5 Years Fighting

I'm going to try to start writing the history of the Colorado fracking war from my experience and involvement beginning five years ago.

On June 2 the fifth year anniversary of my own involvement in the struggle against hydraulic fracturing passed. It has been such a whirlwind for all that time that despite my best intentions, I have not been able to significantly place all of the events, developments, and deep lessons into writing. This is primarily due to the enormous task of fighting an industry that enjoys 150 years of legal precedent, Constitutional powers greater that then people, two full political parties and the entire government they occupy, and the ongoing campaign to keep us all confused, disenfranchised, irrational hopeful in the system and cooperative with the destruction of our land and the poisoning of the people.

It has been a steep learning curve for myself and all people and communities that have fallen into the shadow of 21st century oil and gas development.


So much has transpired. Losses, wins, maneuvers, mistakes, political lies and hoaxes, opportunism, spills, explosions, fires and tragic loss of human life. I'm going to hope to write regularly about all of this from this moment on. If I do it right, we will be left with a complex and dynamic story of what happens to people when they square off against the most powerful industry in the world.

One thing that I have to point out. Back in the first days when I felt the greatest panic and fear of our wonderful little town being turned into a toxic oil field I remember turning to my wife Mary trying to be upbeat about our task ahead. "I think we are about to meet 1500 of the coolest people in Colorado", is what I said, imagining the process that we would enter and in many moments lead.

I think I may have been conservative in that number. There is a lot of caring people out there and we have to remember this at the moment the Boulder County Commissioners seem most ambitious in bringing the anticipated 2000 wells not our County. For five years we have prepared, and the real fight is about to begin.

With love, strength and gratitude,
Cliff