By Richard Martin, Contributing Editor

The natural gas industry in the West would seem to have enough problems already, with gas prices at record lows and a more restrictive set of regulations promulgated by the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission having taken effect this year. But now, this supposedly green source of electricity is coming in for renewed, intense scrutiny for its environmental impacts.

Part of that scrutiny is being fueled by an alarming new documentary on the exploration and production industry
in Garfield County. Titled “Split Estate”  produced by documentary filmmaker Debra Anderson, who’s worked for PBS, National Geographic, and HBO, the new movie presents in exhaustive detail the adverse effects of the oil-and-gas boom of the early 2000s in the high desert country of the Western Slope. At the urging of the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance, “Split Estate” was screened for Garfield County commissioners  last week, and the response could be described as muted embarrassment.

“I really need to sit down and see it again with a pen and paper,” Donna Gray, community affairs representative for Williams, the largest operator in the area, told the Colorado Independent.

The commissioners in Garfield are hearing it from all sides these days. Normally supportive of the industry, the local citizenry is increasingly alarmed by the horror tales emerging of contaminated wells and evidence of pervasive toxins in the region’s environment. “More than 400 people have signed a petition calling for an independent health study before oil and gas drilling in the Battlement Mesa community is approved,” the Grand Junction Sentinel reported last week. The site is controlled by Antero Resources, which plans to drill up to 200 wells from 10 pads.

Critics charge that local and state officials have entered into a deal-with-the-devil in regulating the natural gas industry that powered economies in the hard-bitten towns of Western Colorado during the most recent boom – less than two years in the past but now, it seems, a distant memory. The COGCC is engaged in “enforcement by negotiation,” charged attorney Richard Djokic, who represents local man Ned Prather, who was sickened by a glass of water at his remote cabin, northeast of DeBeque. The water Prather drank contained 100 micrograms per liter of BTEX – benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, volatile organic compounds found in byproducts of oil and gas drilling. Five MPL is considered the maximum safe level for humans.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has also stepped in, rejecting a permit issued by Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment for Anadarko Petroleum’s Frederick station, which compresses natural gas for pipeline transport. The state “failed to adequately support or explain” its decision to approve the facility based on an analysis of only a city block of surrounding area, the EPA charged, ordering the state to re-examine the application and re-consider the permit. The EPA action was prompted by a petition from environmental group Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action.

The fact is that, as fossil fuels go, natural gas is relatively clean and safe (coal mines make gas-drilling sites look positively Edenic by comparison), and replacing coal-fired plants with lower-emissions natgas plants is one of the key pillars of a long-term strategy to reduce global climate change. It would be shameful if the traditional methods of the exploration and production industry in the West helped to scuttle or slow those plans.