Suit Filed to Defend Clean Air for Denver Metro Region

Feds Failing to Limit Fracking Pollution, Rein in Smog

Additional Contact:Samantha Ruscavage-Barz, WildEarth Guardians, (505) 401-4180, sruscavagebarz@wildearthguardians.org


Denver—WildEarth Guardians today filed suit in federal court to protect public health and overturn the oil and gas industry’s plans for fracking more than 36,000 acres of public lands in the Denver Metro Area of Colorado. 

“While the Denver Metro Area is choking on smog, the oil and gas industry is filling the air with even more harmful air pollution,” said Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians’ Climate and Energy Program Director.  “For the health of everyone living in this region, it’s time to stop giving a blank check for the fossil fuel industry to poison the air we breathe.” 

For many years now, the Denver Metro region, spanning a nine-county area, from Douglas County north to Larimer and Weld Counties, has been struggling to rein in smog pollution.  Declared by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 to be a “dirty air” region, air quality regularly violates health-based limits on ozone pollution.

The key ingredient of smog, ozone is a poisonous gas that forms when pollution from smokestacks, tailpipes, and oil and gas operations react with sunlight.  Breathing ozone, even at very small concentrations, poses myriad adverse health effects.

The oil and gas industry is the largest contributor to the Denver Metro Area’s smog problem.  Reports by the State of Colorado show that in 2017, drilling, fracking, and production in the region will release more smog forming volatile organic compounds than all the region’s cars and trucks

A recent peer-reviewed study found that oil and gas operations are a significant contributor to smog pollution in the region, with industry fueling nearly 20% of the problem.

Despite the region’s chronic bad air, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in 2015 opened the door for more than 36,000 acres of new oil and gas fracking on public lands in the region.  The agency issued 67 new oil and gas leases, most underneath the Pawnee National Grassland north of Denver, effectively handing over the rights for industry to drill, frack, and pollute.

“The Bureau of Land Management is handing over our public lands to the oil and gas industry and forcing all of us in the Denver Metro Area to pay the bill of increased air pollution and threats to our health,” said Nichols.  “Our clean air is too important to sacrifice just because the fracking industry wants to make more money.”

Today’s suit targets the Bureau of Land Management’s failure to comply with the U.S. Clean Air Act before issuing the new oil and gas leases.  The law bars the agency from taking actions that cause or contribute to violations of air quality standards.  Here, the Bureau argued that development of the 67 new oil and gas leases was speculative, even though industry has developed extensively in the region.

The lawsuit comes as regulators continue to fall short of cleaning up the Denver Metro Area’s ozone pollution and ensuring protection of public health.  In May of 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency declared that Colorado had failed to clean up the Denver Metro Area’s smog pollution by legally required deadlines

And even though the State of Colorado has taken some steps to limit emissions from oil and gas operations, recent modeling shows that these measures will not be enough to curtail unhealthy smog.  While current standards limit the amount of ozone in the air to no more than 70 parts per billion over an eight-hour period, modeling by Colorado shows that concentrations will remain around 75 parts per billion, continuing to endanger people in the Denver Metro Area.

“Under the law, public health comes before the fracking industry’s profits,” said Samantha Ruscavage-Barz, Staff Attorney for WildEarth Guardians.  “We’re seeing to it that the law is enforced and that the Bureau of Land Management’s illegal oil and gas leasing comes to an end.”

A map of the oil and gas leases challenged by WildEarth Guardians can be viewed here.

Pictures of oil and gas development on the Pawnee National Grassland can be viewed here.


 

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