News & Alerts
October 17, 2019 CDPHE HEALTH STUDY RELEASED – COGCC TO TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION ON PERMITS UNDER 2000’ FROM A BUILDING UNIT
At approximately 10:00am on October 17, 2019, the CDPHE health study (which can be found here) was published that analyzed health effects from oil and gas activities within 300’-2,000’ from oil and gas locations. The CDPHE funded the health study which found no anticipated long-term health effects from oil and gas development. The study, however, did provide analysis through short term modeling of acute health impacts (i.e. headaches, nose-bleeds) during pre-production operations within 2,000 feet from the tested sites. As a result of the short-term health effects analysis, the COGCC issued a press release stating that it will take immediate action on all permit applications under 2,000 feet from a building unit.
In response to the CDPHE study, the COGCC is expanding its permitting review using the established 16 Objective Criteria to include proposed locations under 2,000 feet from a building unit until the COGCC completes its upcoming Rulemakings or July 2020. According to the COGCC press release, the expansion of review under the Objective Criteria and SB19-181 to 2,000’ will implicate 39 pending Form 2As (12 of which are on an operator’s priority list) and 440 associated Form 2 APDs. In addition, the COGCC acknowledges the limitations in the CDPHE study, and therefore the Administration has directed the COGCC and CDPHE to develop and implement testing via actual monitoring to obtain better site-specific data to evaluate impacts and ensure protections. If the data demonstrates impacts that exceed acute health risk values, the COGCC “may take additional regulatory actions to curtail the activities causing those impacts.” Finally, the press release states that this site-specific data will inform the upcoming Rulemakings.