The Environmental Defense Fund and Healthy Air & Water Colorado filed motions to intervene in lawsuits that aim to undo methane and ozone pollution regulations that were adopted in December.

The measures were approved unanimously by the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission.

“This policy has been enormously successful and highly cost-effective, elevating Colorado to become a national leader in forward-thinking solutions,” Dan Grossman, the senior director of state advocacy for the Environmental Defense Fund said in a statement.

“Rolling back clean air protections in the middle of the COVID crisis is a disservice to the state, and ultimately to the industry itself. It would compromise our public health at a time when we can least afford it, and amplify our climate problems.”

Grossman is a former state legislator who works out of the Boulder regional office of the national nonprofit, based in San Francisco.

In March, Weld and nine other industry-dependent counties filed lawsuits in opposition to the new rules against the commission and the state health department, alleging the rules single out one industry.

“Rather than regulating for all Coloradoans (sic), as the Air Pollution Prevention Control Act requires, the ir Quality Control Commission took a one-size-fits-all approach that assumed its new regulations would apply and a roughly equal cost to all Coloradoans,” states the suit brought by the Western Slope counties. “That assumption was false. 

“The diversity of Colorado’s economy – and, in particular, the heavy reliance many western and rural counties place on the oil and gas activity – means those counties will bear a disproportionate share of the costs of the Commission’s increased regulation.”  

The other counties in the suit are Cheyenne, Garfield, Logan, Mesa, Moffat, Phillips, Rio Blanco, Sedgwick and Yuma. 

The two environmental groups on Thursday asserted that dozens of counties, municipalities and public health departments, “as well as thousands of ordinary Coloradans supported the rules.”

“These common-sense clean air protections are entirely achievable and will make Colorado’s air healthier for everyone to breathe,” stated Jake Williams, the executive director of Healthy Air & Water Colorado. “Instead of attacking pollution safeguards during a public health crisis, we should seize every opportunity to clean our air and reduce emissions that can make Coloradans sicker. These rules will do just that – and benefit every single one of us”

Chelsie Miera, executive director of the West Slope Colorado Oil & Gas Association, said the donors behind the motions are donors and constituencies who helped put Gov. Jared Polis in office, “so it’s not surprising that they’d want to protect policies that hamper economic growth in rural communities.”

She said data and testimony from the industry’s experts was ignored by the commission when the regulations were adopted in December.

“There are differences here in western Colorado that matter in regards to air quality and the Air Quality Control Commission failed to take any of that into consideration and, instead, align completely with D.C. based groups,” she said. “The Piceance and (Denver Julesburg) are significantly different basins with different development parameters, and West Slope air quality is also in a very different position than Front Range air quality. Rules should respect those inherent geological differences rather than ignore them.”

EDF HAWC Motion to Intervene Garfield Cty Final.pdf (88.39 KiB)JoeyBunch, Colorado Politics
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