Boulder County Planning Commissioners: Extend the fracking moratorium!

[These are remarks I made to the Boulder Planning Commissioners on October 17, 2012, as part of the public input process. I was among the dozen or so persons who spoke out against fracking, while there were two people who spoke in support. ]


Greetings Commissioners,

My name is Rick Casey, and I live at 1118 Centaur Circle in Lafayette.

Thank you for this opportunity to express my concerns about fracking, which I consider a dangerous and unwise policy to allow on county lands. I've taught environmental economics at Front Range Community College since 2009, and have become firmly convinced that fracking is a wrong and unnecessary policy of resource development. We should instead be investing in alternative energy, and building the base for a truly sustainable energy future, instead of the short term opportunistic policy of hydraulic fracturing.  

I last spoke to you on Sept 24, and spoke in support of extending the county moratorium on fracking. I am actively engaged with other citizens to petition the city councils of Lafayette and Louisville to pass their own moratorium on fracking within their city limits, and to allow us the time to put this to a vote by their city residents in 2013. To date, we have collected approximately 1,200 signed petions of citizens of Lafayette and Louisville that states their support for such a moratorium. I am in the process of organizing this data into a database, and creating an online petition signup, where we expect to collect much more support for this measure. We believe that when the public learns and understands the potential for fracking to ruin their environmental quality, and expose them to serious health hazards, that the great majority of them will be against it. We believe a similar survey should be done of Boulder County residents, and I would be glad to share this tool with your staff to do so. 

The EPA is currently conducting a comprehensive study of fracking that I urge the Commissioners to consider. This large scale study was started in 2011, and preliminary results from it will available later this year. A 170 page report that describes the study is currently available on their website, and I would like to forward this document to your staff for their review. The study will be completed in 2014, and will contain detailed reviews of fracking from a comprehensive and scientific viewpoint, suitable as a basis for making informed policy decisions. 

It is my sincere hope that the EPA's findings will lend conclusive support for passage of the FRAC Act, which has been before the US Congress since 2009, sponsored by our own representatives Jared Polis and Diana DeGette, which would close the Halliburton Loophole, and put fracking under regulation of the EPA, which, in my humble opinion, is where it should have been regulated from the beginning.  

Thank you.

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