It would seem common sense that Colorado’s oil and gas operators should not be permitted to drill wells on land that’s been intentionally placed under conservation easement or purchased for open space. The whole point of setting aside open space, after all, is to protect it from new development. Yet, as The Daily Camera’s Jerd Smith recently reported, three oil and gas operators are targeting tracts of land in eastern Boulder County that are either under conservation easement or have been purchased by the county and set aside as open space.

We shake our heads in dismay. If the public chose to set aside land to prohibit other types of development like housing subdivisions and strip malls, surely the expectation was and remains that such easements should also preclude heavy industrial use, regardless of who owns the mineral rights beneath the surface.

But that is not the case.

Read more at The Denver Post.