Civitas Resources had been on a streak this year.
State and county officials signed off on three of the oil and gas company’s proposed well pads — featuring nearly 60 wells combined — on a windswept stretch of prairie southeast of Aurora that’s near both hundreds of homes and the primary drinking water source for Colorado’s third-largest city.
Then, on Dec. 10, the $2.3 billion company hit a wall.
The Energy and Carbon Management Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator, voted 4-1 to put a stay on Civitas’ State Sunlight/Long well pad — a 35-acre, 32-well extraction project that would lie just over a half-mile from the Aurora Reservoir and from the closest homes in the city’s Southshore neighborhood.
Commissioner Brett Ackerman said Crestone Peak Resources, the Civitas subsidiary that is overseeing the project, should do more to ensure it doesn’t impact neighbors.
“This can be accomplished by Crestone examining locations for this pad farther away from the dense residential development along the boundary of the property,” Ackerman said.
It wasn’t the denial Randy Willard wanted from the ECMC. But the 62-year-old resident of Aurora’s Tollgate Crossing neighborhood for the past 11 years said he sees it as a victory — for now — given the roll Civitas had been on this year with approval of its other well pads on the 26,500-acre Lowry Ranch.
“It was good, but we know the work is not done — it’s not denied or in a safer place,” Willard said.
He’s been fighting Civitas’ drilling plans for nearly three years as president of Save the Aurora Reservoir, a 2,500-member citizens’ advocacy group that goes by the acronym STAR.
Neighbors fear that more than 100 wells producing oil and gas just east of their homes will pose a health hazard, especially for children, and threatens to contaminate the Aurora Reservoir, a drinking source for more than 400,000 people. In March, a study released by the Colorado School of Public Health that drew links between childhood leukemia and proximity to oil and gas wells gave more energy to the fight.
Four schools stand less than a mile away from the proposed State Sunlight/Long well pad.
Civitas still has three more proposed oil and gas well pads planned for Lowry Ranch after that one, for a total of 112 wells across seven pads. That’s down from the 166 wells the ECMC greenlit in August 2024 as part of a comprehensive plan hearing it held on Civitas’ application.
Now is not the time to rest, Willard said.
“We will continue to comment on the plans — we will continue to ask for a denial,” he said.
Civitas will try again
Civitas hasn’t decided yet when it might bring back its application to the commission, or whether it will proffer any new locations for the five members to consider.
Company spokesman Rich Coolidge told The Denver Post that Civitas was confident it could gain the commission’s confidence to move ahead.
“While the decision was postponed, we have direction on resubmitting clarifying information that will garner support from a majority of the ECMC commissioners, who largely agree the site is approvable under the state’s protective rules,” Coolidge said.
Commissioner Michael Cross, who was the lone vote against issuing a stay on the pad, said during the Dec. 10 hearing that Civitas had agreed to take steps to minimize its impact during drilling and production. Those include moving an access road to a less troublesome location, electrifying its drilling rigs to make them cleaner and quieter, and moving product by pipe rather than truck.
“Simply put, the (best management practices) agreed to here and the operational plan are some of the most protective measures we’ve seen,” Cross said.
State agencies and local governments have raised no alarm bells over the pad, Coolidge said, with no objections from entities including the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and the City of Aurora. Arapahoe County gave conditional approval to the State Sunlight/Long pad in May.
“The State Sunlight/Long development plan is undoubtedly the most-vetted site in the state, if not the country,” Coolidge said.
That may be due to the five ECMC hearings held on the pad, including three marathon sessions in November. At the December hearing, Commissioner John Messner said the State Sunlight/Long site had “created some of the most attention of any application that I have had before me since I’ve been on the commission.”
Sakhawat Hussain, a retired gastroenterologist who has lived in Southshore with his wife for nearly three years, isn’t surprised at the controversy the pad has generated. His backyard is a half-mile or so from where State Sunlight/Long could end up.
“We’ll be able to see it from the backyard,” he said.
His wife, Ann, points to Weld County, where on April 6 a massive blowout of a Chevron oil and gas well near Galeton lasted five days, resulting in the closure of an elementary school and the evacuation of 14 families. Toxic chemicals, including benzene, hung in the air, flowed into ponds and streams, and seeped into groundwater.
The ECMC is investigating the incident.
“If this well pad catches on fire, like Galeton, that will be a catastrophe,” Ann Hussain said. “It’s beyond common sense that they’d think this is approvable.”
Want to be ‘an example’
She sees the fight over State Sunlight/Long as a test of Colorado’s six-year-old landmark oil and gas law, passed as Senate Bill 19-181. The law prioritized public health, safety and the environment when state officials consider oil and gas development — a profound change from the industry-focused approach Colorado had taken for decades with energy extraction.
A site so close to homes and schools should not be treated the same as a well pad in a remote area, she said.
“They need to prove that when they passed that law, it meant something,” Hussain said. “The regulations cannot be one-size-fits-all.”
Michael Foote, a former state legislator and STAR’s attorney, said he doesn’t know exactly where this dispute will go from here.
But he has no doubt that robust public participation has made a difference.
“It was very good to see the commission take public opinion and public comment seriously when deciding on the stay,” he said. “Public sentiment is too often heard but not acted upon. We are hopeful that continues on to the next stage of the hearing.”
Willard said STAR raised $15,000 over the summer after Civitas started standing up the 19-well La Plata South pad, which had been approved for Lowry Ranch earlier in the year.
“When they dropped the rig across the reservoir with the lights on all night, that got the neighborhood excited,” he said.
Willard hopes his group’s efforts can resonate elsewhere in the state and give other communities strategies and resolve in their own fracking battles.
“We want to be an example for other groups,” he said.
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