democracy.
Because you know, Hick wasn't the greatest governor and I like Andrew Romanoff so much better. Hickenlooper is an oil and gas guy and once he stood up at his podium and drank a glass of clear fluid he claimed was fracking fluid - it's that safe, right!
So I called up his office and said I wasn't convinced. I told the person on the line that if Hickenlooper wanted me to really believe he had drank fracking fluid, he needed to go to a recently fracked site and slurp up some of the backwash. It wasn't well received by the staff member. The fellow became a bit unfriendly and the call didn't go on much longer.
But back in the day - 2010 through maybe 2014, we had a big oil boom where companies were coming in to 'play' the Niobrara shale. These people just come in and tell you how its going to be, but we're not like that in Colorado. The local governments are fiercely protective of their own powers and don't concede much of anything to the state.
In the county next to mine, my friend, an elected County Commissioner, forced the fracking companies to go with what is called 'closed loop' systems which are apparently a bit safer. Water is scarce here in CO, and it takes around 5 million gallons of water to frack one well one time, and a well must be repeatedly fracked to maximize output. I once asked a driller about this and he started out with the stock, "Well we don't use much water at all when you look at it compared to the total usage" line, but I wasn't buying it and repeated my concern that we were allowing all this water to go to all these companies to frack dozens of wells and what about the neighborhoods that don't have enough water. The guy walked away.
Hick actually had the state send cease and desist orders to the county and city governments who were trying to impose more regulation on the industry, saying that the state regulatory structure was strict enough. To their credit the local governments roundly ignored these orders.
But, as tepid as I am toward Hick, I genuinely do not believe that he 'took gifts.' And what the hell is some Republican accusing him of that for in the face of traitor Trump and Moscow Mitch and their UTTER corruption?
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