I’ve been sleepless, irritated and concerned about the major industrial activity oil and gas operations put within a few hundred feet of my home, as well as millions of other homes, schools, playgrounds and more in Colorado.

There has to be a better way — and Proposition 112 is a start. That’s why I support it.

I’m not a lobbyist or an activist. This is just my perspective as a homeowner and mother in Erie, where I have been surrounded by major drilling operations — several of which have been closer than 2,500 feet to my house. Prop. 112 would still allow for energy extraction in our great state, but would create a much more sensible setback from where we all live, study, play, and breathe.

We breathe about 20,000 times per day. What we put into the air, we put into ourselves.

In just the last three years, there have been literally thousands of residential complaints filed with the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, mostly due to excessive noise and terrible odors.

There are 239 pages from 2015 to 2018 of single-entry complaints; nothing has been done to help residents. Nothing.

What follows is just a tiny window of one woman’s experience, from one year, and one small regional area.

In 2017, the odor and noise at my home were sometimes so intense that no one could sleep at night, let alone open our windows or go outside to enjoy the great Colorado outdoors.

My husband and I bought a sound meter which we would use in our young child’s bedroom in the middle of the night. There in her room — in our neighborhood zoned for low-density residential development — it was louder than the legal sound levels allowed in manufacturing facilities located in industrial zones.

Last summer, more than 5,000 gallons of Anadarko’s oil spilled in the dense residential neighborhood of Erie Commons, which includes trails, parks and a splash pad popular with little children. Hundreds of residents found out about it, for the first time, only after it was reported in the media.

Also last summer, there was a fatal house explosion in Firestone, killing two men and gravely injuring a woman, from an Anadarko-owned well that had filled their home with explosive gas.

Also last summer, a plug-and-abandon site was forced by the state to shut down after Crestone Peak Resources violated safety standards just 25 yards from the Aspen Ridge Elementary School playground.

This site was venting cancer-causing agents over the playground of young children, but Crestone never informed the town and possibly not even the school about the state’s actions or what was going on. (Crestone officials say they think someone there told a school administrator at one point verbally, but this is unconfirmed.) People only found out about it after residents took it to the media — a full two months after the state’s actions.

The language I hear from my friends in the oil and gas industry is that we’re all “emotional.” They call us “surface dwellers” instead of “people.” They say these are “emotional” arguments by extremists for setbacks, and not based on facts, or our life experiences, or hopes for a better, safer and healthier Colorado.

Well, as far as diminishing language goes, “emotional” can feel like a put-down. As a very matter-of-fact businesswoman and homeowner, I’ll go ahead and embrace my emotions here, as I urge my fellow voters to support sensible setbacks.

I’m frustrated that the industry hasn’t responsibly responded to literally thousands of complaints to the state oil and gas commission by trying to clean up its act, by mitigating the problems Colorado residents have reported.

I’m angry when I can’t sleep, cannot sit on my own porch or open my windows because the massive fracking operations near my home (closer than 2,500 feet) have made it too loud, too smelly and too unpleasant to enjoy the home I own. The drilling operations that formerly impacted my life over my 16 years in Erie have been a handful of wells, between one or two and eight. The industry now is embarking on “mega-pads” of 40 wells and more.

I’m very hopeful, because more than 100,000 fellow Coloradans signed the “Yes on 112” petitions in order to give us mere surface-dwelling residents some balance with the oil and gas industry — arguably the most powerful industry on Earth right now.

So: Frustrated, sometimes angry and very hopeful. Those are all emotions. I’ll keep them.

Erika Stutzman Deakin is a native Coloradan, a mother, and lives in Erie.



To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.