Draco Well Pad Proposal Looms Over Erie

Civitas Resources plans to drill twenty-six wells just outside Erie limits concerns residents and town administration.

When Kelsey Barnholt moved to Erie four years ago, she thought its reputation as a mining town was based on a past era, the Gold Rush or a time before we really understood the consequences of mining fossil fuels on people’s health and the environment.

But she can see oil and gas drilling rigs from the window of what she thought was her dream home, where she worries about her own health, that of her two young daughters, and whether she’ll eventually regret having ever lived in Erie at all.

“We can’t stay here that much longer — within the next two years, we’ll be gone,” Barnholt said. “I’m just really worn out on fighting this fight and trying to compartmentalize that the air around you is totally toxic.”

Barnholt has spent months voicing her opposition to the latest drilling proposal near her neighborhood, the Draco Well Pad. This proposal would drill twenty-six new fracking wells in Weld County just outside of the Town of Erie city limits. The plan involves drilling five miles underground across county lines into Boulder—wellbores nearly a mile longer than typically used.

Residents, town officials, and environmental activists are concerned about how the project would contribute to air pollution, water pollution and scarcity, traffic and quality of life for the neighborhood, and site-specific risks from the extreme-reach wellbores and the presence of abandoned wells.

On the west side of Erie, Boulder County has largely ceased oil and gas extraction, having plugged and abandoned many of its 200 remaining oil and gas drilling wells and receiving its last applications for new drilling permits in the early 2000s. But to the east, Weld County is the largest oil and gas producer in Colorado, with 17,317 active wells as of Sept. 1, 2023.

Since the well pad is outside Erie’s official jurisdiction, the Town of Erie cannot approve or deny the proposal. However, the Town has been clear about its concerns regarding the plan, including health impacts from poor air quality and ground-level ozone emissions from extraction in the decades the well has been active. Then there’s also nuisance concerns, like high traffic in the area, noise pollution, odors, and aesthetic degradation of the neighborhood, said Environmental Services Director David Frank.

Additionally, a housing development plan that has been in progress since 2017 would be only 1,500 feet from the Draco Pad, less than the State’s 2,000-foot buffer regulation, put in place for resident safety in 2020.

The proposal is also complicated by the presence of twenty-eight legacy plugged and abandoned wells and twenty-four active or shut-in wells within the proposed drilling and spacing unit. Drilling near those wells without proper remediation could stir up soil containing contaminants from past extraction, some of which are linked to cancer and other severe health conditions. Civitas would plug and abandon twenty-two wells as part of the proposal to offset the impacts of new drilling.

“Though the development doesn’t occur within Erie, it is directly adjacent, and obviously, a lot of those impacts are going to be felt by our residents and by the town,” Frank said.

Barnholt is also concerned by the volume of water that would be used to drill the site and how it could affect Colorado’s landscape overall. A cumulative impacts analysis from Erie Protectors estimates that 541 million gallons of water would be used to frack the twenty-six wells.

“We are in a climate crisis, and that water never re-enters the water cycle,” Barnholt said. “It’s pretty unconscionable that they could even consider a project like this, it’s irresponsible.”

The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission — which grants or denies oil and gas permits in the state — requires mitigation, minimization, and avoidance measures for the protection of public health, safety, and welfare of the environment and wildlife resources on all drilling projects. The Draco Pad will be reviewed by the ECMC Commission to ensure that the project complies with ECMC rules, wrote Community Relations Manager Kristin Kemp.

Kemp wrote that the ECMC will require an engineering review of the horizontal wellbore design, offset well evaluations, and aquifer coverage, particularly for the Draco Pad.

Public Affairs Manager Rich Coolidge wrote in an email that Civitas would develop the Draco well pad using an all-electric, lower-emission drill rig and a quiet completions fleet that reduces sound and emissions. Civitas also plans to remove tanks and equipment located in and around Erie from the twenty wells scheduled for remediation and return close to twelve acres of land.

“We know that Colorado’s regulations governing oil and natural gas development are some of the strictest in the world, and we see the Draco pad meeting and even exceeding the state’s regulations,” Coolidge wrote. “Following conversations from stakeholders, local governments, and others, we’ve developed that pad site to minimize and mitigate impacts by locating it east of Erie in unincorporated Weld County.”

Concerned residents in the area contacted Colorado Rising, a nonprofit action group that opposes oil and gas in the state, to get support as they pushed back against the proposal by submitting public comments, demonstrations, and protests and sharing information with their community.

Colorado Rising is entirely opposed to any kind of fracking in Colorado, particularly in a place like Weld County where it is so concentrated, said Co-Director Caitt Maeve. Residents have to deal with the consequences of oil and gas on a daily basis, like increased risk of wildlife, air pollution, environmental degradation, and the mental stress and uncertainty that results from living near drilling sites, she added.

“Erie’s full of young families, and our communities deserve clean air, clean water, healthy lifestyles, and not the toxic fallout from Big Oil’s selfish agenda,” Maeve said.

While Barnholt is at her own crossroads, deciding whether to stay in Erie or move on from the town she loves for the sake of her family’s health, she sees the town as being at its own crossroads. Will this be a place where the community thrives or the oil and gas industry?

“You can’t have heavy industry and a thriving community,” Barnholt said. “You just can’t. They can’t coexist and keep everyone healthy.”

The Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission will hold a local public hearing on the proposed Draco Pad on Oct. 29, 2024, at the Erie Middle School from 5 to 8 p.m.

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