in the Wattenberg Field, which stretches under most of north-east Colorado. The boom is mostly the product of the effectiveness of hydraulic fracturing, the extraction technique where millions of gallons of frack fluid — a mixture of water, chemicals and sand — is blasted deep into the earth to free trapped gas.

In the last few years, residents in cities across the region have raised concerns about the dangers the heavy-industrial activity might pose to public health as it encroaches on residential areas and how it may also be diminishing above-ground real estate values. In the last twelve months, Front Range cities like Broomfield, Fort Collins, Lafayette, Longmont and Loveland have passed drilling bans and moratoriums, at least until more research is concluded on the effects fracking is visiting on the populations. The movement to limit drilling has met fierce resistance from oil and gas companies. For now, there is no ban or moratorium in Greeley. Indeed, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in May approved proposals to drill more than a hundred new wells within Greeley city limits.

Greeley’s planning commission is tasked with considering zoning and development questions but it also represents residents on matters of air-quality and natural-resource protection. There are now thousands of gas wells being worked all around the traditionally agricultural town in Weld County. Maps of area wells show Greeley as a shrinking “donut hole” surrounded by drilling.

more at link:
http://coloradoindependent.com/128766/greeley-weighs-proposal-to-add-more-fracking-wells-within-city-limits