Colorado voters decided Tuesday to reject a measure that would have blocked drilling in most of one of America’s largest oil- and gas-producing states.
Coloradans shot down a ballot initiative banning new oil and gas drilling within 2,500 feet of homes, schools, and “vulnerable areas” such as playgrounds. The measure was intended to respond to complaints from communities close to fracking who say wells are increasingly encroaching on populated areas and played a role in recent deadly explosions and tainted groundwater.
A state analysis showed the measure would have blocked new oil and gas wells on 85 percent of nonfederal land in the state. Only New York, Maryland, and Vermont have banned fracking. But those states don’t have reserves like Colorado, which is America’s fifth-largest gas-producing and seventh-largest oil-producing state.
The measure was polarizing, dividing even Democrats who want to transition away from fossil fuels to combat climate change.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a centrist Democrat with presidential ambitions, opposed the measure for economic reasons, as did U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, who won his race Tuesday night to replace the term-limited Hickenlooper as governor.
But nationally-minded progressives, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Al Gore, the former vice president and environmentalist, backed the measure, viewing it as momentum for a bigger movement to ban fracking.
The Colorado Petroleum Council, a trade group for oil and gas companies opposing the fracking measure, said it would cost the state 43,000 jobs and more than $200 million in tax revenue in the first year, and $1.1 billion by 2030.
Opponents of the initiative — namely, the oil and gas industry — managed to succeed by heavily outspending supporters roughly 40-1, according to the Colorado secretary of state.
