 this meeting is being recorded. Okay, I think we'll go ahead and start. Welcome everybody. I'm so glad you're all here. My name's Karen Dyke and I am part of Longmont Climate Community. We're a fairly new organization, but tonight's presentation is from Longmont Climate Community. Other members of that group that are on the call are Lynette, Mitzi, Michael, and Judith, and you will see them throughout the program. Tonight is part four of What's In Our Air, and we're going to take a little trip down to another community that's really being affected by pollution from the fossil fuel industry. And then I want to remind you that at the end of the, well, my screen's, I'm sorry, my screen's flipping around here, we will end with a question and answer section. So please put any questions you have in the chat section in the chat window, and then Judith and Michael will be picking those up before we do that final panel. As we start tonight, we need to realize that air pollution doesn't just occur at the point of extraction, but also it leaks from pipelines and from refineries. And then, of course, into our homes we have natural gas stoves. We hope that information from tonight's session will give us ideas for our own work on air pollution. But as we do this, we also need to remember that air circulates freely throughout the northern front range, and air from that refinery doesn't stay in Adams County. So we're going to talk about Cultivando. It's an organization centered in Commerce City, and there is a frontline community there severely affected by the fossil fuel industry that refinery is called Suncor. And I know whenever I'm driving on that I-76 or 270, I always make sure my air vents are closed so that that bad air doesn't get into my car. And so this is the people that reside in that bad air. So we're going to start with the film clip. It's about nine minutes. And it will give you a real sense of what they're doing. So I'm going to share my screen. Take me just one second here to get it started. I reside in what we now call Commerce City, Colorado, which is really the homeland. You know, I think I might have lost the sound when I muted myself. Can you hear now? Yeah. I reside in what we now call Commerce City, Colorado, which is really the homeland of the youth, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Locota, the Kailua, the Chicano, and 48 tribes that still live and travel through these spaces. Ancestrally a space that respected that it had certain sources of life, and you had to respect the region for what it honored and what it offered. And the Indigenous people did. They want all of the resource with none of the responsibility of restoring the source of life that they're taking. That is where I have grown up my entire life, where I have practiced our traditional ways of life. I think a lot about Suncourt being right next to the Platte River. Those very same waters are right next to the Platte River. Asking my grandparents about it when they would take us to school because we would pass by it every single day. You know, they didn't seem like it was that big of a deal, and we started to see the effects on my grandparents' land. Grandparents would wake up in the morning and they would have this film that's on their cars, and since then it's only gotten worse, and that film is like a yellowish type of color. And you can see some of that yellow smoke. You know, I've been driving down the street and been able to see it. I think about all the teenagers who have to go back inside because the air quality is too bad for them to play out or to ride their bikes. My mother has autoimmune disease, which now I have also developed as well. Families who've lived here for, you know, decades who are reporting that their children are having a hard time breathing, concentrating, having nosebleeds and things like that. I don't think they understand how they've affected our air and our water, in nor do I think that they care. I had to shelter in place at school in December because of a large yellow plume of ash released by Suncore. Because they come from a space that they can take the resource without ever restoring the space. A life giver understands the rebalance of taking part of that resource for ballots, but mostly restoring the space when you're in there so that resource can continue. It's supposed to be sustainable. Because it is so close, you know, and because they don't always disclose what's in the air, you know, what's being emitted, we don't really know how it's going to affect us. We remember a couple of years back when there was this thick yellow dust that was everywhere. It was on our cars, it was on our windows, and Suncore just apologized and said they would offer some car washes. A lot of the people in my house, you know, they get migraines. Those are some of the things that have been reported by a lot of people in these neighborhoods, right? And they've been allowed to do that for only economic benefit. Well, they have literally diminished the quality and health and safety benefit of everything. The quality of soil, air, land, and the people. When we take care of the earth, the air, the water, we also take care of ourselves and our family, our descendants and our ancestors. Yeah, so of course, just on the other side of all those trees, you know, you can even see it flickering right now. It's all right there, you know, in our backyard. To me, a good neighbor is someone that I can trust next to me. Good neighbors are there to love you and your community, just like you love them. You share that space. That is not a neighbor. That's a monster. It's killing our children. We are not only able to speak up, but that people are willing to listen and that there's going to be change. This wouldn't fly in an excellent community. This wouldn't fly in a predominantly white community because no matter what the state accuses that conversation refinery of it, doesn't seem like anything ever changes to outsiders. It's alarming. But to people who live near Santa Barbara, it's just another day in the shadow of a seemingly untouchable giant. Now that we know that this is happening to more of us, then we feel like the strength of the community, the strength in numbers. And so our community is very ready now to make sure that SunCore is held accountable. Cultivando is an environmental and civil justice organization chosen to set up new air monitoring devices around the refinery and nearby neighborhoods. Our monitors will measure up to 50 toxics, including radioactive matter. The information that will be picked up from these monitors will then be fed into a bilingual website, which we will also be creating and will list all the toxics that have been detected by the monitors as well as the associated health conditions that are tied to those. The people who have to live around an industrial zone are the low-income families, are my people. You know, if not enough people are speaking up and trying to advocate for our communities and that's when we have to step in. What's at stake right now is our future generations. It's their air. It's their water. It's their life that we're fighting for at the end of the day. Prepare yourselves for the challenges of the climate impacts that are already going to happen. I'm trying to teach them some form of sustainability because I know that they're going to have a harder fight than I did. Don't be afraid. I have watched this several times and every time I watch it, I just think it's cool. Right, is that more people will join the cause. If they continue business as usual, we will be choked out and fleshed out of our home lands. That's just what's going to happen. I think it's the end. I'm sorry I didn't mean to put into the video there. But every time I watch this, I think about how all holocausts be to live in that evolution. It's hard enough just knowing we're here downstream from the fracking and now that we have been seeing it while doing that's really awful. I forgot to mention at the beginning that this video along with the first three presentations can be found on Longmont public media and also on our new website, Longmont Climate Community. It's also on YouTube if you want to go out on YouTube. I'm going to share a different presentation now. I'm going to introduce Phil Doe. I've known Phil Doe for a long time and he's here to give us information on that project involving Cultivando. A representative from that community, Oga, we invited her tonight. She couldn't join us so thank you Phil for stepping up. Phil Doe was the Environmental Director of Be the Change Colorado. Formerly he headed the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Policy Office for the Regulation of Federally Developed Western Water. He was also a federal whistleblower on 60 Minutes. He's written many articles on environmental issues and Colorado politics for the online magazine Counterpunch. Phil? Thank you, Karen. Let's go to the first slide. Would you please? Brett, new details for you tonight. On the power failure at the Suncore refinery, this is that orange smoke billowing into the air two weeks ago. Take a look at that. Pretty scary, right? The company officials, though, they acknowledged the accident released over 75,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide right there into the air. That's 150 times more than the daily limit, but state officials say the release did not pose any health risk. Okay. Next slide, please, Karen. There we go. We got it, Karen. We're just- It takes a village. It takes a village. You know, the only thing I can do with my hands is use my toothbrush, but let's talk a little bit about who Suncore is. They're the second largest corporation in Canada. Their chief source of profit is the mining of tar sands. They're the largest tar sands miner in the world. And as you know, James Hanson said, if they develop all the tar sands in Alberta, game over. Now, as for the refiner itself, it started back in 1940, maybe even a little earlier. It's gone through numerous changes. Suncore bought it in 2003 and 2000, frying from Conoco and Valero respectively. It produces about 100,000 barrels of oil and gas a day. Most of the jet fuel at the IA comes from Suncore. Most of the asphalt used in the state comes from Suncore. About 55% of the diesel in the state comes from Suncore. 35% of the gasoline. Tar sands from Alberta, 1200 miles away, makes up 15% of the production. When Suncore bought the Conoco and Valero refineries, they paid about $200 million for both of them. They spent, according to them, about $400 million upgrading the refinery. But I think most of that money was spent on bringing a pipeline from Canada down to the Suncore refineries. So that's how they got the tar sands down. The dirtiest fossil fuel there is. Okay, next slide, Karen, please. What is the Cultivando project? Well, one thing it is, is the continuous monitoring first time ever of Suncore air pollution. One thing you have to understand about oil and gas development in this state and throughout the United States, oil and gas monitor itself. The state does not monitor. It's been said that self-regulation is to regulation as self-importance is to importance. Once you add self as a modifier, the world changes completely. And that's what happens at Suncore. You have no idea what's going on out there. But let me tell you some of the chemicals we were concerned about when we started developing this project plan. I don't have greenhouse gases there, but I'll just say a word about that. Suncore has a permit to emit 800,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. That's CO2 and methane. It's hard to explain how great that volume is. But I used to say that, well, the static weight of the Empire State Building is 346,000 tons. And it weighs, it's almost over two times that. But those are apples and oranges. What you can say is that in 2019, 188,000 cars were bought new in the state of Colorado. The tailpipe emissions from all of those 188,000 cars is about equal to what Suncore does. It's supposed to be the second-largest polluter in the state, Comanche III being first. But Comanche III doesn't operate very often. So I think that Suncore is probably from a greenhouse gas standpoint. And from other pollutants, probably the largest emitter in the state. Benzene, the World Health Organization says there's no safe limit for humans around Benzene. Yet, Suncore has a nine parts per billion permit. It exceeds that as the slide showed you as Cultivano's slide presentation or movie presentation showed you. They've seen it all the time. 2012, they got a $2 million fine. They've had other fines. EPA estimates that they probably reached two tons of Benzene a year. Hydrogen cyanide was developed as a pesticide. It was used in First World War as a poison gas in the trenches, first used by the French. It was later used by the Nazis, of course, in extermination camps such as Treblinka in the Second World War. Suncore has had a tremendous problem controlling its cyanide, hydrogen cyanide releases. It started out a few years ago about 10 tons and kept going up and going up and going up because it's not, there's not a standard for it under the Clean Air Act. They ask and the state gives them approval. But it finally got up. They asked for 20 tons a year and all hell broke loose. And the people around in Commerce City around the Suncore were like, what the hell is going on here? And that's when the whole issue of these two pollution permits, which have been expired, one for over a decade, started to surface. And people started to learn that they weren't giving these permits for pollution based on any health considerations, but what they could do under the Clean Air Act. Suncore also releases about 12 tons of hydrogen sulfide, which is another gas poison, which the British used in the First World War. Start getting a picture here of this place. It's just a little house of horrors. And the sulfur dioxide, of course, is what everybody sees. That's what you see in that slide below. And this, you know, they've had huge sulfur dioxide releases over time. The one that they showed in the Cultivano film in 2016. They have a permit for 500 pounds a day. They released 75,000 pounds. It closed down an interstate highway. All the schools were locked in. They had to reverse 9-11 for all the houses within a two mile range of the Suncore plant. It happened again in 2018. This time there were these pellets of clay that came with it. It covered the entire area. All the cars. But once again, Suncore said no problem. State agreed. But they did warn the people that they should wash their clothes right away and take a shower. And they said, well, and as they said in the film, well, we'll wash your cars for you too. And then there's particulates. Not a very sexy subject, I suppose, but it's what we would call soot. But it's giving a lot more attention now. Suncore has a permit for 55 tons of particulates a year. The EP estimates that that's been probably underestimated by many, many, many times. But since nobody regulates and nobody monitors except Suncore itself, it's hard to ascertain. One thing we do know, the particulates have a tremendous impact on public health. The National Academy of Science recently said that about 63% of all environmental deaths result from particulates from fossil fuels. 3% of all deaths in the United States result from particulates from fossil fuels. And then there's a new study out from Harvard saying that of the 9 million premature deaths in the world, the 9 million deaths, the substantial proportion of them, about 60%, are from particulates from fossil fuels. It's becoming a major, major problem. Add to this that a Harvard study on radioactive pollution shows that from well sites, downwind from well sites, increases in radioactive toxins increased substantially, up to 40% above background. And that those, those particulates, those toxins are carried by particulates and can be measured 12 miles downstream from the actual source. And finally, there's a very recent article out of the Journal for National Cancer Institute, which says that within 5 or 10 miles of our refinery, the chances of contracting one, one form of cancer or another go up exponentially. So would you go to the next slide? This is, this is, and 5 mile radius, the area inside that circumference is home to 120,000 people. But it also includes downtown Denver, where people don't live. So the impact is actually much greater. But look what it includes. I mean, you know, it includes the downtown, the major hospitals in the metropolitan area include national Jewish. And if you go out to the 10 mile radius, it includes a population of all 875,000 people that are being potentially injured with increased chances of cancer from the Suncor refinery. You know, it includes the Denver Country Club. I like to say that, well, the only, the only thing that the people at Denver Country Club and the people around Suncor have in common is the fact that they're all, all being their chance of getting cancer are a lot greater. As the film shows, the people around Suncor are about 75% Latino and about 55% live below the poverty line. And, you know, I think the poverty line in the United States is still 12,000, $12,000 for a single person and $22,000 for a family of three. Think about that. They have to look, they live that way. And then they have the Suncor refinery right at the back. Next slide, please. The Culter Bottom will manage the project in mismanagement. That lift will do the boat, you know, boulder hour will do the data collection. And these are some of the people that will do the health and sociological studies. On the right there at the top, the man in the gray hair is Dr. Brown. He was the chief head of the Connecticut Department of Public Health. He was an associate director for the CDC in Atlanta on toxicity, on toxicology. He taught toxicology at Northeastern University in Boston and got his PhD. He was doctor of science from Harvard College in toxicology. Down at the bottom left is Willis Supra. She's from Louisiana. She's served on the EPA National Science Advisory Council, co-chair them for years and years and years. She won a MacArthur Genius Award for her work helping small communities understand the impacts of oil and gas development and refineries on their communities. The middle two women are Ramona Beltran. She teaches sociology at DU and, of course, may recognize Stephanie Maylan. They will be doing the sociological and psychological impacts of Suncor on the people's lives living around the refinery. And the psychological effect can be devastating. I mean, as you recognize now with the impact that the pandemic has had on kids, the psychological impact. At the bottom, I'll skip the fellow over there with the mask. I think I recognize him. But the guy at the bottom, the bottom right, is Mike Wireman. He's a friend of Wes and I. He was a hydrogeologist at EPA and recognizes a national expert on groundwater. I haven't mentioned this, but part of the study will include PFAS. And Mike will do a literature search and review of what PFAS information is available about Suncor and the surrounding. Suncor has a tremendous problem there. They have monitoring wells at the plant and they've showed up PFAS about 190 times above the safe health standards EPA has established. Plus, they discharge about 3.5 million gallons of water a day in the Sand Creek, which runs in the Platte River. And that is probably a good avenue of escape for PFAS as well. He will be looking at those pathways and be writing a report on. The final report on the health impacts will be written by Dr. Brown. Wilma will be the go-to person for Cultivando when the data that that looks like there should be alert put out to the people about what's going on. And the study from these two women will probably be later than the rest of the report was put out. Okay, the next slide. It costs about 1.7 million dollars. It's in two components. A debtless data gathering is one component and the health and social impact components and Cultivando's community involvement are the other component. Next slide. It's a one-year beginning in January of 2022. We'd like to extend it. I mean, it's the only study of its kind. And I think that money should be made out of the APCD's budget to allow this study continue until we get enough information to make a decision. Now, one of the things that's complicated in this whole business is that the APCD within the CDPHE within the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment claims that SB 181 doesn't apply to it. So it doesn't have to evaluate these pollutants as to their impact on public health. That's their claim. That's going to be a big fight. We've been at it for a long time now and it's got to come to an end here soon. Next slide, please. This is shameless. I've written three articles on the Cultivando situation and I'm just listing them here. The last one, how much time do I have, Karen? You have about five minutes. One of the things, the reason we got involved with Cultivando on this was that when the state fined Suncor, $9 million, they set aside $2.7 million or $2.9 million for citizen projects. The interesting part was that the citizens that were in the side of that money was going to be spent. We would have never gotten involved in it if the state was going to. So, you know, we helped Cultivando put together the project. When we got to the voting, guess who was voting? The state and Suncor and they both voted against this project. And I write about that. I was so infuriated by that I could not believe it. But the citizens finally prevailed and we did get funding for both parts of the project. This one down here that the more than two dozen major lawsuits, it's kind of interesting because as you read in the paper recently, Boulder County is suing both Suncor and ExxonMobil over their climate disruption. It'll be interesting to follow, but we can't wait for that. We've got to get Suncor either closed down and I think that's probably the only real option or it's got to quit killing people slowly or quickly as it's doing now. A lot of the information that I talked about in this came out of this, the way things are in Colorado, Latino led effort to change things, which was March of 2020. Those are all available online. In the last slide, I think it's the last one. These are some of the people that supported our effort. There were a lot more that wrote in, but these were the ones that we had on, had captured by the time we submitted our proposal. Richard Lamb was always up front. We became fairly good friends. He always supported everything we wanted to do about climate and fracking. He was one of the first to sign on on this and he actually went out and tried to get other, other past governors to sign on, living north of you and no luck, but I'm going to miss him. He was a good guy, I thought. There you have it. That's the background on what Cultivando is going to do about with Suncor. Thank you, Phil. Lots and lots of information. A reminder that you'll be able to go back to our website or long route public media. You don't have time to copy all those journal articles. Mitzi is going to take over here. Yes, good evening. My name is Mitzi Nicoletti. Our next two speakers, Dr. Detlev Holmig and Andrew Kuster, will discuss their findings at the Suncor site. Our first speaker, Dr. Detlev Holmig, received his university education and PhD degree in Germany. He moved to the U.S. where he held appointments at the State-wide Air Pollution Center, University of California Riverside and the National Center of Atmospheric Research in Boulder. Over the past five years, Dr. Holmig's research has shifted towards a study of air quality here in Colorado. He is the lead scientist for community monitoring with stations in Boulder, Longmont, Erie and Broomfield and now is adding the Suncor site. Detlev, would you like to give us an update on the Suncor site? Yes, thank you, Mitzi. Good evening, everybody. Good to be here again. Is that screen sharing working? Can you see my presentation slide? Yes. Good, good. Okay, I want to give you an update where things stand with the implementation of an air monitoring program in Commerce City. I have a first chart, a few data plots to share with you as well, but I want to emphasize this all very, very fresh, very new and still part of the preliminary. Okay, yep. So probably most of you have seen this in the past. This is what we've been developing the last four or five years, a network of air monitoring stations here in the Colorado Front Range. These are the existing operating sites shown data and presented this many, many times. So what's new? Bottom right here. So we've been adding two new locations to this network, two sites in Commerce City, and we've named those Commerce City fixed sites, CCF and Commerce City mobile sites, CCM and I will show you now what we're monitoring and where things stand with setting these sites up. So in the stable here in the left column shows the measurements that are planned for the fixed site location, again CCF, and let me walk you through. There's a very long list and I would claim as far as I know this is probably the most comprehensive air quality monitoring in the state that's ever been done as far as I know. So the fixed sites on the left has the meteorology, we're measuring ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nartic oxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, methane, volatile organic compounds and that includes many, many compounds and I've only listed two here individually that's benzene and hydrogen cyanide and we heard about those compounds in the previous talks and we'll monitor particulate matter, coarse particulates, PM10 and fine particulates, PM2.5 and then really for the first time in this capacity we'll be monitoring the radioactivity and rather than doing long-term averaged filter samples we will be measuring those in real time at high time resolution which is really a high, high advantage over long-time integrated measurements and we have a mobile facility that has a smaller selection of measurements here, meteorology, nartic oxide, nitrogen dioxide and again VOCs and then it has a community monitoring program. I will show you in a moment what that entails but let's look at the trailer facilities first, the fixed site you can see in this picture here, it was installed in late November, it's north of Suncor and that houses all these measurements that were listed in the left column. The mobile trailer is a little bit smaller since it has fewer instruments, it's also deployed as of right now in Commerce City and these are the components of the community monitoring so these are air monitors, samplers that are placed at community sites across the area and there are three components that these small purple air particulate monitors which you see in the left picture then we will deploy these passive samplers for volatile organic compounds that's shown in the middle and on the right this shows these canisters, these round steel canisters and they're also used to sample air when there are occurrences of poor quality, we will give those to citizens so they can open these canisters and they will then suck in air and close the valve and we will then analyze those for volatile organic compounds in one of our laboratory trailers. This shows where these are currently deployed in the very center there, kind of this little picture is roughly where the Suncor refinery is located straight to the north is this fixed side and the yellow dot the mobile trailer it will move around about every two weeks it's currently a little bit to the northeast of the Suncor refinery and then these purple air and particle sensors we have more than 20 of those installed right now and you can see how they are distributed at all of these purple dots locations and again I want to show you a little bit more where the fixed side our central side is located the brownish trailer and you can see it's a pretty straight shot from the refinery to the north maybe less than a mile half a mile and we looked very very hard for a long time to find a suitable location trying to find one that was in a straight airflow without any other interfering potential sources in between that's the best you could come up with and it's been there for two months and measurements are currently ramping up this is a status report where things stand as of right now the deep green color show monitoring that's up and running fully quality controlled the light of blue these are measurements ongoing we're still working on some of the calibration procedures for those measurements and the other ones are in preparation at the fixed side the VOC instrument was just made operational the last two days we anticipate this will go online in the next week or two the particulate monitor just almost shipped today should go online in the next few days the radioactivity measurements it's an instrument which was ordered in December and is anticipated to arrive in in april the the mobile trailer is up and running with VOCs we're just not reporting them yet to the website the particulate measurements on the purple airs are running and the passive samplers for the VOCs and the canisters we accept to and start in march we've also developed a web portal where these data are being reported the site is up and running you can see the url here in the title it reports current air quality conditions in this very simple um simply design color scheme to report air quality and green yellow orange red and so forth you see the scale there and then below is the data tabulated format and there's also another tab where you can see the data plotted as time series we call these this is the last three days of data you're probably familiar with this by now since the other sites have a very very similar format and you can see this actually data all the way through today for three of the gases pollutants that we're measuring at the commercial city fixed site ozone carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and another component of the project is dispersion modeling what we're doing here is we're taking inventory emissions so these are not our own measurements these are inventory emissions what's reported to be emitted from the refinery and these apply those emissions to a dispersion model that then projects where downwind these emissions end up and how they are distributed at the surface so you can see one example from an episode in january when we had a strong inversion and we had winds from the southeast you can see the emissions being transported to the northwest of the refinery this is making good progress but it's not posted in real time on the website yet um we've also included the observations from the fixed site in our data analysis tool that's public online so you can as of right now access this tool and if you look here at the very bottom um ccf-comersity fixed site the data are in this tool you can select it you can select the species you can select the the time window and um visualize data from any um period where they are available um to date i'm going to give you some first very first example this was just the last 10 days um methane measurements from the commerce city location and here they are in this darker blue the darker blue um compared to measurements at the border reservoir in eerie and in longmont um so you can see you know we have um episodes where the commerce city data are elevated above these other locations but you know we also had spikes here in longmont that were pretty high for for a few days you can also see that you know their times when they're low and all the sites are low and that's mostly then when it gets really windy and the air gets pre-clean you know all across the front range you can see this even down at commerce city um where levels drop to much lower levels so this is methane nitrogen oxides um over since we've been running this for the last two months on average we see higher levels of nitrogen oxides in the commerce city site and at all the other locations so you can see the dark blue um has most of the the higher spikes um compared to the other locations this is what's been striking the most thus far these are measurements of hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen sulfide is this smelly sulfuric compound you know when you go to yellowstone you smell some of that and also sulfur dioxide you can smell it at landfills and mostly where there's rotting material or there's there's there's there's geologic gases i'm coming to the surface um we measure thing there's only at two sites in the network the other comparison site is in broomfield that's the um soring eagle location in broomfield which is here comparison in green and you can see clearly how the commerce city location is so much more elevated in the hydrogen sulfide the odor threshold varies um among people i've seen odor thresholds reported as low as nine ten parts per billion so you can see we have quite a number of spikes here where you would expect that this will be noticed recognized by people um being in that area and these levels are clearly exceeding um odor thresholds values and we've seen this this is many many many times um when we look at this hydrogen sulfide data um and do this correlation with wind direction we see a very clear pattern where the elevated levels of hydrogen sulfide are correlated with winds from the west and the south so these are wind roses where the length of these these pie segments show you how frequent the winds are from a certain direction and when we saw this we were very happy um because you see most times the winds are from the south of the southwest and we are located north of the refinery so we are downwind which is where we wanted to be so we're in the right place and you can see that um there's much more red in the flows from the south but also specifically from the southwest if you then plug this into the model and put this on on the map um this is what we've gotten so far and this is just for three weeks of observations in january you can see very very nicely how um when the winds come from the the north the east or the southeast the levels are much much lower so the blue colors are for for lower levels um of hydrogen sulfide and that the um that there's a very distinct narrow section from where the hydrogen sulfide appears to originate but now you have to remember that the winds don't really come that frequently from the west you know they come much more frequent from the south but when they come from the west of the southwest we see these these much darker colors redder colors so there's much higher distribution of higher concentrations with hydrogen sulfide from that segment and then when you combine those now you so you multiply the frequency of the winds with what you see in levels that's coming from those directions it looks a little bit different um but you get a similar story you know most of that hydrogen sulfides comes from the southwest quadrant um air coming from the north is much much cleaner much much lower air coming from the southeast doesn't have much so you know we're starting to see some dependencies we're using this this high time resolved data and collating it with the with the winds we can get a first few insights you know where some of the pollutants that we see here are originated so and this is just a very first glimpse of what we'll be doing the next year and where things stand at this point and as I said we're we're still ramping up and I think within the next month or two um we'll pretty much be fully up and running and with that I'll turn this back to mitzi thank you delib Andrew is next if I remember right yes thank you delib that was excellent so our our next speaker is andrew cluster he is a colorata field advocate at earthworks he is passionate about environmental justice and community organizing and is determined to apply that passion to the critical work in colorata of ensuring that the state and local governments are prioritizing public health the environment and future coloradans over resource extraction andrew thank you and I'm going to start sharing my screen and I just have a video a single video to share with you all today um but before I before I start playing the video and you can all see my screen correct yes before I start playing the video I did just want to say um a little bit in case there's a few folks on here who haven't seen me present on one of these webinars in the past um as an employee with earthworks I'm a certified optical gas imaging thermographer which is quite a bit of a mouthful but essentially what that means is I am trained to use and operate optical gas imaging cameras or ogi cameras and these are specially designed infrared cameras that allow us to visualize pollutants that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye and the camera model that we at earthworks use and I use when I'm conducting field work for earthworks is the same model that the oil and gas industry employs for leak detection and repair because this is a camera that allows us to see methane which is invisible to the naked eye and as I think we all know is a major greenhouse gas and a major pollutant from the oil and gas industry and it also allows us to see other hydrocarbons including volatile organic compounds such as benzene which um Phil I think did a really good job of framing for us as to why we should be concerned about benzene emissions and so one last note before I start playing this video and I'll talk over the video in the interest of time but typically when I do field work um and when earthworks conducts field work we're looking at upstream facilities so well sites well pads infrastructure that's associated with oil and gas and extraction um we don't as frequently film um gas plants and refineries and part of the reason is because one of the things that we do with our field work is we try to hold operators accountable um to what they may be getting away with and we try to hold uh state regulators such as the air pollution control division accountable for the regulations that they may be enforcing or may not be enforcing when it comes to refineries as Phil mentioned um in his presentation they kind of operate under a completely different regulatory framework than well facilities and well pads and so um this video here that you're going to see um I was I was approached by both boulder air and poltivando last year and this was filmed in December of last year and we're really we're thinking of this as just a sort of complement visual complement to the data that that live is collecting and to the rest of the data that's going to be gathered by this project and I plan to take subsequent videos but um we won't be following through with our traditional earthworks process of filing complaints via these videos or anything like that unless um something really really stands out but again you know as Phil discussed these refineries even when they are operating under a permit which Suncor has not been they are permitted to pollute um pump tons and tons of pollutants into the atmosphere um and which is a problem in and of itself but I'm going to start the video now and I will like I said I'll provide some commentary as it plays um in the interest of time because I know we have some more speakers to get to um but you'll see as this video starts we'll start with just a digital camera photo um and as it zooms in it's going to transition to the ogi footage and you can already notice immediately that what you're seeing via ogi is a lot more there's just it's a lot more busy than what you saw with that naked eye view and the first thing that you'll see is a lot of these stacks on the refinery you can see the heat and steam coming out of the top of their stacks but the more important thing to focus on the stack in the middle of the video here you see this tail this trail of pollution that is that is coming off of it and going off screen that's the telltale sign of missions that are uncombusted coming from that stack so again our camera visualizes hydrocarbons methane vocs those whatever is coming out of the top of that stack is not being fully combusted and therefore those pollutants are carrying off and away from the facility in this video and again you know what we're what we're hoping to achieve with these videos and this is just the first pass we I plan to take some more of the refinery from potentially different angles all of these were taken from across the sand creek um is the easiest access we have um so from the north um what we hope to achieve is to be able to show people show folks who are um engaging with cultivando's project first of all where where the sources of emissions potentially are on their refinery and also just to get a sense to start to understand conceptualize how this pollution is traveling away from the facility you know this is not localized when there's uncombusted emissions coming from these stacks um they're traveling far away from the facility before they settle over the surrounding neighborhoods um so again in this this other clip you see some of these stacks and you see that telltale sign of pollutants that are trailing away from the tips of the stacks there and I think the video is just about over um but as I said this is a first pass this is the first edited video we've thrown together we plan on over the course of the year um taking additional videos and continuing to complement um all of the data air quality data that that live is collecting and boulder is collecting and we'll probably have much more to share in the future Andrew thank you we look forward to seeing more footage this year it's alarming what we're looking at but thank you for being here tonight and now what we're going to do is move on to the next portion of the webinar which is our panel discussion if you have any questions for panelists please put them in the chat box Andrew Cluster at Phil Doe Dr. Detlef Helmick will be on the panel but we're also going to hear from Mike Foote Jonathan Singer and Mayor Joan Peck Mike Foote former Colorado legislator and current environmental energy attorney Jonathan Singer former Colorado legislator and current executive director of logic Joan Peck longtime environmental activist and current mayor of Longmont we're going to ask each of these panel members to give us a quick summary of what they're currently working on and then we'll start our panel discussion Mike can you please start us off with an update yeah happy to you thanks a lot Mitzi and thanks everyone for joining us here tonight what I'm going to be talking about here for a few minutes hopefully I'll make it a fairly quick summary is about a recent report that I completed for the Sierra Club the Colorado chapter of the Sierra Club regarding the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and how it's been doing over the last year since their mission change rules went into effect so you know the report was extensive I am not going to just put it up on the screen as a PowerPoint because you can read it yourself if you haven't read it already and also I'll put a link in the chat here after this is all done so that you can take a look at it but so basically I was I was very happy to to help put this information together Sierra Club wanted to know the answer to how things are going with the COGCC a year since the mission change rulemaking occurred and the mission change rulemaking occurred a actually it was about a year and a half after Senate Bill 181 actually passed and so it's been quite some time since the bill passed but then when mission change went into effect you have the new rules that went into effect January 15th of 2020 2021 I'm sorry and they just wanted to know how it's going and so I guess you know I'll summarize it this way you know like when you see on social media you kind of have the split screen of you know it says how it started and then how it's going and and so the way that I would summarize it I guess is if I had to put together a meme along those lines I would start off with how it's going which was the bill being passed were you know maybe a picture of the governor signing the bill back in April of 2019 and how it's going I think I would probably put a picture of somebody you know hanging on to the edge of a cliff and in danger but also not having lost hope they haven't fallen off the cliff yet they can still get up off the cliff but clearly that's kind of a perilous situation and that's really how I would put how things are going with the COGCC now after observing it for a year and looking into the documents and really just trying to pencil a paper to figure out exactly how the new commission has been implementing the law so there's good there's four areas that I'll just point out in particular in this little summary but of course if you want more information you can always go take a look at the report the the the first area that I'll talk about very briefly is just kind of a general permitting philosophy I'll talk then about cumulative impacts and what they're doing or not doing with with regards to accounting for cumulative impacts of oil and gas development I'll talk about setbacks and what's happening there and then finally I'll talk about enforcement of rules or lack thereof and just generally what the current commission is doing along all four of those lines that's not that doesn't cover everything that's in the report but I think it's kind of the four maybe takeaway lines that you can take from it so number one going to the general permitting philosophy you know the the one of the main points of Senate Bill 181 was to change the permitting philosophy and the mission of the oil and gas conservation commission I think we know that the mission of the COGCC beforehand was a dual mission it was to to basically what's the word I'm looking for they were promoting the industry at the same time as they were regulating the industry which is not really a very great mission there and clearly you know during that point in time they were doing much more to promote the industry than to regulate the industry the bill was intended to make sure that they were solely a regulatory entity that they were regulating the industry and in that case with permitting any new kind of facilities what they were supposed to do is first and foremost look at whether or not those new facilities would be protective of public health safety welfare the environment and wildlife so whether or not it was protected under 181 is supposed to be their main inquiry what we're seeing instead of asking the basic question about what things whether or not a particular new facility is protective what we're seeing is they're kind of reverting back to the old check a box mentality which is what they had before which was here's our rules and as long as the new permit checks all the boxes and these new rules are met then you're going to get your permit regardless of whether or not it really is protective now the COGCC would claim their new rules are protective and that's what's protecting public health safety welfare the environment and wildlife but I you know I think I disagree with that I think a lot of probably everyone on this call disagrees with that but the bottom line is they're not really even looking at it in a way that the bill really intended which was the big picture of is it protective or not if it's not protective the permit shall be denied and that's just not the way of looking at it right now unfortunately the second quick takeaway that I'll talk about are setbacks and this is kind of related to the general permitting part but with setbacks I think those of you that followed the mission change rulemaking know that the debate about setbacks was quite extensive ultimately the rule that the CRGC put into place was a presumptive 2000 foot setback however there are exceptions to the 2000 foot setback they're going to allow an operator to go as little as 500 feet away from a residence and there's four exceptions to the 2000 foot presumptive setback one of which is really turned out to be quite troubling which is the exception that allows the operators say if they are putting into place conditions that are provides substantially equivalent protections to if the facility was 2000 feet away they can go ahead and put the facility say a thousand feet away or 750 feet away so it's known as the substantially equivalent protections subsection that right now at least based on what we've seen from the last year has been an exception that has been ill-defined at the very least but at worst is an exception that threatens to swallow the entire rule and really become the rule we saw three new permit applications in 2021 that employed the substantially equivalent protections exception there are a couple that are coming up here this month actually next week that are even worse than the ones that we saw in 2021 one of which the Longs Peak OGDP wants to place one of its pads within 2000 feet of 87 residences at Firestone and they're claiming that what they're putting into place is going to provide substantially equivalent protections to if the facilities place 2000 feet away so this as I said is an exception that threatens to swallow the rule we'll have to see what the COGCC does in particular with these new permits permit applications that are coming up here next week the third thing I'll talk about very quickly is cumulative impacts you probably know that Senate Bill 181 put into place a requirement for the COGCC to evaluate and address cumulative impacts of oil and gas operations so that's a two-part equation you have to first of all evaluate what's happening and what kind of impacts or effects the oil and gas operations having on the environment particularly those cumulative effects but after you evaluate that you're supposed to actually address those things and in plain English at least the way that I kind of see cumulative effects and some of the impacts being is that it's really an analysis to ask what is too much for an area you know I know most of this program has been about Commerce City of course Commerce City already is struggling with all kinds of fossil fuel pollution including the Suncor refinery so in a place like Commerce City if you put in three or four or even as many as six new oil and gas developments which is what actually one of the operators wants to do you know the cumulative impacts of that are going to be huge because of what they're already suffering less so perhaps in a place in rural Colorado but that's debatable and then that's even leading outside the issue of climate and the effect on climate but at any rate the COGCC right now even with the Commissioner's own admission has not really done much with cumulative impacts and implementing that part of 181 they are doing stuff to gather the data but they're not really doing anything with the data so far and they have said that so this is no surprise but I still think it's worth mentioning because again it's been since 2019 since the bill's been in effect and we still don't have anything that's really truly addressing cumulative impacts at least as envisioned than I wanted to want okay so finally I'll talk very briefly about enforcement and really what I want to point out here is that there have been some enforcement measures taken over the last year since mission change that have been more robust so you know I certainly want to acknowledge that I call it in the report a two steps forward one step back approach because there have been some steps forward but there's also been some steps backwards too like letting a major violator cut their fine down more than half that that was assessed against them for example and also just the fact that there's still numerous numerous complaints from residents that are close to existing oil and gas facilities particularly along the lines of excessive noise and excessive emissions we see this in jurisdiction after jurisdiction the facilities that they're complaining about are facilities that were permitted before Senate Bill 181 but nevertheless the rules that cover those facilities are in existence now after 181 and they're not sufficient enough to protect nearby residents against excessive noise and emissions among other things but noise and emissions are really the two main themes that we're seeing so that still exists that's still out there that's still happening it's still affecting people in a real way and it just was something that I felt was important to point out in the report so I guess I'll wrap it up there for now unless there's any kind of Q&A or people want some further information about it you know it's it's something that I felt very privileged to be able to work on to report you know unfortunately I'm not in a position to pass any laws to do anything about it at this point however you know folks can still go through the legislative process and and try to get legislators to really address these types of things it's not unusual to have a quote unquote cleanup type of bill that's introduced after a major bill and to me it seems like some of the provisions in 181 that are not really being implemented kind of scream for a cleanup bill although it certainly won't be a simple cleanup bill so I'll leave it at that and again thanks for your attention and thanks for having me on and look forward to any kind of questions you have about it and in the meantime I'll also put the link to the report in the chat box thank you Mike I encourage everybody to read that report and thank you for all the work you've done Mike on it next Jonathan can you give us an update on what you're doing currently I can so hopefully you can hear me okay so first of all I just want to say thank you welcome to my basement I'm glad we could fit all 44 of you in there and I want to compliment all of you for actually sitting in the same place for so long actually your cameras are off so I can't tell whether you've been sitting or jogging so so this is what I'm going to do actually and I'm going to take a little less time for myself and a little bit of time for all of us so I'm going to start talking in about 30 seconds here but I'm going to ask 10 people at least 10 people to turn their cameras on for a second because we're going to do something and it's called chair yoga yes because if you can't take care of yourself you can't take care of other people so we're not going to do all these exercises I want everyone to pick one of these I'm going to do the shoulder stretch because it looks the easiest although after a night of drinking if you look at the bottom right hand corner maybe restore might be what what most of us will look like so so all right we're going to take 30 seconds here pick an exercise I'm going to do the shoulder stretch oh I am actually wearing real pants today but I'm still just doing the shoulder stretch all right I'm going to do one more because it turns out I'm in worse shape than I thought so all right I'm going to do one one seated leg left oh I couldn't even do it all right well all right so now now that that thus concludes the um the healthy part of this the the exercise here today so um thank you all for for indulging me on that but trust me it is good for you I hope you all signed a waiver before you did this in case anyone strained anything so logic has been focused on both the state the federal and the local level and the one thing that I wanted to share with you and I don't think anyone has shared it yet is the story map project that that has been put out with a conjunction of other environmental groups so the story map project is something that's available to to anyone and this identifies within the state of Colorado where our wells are and whether these are high producing wells low producing wells uneconomic well uneconomic wells there we go and um so I'm gonna walk people through uh just briefly what this is so um so when we look at at our map of Colorado here we'll zoom in and enhance to Longmont Boulder County for Collins what you can do is you can pick any particular area here through the story map project and logic will do uh will be doing an event where where will you do a full walkthrough of this you can see who the applicant is or who the operator is um and what they're doing why is this important well as you can tell you don't have to be a scientist you don't have to be certified in anything to see that the majority of wells in the state of Colorado are producing uh less than one barrel what does that mean why is that the case why are uneconomic uneconomic wells allowed in the first place well it turns out it is actually cheaper to allow uh a potentially polluting dirty uneconomic well to continue to produce then it is to remediate cap it properly and and stop the the fugitive emissions that are occurring so now that we know the truth the truth will set us free right uh the opportunity now is to talk to our policymakers and tell them that if this is actually what Colorado looks like then it's time to make sure that we're actually working on the biggest part of this problem which are our low producing and uneconomic wells now as a former legislator uh who is not yet uh out of his two year time out um i can't lobby i can educate but i can't lobby and so i'm gonna i'm gonna stop talking about what i'm doing at the state level because that's all i'm doing at the state level right now but what's happening on the federal level i'm gonna give you some good news and then i'm gonna give you some bad news and then um you'll you'll see what you want to do with it the good news is this um our congressional delegation is paying attention they are listening um even uh some some of the folks that we had a tough time with at the state legislature including our former governor john haykin looper understands that profits don't always equal prosperity for people and one of the big things that we're talking about at the federal level is stopping non-competitive leasing um for those of you who don't know what non-competitive leasing is imagine there's a certain number of parcels uh across bureau of land management land and that are up up for lease and you've got parcel a parcel b parcel c parcel d they get auctioned off for use and the auction prices are supposed to pay for the remediation and the cost of well guess what our operators go out there and axon talks to bp bp talks to extraction extraction talks to somebody else and they say you know we could bid against each other or what we could do is if i if i just bid on a i promise i won't bid on b and you can go ahead and bid on b and extraction if you want to go ahead and bid on b um don't bid on c because we're to let axon do that so now we the people are getting pennies on the dollar back on what uh what is rightfully ours so um john haykin looper actually wrote an op-ed supporting the end of non-competitive leasing this was brought up actually um in the build back better bill and our favorite or at least favorite west virginia senator uh joe manchin was not opposed to this the bad news is this build back better is still not going anywhere and so now the question is can we salvage the pieces of the build back better bill and put them into other pieces of legislation or put them as standalone pieces of legislation to see them pass and so i wanted to give people a little bit of hope um along with the cynicism and and the last thing that i wanted to share with you is what we're doing at a local level you heard a little bit about firestone um you saw uh with andrew's presentation some of the fugitives of the missions that are happening up in larimer county right now average everyday people who had nothing to do with oil and gas are standing up every single day there's a woman uh by the name of susanne who saw that oil and gas was coming into her community right by the golf course and the bike path in her neighborhood she started a change.org petition that logic saw we called her up and said hey susanne we saw your change.org thing you need some help and she goes there's people that help with this we said yeah that's why we're here um we knocked on doors and we talked to people we talked to people who are definitely not democrats definitely not progressives people who actually have worked in the industry or who have family members who are in the industry we said we said hey this is going to come within 1500 feet of your home well that can't be the case i've worked in the industry before this is this happened somewhere far far you know out in rural areas you know it's actually going in front of your planning commission in two weeks and if you want some tools we're going to do a zoom tell you how you can advocate for yourselves if you're curious all of a sudden people start coming out of the woodwork people who were either uninformed or misinformed by the oil and gas industry showed up spoke truth to power and the firestone planning commission denied that permit that's the power of not of logic but the power of local neighborhoods now that was appealed to the city council who overturned that denial and we have another shot now at the oil and gas conservation commission at the co gcc and we have the ammunition now to be able to say you know what the one quasi judicial non-biased governmental um wing responsible for looking at appropriate land use policies said no this to my knowledge on february 16th will be the first time that the colorado oil and gas conservation commission under the new rules relating to senate bill 181 will be able to take that input and say you know what we aren't about fostering the industry anymore we are about regulating the industry and because of susan standing up someone who had never done anything in politics in her life never imagined she would be would probably be rightly embarrassed if i made her turn her camera on and do seated cherry yoga um is now a leader and an organizer and she hates being called those things but she is and on february 16th we will see whether or not the new rules the new mission and her organizing work can flip this script on its head so instead of instead of carrying on about this we've got tons more work to be doing um in the entire state of colorado but i wanted to share that one positive negative information and uh look forward to your questions jonathan thank you thank you for that story we look forward to hearing what happens on the 16th mayor john peck would you like to give us a little update before we start our panel discussion sure thank you and thank everybody for attending i i'm always so impressed that there are so many people that are interested in the subject and want some action and i i enjoyed listening to mike foot and jonathan singer and i did read mike foot's paper white paper to see air club the one thing that is frustrating to me is the fact that and on february 16th i hope that this turns around on sb 181 because uh city council in longmont had a breakfast zoom breakfast with um some of our two of our representatives uh let's see who was it karen uh and tracy brunette and karen uh what's her last name shoot shoot me your last name mike mcormick yeah some reason i'm looking at lennette and i want to say mcclean and i thought no that's not right it's an mc word but um i asked her because tracy is having a lot of bills she's writing a lot of bills that are going to be uh coming out um to be addressed and i asked her when you write these bills tracy and they go to co gcc who what is the oversight to co gcc what is the oversight to make sure that co gcc follows the bills that we have written that the legislator puts through because i've watched mike for years and jonathan and matt jones struggling with this problem and it's as though co gcc just acts as though nothing nothing has changed and tracy told me both karen and tracy had no answer they had no answer for the bills they're writing to make sure that those bills are followed so i think that that is a huge loophole that uh we we have got to face and i don't know how to do it but maybe collectively we can figure it out um but i i love these series and we're on part four which i'm thinking is one of the most important because it's really highlighting the need for all of these communities to support each other and work together with we can speak with one voice and it's a bare voice in each little community trying to just turn the tide on what's happening there um and in the very first uh comment it was uh i like the fact that he called it the uh the untouchable giant gas and oil is the untouchable giant so i want to make that untouchable giant accountable accountable to us um i know that mike foot tried to get a bill passed for where the burden of proof lies when there is harm being done either to a community or two individuals and it is brought to court it is taken the next step to get justice but the burden of proof falls up on the person the city the municipality to prove that they have been hurt mike's bill and i wish it had passed i'm hoping that someone else will take that and move with it his bill said that it's up to the industry to prove that they did no harm and that didn't go anywhere but um i think that that is really where we need to go because we are fighting a giant that has never been accountable so um thanks everybody for coming and i hope that we can continue to work together or on a bigger scale have a louder voice so thank you mayor john peck and thanks for being here and now i think we're ready to start uh some of the questions that have been put in the chat box well how do we have um there are not many yet you still have opportunity please uh type yours in if you have one well i just want to say wow uh the knowledge and the experience and wisdom of the panel speakers is phenomenal tonight thank you all for that um the only question i see both of them are kind of from from jone the one she just touched on which i think is probably paramount in this whole conversation is that uh the bill of uh or mike's bill and perhaps further or future or even current attempts at revisiting placing the burden to proof on the industry i think in most of the big business commercial endeavors in our country uh that would make all the difference if we can flip the laws on on their heads and and have that pertains to all industries that are harming us but if there's any comment mike you can make on that they'd be great otherwise jone had um beyond what has been made uh jone had a question of how can we support cultivando which was kind of the focus of tonight in their efforts which are so important and so poignant um michael i'll just say really quick that yeah i appreciate the shout out about the that bill um from um mayor jone peck um and it was one of many bills that uh that i uh tried along with several other legislators that didn't quite make it past the finish line but you know it was really an attempt to kind of uh enshrine the precautionary principle um and it didn't it didn't happen um but uh that doesn't mean that it couldn't still be attempted i mean i think jone definitely is correct when she talks about the imbalance of power and um we still face that i i think when it comes to something like implementing senate bill 181 the one of the problems is that the industry has the resources and the people to continue to push and continue to monitor and continue to work the reps and to continue to try to influence the rules in a way that always works in their favor and um community members environmental groups and others don't have anywhere close to those kinds of resources um you know that doesn't necessarily absolve people of trying to do it i just think that there's a real imbalance there that could certainly explain what's been happening but uh that doesn't mean it's irreversible i think we need to recognize it and that it's happening and do whatever we can to really step up late at this point and that's why i'm glad that jonathan talked about some of the work that logic is doing because i think that's part of the effort to rebalance and to bring the community's voice to the table so it's not just the industry that's working the refs so to speak but also the community's working the refs too and uh and see if it gets to the place where 181 really is implemented the way it should be so um anyway that's that's all i had about that unless there's any other you know questions about it um well i'd like to build on that a little bit mike because uh jonathan mentioned logic but i'm not sure people know what those letters stand for and what that group does and you mentioned too jonathan having a toolbox so to speak for making change i was very impressed with the cultivando speakers in that film who were willing to step up step out of their comfort zone and address the issues but obviously who do you address and what is what is their comeback or non-comeback i guess you should say but um if you could say a little more about the tools in your toolbox that might make us all better advocates for uh safety in this issue sure no i'm i'm happy to you know so logic logic stands for league of oil and gas impacted coloradans whoa and yeah which is why we use the short version of that because that's a mouthful um but but we liked it so i mean this this is logic's place um on the spectrum of of activists and and and advocacy um we do everything from giving neighborhoods the tools to be able to advocate for themselves when oil and gas is encroaching on their neighborhoods and in their environment um and and it's old school i mean it literally is sitting down with folks and then figuring out where they want to go and what they want to do and then going out knocking on the doors talking to people saying this is when your decision makers are going to be making a decision this is how we're going to do it on top of that we've also expanded into everything from and this all always depends on fundraising um you saw the the story map project that's a tool that's a tool that anyone can use um that there's an eight billion dollar unfunded liability in the state of colorado um and then uh you know last but not least uh in in addition to all of those things i just wanted to say a special shout out and thank you to some of the folks from the larimer alliance who are here today these these are larimer county organizers who have we've leaned on them and they've leaned on us to be able to um step up at the larimer county commission hearings as well as city of former collins where they're actually starting to finally turn a page on making sure that they're doing the right kind of monitoring that should have been happening um long ago and is now you know in brunefield long lot in other places thank you um another question and i'm not sure who would address this just jump in any of the panel but regarding air monitoring what are the criteria for uh generating data that the c d p h e will accept who can jump on that the criteria what are the criteria do you feel well i mean i i think from the standpoint of what's immediate people need to get involved in the permitting process that's going on right now there are two permits that are coming up one for one of the plants and one for the water for the water permit people ought to object to those permits being renewed under the present circumstances because they're not looking at health impacts they're trying but they're they're caught up in the clean air act which only has standards for six pollutants and there are numerous other pollutants we have to go after on this from the standpoint of public health and 181 requires public health be protected now if it doesn't that's the biggest curveball ever served served the public if 181 doesn't protect us that is a curveball and if it doesn't then we need to know that and mike's probably right and need to go back to the legislature and correct it but they have two permits coming up at the apcd and people have to take a strong strong stand in supporting these things either have to be greatly corrected or you can't renew them so phil i'm going to butt in here for a moment are those the two suncore permits you're speaking about there's one suncore air permit and one sort suncore water permit there's two do you know the dates that they are going to be coming up for renewal not off the top but they're they're published i'll see if i can get them for you i'll put them on the chat line or give them to Karen yeah it's really important i i don't think there's anything more because it's kind of a backwater over at apcd i mean a lot of attention has been given to co gcc you know about oil and gas development but it's really the air quality that the apc has you know it hasn't it's in charge of air quality and not not enough attention has been given to the apc and what they do now they you know they they they cashiered the director recently because he wasn't doing any modeling at all but it's still you know it's pretty sleepy place i'm i'm sorry to say and it's going to take a lot of a lot of effort to change it so one of the reasons that i asked is that bringing communities together working together this if we know the dates this is going to happen we can we can work together to either write letters of testimonial or show up or and i i would really like to know what those dates are so if you could get us that that would be great you've got two allies with the in the city council in commerce city susan noble and christy douglas who's just been elected they would be overjoyed with support okay great thanks no jonathan do you did you have some for the comments on it i'll just i'll just say this very quickly logic has a c4 wing that's does not just political advocacy but we actually support candidates the majority of our endorsed city council candidates in commerce city lost there are elections coming up municipal elections coming up in april in eerie if people aren't paying attention we could see a whole new slew of people get elected that don't care about the things that we're talking about and then regardless of how we organize we may not have the people in the seat of power that we need and last but not least let's not forget democrat republican or if you're an unaffiliated primaries are coming up in the summer so now is the time to start asking the questions of your candidates and making sure they're a educated on the issues and that they are going to support the issues that you guys care about so not here to be an advertisement for anyone but coming up guys keep your eyes peeled jonathan i presume that the oil and gas industry funds a lot of those candidates uh campaigns that are trying to get elected on a local level not the ones the logic supports no no i know i know but i'm just saying that's obviously been a pattern yeah and we will be seeing that uh in eerie i have no doubt yeah andrew what are your thoughts on on this subject well to circle back to your question if i understand it correctly about um criteria for cdph to accept data um honestly to be to be completely frank the criteria is you have to be an employee of the cdph itself in order for that data to be accepted by them um and you know just as some insight into that i mean i have at earthworks we use the exact same model of camera that the cdph uses to conduct uh inspections i when i got my certification as an optical gas imaging thermometer there was an apcd employee who was also getting recertified so we'd go through the same certification process and yet when i submit videos that clearly show pollution occurring at oil and gas facilities in the state of colorado those videos do not count they're not considered evidence of pollution they're not considered evidence of anything by the air pollution control division and the only difference is between a video that i take and a video that they take is the person clicking record on the camera so um that you know that's that's from my personal sort of experience but i mean this this applies to citizen complaints this applies to any sort of evidence that any of us gather about any sort of violations or pollution issues that may be ongoing at oil and gas facilities as of right now these agencies don't consider that they do not prioritize that citizen gathered third party evidence in the same way that they would as if their own staff were collecting it surprise surprise yeah but what you're saying there's one of the reasons why a lot of us have gotten tired making statements before these commissions and things which are are just dismissed as community extremists something or other like that so one of my questions though is about testifying and is there still time to sign up for this hearing about the firestone situation and at the co gcc in february 16th is that are we too late to sign up for that or does anybody know on this panel i think the really the important thing is if you live in the firestone area i left my email in the chat for anyone info at colorado logic.org really they're going to want to hear from impacted neighbors not not folks that are i mean if you want to show up great we're all downwind and downstream from somewhere right but what they really want to hear from is they want to hear from those directly impacted you know residents and they want to hear stories more than statistics or science so to speak no well a little from column a and a little from column b i mean i will be there in my capacity as an organizer but but i think the important thing is is they they like i said they really do want to hear from impacted residents yeah one thing i'll say just to add to that is that other new permits the new permits that were approved back in 2021 none of them had any kind of resident opposition now that doesn't mean that there wasn't resident opposition it just means that they either didn't know or chose not to show up in order to express that so that i i know there's going to be some resident opposition to the long peak o gdp in particular and so this will be kind of the first time that the commissioners are confronted with some real opposition to a plan so that leaves me somewhat hopeful that we'll have a result in this case but i just think that it's worth noting that you know whether it be just because there's been difficulties and people figuring out how to participate whether just that the residents don't care either way there just hasn't been any kind of feedback negative feedback from residents on the other permits at least in 2021 i'm not sure how to uh karen how much time do we have i know folks uh we're going a little bit over and yeah we're we're over but a dead lip has his hand up and then um lennett's gonna close i think we're probably about at the end you know the mind can only absorb what the what the bottom can tolerate right so yeah but i wanted to add is in the context of air permits or air emissions permits there's a huge huge dilemma that there really is no independent observations verifications check on these permits and it's not even because nobody wants to you cannot you know other than the operator themselves nobody really knows how much is coming out of these stacks um you know even we can we can measure as hard as we can possibly do with our stations that are half a mile away on the ground these these measurements will tell us you know what's in the air at that place near the ground and it's important because you know that's where people live but how much is coming out of these stacks we cannot tell from those measurements and nobody else is doing these measurements as far as i know you know you would need to have somebody climb up there with a ladder put a put a probe into the exhaust and measure it you know every every minute every hour throughout the year and nobody can nobody does it be very very difficult measurement it be very costly so these these emission estimates they're based on self-reporting they're just based on a very very few snapshots that i would doubt reflect the changes in operations and emissions throughout the day day versus night throughout the week throughout the season as you know in any any operational conditions change in the facility i would have no idea how to really verify check you know if what's in this permit is it is it right is it too much is it too low we can't and i'm not aware that anybody else does and the state doesn't do it either you know it's it's just guessing hoping these these values mean something i don't know i can't tell you i don't think you can find anybody you can really tell you how accurate these these estimates are well i'm hoping that in our next webinar we can talk a little more about strategies and i i think you know you listen to these stories enough and hear these facts about implementation and you just yearn for a more dramatic or more newsworthy more inspiring way to participate in the change that needs to happen so i'm hoping we can build on what we've heard tonight and get to that place where we feel creative and inspiring and like we've got a workable workable options yeah but thank you all yes yeah thank you to Judith and Michael for handling our questions and answer section and to Mitzi and Karen for for for the rest of the mc my name is Lynette and our next event will focus on how we can coordinate with all of the environmental groups and leaders in our northeast region and we do need to come together to take on this huge industry and that's polluting our communities and adding to climate change so we need to encourage our legislators and our regulatory agencies to hold the oil and gas companies accountable and we can pass all the regulations we want but if they aren't being enforced it doesn't matter how many requirements are in place so our next event will be an event to pull to pull our region together and to coordinate our efforts so if you haven't signed up for if you haven't signed up for this event or if you don't have you know if you weren't on our registration please sign up on our website let's see i have i think i have it up here our website address um we have a free website url so it's kind of a long one but um on our website we have our last three videos and we're going to put this one on and this video is not being live streamed now but uh long month public media will put it on uh the next probably week or two they're going to show it and so their archive will have it it's going to be on youtube and it's going to be on our website so you'll be able to share it and you'll be able to look at it again if you'd like to um i want to thank all of our presenters who did a great job it was really interesting and informative and thank you to everybody who attended we had about 44 people here and they stayed with us so that thank you for for hanging in here with us i know it's a lot to take in um so there's some links in the chat box in the in the chat box and we'll post those on our website also um thank you to everybody please stay involved and please sign up on our website for any future events we our our next event we don't know when or where but probably in the next couple months we're going to have it so and it's going to be hopefully we're going to have it live and not very virtual this time so thank you everybody thank you to all of our speakers yeah uh lene can you maybe turn on so that everybody could um put things in the chat if they would like i got a message from uh Karen something she'd like to put in there there might be other people as well yep there you go you can anybody can can uh talk to anybody else now so okay great thank you guys thanks to everybody for coming yes thank you thank you have a good evening yeah thanks a lot see you karen thanks so much phil it's good to see you again it's good to see you thank you phil thank you andrew it's been a while it has been a while yeah thank you everybody last time i saw you was driving down to your house to uh support joe salazar oh you and that one maybe that maybe that was a time yeah well i did utha and i drove down there and we got lost it took us about two hours yeah but you showed up well yeah we did that would have been a lot better than the guy we got i can tell you that yeah yeah don't give up i mean they you know we will post the recording uh rick we're gonna post we'll we'll post it okay all right it's been good all right yeah good night thank you thanks everyone