Less than three weeks after Gov. Jared Polis signed into law a sweeping bill giving cities and towns in Colorado new powers to regulate oil and gas drilling, communities sitting atop the state’s vast fossil fuel deposits are already looking at how to flex their newfound muscle.

Lafayette, just hours after the bill was signed, added another six months to its moratorium on drilling in the city. Broomfield next week will discuss temporarily banning new oil and gas wells while it mulls new rules on the industry.

Larimer County is launching an Oil and Gas Regulations Task Force that will meet over the spring and summer to come up with recommendations on how county leaders can move forward imposing limits on an activity that has been at the center of recent public health debates.

“I think it’s no-holds barred for communities,” said Joe Salazar, a former state lawmaker from Thornton who heads the anti-fracking group Colorado Rising. “The oil and gas industry has been abusive for a long time and now communities are going to fight back. It’s the dawn of a new era.”

That new era began on April 16 when the governor signed into law Senate Bill 19-181, which passed the Democratic-led legislature earlier in the month.

RELATED: Effort to repeal Colorado’s new oil, gas law is dropped — for now, sponsors say

The measure transfers much of the state’s authority over oil and gas activity to local governments. It also fundamentally revamps the mission of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the main regulatory body over energy extraction in the state, to prioritize public health and safety in permitting decisions and abandon the agency’s traditional role of fostering energy development.

In Brighton, city leaders have started talking about putting new rules — such as inspection fees, noise mitigation and mandated use of pipelines — into the city code so that the municipality doesn’t have to negotiate with oil and gas companies over those issues every time a drilling application is filed.

Matt Sura, an oil and gas attorney for a half dozen northern Front Range communities perched over the mineral-rich Denver-Julesburg basin, told elected leaders at a recent Brighton City Council study session that one of the most notable changes from SB 181 is the doing away of state pre-emption in matters of energy extraction.

“Local governments’ hands have been tied for as long as we’ve been doing this work together,” Sura said told City Council members in late April. “You couldn’t go beyond what the state required. And that made things difficult.”

That difficulty has played out in recent years in loud city council meetings, expensive and contentious ballot issues, rowdy Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission hearings, and legal challenges that have ascended all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court, as communities sitting in the shadow of oil and gas’ industrial footprint have attempted to blunt the industry’s impacts.

Despite the governor’s stated hope at SB 181’s signing that the law would put an end to the state’s ongoing “oil and gas wars,” resistance to the new statute started to solidify almost immediately.

First there was a proposal — recently pulled by its backers — to get a measure on this fall’s ballot that would overturn the new law. Proponents of repeal say they could bring it back for the 2020 election, depending on what communities do with local regulations.

Then last week, Weld County announced that it planned to formally designate itself an “oil and gas local-control county,” whereby it will “(take) control back from the state” to “maintain the working relationship we have had with the energy industry.”

Weld County is easily the top producer of oil and gas in Colorado, accounting for 89 percent of all crude oil production and one-third of all natural gas production in the state. Commissioner Mike Freeman said funding for schools, roads and other services in Weld County is heavily reliant on the tax proceeds remitted by oil and gas companies.

“We believe that 181 gives us the power of pre-emption over the state on land-use powers,” Freeman said. “If it pre-empts the state one way, it pre-empts the state the other way.”

“It’s in their face”

Sara Loflin, executive director of Erie-based League of Oil and Gas Impacted Coloradans, said communities should take full advantage of the monumental shift in the state’s legal landscape to explore what more they can do to corral an industry that produced a record 167 million barrels of oil in Colorado last year and has nearly 6,500 drilling applications pending.

Pushback from the industry and its allies may be forthcoming, Loflin said, but that shouldn’t stop the discussion from happening.

“In Broomfield and Adams counties, where they face the imminent expansion of large-scale drilling, there is a sense of urgency that we need to take a look at this now,” she said.

In Thornton, the city isn’t sure yet whether it will try to resurrect oil and gas regulations it passed two years ago that a judge struck down as being in conflict with state law. The City Council is scheduled to tackle the topic of life under SB 181 during a planning session Tuesday.

Abbey Palte, an 11-year resident of the city’s Signal Creek neighborhood, said her neighbors want to see what Thornton is willing to do to harness the powers it now possesses under SB 181.

“There is a sense that we need to look to our City Council and county commissioners,” she said. “People are waking up to it because it’s in their face.”

Last month, Palte posted a video to Facebook of a fleet of seismology trucks trundling down her street. The vehicles were there to do a vibration-based 3-D seismic survey of her neighborhood to “produce a detailed image of the geological layers deep beneath the Earth’s surface,” according to a notice she received from Great Western Operating Co. that she shared with The Denver Post.

In recent years, communities north and east of the metro area have been eyed for the next wave of mineral development. In Commerce City, more than 200 wells are in the planning stages and neighbors there have been actively fighting oil and gas activity so close to homes.

They worry about truck traffic, noise, lights and noxious emissions from oil and gas operations that can have more than 20 wells drawing up underground minerals at a single location.

Just days after SB 181 was enacted last month, a new nine-member oil and gas focus group held its first of three meetings. The group, which convenes again May 22, will provide input on potential rules Commerce City might impose on the industry — now that it can.

“We have the opportunity to do a lot more with oil and gas than we were able to do before,” Councilman Steven Douglas said. “With 181, we can really lay down the reasons why wells may not be able to go where they previously could go.”

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission will spend the next year writing rules on oil and gas regulation based on the dictates of SB 181.

Lawsuits, initiatives and elections

But new power doesn’t mean unbridled power, industry backers say. John Brackney, a former Arapahoe County commissioner who helped spearhead the SB 181 repeal effort, said the watchword is “overreach” by local government leaders.

“Should they overreach, the oil and gas industry and the business community will give us full backing to put initiatives on the ballot (in 2020),” Brackney said.

And such measures would likely get solid support from the electorate if results from last November’s election are any indication, Brackney said. Voters soundly defeated Proposition 112, a measure that would have mandated a 2,500-foot setback from homes and schools for new oil and gas wells.

Residents, he said, recognize the critical role the energy industry plays in keeping Colorado economically healthy and the nation less reliant on foreign shipments of oil. A report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute a few years ago concluded that the oil and gas industry contributes about $31 billion to Colorado’s economy and supports roughly 232,000 jobs, both directly and indirectly.

“There is no doubt that the citizens of Colorado won’t allow oil and gas development to cease,” Brackney said.

There will also be pushback from those who own the underground energy deposits should they be denied access to their property through overregulation, said Neil Ray, president of the Colorado Alliance of Mineral and Royalty Owners.

“If there’s a regulatory taking, it will be pursued,” Ray said. “This isn’t baking brownies here — this is serious money, these are serious property issues.”

Aside from the courts and ballot initiatives, resistance to new oil and gas regulations could once again emerge in local elections. In 2017, pro-industry organization Vital for Colorado gave more than $325,000 to local campaign committees in Greeley, Broomfield, Thornton, Aurora and Loveland to help get business-friendly candidates elected.

Anti-fracking groups also poured money into those races, but not at the same level as their opponents. Vital for Colorado spokesman Rich Coolidge told The Denver Post last week that it currently has no plans to get involved in local elections.

“But we are watching very closely to see what kind of candidates and ballot measures receive support from the League of Conservation Voters, Food & Water Watch and other big national activist groups,” Coolidge said.

“Reasonable and necessary”

While a post-SB 181 battle royale appears to be shaping up between the same forces that have long fought over escalating oil and gas activity at the periphery of Front Range neighborhoods, Kevin Bommer, executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, said the regulatory landscape might not shift as much as some people think.

Local elected leaders are concerned about the jobs and economic well-being the industry produces along with worries about public health and the environment, Bommer said.

“Municipal leaders are pragmatic and cautious, and I would anticipate they will move slowly and cautiously,” he said.

Plus, many communities have already put in place operator agreements or memoranda of understanding, in which drillers take voluntary steps to lessen their impact on residents, such as using pipelines instead of trucks to move product or increasing the distance of their wells from houses.

Dan Haley, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said operator agreements have been “an important tool for several years.”

“It takes a commitment to thoughtful and lengthy discussion, but operator agreements are a way to coordinate and construct unique approaches to local energy development that values community interests, property owners and business needs,” he said.

Just one day before SB 181 took effect, Aurora became the largest city in Colorado to commit to hammering out operator agreements with oil and gas companies drilling within city limits.

Most notably, new rules on oil and gas development would be tempered by SB 181’s own language, which states that any new regulation put forward must be “reasonable and necessary.” While the interpretation of that phrase will likely end up in court, industry advocates say it’s critical.

“The inclusion of ‘necessary and reasonable’ provides a backstop in Colorado statute that ideally will ensure that objectivity wins out over subjectivity,” Haley said. “We have to operate within a framework that is based on facts and data.”

Sura, the oil and gas attorney, said one size does not fit all when it comes to implementing SB 181. At the Brighton study session last month, he said individual communities will make rules — or not make rules — according to their sensibilities, population and culture.

“Every community is going to have different needs and different ways of addressing oil and gas,” he said. “And this legislation allows Brighton to be Brighton, Commerce City to be Commerce City and Boulder to be Boulder.”

At its core, he said, Colorado’s new oil and gas law allows a conversation about local regulations to take place without fear that ideas that emerge from those talks will immediately face litigation.

“Oil and gas operators no longer have the ability to hold state pre-emption over the heads of local government,” Sura said.

Oil production in Colorado (millions of barrels)

2011 — 39.5

2012 — 49.6

2013 — 66.2

2014 — 95.6

2015 — 122.8

2016 — 116.5

2017 — 130.7

2018 — 167.7

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Active wells (top counties)

Weld — 21,452

Garfield — 11,768

Yuma — 3,833

La Plata — 3,294

Las Animas — 2,903

Rio Blanco — 2,874

Colorado — 53,031

Source: Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission