Colorado State to pitch study on air quality impacts of gas drilling
Presentation slated for Monday’s BOCC meeting
The BOCC meeting is today – Monday, August 20. The CSU proposal is No. 6 on the afternoon agenda, which begins at 1:00 p.m., so they probably won’t get to it until 2:00.
You can access the BOCC Agenda here.
There is so much wrong with this it’s hard to know where to begin. For one thing this article came out in Saturday’s paper, and the meeting is today. It is not a public hearing. We have no clue whether the commissioners will vote on the proposal today, or if they will accept public comment.
The Gasfield BOCC must be taking public relations training from the oil & gas industry. Keep the public in the dark and don’t tell them anything until the very last minute. Then laugh at how frustrated they get when they scramble to organize a response on such short notice.
Sonja Linman is the Democratic candidate for the at-large county commissioner seat. Here’s what she wrote on her Facebook page on Saturday about this statement in the article regarding the Battlement Mesa HIA:
“The study is a second effort to determine air quality impacts from drilling, after the commissioners aborted an earlier study by the Colorado School of Public Health, called the Battlement Health Impacts Assessment.”
1. The original study should not have been aborted.
2. If the original study was to be replaced by a new effort, to maintain an uninterrupted time frame, it should have been implemented at the time the last study was closed.
3. The results of this proposed study will not be available until 2015. That’s a problem for those who are concerned about their current water and air quality.
4. The BOCC should make it clear that within this study, if ANY dangerous compounds are discovered, the public will be notified IMMEDIATELY.
5. The very fact that the air and water quality studies have been interrupted at all indicates poor representation from the BOCC regarding the health and safety of our constituents.This makes me angry.
I’m angry too. She’s right. What about the Battlement Mesa HIA? Why did they scrap that study and now start all over?
Dave Devanney of Battlement Concerned Citizens wrote in a widely circulated email this morning: “It should be noted that this study will just collect data. There will be no examination or assessment of the health risks from those emissions. When the HIA was terminated, the county seems to have lost interest in health impacts.”
Devanney won’t be able to attend the BOCC meeting today. I can’t be there either.
But you need to know about Air Resource Specialists. The firm is described in the article as being part of the “study team” which will also include “university experts.” Who are these people? Well look no further than their client list which includes Anadarko, EnCana, and Shell Rocky Mountain, plus a handful of energy industry consultants.
I think we know who’s behind this study proposal – the oil & gas industry.
Categories: Garfield County, oil and gas drilling
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