350 Colorado has joined with over 30 allied organizations to launch a statewide coalition called Protect Our Colorado. Our goal? Put a stop to dirty, dangerous fracking in our state.

How can you help?  Call on your elected state representatives to place a moratorium on fracking.  Click here to send a letter—it’s fast and easy: act.350.org/letter/CO_frack_moratorium/

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a heavy industrial process whereby millions of barrels of water are mixed with hundreds of undisclosed and often toxic chemicals and then injected into the earth under extremely high pressure to force natural gas (methane) to the surface. Fracking has been exposed as a dirty and dangerous “extreme energy” that poses grave risks to public health, clean air and water, and a stable climate.

A huge amount of methane leaks from fracking well-heads (as much as 3-9% of total fracked methane is leaked into the atmosphere), leading some researchers to surmise that fracking may be as dangerous to our climate as burning coal—if not more so.

The first major goal of Protect Our Colorado is passage of fracking moratorium legislation through our state legislature. Click here to call on your elected representatives to sponsor a bill placing an immediate moratorium on fracking in our state.

Thanks so much for helping to protect our Colorado and our planet.

You can read 350 Colorado’s statement regarding the need to fix the “dual mission” (promote and regulate oil and gas in CO) of the COGCC (Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission) delivered in March, 2013, here.

Fracking by the numbers (from http://www.fractivist.blogspot.com/):

Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission Data and Failures

  • 43% of all operator spills result in groundwater contamination.
  • 3.1% of all operator spills result in surface water contamination.
  • 57% of all protective berms fail to prevent secondary industrial liquid waste migration.
  • 2003-2012 Weld County, CO – 1.7 million gallons of produced water and oil never recovered from the ground after operator spills. It’s still in the environment.
  • 2.4 billion square feet of surface has been contaminated by 1,000 O&G surface spills. Study: 1,000 spills in Weld County, CO
  • Laramie-Fox Hills Aquifer was contaminated with toluene and thermogenic gas by an O&G operation in 2009 – Weld County, CO
  • Colorado has 129,073 Completed O&G wells. ~48,000 are active and ~81,000 are inactive.
  • Early statistics show that ~55% of all abandoned wells are being re-entered/re-drilled.
  • Colorado has over 5,000 reported industrial waste spills on record.
  • There have been 3,552 oil and gas related public complaints filed with the COGCC.
  • The burden of expense has been shifted to the local emergency response departments to battle any fires or mishaps. This expense has been shifted by the oil and gas industry to citizen tax payers, meaning ‘you.’
  • There have been 3,964 ‘Notice of Alleged Violations’ filed by the COGCC.
  • There are 825 unique oil and gas operators listed at COGCC.
  • There are 693 ‘UIC SIMULTANEOUS DISPOSAL’, ‘UIC ENHANCED RECOVERY’, ‘UIC DISPOSAL’ sites in Colorado. Approximately 300 are active.
  • There are over 5,000 pits in Colorado of all statuses.
  • There are 11 gas storage facilities in Colorado.
  • There are 168 gas processing plants in Colorado.
  • There are 183 gas compressor stations in Colorado.
  • There are 108 gas gathering systems in Colorado.
  • There are more than 4,000 active oil and gas wells closer to homes than the COGCC 350′ setback mandates, thus denying the state to prevent or mitigate adverse impacts to human health
  • COGCC has failed to prevent or mitigate adverse environmental and human health impacts in accordance with their mission statement.

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