Among the recommendations sent to Gov. John Hickenlooper from his task force convened to help sort through the jurisdictional overlap between the state and its localities where gas and oil development is concerned are two that aim to promote planning ahead and early communication between the industry and local governments.
The idea is to ease the inherent conflict between gas and oil development and surface land owners, a goal that necessarily includes participation from local and state government – both of which have a role in regulating gas and oil activity. Articulating the recommendations in state rules is the next challenge. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is undertaking that effort, and in doing so, should be conscientious about gathering and considering local input – particularly from counties, such as La Plata, where this communication has long been the norm.
The COGCC is crafting rules to embody the task force’s call to develop a process for local government participation in the permitting of “large scale oil and gas facilities,” including outlining the COGCC’s procedures and authority to regulate where they are located. The concept is a good one: Where “large-scale facilities” are located is very much the concern of their neighbors, and local governments, whose authority to regulate land use is clear. The challenge for the rulemaking process is defining what exactly constitutes a “large scale facility.”
The definition process alone reveals much about each affected community, and to help, the task force suggested the COGCC consider the intensity and scale of the facility in question, as well as its proximity to neighboring land uses. This is helpful, but leaves much gray area. The fuzziness is compounded by justifiable concern from La Plata County and others who have established a navigable framework for negotiating gas and oil activity within residential areas. Other cities and counties are not so seasoned in this, and the state can be helpful to them. However, counties that have systems in place to address these concerns should be empowered to continue.
“We don’t want to have (the state) start regulating what we’ve done well and will continue to do well,” said La Plata County Commissioner Julie Westendorff at a meeting with COGCC staff and representatives from Southwest Colorado counties and municipalities Thursday. And while that is not the COGCC’s intent in the rulemaking regarding large-scale facilities, it touches on the inherent tension underlying the entire issue.
“Nothing that we are going to do changes local authorities right to regulate land use,” said COGCC Director Matt Lepore at Thursday’s meeting. “At the same time, my charge is to craft a rule that defines what a large scale facility is, and anytime we draw a line, there are going to be people who think we drew it in the wrong place.”
Nevertheless, Lepore’s effort to gather local input across the state will help clarify where that line should be drawn.
A second recommendation that would allow municipalities – but not counties – to ask the industry for a five-year plan of its activity in advance of development would do much to advance early coordination and planning. The COGCC, however, should extend that authority to counties as well. “It behooves everybody to have a sense of what the future looks like,” La Plata County Commissioner Gwen Lachelt said Thursday. “Counties should absolutely be included in that rule.”
Enumerating and planning for long-term development is the crux of county land use authority’s functionality. Extending tools that facilitate that to all levels of government that govern land use is appropriate and necessary. The rulemaking process should reflect communities’ wide-ranging on-the-ground experience, building on the positive and encouraging improvement where it is needed.
