Oct. 03, 2006 - 18:37 MDT

CAMPING ?

Sometimes good ideas suffer bad execution of plans made and agreed to. Makes me think that our state officials better examine and nail down promises.

An Associated Press article in the business section of this morning's Rocky Mountain News brings information on housing afoot on our Western Slope where oil and gas folks are working. Quoted here in full:

ENERGY FIRMS EYE WORK CAMPS

GLENWOOD SPRINGS -- "At least two energy companies are seeking permission to build temporary worker camps in western Colorado, focusing on the natural gas hotbed of Garfield County."

"Williams, the largest natural gas producer in the county, applied last month for a permit to park manufactured housing on a 20,000-acre lease north of Parachute (Colorado). This past spring, Occidental Oil and Gas Group asked for permission to park several travel trailers on land north of DeBeque (Colorado) to house about a dozen workers."

"Both companies said they want to spare their workers a long commute to the sometimes-remote drilling areas."

"We want to place them in a safe environment for the length of their shift so they don't have to drive back and forth," Williams spokes-woman Susan Alvillar said."

"So-called man camps have cropped up around the West amid the energy boom driven by natural gas. Last month, Sweetwater County commissioners rejected plans for a camp that would have housed 125 people in downton Farson, Wyo. saying it was too close to a school and the little town didn't have sufficient infrastructure."

"Wyoming's Sublette and Sweetwater counties are seeing a housing shortage because of all the energy workers in the area."

"In Colorado, the Williams and Occidental camps would require a change in county zoning rules. Both companies operate in areas where temporary worker camps are not permitted."

"We're working cooperatively with the county," Alvillar said. "We're learning as we go."

"Williams has hired a catering service to provide daily meals, an emergency medical technician will be on site, and plans call for a septic system she said."

"If the camp is approved and winter drilling at high altitude proves successful, Williams would consder additional camps, Alvillar said."

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I guess that growing up in the Denver area and seeing the mine holes in the mountains gaping open for the unwary, the ghost towns of Blackhawk and Central City, which basically were towns in name only, buildings and a few ghostly people residing there. I doubt that there was even water supply or sewage service in those two back then. Heather and I honeymooned in a cluster of cabins in a place called Apex, about ten miles north of Central City, a place where miners once lived and worked nearby. A few citizens of Denver had bought some of the old cabins and gussied them up a bit and used them as summer cabins. Still evident are the dumps at the mouths of the big mines - statewide, probably never to be removed, rock exposed to the elements that leaches poisonous minerals to our streams.

I have seen aerial views of the oil-patching going on in our West, a criss cross of access roads, pads where the wells and associated support areas are, it is unbelievable until seen I guess.

It concerns me that some of our city, state and federal people will allow ? Camps ? to be constructed in areas of oil and gas activity. Possibly not paying sufficient attention to adequate pure water supply and sewage disposal as well as assuring there will be enough electric power available to make those places truly liveable. And then will the powers-that-be make sure that police and fire protection is supplied ?

All this to build ?camps? for gas-patchers to live in while the bonanza is still flowing. And then, what happens when the oil is depleted ? Vast miles of a mesh of roads, empty wells and ghost towns galore ?

Perhaps manufactured housing would be a good idea if the Oil industry would guarantee to move the manufactured housing from depleted areas to places near resorts and ski areas to be available at a decent low rent for the people who work in those areas, who just cannot, by any means, afford to live in the resort areas. What hourly worker can afford to live in Vail or Aspen ?

I've got the questions and a few feeble ideas, but do hope that ghastly, ghostly exhausted oil patches and housing don't litter our landscape forever.

When the party, blowout, rendezvous or whatever is over, is there much use in CAMPING ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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