Mayor’s farewell message crossed the line
I read Mayor Bagley’s farewell message to Longmont in the City Line newsletter. Clearly he crossed the line when he included in his goodbye message his biased perspective on the city mayoral race.
The City Line is published with taxpayer dollars and should not be used as a soapbox for the mayor’s partisan political views regarding the election. In his message, Mayor Bagley decries the inclusion of “party ideology” in Longmont’s City Council, then proceeds to use conservative buzzwords to castigate the supposed offender in the mayoral race. It’s no secret who Mayor Bagley is rooting for, and against. Mayor Bagley used some of the same coded language in his opinion piece and letter to the editor as he did in this farewell message. So why did the city editor allow this language to be published in the utility bill newsletter in the first place? Apparently someone on city staff is asleep at the wheel.
More oversight should be provided by city managers, including the top manager at city hall, so that inappropriate uses of the City Line do not happen again. As for Mayor Bagley’s exit from City Council, I wish he had done it a lot sooner.
Ruby Bowman
Colorado taxpayers should not carry drillers’ burden
After months of delays, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission finally released new draft rules for its Oil and Gas Financial Assurance (FA, 700 Series) Rulemaking several weeks ago. They are a major disappointment, to say the least.
Currently, it is estimated that Colorado has financial assurances for only 2% of an estimated $8 billion liability for wells that have already been drilled. The COGCC must eliminate blanket bonding and require significant full-cost bonding in order to prevent taxpayers from having to shoulder this cost. Otherwise, Colorado taxpayers themselves will bear the unjust brunt of the cost in plugging and abandonment projects.
Stricter financial assurances will mean accelerated plugging and abandoning of these wells, which will protect Colorado communities from dangerous methane emissions and ozone. Colorado drivers are not the primary “driver” of ozone pollution. That would be the oil and gas industry, which emits the most VOCs of any kind of polluter. Driving less is great, but industrial strength polluters are the biggest problem and the easiest one to solve.
The sole mission of the COGCC is to protect public health, safety, welfare and the environment. Colorado taxpayers must not be held to bear the unpleasant cost of plugging and abandonment projects. The operators responsible for the existence of the wells in the first place must accept their moral responsibility to see the projects through to completion in a manner which takes public health and environmental protections into account. It is not the obligation of taxpayers to do so.
Please contact the COGCC to exhort members to require full-cost bonding for the oil and gas industry in Colorado. The life of the planet is existentially at stake.
Tom Stumpf
This content was originally published here.