CITIZENS FOR A HEALTHY COMMUNITY
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Mission Statement
Citizens for a Healthy Community (CHC) is a citizen-led nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the air, water, and foodsheds of Delta County in Southwest Colorado from the impacts of oil and gas development and paving the path to a clean and renewable energy future. Delta County is home to the North Fork of the Gunnison River, the fertile, surrounding North Fork Valley, and home to the largest concentration of organic farms in the state.
About This Cause
CHC is a 500-member strong grassroots organization established by a group of residents in 2009, who were concerned about risks of large-scale oil and gas development to the community’s health. We use advocacy, research, outreach and education, and grassroots organizing to increaseprotectionsforour waters, land, and people. CHC seeks to protect the Delta County region from becoming an industrialized oil and gas zone. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) seeks to open 95% of BLM public lands and minerals in the area to oil and gas leasing. This would destroy our local economy built on sustainable agriculture, recreation, and tourism. We are working to designate Delta County region's air, water, and foodsheds as inappropriate and unacceptable for oil and gas development. We are dedicated to ensuring a livable and resilient community for present and future generations. Impact Statement Since our founding, CHC has become a leading citizen-impacted, citizen-led group working to protect people from the hazards of drilling and fracking. The valley, which is surrounded by public lands, is a bread-basket for Colorado, and oil and gas is an industry that is incompatible with our growing agricultural and tourism-based economy. We are successful because of our staff expertise in water, ecology, and the law; our committed and vocal grassroots support; and strategic partnerships we hold including with Western Environmental Law Center, Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians. To date, we have made considerable progress standing up to oil and gas development in Delta County. We have: 1. Stopped lease sales of 30,000 acres of land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), preventing drilling near farms, ranches, towns, and schools; 2. Won a case forcing the BLM to disclose the names of oil and gas lease nominees, and changing BLM policy nationally; 3. Persuaded BLM to conduct an Environmental Impact Study on a proposed natural gas drilling plan for 146 new wells on Bull Mountain just upstream from the Paonia Reservoir, an important irrigation resource; 4. Convinced the U.S. Forest Service to withdraw their approval for a natural gas drilling permit near Little Henderson Creek (a small tributary of the North Fork of the Gunnison River) because the legally-required analysis to consider the full scope of impacts the drilling project could have on the ecosystem had not been completed; 5. Participated in Gunnison County’s oil and gas rule-making revision, resulting in new safeguards that establish buffers between water resources and new drilling locations; 6. Stopped the permitting of an oil refinery disguised as a coal gasification plant that was proposed through a technical revision of an existing coal permit; 7. Enabled 42,000 public comments to the BLM opposing their draft Resource Management Plan (RMP) and favoring an option of no oil and gas leasing. Also, enabled 8,000 public comments against the North Fork Mancos Management Master Development Plan for 35 new natural gas wells in the upper North Fork of the Gunnison River watershed; 8. Won our State Director’s Review on the approval of the proposed 108-Whitewater Master Development Plan, which was remanded to the field for failure to consider the impacts of fracking; and, 9. Held BLM accountable to its lease termination rules to close 39 leases (66,000 lease acres) to further action without a new competitive lease process. 10. Stopped a December 2018 Oil and Gas Lease Sale for 7800 acres. 11. Secured unprecedented public health, safety, welfare, environment, and wildlife protections in the State rulemakings to implement the 2019 oil and gas reform act. The challenges we face stem directly from the desire of the oil and gas industry to extract from the Mancos Shale deposit that sits under Delta County. In 2016, the U.S. Geological Survey reported that the deposit is the second-largest natural gas reserve in the country. This news, along with biases from federal, state, and local officials for the oil and gas industry has made Delta County and the North Fork Valley a target for increased natural gas extraction, threatening our region’s farms, families, pristine wild places, wildlife, clean air, and clean water. Needs Statement As a nonprofit organizaion, we depend on funding and support from our dues-paying members and other area residents and visitors who believe in the value of what we do. This coming year, we have a need to continue existing programs and begin some new initiatives. Our top needs include: 1. Program support for our campaign to Protect the North Fork from becoming a new gas field. 2. Support for our educational and outreach work, including hosting documentary film screenings, educational events featuring expert speakers, and community gatherings. 3. Climate Action Work including developing a Delta County Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory and Climate Action Plan. 3. General operating support. Organization History Oil and gas development, and particularly the relatively new technology of high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), has expanded across Colorado faster than reasonable scientific assessment, monitoring, and regulation of the industry. CHC represents a population unwilling to accept oil and gas development by an industry that cannot be held accountable for impacts to human health and the environment. CHC envisions a day when: Delta County Region's food, air, and watershed are no longer threatened by large-scale industrial oil and gas operations. Elected officials, agency personnel, and citizens use science as the basis for decision-making. Regulatory agencies err on the side of caution and protecting public health by denying a proposed action when scientific uncertainty exists regarding the potential harm of the action. One industry is not allowed to supplant another (i.e, invasive gas and oil development does not have the right to ruin agricultural and tourism based industries).