An Appeal to the Stakeholders in Huerfano County's Natural Wonders

I wrote this as a response to the Summer Visitors Guide published by a local newspaper:

 We discover anew the wonders of this area in the just-released colorful Signature Visitor's Guide. But we have a huge task to preserve all this natural beauty and opportunity for adventure. From Greenhorn Mountain to the Spanish Peaks, industrial oil and gas has a more sinister view of western Huerfano County. Greedy landmen have already solicited the U.S. Forest Service to lease the San Isabel National Forest at the base of the Spanish Peaks and around Cuchara for industrial oil development. What is more, 100,000s of acres have been leased in the awesome Yellowstone Road area and north to Gardner. In a conversation with a former EPA official last week, I learned that 3000 bore holes could be horizontally drilled beneath leased lands in Huerfano County. Each of these requires truck traffic in the thousands of trips to bring in water, silica substances, and fracking chemicals, and take away waste water to remote disposal facilities (if we are lucky).

The county needs help from the population segments represented  in the Signature special edition. If you are a hiker, hunter, fisherman, photographer, pilot, artist, quilter, musician, writer—the list goes on, you need to get involved in your special way, through your organizations or creative works, to protect the land from which you receive your recreation and inspiration. It is really very simple. Two photographs could tell the entire story. One of the area as it appears now and the other of a trashed industrial gas/oil field, barren well pads, and dusty, traffic-filled access roads. I can't think of a greater peril than the one we face in western Huerfano County. We need to protect our air, our water, our natural wonders, and our liberties by using our various gifts and talents to alert all our visitors and residents to what is at risk. Remember, with 3000 wells and tens of thousands truck trips, as well as high-pressure drilling pipes and escaping underground gases, it takes only one accident in the allowable 500-foot setback to severely damage a child's or elderly person's health and leave a permanent, stinking, oil-soaked stain on the earth. And there will inevitably be such accidents. That is the risk. And the reward will come by eliminating dangerous industrial activities in this artistic, sports, and vacation paradise.