Behind the Colorado Fracking Betrayal

- by Joel Dyer, August 7, 2014, Boul­der Weekly

So what went wrong with bal­lot mea­sures 88 and 89? How could these pop­u­lar citizen’s ini­tia­tives writ­ten to give local com­mu­ni­ties more con­trol over drilling and frack­ing in their neigh­bor­hoods have failed to get on the ballot?

Well, the first mis­take Col­orado cit­i­zens made was they trust­ed a politi­cian, Con­gress­man Jared Polis, to help them with their cause. Polis formed a green-sound­ing orga­ni­za­tion, which wrote bal­lot ini­tia­tives 88 and 89 and paid the sig­na­ture gath­er­ers for their amaz­ing efforts, which cul­mi­nat­ed in more than 260,000 sig­na­tures being gath­ered, more than enough to put both mea­sures before the vot­ers in November.

In fact, Polis was so effec­tive in his efforts that his orga­ni­za­tion sucked up all the anti-frack­ing ener­gy in the state, caus­ing oth­er local-con­trol bal­lot mea­sures which were writ­ten and put for­ward by actu­al grass­roots activists to be with­drawn. They couldn’t com­pete with Polis’ mon­ey or his orga­ni­za­tion. And why should they com­pete, they all want­ed the same thing, right?

And so began the Polis show. And what a show it turned out to be.

In the final act, a fun­ny thing hap­pened on the way to the Sec­re­tary of State’s office to turn in those quar­ter of a mil­lion sig­na­tures from Col­orado res­i­dents who want­ed to pro­tect their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties from oil and gas indus­try con­t­a­m­i­na­tion; Polis trad­ed them for a bag of mag­ic beans.

Actu­al­ly, the beans would have been a bet­ter deal. Polis trad­ed them for noth­ing that had any­thing to do with frack­ing or local con­trol over indus­tri­al activities.

Sure he says we’ll get a pan­el, not just any pan­el mind you, but a “blue” eff­ing “rib­bon pan­el” appoint­ed by Gov­er­nor Hick­en­loop­er. I know, those mag­ic beans are sound­ing pret­ty good about now. Oh, and the state will stop suing Longmont.

Does that mean Long­mont gets to keep its ban on frack­ing? No.

So what does it mean? Nothing. 

So why did Polis sud­den­ly, with­out warn­ing or even a con­ver­sa­tion with the peo­ple who had worked so tire­less­ly to put local con­trol over pol­lut­ing indus­tri­al activ­i­ties to a demo­c­ra­t­ic vote, steal and destroy arguably the most impor­tant bal­lot mea­sures in state history?

That’s the real ques­tion that has yet to be answered can­did­ly and why this issue is too impor­tant to leave to the col­umn of a frus­trat­ed editor.

I believe that what real­ly hap­pened to Col­orado cit­i­zens and their sig­na­tures, is that they were trad­ed like a damn com­mod­i­ty at the nation­al level.

I sus­pect that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and a num­ber of major envi­ron­men­tal groups at the nation­al lev­el were far more con­cerned with keep­ing a Dem as gov­er­nor in a state that is bare­ly blue and hang­ing on to Mark Udall’s Sen­ate seat and his crit­i­cal swing vote on the Key­stone XL Pipeline than they were about frack­ing in neigh­bor­hoods in Col­orado. In fact, most Democ­rats and envi­ron­men­tal groups at the nation­al lev­el are still oper­at­ing on decades-old sci­ence that says nat­ur­al gas can be a safe bridge fuel to a sus­tain­able future. I’m guess­ing there are no 67-well pro­duc­tion plat­forms inside the belt­way spew­ing 140,000 tons of VOC’s a year across a kinder­garten play­ground. That’s too bad.

Democ­ra­cy in Col­orado took a hit last Mon­day and it’s going to take a while to nail down exact­ly what occurred. But I promise that this paper will do every­thing pos­si­ble to expose the real pow­er play­ers, oth­er than Polis and Hick­en­loop­er, behind this betray­al of Col­orado voters.

Per­haps this inci­dent will serve as a reminder to all, that change can only occur at the grass­roots lev­el. The peo­ple of a town or a coun­ty and maybe some­day a state can make a dif­fer­ence, they can change the laws, they can join hands to pro­tect their homes and fam­i­lies. When nation­al envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and par­ty pol­i­tics get involved, com­mu­ni­ty-alter­ing issues like drilling and frack­ing become lit­tle more than pho­to ops and fundrais­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for the envi­ron­men­tal glit­terati and their polit­i­cal coun­ter­parts in Congress.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pret­ty tired of a hand­ful of peo­ple who think they know what’s best for the envi­ron­ment and our com­mu­ni­ties manip­u­lat­ing our local demo­c­ra­t­ic process to push their polit­i­cal agendas.

And besides, these cow­ards got it all wrong this time. They were afraid that Udall and Hick­en­loop­er would lose in Novem­ber because Repub­li­cans would turn out in greater num­bers to oppose mea­sures 88 and 89. They caved to this fear and Polis sold out his con­stituents even though the polling showed that both mea­sures had a good chance of win­ning despite the spend­ing dis­par­i­ty. It may well backfire.

The apa­thy that Polis and the peo­ple who have his ear have now cre­at­ed among pro­gres­sives who would have turned out at the polls to vote for the mea­sures in record num­bers will do far more to under­mine Udall’s and Hickenlooper’s reelec­tion bids than any­thing the mea­sures would have done for Repub­li­can turnout.

In the end, mil­lions of Col­orado vot­ers, Democ­rats, Repub­li­cans, Inde­pen­dents and oth­ers, lost their right to have their voic­es heard because a small hand­ful of polit­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful men and woman are afraid of democ­ra­cy. That’s the real deal behind this betray­al. So stay tuned, I sus­pect there is much more to come.