
This map depicts the total amount of water used to hydraulically fracture the wells at oil & gas locations across Weld County, Colorado. While the American Petroleum Institute (API) says “the average fracking job uses roughly 4 million gallons of water per well,” recent proposed projects such as the Draco Oil & Gas Development Plan (OGDP) in Erie estimate they’ll use over 20 million gallons to frac each of the 26 well bores at the Draco pad.
For the 668 wells completed in Weld County for 2023, hydraulic fracturing treatments required over 10 billion gallons of water, as shown in the chart below.

Billions of gallons of water are permanently poisoned each year, often injected into Class II disposal wells around the county, as shown on the map as purple triangles and in the chart below.

The data was compiled using GIS data downloaded from the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) web site at https://ecmc.state.co.us/ and public disclosure information from Frac Focus Data at https://fracfocus.org/data-download on July 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 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.
Data Sources
- Municipal boundaries and population counts from the Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) from the Colorado Information Marketplace.
- The final approved 2021 Colorado House redistricting plan from the Colorado Independent Redistricting Commission.
- Highways, major roads, local roads, water, and waterways from OpenStreetMap data for Colorado, courtesy of Geofabrik and the OpenStreetMap Foundation.
- Production data from the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission (ECMC fka COGCC).
- Public disclosure information from Frac Focus Data at https://fracfocus.org/data-download .