DENVER — Colorado’s top regulator for the oil and gas industry heard from the public this week as the state plans new rules to assess and address health and environmental impacts.
Local residents and environmental groups told Denver7 they have raised concerns with the state about the damage they have experienced over the years and hope the state will take action this time.
“We’re exhausted,” said Renee Millard Chacon, a Colorado Environmental Justice Action Task Force member who lives in Commerce City, near the Sunco refinery. “Our community is traumatized. [by the state] We are increasingly asking for our experiences and testimonies. Delaying implementation actually delays equity. And the climate crisis means people will die. ”
These deadly outcomes are what she and others speaking at the Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) this week hope to avoid.
The ECMC held a public comment hearing as part of its process to develop new rules on how to study and address the “cumulative impacts” of oil and gas operations on health and the environment.
Last summer, Colorado passed a law requiring ECMC to create these rules by next April.
This puts a firm deadline on a process that Millard Chacon said has dragged on for years, despite several other state laws aimed at shifting the ECMC’s focus to protecting the public welfare. Ta.
“When we’re talking about cumulative impacts, we’re talking about air quality, land quality, water quality, and people. Everything is interconnected,” Millard Chacon said.
In recent years, ECMC has collected hundreds of public comments regarding cumulative impacts.
But Millard Chacon worries that the state is ignoring such testimony in favor of industry profits.
“If people only care about money, they won’t see me as a person,” she says. “I understand where the economic fear comes from at the state and federal agency level. But what they don’t understand is that you can’t drink money.”
At public hearings this week, oil and gas industry representatives such as the Colorado Oil and Gas Association and American Petroleum, as well as companies such as Chevron and Oxy, suggested how the state should define cumulative impacts and We submitted comments requesting the following to the meeting: Maintain much of the existing framework.
Local residents and environmental groups reiterated their concerns and hopes for action. Many called on the ECMC to consider health and environmental impacts before approving permits, and to consider revoking permits if harm is identified. Although the ECMC currently reviews applications on an individual basis, these new rules could lead to a more holistic approach that considers broader impacts.
This includes consideration for communities that have been disproportionately affected, such as the area near the Suncor refinery in Commerce City where Millard Chacon lives and serves on the City Council.
“Addressing environmental justice is not a partisan issue,” Millard Chacon said. “This is known data…and this data has been out for quite some time, so if we’re asking you to act and you find another reason to delay, you’re not doing your job. There will be no,” she said of the committee.
Millard Chacon said that as a mixed-race Chicana-Filipino who lives in an affected community, he had no choice but to continue the work of his ancestors fighting for environmental justice. But she hopes more Coloradans will get involved.
“Everyone needs to be involved at this point,” she says. “The community is as much a stakeholder as the industry and we are tired. We are tired of dying and we are tired of being traumatized. We are rightly tired of being ignored. But we live here and we’re not going to leave. We don’t want to see future generations forced to fight like this.”
Colorado enacts new rules to address health and environmental impacts of oil and gas
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