The air quality surrounding Erie’s often-derided Woolley-Sosa and Champlin oil and gas sites are “below non-cancer health-based reference” levels, according to a report released last week by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Titled “Health Risk Evaluation from Inhalation of VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) in Ambient Air Near Woolley-Sosa and Erie Champlin Oil and Gas Sites,” found that all air concentrations of individual and combined VOCs were below non-cancer health-based reference values. Cancer risk estimates for benzene, ethylbenzene, and the two VOCs combined were less than one in one hundred thousand.”
That level is generally considered to be within the acceptable risk range, officials said.
The wells themselves have been the subjects of many complaints in recent months, both for odor and noise, officials said, who added that many of the complaints were related to upper respiratory irritation and physiological responses to odorous substances in the air
Despite the report, according to Mike Van Dyke, chief of environmental epidemiology with the CDPHE, potentially harmful chemicals in the air surrounding those sites could very well still be present.
“We have limitations in the methods and what were able to do,” Van Dyke said Thursday. “We measure a subset of chemicals that are in the air, we evaluate those against health-based reference levels, and in this instance we try to figure out which of those substances are responsible for the complaints.”
Despite the department’s methods and state of the art technology — the air quality throughout certain days in March by the Colorado Air Monitoring Mobile Laboratory — Van Dyke said their is plenty of room for other chemicals to slip by unnoticed.
“There could be other chemicals that we weren’t able to measure that are associated with the kind of health concerns that people are complaining about,” he said.
“I think we were accurately measuring from that site, but we are just not able to measure everything form that site.”
Spurred by the Firestone house explosion last month, a conversation among Erie town leaders about the coexistence of development and fracking has been amplified recently.
Erie’s Board of Trustees approved a contract amendment with Denver-based Pinyon Environmental, Inc. earlier this month, expanding the amount of wells slated for “additional air quality monitoring,” according to town documents.
The contract comes as town officials increasingly have call for a heightened scrutiny of oil and gas operation setbacks in the wake of recent oil and gas fatalities.
The setbacks of new homes from old wells vary widely: 150 feet in Firestone and Dacono, 200 feet in Frederick and Broomfield, 350 feet in Louisville and Lafayette, and 750 feet in Longmont, according to municipal codes.
There is no parallel regulation from the state, spokesman Todd Hartman said earlier this month, because, “COGCC regulates the oil and gas industry; it doesn’t regulate homebuilders or developers or related entities.”
The house in Firestone was located 178 feet from the well that caused the blast, and its construction was in compliance with the town’s required 150 feet.
Regulations for how close new residential developments can come to existing oil and gas wells fall under city and town jurisdiction.
According to some who live in the area, the impacts reach far past the mandated setbacks.
“The health and odor concerns that we are getting appear to be associated with times when the wind direction seems to coming from the (oil well sites),” Van Dyke said. “So it seems to make sense that something from that site is causing these issues.
“Based on what we’ve measured, we don’t see a potential hazard,” he added. “But again, our technology has its limitations.”
Anthony Hahn: 303-473-1422, hahna@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/_anthonyhahn
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