Fight over oil-gas plan dominates meeting

A controversial oil and gas drilling operation involving 84 wells planned for northern Broomfield brought out a giant crowd to the City Council chambers Tuesday for a marathon meeting on what has become a festering issue in this northern suburb.

City leaders were scheduled to vote on whether to approve an agreement — formally known as a memorandum of understanding — with Extraction Oil & Gas Inc. that would place limits and conditions on company operations at several proposed drilling sites along the Northwest Parkway.

No vote had been cast by the council as of press time, and numerous people — 90 were signed up in all — were still waiting to give comment on the issue late in the evening. So many people showed up for the meeting that city officials had to open two overflow rooms.

One of those in the audience was Jodi Devine, a Broomfield resident who expressed frustration about the number of wells being proposed in the city and the possible impacts that developing them could have on those living in nearby neighborhoods.

Devine was joined by many of her fellow residents in urging the council to postpone a vote on the agreement until several major issues — the most significant being the proposed location of the wells — could be resolved.

“Why are we putting the health, safety and welfare of our citizens at risk?” she asked.

A large contingent of Adams County residents also went to the meeting to urge Broomfield city leaders to hold off on a vote. A couple of Adams County commissioners told the council that the recent decision by Extraction to move several of its well pads — containing 49 wells — to just north of neighborhoods on the Adams side of the county line was troubling.

Commissioner Steve O’Dorisio said the wells would be too close to nearly 200 homes in the North Star Estates and Mustang Acres neighborhoods, with none of those residents having a say on Extraction’s plans. He said the wells should be moved to land north of the Northwest Parkway — “in the least impactful area.”

“Shoving them up against our residents isn’t the right thing to do,” he said.

While the Broomfield City Council heard plenty of concerns about drilling in this city of 65,000 on the edge of the highly productive Denver-Julesburg Basin, many speakers supported the deal the city had hammered out with Extraction. They noted that the company had made numerous concessions it didn’t have to under state law.