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 July 2, 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 printed 24″ x 36″ poster of any of these maps, and please contact us if you would like to have us create a similar map for your area.
Since we’re under the threat of additional drilling at Coyote Trails, here’s a deeper look at the connection between the noise, odor, and other complaints made about the drilling and hydraulic fracturing/completion operations at the 27 wells of the Coyote Trails pad in 2018 and 2019.
An aerial image of the Coyote Trails drilling pad, from a 2018 Denver Channel 7 News article.
tl;dr Extraction Oil & Gas intends to drill an additional 18 wells at the Coyote Trails pad in unincorporated Weld County, just outside of Erie, Colorado. We are working diligently with other organizations, the Town of Erie, and the City and County of Broomfield to prevent this Application for Permit to Drill (APD) from being approved. Most recently, their APD was denied by the ECMC Commissioners in a 4 to 1 vote during a January 24th, 2024 commission hearing. The operator will most likely resubmit their application with additional information, the timing of which is unknown.
We’ll be updating this FAQ as we get additional information from the various involved parties. Where possible, links to additional/source material have been provided.
As complicated and difficult as it can be to submit a complaint to the ECMC (fka COGCC) about an air quality, noise, or odor issue at an oil and gas facility in Colorado, the number of complaints lodged with any location is a good measure of the negative impact that oil & gas exploration has in our neighborhoods. With data obtained from the ECMC, here’s a data table showing the sites that logged more than 20 complaints of any kind since 2010.
On Wednesday, January 24th, the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) made the unusual move of hearing an application to drill (APD) at the existing Coyote Trails facility in unincorporated Weld County, just northeast of the Vista Ridge development in Erie.
Below is the testimony given by Erie Protector’s Editor in Chief, Christiaan van Woudenberg.
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.
