The Loveland proposal has been the subject of intense legal wrangling and a fractious messaging war that is raging at full steam, where house mailboxes and television and radio airwaves are filled to brimming with messages.
Loveland resident Blanca Stewart told the Independent that she was fed up with the flyers that come every day by U.S. Mail.
“They’re killing how many trees for this?” she said, referring to one of the groups opposing the moratorium called Protecting Colorado’s Environment, Economy and Energy Independence, a group formed by another oil-and-gas group called Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development. “These are big fat flyers of cardboard with shiny surfaces in my mailbox. I have saved them all so I can send them back where they came from… I didn’t have an opinion on this issue before. Now I do.”
Loveland is located in the northern Front Range gas patch among five cities that have already passed bans and moratoriums on the controversial boom-time drilling practice, where millions of gallons of water sand and chemicals are blasted into the earth to fracture rock formations and release oil and gas. Loveland, a city of 70,000, is near the center of the movement that has set ablaze energy politics in the state. Drilling companies have spent millions over the last two election cycles in failed efforts to quash proposed bans in Boulder, Broomfield, Fort Collins, Lafayette and Longmont.
