RIFLE, Colo. - "For 10 years, Garland and Diana Anderson have lived on a western Colorado mesa and loved nearly everything — the mountain views, the sunsets, the antelope and elk. But the Andersons have seen fewer animals since gas drilling began in their subdivision south of Rifle. Then they learned that a company plans to build a well on their 80 acres and that there is little they can do about it, because they don’t own the rights to the minerals underneath.
“I wouldn’t buy there now and nobody else wants to, either,” Garland Anderson said over a recent breakfast in a small diner. Similar complaints are cropping up around the Rockies, which last fall were described by the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as “ground zero” in the Bush administration’s drive to increase domestic energy development.
Worries of another boom-bust
The plan has run into unusually broad opposition in western Colorado, from relatively new arrivals like the Andersons to veteran landowners who remember when the region’s oil shale industry went bust in 1982. Even commissioners in revenue-starved rural counties say energy companies are running roughshod over local rights.
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Dave Cesark, environmental specialist for the exploration and production division of Oklahoma-based Williams Cos., one of the biggest players in the Rockies, said his company works hard to keep landowners happy. But he concedes conflicts are becoming more common. “People are moving here, building froofy homes and there’s a lot of development in an area that hasn’t seen a lot of development,” Cesark said. “It’s almost a land battle.”
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