The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that fracking bans in two of the state’s cities conflict with state law and are not enforceable.
Fort Collins and Longmont had been sued by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association for stopping hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in their cities. Fort Collins had instituted a moratorium on fracking for five years, while Longmont outright banned the process.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the local laws were pre-empted by state laws.
“Applying well-established pre-emption principles, the Supreme Court concludes that the City of Longmont’s ban on fracking and the storage and disposal of fracking wastes within its city limits operationally conflicts with applicable state law,” the decision stated. “Accordingly, the court holds that Longmont’s fracking ban is preempted by state law and, therefore, is invalid and unenforceable.”
The court’s decision varies from a similar state court case in New York two years ago, which held that cities had the ability to ban fracking in the Empire State. The drilling method was banned statewide in New York in 2015. Maryland has placed a moratorium on fracking until 2017.
Fracking, the method of drilling deep into rock and using chemically treated water to blast the rock apart and release natural gas, has been credited with causing a boom in natural gas production in the United States in recent years.
But many activists are concerned about the negative aspects of the process, such as air and water pollution, earthquakes and the effect on health.
The Colorado court wrote that fracking is not just a matter of local concern because it involves the entire state’s regulatory processes. Instead of being regulated at the local level, fracking needs to be considered statewide, it said.
The state’s Oil and Gas Conservation Act does not say cities and towns in Colorado cannot ban fracking, but it does make clear the importance of energy production to the state and gives the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission power to make regulations. That means the state agency would pre-empt local laws, according to the decision.
