The Loveland City Council deferred an item of business regarding a new ordinance updating oil and gas regulations during Tuesday’s regular council meeting and unanimously voted to extend the existing moratorium for another six months.
The city’s current moratorium was set to expire on Sept. 1, but Councilwoman Dana Foley requested an extension of the moratorium because the city council had received new feedback on the first draft of the ordinance. Foley also said councilors did not have enough information, pointing to a specific standard document that was not included in an agenda packet.
According to Kim Overholt, the city’s communications manager, city staff received a letter from the American Petroleum Institute (API) the day before the council meeting.
The letter said the first draft of the ordinance, which the city submitted to them for feedback, contained several provisions that either duplicated state regulations or overrode the authority of state regulators.
“Regulation must be both reasonable and necessary. Equally important, actions must be supported by strong evidence. We note that many of the recommendations presented by the city overlap with efforts at the state level,” Alejandra Major, deputy director of API Colorado, said in the letter.
The 13 provisions of the API regulation in question ranged from the regulation of pipelines and expiring permits to the question of how far oil and gas production can be from residential buildings.
Provisions in the first draft of the ordinance state that developments must be at least 1,000 feet from residential buildings, but the API stated that the regulations should be consistent with the Colorado Energy & Carbon Management Commission’s 500-foot rule.
The difference in setbacks from the developments is a testament to the differing desires of the City Council. Mayor Jackie Marsh and Councilwoman Laura Light-Kovacs called for stricter regulations on the industry, while Councilman Steve Olson and Foley called for less restrictive measures.
Loveland City Manager Rod Wensing agreed with the decision to extend the moratorium during the city council meeting.
“Because this issue is a council-mandated moratorium, staff is here to support that moratorium. It’s really up to council if they want to extend it, have more conversations, have more conversations with the community. Staff is here to support you,” Wensing said.
Brett Limbaugh, director of city development assistance, also agreed with the decision to extend the moratorium and postponed the planned item of business during Tuesday’s meeting.
“We have a draft regulation for you to review tonight, but we just received comments from industry experts this week and I would like to take the opportunity to incorporate those into the regulation if we see fit and perhaps provide you with a more polished document,” Limbaugh said.
Councilors said they appreciated Limbaugh’s honesty, but even before the motion was voted on, concerns arose about which side of the table was more strongly represented in the update process.
Olson and Samson raised similar concerns to those in the past about the oil and gas industry not being represented during the process of updating the ordinance. Olson suggested having representatives from the oil and gas industry present at future council meetings to “have both sides at the table.”
Light-Kovacs agreed with Olson and Samson, but also said that the other side must be represented equally.
“I agree we should include all sides of the table, and that should include some (non-governmental organizations) that are committed to environmental and social justice. So if we’re going to include industry, we should include those folks as well. That way we get the whole picture, hear different perspectives and can choose the best path forward for Loveland,” Light-Kovacs said.
Overholt was among the city staff working on updating the regulations and said the process now involves getting more input from the public and interested stakeholders.
She said staff were doing their best to gather input from a range of stakeholders, but a crowdsourcing platform used to contact key environmental stakeholders was not working properly.
“We couldn’t reach these people directly, all emails bounced back. There was no way to communicate with the people on the environmental side and invite them, after the initial input, to come back and give more feedback,” Overholt said.
Overholt did not predict when the ordinance would be brought before the City Council again, but assured that revisions to the ordinance would be full of balanced input.
“We need to make sure that the information is balanced when we collect it,” Overholt said. “We try to avoid bias and targeted influence. So we look at who all the stakeholders are, including residents. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
To view the draft regulations and to provide comments, visit lovgov.org/oilandgas.
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