DENVER— Conservation and social-justice groups sued the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division today for issuing an air-pollution permit that will potentially allow thousands of oil and fracked gas wells throughout the state.
The permit fails to consider whether air pollution from oil and fracked gas wells will create unsafe levels of pollution in the state’s communities, according to the lawsuit.
Those areas include the Metro Denver/North Front Range area, which has violated smog standards for more than 15 years, as well as Rocky Mountain National Park.
“Colorado’s practice of rubber-stamping approval for thousands of fracking air permits for the past decade has come at the terrible price of kids having asthma attacks and wildflower fields in our mountains being stunted or destroyed,” said Robert Ukeiley, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s time to end what is essentially a free pass for the fossil fuel industry to pollute.”