As a kid I ate a lot of bologna, so I know it when I see it.
The oil and gas industry says that Proposition 112’s 2,500-foot setbacks will put 85 percent of Colorado’s non-federal lands off limits to drilling. I zoomed in on the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission’s GIS 112 study maps and there’s clearly plenty of legal space in between the buffer zones to drill. Lateral drilling for fracking can go more than 2 miles (10,000 feet), making it possible to access target areas from lots of places outside the buffer zones. The 85 percent number is pure bologna.
If 112 passes, the oil and gas folks can keep running their ugly, smelly, noisy and poisonous business. According to Colorado Parks & Wildlife’s 2014 Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan, outdoor recreation added $34 billion in revenues and 313,000 jobs to our economy. The new 2019 report to be issued Oct. 26 will probably go beyond $50 billion and 400,000 jobs, far more dollars and jobs than what oil and gas produces.
Protecting blue skies, clean air and water, open spaces, parks, trails, free-flowing rivers, and ranches makes more jobs and money for Colorado, and more sustainably, than oil and gas ever will.
The Trump administration’s August 500-page environmental impact statement says the planet will warm a disastrous 7 degrees by the end of this century. Scientists say this would be catastrophic for us and every other living thing on Earth. Why in the world would you not want to vote yes for 112?
John Fielder
Silverthorne
