This editorial by Cliff Willmeng originally appeared in the, Daily Camera on May 11, 2017
In the life-and-death, high-stakes game of oil and gas drilling, the Boulder County commissioners officially laid their cards on the table in a Daily Camera guest opinion published last Sunday (“Lack of local control over oil and gas frustrating, difficult,” May 7). They have nothing. I mean, literally, nothing.
They rehashed 14 talking points that have been repeated in one version or another for the past 15 years — with predictable and disastrous outcomes and ever more drilling. It’s not as though they come to this critical juncture without words. They have lots of those. What they are missing is any strategy outside the very one historically beneficial enough to the oil and gas industry that homes are now blowing up and people are dying.
To be fair, they told us that they feel “frustrated,” so there’s at least that. With their call for the community to rally behind their empty strategy and with their inability to protect us or our environment, we can’t be anything but cynical. They call for a “united front” around a leadership that brought us to this very tragic and lethal. That’s not a united front; it’s a suicide pact. No thank you. MORE...