Erie, at the epicenter of oil opposition
April Beach, Wendy Leonard, Jen Palazzolo and Angie Nordstrum, in a field across from their children's elementary school where oil-well drilling is planned.
"We have this wonderful little suburban utopia here and then all these gas wells infringe upon the community," Nordstrum said.
Nordstrum isn't alone in her worries. Anxiety over natural-gas drilling pervades this town on the Weld and Boulder county line. Some residents believe that hydraulic fracturing, a drilling technique that involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals to release gas from shale, has poisoned their air.
They point to air-quality studies conducted in Colorado that have shown the presence of pollutants associated with oil and gas development. Others dislike the traffic and noise and what they say are unsightly wells.
Fracking operations began setting up in and around Erie around 2005; it is only now confronting challenges related to oil and gas development that some towns throughout the West have dealt with for decades.
The concerns of Erie parents and others can be found elsewhere, and the potential for a backlash from communities where drilling activity is creeping ever-closer to
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