The oil patch is at it again. More propaganda commercials to convince you that complying with health, safety and environmental rules will put it out of business.
Senate Bill 19-181 is not Proposition 112. It’s not a handful of legislators that supported this bill. It was the majority of legislators that the people of Colorado elected.
I’ll tell you why this bill will not hurt the oil patch. I worked as an oil and gas geologist before becoming an environmental engineer employed by a large manufacturing company. I was just starting my career in environmental engineering, at a time when the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) had been passed a few years earlier. Industries that produced products as well as hazardous waste were screaming the same thin,g “You are going to put us out of business!” “We can’t possibly comply with all these new regulations and we’ll have to lay everyone off.”
It didn’t happen! Instead of laying people off, industries hired a bunch of people like me to help them comply with the new regulations. What we did was find ways to reduce our waste, reuse materials and recycle what we couldn’t use. And the company’s bottom line went up.
Now I live in Las Animas County, where 24 percent of water wells tested by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission have man-made organic contamination. SB 19-181 is needed. It won’t cost jobs and will not hurt the oil business. It will make them more efficient.
Joel Nelson
Weston
