Fracking Arapahoe County

APRIL 2024 — The  Lowry Ranch Comprehensive Area Plan  (CAP) proposes 166 oil and gas fracking wells on 10 pads across south east Aurora — with the Aurora Reservoir right in the middle. Owner and operator Crestone Peak Resources, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Civitas Resources, is currently seeking approval from both state ( ECMC ) and Arapahoe County officials to proceed with drilling, followed by 25+ years of extraction operations.

 Submit comments to the ECMC here. 

Submit Comments on the Lowry Ranch CAP to Colorado's Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) now through May 3rd, 2024.

Above is a map of the Lowry Ranch and Box Elder CAP boundaries — threatening Aurora residents with acute exposure to toxic chemicals and Front Range residents with chronic summer ozone.

Alarmingly, the Aurora Reservoir lies right at the center of the (proposed) Lowry Ranch CAP.

As the 4th CAP to be considered for the Front Range, and the 2nd threatening Aurora and Arapahoe County residents after the Box Elder CAP (37,520 acres) was approved in late 2022 — local residents are fed up and raising the alarm.

With enough public outcry, we can persuade ECMC and Arapahoe County Commissioners that the cumulative impacts of the Lowry Ranch CAP on our air, water, and wildlife are just too great — and to deny this dirty fracking deal.

Despite friendly sounding names like "Beaver" and "State Harvard", the 8+ fracking pads of the Lowry Ranch CAP are not a neighbor that anyone should want to move in next door. The pollution and health impacts are simply too great to ignore.

The entire Box Elder drainage basin that flows through the Lowry Ranch CAP is already designated as severely impaired, per the Colorado  Water Quality Control Division (WQCD) .

Flowing downstream from south to north, from south of the Aurora Reservoir, north past the Lowry Landfill Superfund Site (LLSS), Murphy Creek (Homes), Buckley Spaceforce Base, crossing Colfax Ave, then into Sand Creek.

Fracking-induced fluid flow can occur along vertical boreholes that penetrate the relatively shallow Denver Basin Aquifer, as they reach towards oil and gas-bearing formation some 7,000 feet below the surface — risking contamination of drinking water supplies for millions of Coloradans across the Front Range..

While air pollution from fracking has lead the Front Range to be in "Severe nonattainment" for Ozone, for the last 16 years.

Thanks to oil and gas drilling and fracking — the Denver Metro North Front Range (DMNFR) has been in nonattainment for the 8-hour Ozone standard since 2005.

Fracking is the single largest contributor to Ozone pollution across the Front Range.

The RAQC is the lead planning agency with responsibility to ensure the DMNFR meets Clean Air Act standards.

As one of the  6 criteria pollutants  for which EPA has health-based standards for allowable concentrations in the ambient air, ozone gas is highly reactive and damages anything it comes into contact with... including plants, animals, and the lungs of over 4 million DMNFR residents.