Someone recently asked, “How much of Erie’s soil has been and will be hauled away?” The short answer is 8,722 cubic yards of contaminated soils have been excavated from Erie since the ECMC started making this data available in 2014. This is equivalent to 632 dump truck loads, each carrying 14 cubic yards. Of these 18 spills, 16 reported an “unknown” volume of oil spilled, and 13 reported an “unkown” volume of condensate spilled.
Here’s the breakout for each year:
Year
Number of Spills
Total Soil Excavated (Cubic Yards)
2014
–
–
2015
1
1,200
2016
1
60
2017
3
4,413
2018
–
–
2019
–
–
2020
3
1,975
2021
–
–
2022
3
685
2023
5
350
2024
2
39
When we expand our search to the entire State of Colorado, there are 2,292 spills that required soil excavation, with an average of 165 cubic yards excavated for a total of 687,513 cubic yards excavated. The distribution of these data is shown in the chart below:
This chart shows the distribution of number of cubic yards of soil excavated for the 2,292 spills reported to the ECMC where some volume of soil was excavated.
After 8 hours of testimony and deliberations over two days last week, the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) voted unanimously on Friday to indefinitely stay a decision on the Draco Oil & Gas Development Plan (OGDP) in unincorporated Weld County, less than 500 feet outside of the Town of Erie.
The proposed Draco wellbores extend over 5 miles west through Erie and into Boulder County, and will hydraulically fracture and extract minerals underneath 4,500 homes. These wellbores also threaten 72 existing wells in the drilling & spacing unit (DSU) and many more nearby, prompting concern, outrage, and action from local residents. The Draco stay decision is cause to celebrate … right? Right?
The proposed site is surrounded by the Denver Regional Landfill to the north and the Front Range Landfill to the east. As of June 13, 2024, the site is host to 22 producing wells, 7 shut in wells, and 2 plugged and abandoned wells. All 29 of the active wells on the site will have to be plugged and abandoned in the future.
The Town of Erie has logged the most complaints to the ECMC of any municipality in Colorado, as shown on this map of oil & gas infrastructure and complaints. Data from the ECMC.
This map depicts the existing oil & gas infrastructure in and around the Town of Erie, just north of Denver, Colorado. Erie is on the front lines of the battle between responsible residential development and oil & gas exploration of the Denver-Julesburg basin. During drilling and completions operations at the Waste Connections and Pratt sites just north of the Vista Ridge development in Erie, almost 1,000 complaints were logged for noise and odor issues.
The data was compiled using GIS data downloaded from the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) web site at https://ecmc.state.co.us/ on May 3, 2025.
This map has been created for the Erie Protectors in partnership with EcoCarto, a local mapping consulting firm. Visit their online store to order a high resolution printed 24″ x 36″ poster or PDF of any of these maps, and please contact us if you would like to have us create a similar map for your area.
Thank you for joining us at the Erie Community Library on June 12th from 5:00 to 7:00 for an information and question & answer session about the Draco Oil & Gas Development Plan (OGDP). We had over 50 people attend! Community activists, local elected officials, and other knowledgeable experts were on hand to answer your questions about this large-scale oil & gas development plan that affects neighborhoods in Erie, Colorado.
Watch the recording of the April 16, 2024 Erie Board of Trustees Draco Study Session on the Town of Erie’s web site. The Draco presentation begins at the 54 minute mark.
Well locations with potentially interfering wells in producing or shut-in state are identified in red circles with dotted red lines.
This map depicts the existing oil & gas infrastructure in and around the proposed drilling and spacing unit (DSU) for the Draco Oil and Gas Development Plan (OGPD). The well pad for the proposed 26 wells is several miles east of the DSU, just north of the Crestone Hub at CR 6 and CR 7 in unincorporated Weld County.
Colorado House District 19 is inundated with oil & gas infrastructure; shown here are the hundreds of wells and directional lines that cross the district.
This map depicts the existing and planned oil & gas infrastructure within and surrounding Colorado House District 19.
It was compiled using GIS data downloaded from the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) web site at https://ecmc.state.co.us/ on June 11, 2024.
This map has been created for the Erie Protectors in partnership with EcoCarto, a local mapping consulting firm. Visit their online store to order a high resolution printed 24″ x 36″ poster or PDF of any of these maps, and please contact us if you would like to have us create a similar map for your area.
This visualization shows the amount of water used to frac each of the wells drilled within the municipal boundaries of Erie, Colorado since 2017. The data is grouped by operator, with the most recently fracked wells shown first. In total, 626.48 million gallons of water have been used to frac these wells, with a median of 9.64 million gallons of water used to frac each of the 57 wells.
In Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V of this series, we showed that each hydraulic fractured well permanently poisons millions of gallons of water.
Once again, the Erie community is under assault with the 26-well proposed Draco pad and an additional 18 wells proposed to be drilled at the Coyote Trails pad. Let’s look at the data for the Cosslett East wells, completed in September 2023.
A total of 178,725,812 gallons of water were used to drill these wells, with a median of 13,261,197 gallons per well. This is 18.4% less than the median water use for the original Cosslett wells, but without completion information for these wells (the data is not yet available at the ECMC), it’s not obvious why. For reference, here is a visual representation of the two sets of directional wellbores:
A comparison of the directional wellbores for Cosslett (left) and Cosslett East (right).
Once the completion data for the Cosslett East wells becomes available, we’ll update this analysis.
In Part I and Part II, we showed that each hydraulic fractured well permanently poisons millions of gallons of water. This week a new Duke University study was released, claiming “the amount of water used per well for hydraulic fracturing surged by up to 770 percent between 2011 and 2016 in all major U.S. shale gas and oil production regions.”
Since it has been a while since we’ve gathered this data from FracFocus, a quick calculation shows Extraction Oil & Gas has used 102,044,434 gallons of water to frack the 10 wells at the Coyote Trails pad just east of Erie, Colorado in unincorporated Weld County.
Extraction Oil & Gas used 102,044,434 gallons of water to frack the 10 wells at Coyote Trails.
Once again, let’s say it out loud:
Extraction Oil & Gas has used one hundred two million, forty-four thousand, four hundred and thirty four gallons of water to frack the ten wells at Coyote Trails.
Keep in mind that these 10 wells are just the beginning; 4 Form 2s have already been approved and another 24 are pending for this location.
