Industry Sues to Invalidate Colorado Communities' Fracking Bans

It seems that folks’ efforts to restrict fracking from their communities is in jeopardy in Colorado. Last month the citizens of Fort Collins approved a five-year moratorium on fracking within their city, and Lafayette has made similar changes to its city charter to make fracking illegal. Fracking is legal in the state as a whole; these are merely restrictions on fracking within the boundaries of these cities.

            Now the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA), an industry sponsored organization, is suing these two communities these two towns on the grounds that their fracking bans are in conflict with state law that regulates oil and gas extraction. COGA says that only the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has exclusive authority to regulate wells in Colorado. This story goes back to around a year ago, and I've blogged about it before.

            I’m not a lawyer, so I really can’t make a judgment on the merits of this case. Considering, however, how recent research indicates the hazards of fracking (see here, here, and here)  it seems perfectly reasonable that people should be able to restrict this extractive practice from their communities. Sound reasonable? What do you think?

This Is NOT From The Onion: Undercover Activist Who Exposed Animal Cruelty Is Cited For Animal Cruelty

Worthy of the most absurd of  The Onion headlines, one that would even set Orwell’s head spinning, reads Undercover Activist Who Exposed Animal Cruelty Is Cited For Animal Cruelty. The undercover activist, Taylor Radig, went undercover to document animal abuse at the Quanah Cattle Company in Kersey, Colorado. The videos she took showed employees kicking, throwing, and performing other abusive acts on young calves. After the activist group she was working with, Compassion Over Killing, released the video, employees at the cattle facility were fired.

            As the Weld County Sheriff’s Office cited three employees of the Quanah Cattle Company with misdemeanor animal cruelty, the office went on to charge Radig with the same charge. According to Lindsay Abrams in Slate:

“Radig’s failure to report the alleged abuse of the animals in a timely manner adheres to the definition of acting with negligence and substantiates the charge Animal Cruelty,” a statement signed by the sheriff explained. They’re also accusing her of having participated in the abuse. If convicted, she faces up to 18 months in jail.

This sort of reasoning on the part of the Weld County sheriff’s department would seem to indict just about any whistleblower reporting any sort of corporate criminality. The sheriff could go so far as to indict police or FBI agents that infiltrate terrorist groups or organized crime.

Colorado, where a great deal of today’s meat packing occurs, currently has no “ag-gag” laws, legal restrictions on activists or reporters that make it difficult or impossible to report animal cruelty, unsafe working conditions, or unsanitary conditions or practices at slaughterhouses and meat pacing facilities. With sheriff departments like the one in Weld County, however, it seems that the big agricultural interests don’t need them. They can just charge the whistleblowers with the crimes that they report.

Are Folks Being NIMBYs When They Say To Keep the Fracking Out of Their Town?

One of the things that I’ve heard from those inside the environmental movement is that progress on the environmental front at the federal level is not promising. With gridlock the status quo in Congress and GOP lead opposition to environmental regulation, any environmental success in Washington would be long fought and quite possibly fruitless.

            Those in the environmental movement have encouraged folks to work on the state and local levels, where people can more directly take charge of their lives and the environment around them. That’s what makes this story out of Colorado so intriguing. Not wanting fracking type gas drilling to disturb their parks, schools, and neighborhoods, the residents of Longmont Colorado banned fracking in their town.

Now it looks like they are in for a plethora of lawsuits challenging their right to restrict the controversial extraction process. The state of Colorado says that it, not local governments, has the right to regulate drilling. The energy companies claim that the ban infringes on their property rights.

Certainly local municipalities cannot enact laws that run counter to state and federal laws. No matter how many crack addicts live in a town, they cannot make cocaine legal in opposition to state and federal statutes. On the other hand, people in a community should have the right to live in a town that is unmolested by the presence of large-scale drilling, especially considering the health concerns that have been associated with fracking.