Letter to COGCC's Director Matt Lepore - Unbecoming an Officer of the State

Dear Matt Lepore:

In a recent article:  http://durangoherald.com/article/20130719/NEWS01/130719493/Commission-director-apologizes-to-fracking-critics-

(Lepore originally made the statement at an energy summit in Loveland this week. According to The (Fort Collins) Coloradoan, Lepore said that residents who “storm city hall and demand you protect their health, safety and welfare” fail to connect how banning fracking would affect natural-gas prices.)

Although I appreciate you 'backtracking,' your comment has struck a sour note with citizens nation-wide.  Indicating that the price of natural gas is worth far more than the price of our inalienable Civil & Constitutional Rights is reprehensible. The people of Colorado and other 'fracked' states are continuously struggling to protect themselves from the harmful adverse impacts the largely unregulated  oil and gas industry imposes on our ways of life.  The COGCC appears to have only succeeded at one element of its mission statement to: 'protect correlative rights of mineral owners and that of the oil and gas industry.' Please understand that the price of natural gas will never increase when a single city bans fracking. Such statements are merely scare tactics that are absent of reality.

If you are unaware of the urgency, let the citizens inform you that 'storming a public place' operated by tax payers dollars to demand that our health and safety be protected is essential and a Constitutional Right. It's the nature of not being listened to in a meaningful, humane and civil way. Our rights to safety and protection have been taken away from us via federal oil & gas exemptions. 

Reminder: I had >75 active wells within a 1 mile radius of my house in Firestone. I lived in hell for two years there. I had a bloody nose for nearly 1.5 years, migraine headaches, GI problems, burning eyes and throat and other issues. I've since moved far away and my symptoms have subsided greatly or altogether.  Anecdotal physical symptoms from living that close to hundreds of tons of endocrine disrupting and carcinogenic chemicals is a real, factual observation, not anecdotal.  You have never experienced it, so please have decency and humility to those who cannot move and are being willfully poisoned by the industry's exemptions and mishaps.

Being that you are paid by our tax dollars, it's unbecoming of an officer to make such biased statements as you did.  You cannot erase it.  If you would like to meet sometime to better understand the failures of the COGCC's past to ensure a better, more well protected future, I am available. We can only succeed when we know our failures.

Wealth over health is the wrong way to operate and it's inhumane.

Thank You,

Shane Davis