Western Colorado Alliance won big environmental impact mitigation improvements in Routt County’s
updated land use codes, which were issued in June 2024.

Our focus had been on the oil and gas environmental requirements, protecting our community from impacts to air, noise, clean water, sensitive habitats, and more. The wins include:

1. The prohibition of crypto-mining power generation and other non-beneficial uses.
   
2. Generic requirement for use of oil and gas equipment meeting the current low-emissions limits.
   
3. Two-thousand-foot setback of wells from residences and 1000-foot setbacks from schools and publicly owned buildings. The residential setback is the same as in the state-level Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) rules, but without the ECMC exemptions which allow for smaller setbacks under certain situations.
   
4. Two-thousand-foot setback from public water bodies without an exemption granted by Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW).
   
5. The updated codes include strengthened protections for sensitive wildlife and public water (rivers).
   
6. The updated codes tighten equipment noise mitigation requirements.

Setbacks are the most robust form of protection because they represent minimum distances between emission source and receptor, and don’t rely on proper operator performance to minimize impacts.

In numerous code locations, the requirements have changed from recommended consultations with CPW to required consultations with CPW. By shifting the project application requirements on proposed operations from “may require” to “shall require” consultation with CPW, the burden of requiring consultation with CPW is shifted from the duty of the Planning Department to the duty of the applicant.

Alliance members Diane Brower, Diane Miller, and Rodger Steen attended numerous commissioner and department meetings in 2023 and 2024 and submitted letters explaining the need for, benefits of, and requesting these improvements.

To complete the update in codes and the Planning Department’s understanding of project operational details, our Alliance hosted a Planning Department site visit to Jackson County to observe one of the recent gas-to-electricity (sometimes called crypto mining operations) in August 2024.