Moratoriums and bans are defeated, yet concerns about oil and gas drilling have expanded – due to April’s deadly house explosion in Firestone – from merely clean air to the very lives of those whose homes sit on or near the northern Front Range’s oil and gas fields.

But the problems presented by the overlapping of population centers and rich deposits of oil and gas are not expected to diminish, meaning that municipalities, the state and producers must work together to see that communities and oil and gas extraction can coexist.

As the Denver Post reported recently, a rapidly growing population and a vibrant oil and gas industry on the northern Front Range are on a collision course.

A Post analysis of pending and approved drilling permits in the Wattenberg Field in Weld, Larimer, Boulder, Adams and Broomfield counties found that permits are being taken in and near populated areas twice as often as in more remote areas.

Read more at The Longmont Times-Call.