Opinion: Anti-energy Initiative 97 threatens Colorado’s public schools

Bob Schaffer | The Coloradoan

July marks a new state fiscal year wherein Colorado’s public schools receive their first installment on a massive cash infusion – a considerable 6.2 percent increase over last year – thanks in part to hefty collections of new state taxes and fees paid by those who gather Colorado’s clean natural gas, and others who harvest energy-packed organic compounds.

Regrettably, the generous windfall is already being threatened by a well-organized, special-interest group hoping to persuade voters to slash Colorado’s precious energy and mineral revenues immediately, and for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, teachers and children in the state’s public schools will win again this year, as they did in 2016 when similarly attacked.

The conflict involves Initiative 97. Its supporters must first get enough signatures to qualify the measure for November’s state ballot.

Secondly, a majority of voters must be persuaded to support it. A group called Rising Colorado is behind Initiative 97, which it depicts as an unadorned “public-safety” regulation.

Honest disclosure is prudent here: For the past nine years, I have been a high school principal, and headmaster of a K-12 public school in the Fort Collins-based Poudre School District; meaning my institution, my students, and my teaching co-workers benefit directly from state revenues generated by taxes on oil, and natural-gas harvesting. In fact, we benefit enormously from them.

Moreover, my previous career was as vice-president of an energy firm heavily invested in the wind-power industry. Prior to that, as a member of the U.S. Congress representing Colorado; and, earlier as a Colorado state senator, I established a longstanding and consistent record of supporting renewable-energy producers at both the state, and national levels.

That’s all to say I don’t deny a personal favoritism for renewable energy. And, I definitely favor devoting tax revenues cultivated by Colorado’s conventional energy resources to the holy cause of educating children.

While openly confessing these predispositions, my professional experiences have only impressed upon me the commonsense, western values of the vast majority of Coloradans with which I wholly concur: Those of us considered environmental conservationists have long supported the levelheaded development of Colorado’s environmental and health-safety standards that apply to all state energy production – the most comprehensive energy-production regulations in the country.

Indeed, on a statewide basis, harvesters are scrupulously regulated by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, or COGCC, and the Department of Public Health and Environment.

Locally, our county and city ensure more direct energy-production safety under land-use planning, traffic control, building codes, fire inspections, and emergency-service compliance.

Additionally, multiple federal regulations provide an even wider regulatory framework through well-known laws like the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Occupational Health and Safety Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act, and the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, and more.

Naïve to these safety assurances, Initiative 97 proposes restricting energy harvesters to an impractical half-mile well-boring “setback” distance from various geographic features and defined human activities such as neighborhoods, and roads.

This point-of-harvest distance exceeds by five times our government’s current setback standard, which state energy experts say would all but end new, clean, natural-gas harvesting in Colorado, and any tax revenues new harvesting would earn for every Colorado public school – without palpably improving public safety, or environmental integrity.

Just as alarmingly, Initiative 97 exempts oil drilling on national forests and all federal open spaces. Should it pass, our national forests would be among the few places left open for new oil-drilling permits.

According to COGCC, 85 percent of Colorado’s non-federal land would be off-limits to new natural-gas harvesting. A restriction of Initiative 97’s magnitude, according to a June analysis released by the Colorado Alliance of Mineral and Royalty Owners, could cost our state an unfathomable $26 billion in lost revenues, and legal takings claims.

As citizen owners of the most beautiful, energy-rich state, Coloradans must strenuously demand public officials and natural-energy leaders be wise stewards of both the environment, and our energy economy for the sustained benefit of our schools, public institutions, communities, and people.

It’s imperative that Colorado voters lead by example. Initiative 97 can only threaten public-school funding by guaranteeing a reckless demise of Colorado’s economy. It’s an irresponsible, dangerous proposal.

Bob Schaffer is headmaster at Liberty Common School in Fort Collins. His column appears monthly.