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
For Immediate Release, December 22, 2020 Contact:
Robert Ukeiley, (720) 496-8568, rukeiley@biologicaldiversity.org
Colorado Officials Admit State’s Smog-reduction Plan Already Failed to Protect Colorado From Deadly Pollution, Then Approve It Anyway
DENVER The Colorado Air Quality Control Commission has approved a plan that was supposed to reduce smog in the North Front Range by this past summer, even though state officials knew the plan had already failed to deliver the required pollution reductions.
Levels of ground-level ozone pollution, commonly referred to as “smog,” continued to violate air-quality standards in the area because Colorado’s plan failed to rein in pollution from fracked oil and methane gas.