The Colorado State Senate on Wednesday gave its final approval along party lines to a bill that will dramatically reform the way oil and gas businesses are regulated.

The legislation, Senate Bill 181, is one of the most hotly debated issues in front of the General Assembly this year. Wednesday’s final vote followed a day-long debate. Before the bill goes to Gov. Jared Polis for his signature, the state House, which is considered far more liberal than the Senate, must debate the bill as well.

Among the changes, the bill would make is changing the mission of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to protect public health and safety. Supporters of the bill also say the bill will ensure more local control over oil and gas regulations.

Republican state Sen. John Cooke of Weld County, which has more extraction operations than any other part of the state, said the bill flies in the face of local control.

“If we opt out, we have to follow the same rules,” Cooke said, pointing out that local governments can’t write less restrictive rules, only stricter ones. “That’s not local control.”

Other Republicans spoke out against the possible financial impact the bill could have for oil and gas workers, communities that are heavily dependent on oil and gas, as well as the state’s own coffers.

State Sen. Rob Woodward, a Loveland Republican, painted the darkest possibilities: “Marriages will crumble, suicides will increase.”

Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat and one of the bill’s sponsor, said he believes the legislation will actually stabilize the oil and gas industry.

“In the end, I think it’s in their interest to have common sense reforms,” he said.

In debate Tuesday and in the final hearing Wednesday, Sen. Vicki Marble, R-Fort Collins, assailed what she called the politicizing of a 2017 home explosion in Firestone that killed two men and severely injured a woman, Erin Martinez. The bill’s supporters have cited the accident as an example of the need for stronger health and safety protections.

“I represent Firestone and I’m getting a little bit tired of the misrepresentation of the explosion that happened and those poor family members being brought into the discussion, which has nothing to do with this bill,” Marble said Tuesday, adding that she sponsored a bill last year to deal with abandoned wells.

Martinez, whose husband and brother were killed in the explosion, supports the bill. The legislation includes provisions that would require better mapping of flow lines from wells and testing of inactive lines before they’re turned back on. Local investigators said the explosion was caused by a build-up of methane gas leaking from a flow line that wasn’t properly capped when a nearby well it was attached to was turned off and then reactivated.

“I would not be fighting for SB 181 if the problem had already been ‘fixed.’ It was not an orphaned well that caused the explosion of my house killing my husband Mark and brother Joey,” Martinez said in a statement. “It was an improperly abandoned flow line that had not been capped or disconnected from the well head. No previous legislation has properly addressed the issues that impacted my family.”

Martinez said she would be willing to meet with Marble to explain the full circumstances.