Homeowners Feel Heat in West Coal Boom
- April
- 12
10:53 pm Live Literature
“You don’t know day to day when you turn on your faucet whether you’re going to have good, clean water or whether there’s going to be chemicals in there that you’re unaware of,” said Tracy Dahl, a design engineer who built a home atop a mountain on North Fork in 1995.Higher natural gas prices and the push for domestic energy development have made the Rockies’ unconventional sources more economical. That’s created conflicts with the area’s growing population, most of which lives on a split estate: when one party owns the land and another owns the minerals underneath.The split occurred across the West as the federal government granted homesteads but retained the mineral rights, or when people sold the land but kept the minerals. Federal and state laws give mineral owners or leaseholders the right to reasonable use of the surface to extract the minerals.Most of the gas drilled in the Raton Basin, which includes the ranch, is from coal-bed methane — gas trapped in coal seams that once provided a thriving coal-mining industry. Roughly 2,600 coal-bed methane wells have been drilled.Methane gas was a liability in coal mining because of its volatility, but then companies started tapping it as a fuel source. Pumping groundwater relieves the pressure that traps the gas, raising concerns among landowners about the effects on the water table and drinking water wells.The Raton Basin is one of the hot spots of an energy boom rippling throughout the Rockies. There are roughly 34,000 active wells across Colorado and tens of thousands more are expected over the next 20 years.Warren McDonald, who ranches west of North Fork, has a good relationship with Pioneer Natural Resources.”Typically, the people having the problems moved from cities and towns. They think they’re going to go up to the wilderness and live in harmony with nature, but those days are kind of gone,” said McDonald, whose family has ranched in the area since 1890.McDonald said energy development is a big boost for ranchers and farmers like him who own some minerals because they get royalty payments. Jobs, business and tax revenue are all up.”It’s night and day from when the coal mines shut down in the ’90s,” McDonald said.”I saw the downside when the coal mines closed,” said Glenn Moltrer, a businessman who heads the local chamber of commerce. “People actually put dummies in the windows of stores (in Trinidad) to make it look like something was there besides vacant storefronts.”On River Ridge Ranch, a rural subdivision near Walsenburg about 40 miles north, the state has halted gas production so the operator, Petroglyph Energy of Boise, Idaho, can figure out how methane is getting into water wells and how to stop it.A small fire erupted when a spark from an electrical switch ignited built-up methane at a water well on the ranch last summer. Around the same time, an explosion raised the roof on a shed over a water well near the subdivision.Petroglyph Energy provided homeowners devices to monitor whether their wellheads are venting methane. Petroglyph Chief Operating Officer Ken Smith said the company is monitoring groundwater and has seen nothing to indicate that people are in danger.Bruce Hopke’s home sports a view of hills covered in pinon pines rolling west for miles, slamming up against the snow-creased Spanish Peaks. Plans for about 50 wells have been approved on the 5,600-acre River Ranch site, but not all drilling permits have been issued.”I would love to see them fix it, I really would,” Hopke said of Petroglyph’s plan to block seeping methane. “If they fix it, nothing has changed, everything’s fine. You can have a cup of coffee and turn on a light switch — the small pleasures.
Tags: cup of coffee, day, engineer, Live, love, venue, wildernessRelated posts
