If you go
What: Lafayette City Council
When: 5:30 p.m. Tuesday
Where: 1290 S. Public Road
More info: cityoflafayette.com/27/Government
A decision may come down on whether Lafayette will impose an embargo on new drilling permits within city limits Tuesday night.
If approved by City Council — and officially sanctioned next month on second reading — the moratorium would stay new oil and gas applications for a year, unless officials opt for a shorter period.
A vote on the issue was tabled earlier this month.
The moratorium’s possibility has sparked resistance among industry officials wary of any regulation and prominent local fractivist groups who say the stay would fly in the face of the city’s Climate Bill of Rights and Protections passed earlier this year.
It’s a measure that effectively, if not symbolically, preempts drilling in Lafayette in the name of residents’ health.
Anti-oil and gas activists have said that the moratorium would, at best, undermine enforcement of the climate bill, and at worst, create a paradox within the city’s municipal code.
“The ordinance clearly states that oil and gas activity in Lafayette would violate the rights identified in, and protected by, the ordinance,” Denver attorney Karen Breslin said in a statement. “An ordinance to place a moratorium on oil and gas drilling would create conflict in the municipal code. (A moratorium) raises the possibility of drilling at some point in the future, bringing into question whether the Climate Bill of Rights precludes such activity.
“For this reason,” she added, “a moratorium would, in my view, undermine the unequivocal prohibition against oil and gas activity contained in the Climate Bill of Rights.”
City Attorney David Williamson has said on several occasions that he did not think there would be any contradiction between the two measures.
Officials say a moratorium would give the city time to craft new oil and gas regulations without having to rush legislation through ahead of newly announced drilling plans slated for the region.
Anthony Hahn: 303-473-1422, hahna@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/_anthonyhahn
