Earlier this month, the Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC), Colorado’s oil and gas regulator, released draft rules to approve or disapprove oil and gas projects. The draft rules fall far short of the ECMC’s mandate to regulate oil and gas development “in a manner that protects public health, safety, welfare, the environment and wildlife.”

In September, the ECMC has another opportunity to fulfill its obligation to protect Colorado’s communities, but once again, the interests of the oil and gas industry appear to be taking precedence over the health of Colorado’s communities.

As members of Colorado’s Environmental Justice Action Task Force, we call on the ECMC and Governor Jared Polis to strengthen these regulations to hold oil and gas polluters accountable and stop rampant oil and gas pollution in Colorado’s disproportionately affected communities.

We represent two of 22 members of the Environmental Justice Action Task Force appointed in 2021 and served as co-chairs of the Cumulative Environmental and Justice Impact Analysis Subcommittee. The Task Force worked extensively with community members and state partners for nearly a year and ultimately developed a set of recommendations to address environmental injustice in Colorado. ECMC’s latest draft rule lacks several key provisions needed to protect disproportionately impacted communities from the harmful impacts of oil and gas development.

We are not the only task force urging the ECMC to tighten these draft rules. Meera Fickling, building decarbonization manager at Western Resource Advocates, Hilda Nucete, health equity officer at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Ean Thomas Tafoya, Colorado state director at GreenLatinos, and Jamie Valdez, chair of the Sierra Club’s Sangre de Cristo Group, all support the opinions expressed in this article.

The bill fails to protect residents living near oil and gas production areas, particularly those who already struggle with pollution and related health problems such as asthma, cancer, or autoimmune diseases. By not requiring oil and gas production activities to occur within 2,000 feet of disproportionately affected communities and limiting public participation in the permitting process, the state is putting industry profits ahead of people’s safety and well-being.

By failing to protect Colorado communities, which is a key part of ECMC’s mission, these bills perpetuate environmental racism, as many of the Colorado communities most impacted by oil and gas pollution are communities of color and low-income communities. According to Protégete’s Colorado Latino Climate Justice Policy Handbook, counties in Colorado with high Latino populations have a disproportionately high number of oil and gas wells and a disproportionately low number of air quality monitoring stations. These proposed rules ignore the spirit of environmental justice and are inconsistent with the final recommendations we made as members of the Environmental Justice Action Task Force.

Our final recommendations included that state agencies should use the definition of disproportionately impacted communities (DICs), which is explained in detail here. However, the ECMC’s latest draft rules favor a different definition, cumulatively impacted communities (CICs), which excludes many areas historically impacted by oil and gas activities, as well as nearly all communities on Colorado’s Western Slope. The ECMC is not the only state agency that uses CICs. Several environmental organizations are involved in ongoing litigation with the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission over the use of the term CIC, which includes only a fraction of the communities included in the DIC definition.

The ECMC should use the definition of DICs recommended by the Task Force and used by state legislators. This definition ensures that the communities most affected by environmental injustice are accurately identified and protected.

In addition, the ECMC should strengthen its proposed draft rule in three ways:

• Close loopholes to ensure that no new oil and gas development is permitted within 2,000 feet of DICs unless every resident living within that radius gives their informed consent.

• Require a community air quality assessment before issuing new oil and gas permits, and deny permits if oil and gas activities would raise air pollution to levels harmful to health.

• Set and enforce strict limits on ozone-forming, toxic air pollutants during the summer months, typically when air quality is at its worst along Colorado’s Front Range.

Everyone in Colorado has the right to live in a healthy and safe environment. Instead of cleaning up oil and gas pollution, the ECMC’s latest draft regulations make concessions to oil and gas polluters and ignore community concerns. This is unacceptable. Governor Polis and the ECMC must protect and listen to the voices of the communities most affected by environmental racism and hold oil and gas polluters accountable.

Renée Chacon is co-founder and executive director of Womxn from the Mountain and a member of the Commerce City Council for District III. Beatriz Soto is the Director of Protégete at Conservation Colorado and co-chair of the Clean Water for All Colorado Coalition.

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