Phillip Doe

Most people would rather watch an evening of “Survivor” reruns than go to a council meeting in their city. But no more. Not in Colorado since the invasion or threat of invasion by the oil industry into cities and towns up and down the Front Range.

I went to a meeting earlier this winter in the Colorado Governor’s Office. I’m not a regular. The Governor, John Hickenlooper, Hick to his friends, had called the meeting with Boulder County Commissioners to discuss the county’s draft regulations governing the recovery of oil and gas found in the county’s deep underground shale formations. The fact is that most of the state is underlain by these ancient and organically rich seabeds. All are ripe for exploitation through the use of the industry’s new mining technique called horizontal fracking.