More than a hundred people attended a public hearing on Thursday evening to criticize a cluster of new oil and gas wells proposed near the Aurora Reservoir.
The project – known as the State Sunlight/Long plan – comprises 32 new wells on Lowry Ranch, a sprawling open space owned by the state in unincorporated Arapahoe County, and formerly a Defense Department bombing range.
“I’m gonna ask that ya’ll look into my eyes,” said one resident to state officials. “… I am one of the people whose health is going to be dramatically affected by this.”
The ranch once housed ballistic missiles, and oil and gas drilling has taken place there since the 1920s. Its perimeter borders Aurora and its reservoir, a major drinking water source for hundreds of thousands of people.
The State Sunlight/Long plan is part of a larger effort to drill new wells over the next five years on the ranch.
Last year, state regulators approved a large development plan, called the “Lowry Ranch Comprehensive Area Plan,” allowing the oil company Civitas and its subsidiary Crestone to drill up to 166 wells across eight locations on Lowry Ranch.
But each location needs a specific plan before drilling can take place. That plan must be approved by Arapahoe County and state regulators, who must take into account the environmental and health impacts of each site.
Civitas already has 37 wells approved or under construction on the ranch. But the State Sunlight/Long plan is running into sustained and vocal community opposition.
In May, Arapahoe County conditionally approved it, a key hurdle for its final approval.
The state’s Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC), which regulates oil and gas development, will weigh whether to approve, modify, delay or reject the plan during a hearing in October.
Ishan Thakore/CPR NewsAn Aurora resident appeals to state officials to reject a proposal for 32 new wells near her home during a public hearing on September 11, 2025.
Thursday’s meeting, in a bucolic wedding venue near the Eastern plains, drew an overflow crowd that spilled to outside lawns. Residents animatedly told state officials that they had major health, safety and environmental concerns about the site, which is less than a mile from the nearest home.
Dozens of people were dressed in bright blue shirts that read “Sunlight WRONG,” and were members of Save the Aurora Reservoir, an advocacy group that opposes fracking near the reservoir. Some residents said they hoped for political consequences if regulators approved the plan.
“Make this a primary gubernatorial issue so that we don’t get fracked,” said Jason Wu, a high-school chemistry teacher in Denver, who had his young child strapped to his chest during his remarks.
He urged residents to vote out Arapahoe County commissioners who support the fracking proposal. “Vote for any district commissioner willing to clean house in Arapahoe County because this is a failure on the part of the county,” he said to sustained applause.
Concerns abound as October hearing looms
The wells’ surface area will take up only a small area on the ranch. But because they will be hydraulically fractured, or fracked, tunnels and wellbores will stretch horizontally for miles underground, reaching thousands of feet underneath homes and the Aurora Reservoir.
In May 2024, the city of Aurora said in a public comment letter that drilling or fracking on the ranch “do not pose a risk to the Aurora Reservoir,” based on the city’s analysis and the fact that underground oil and gas reserves are thousands of feet below the reservoir.
The Lowry landfill, a toxic Superfund site, is also nearby, though drilling will not occur underneath it, according to Civitas.
When ECMC commissioners approved the larger plan to drill on Lowry Ranch, they required Civitas to use electric-powered machinery on its sites, to cut down on noise and pollution from traditional diesel or natural-gas-powered heavy machinery.
Despite these conditions, during the first half of Thursday’s meeting, not a single speaker expressed support for the State Sunlight/Long proposal.
In a statement, Rich Coolidge, a Civitas advisor, said that its larger plan for Lowry Ranch has already been approved by multiple state agencies using strict regulations, and that the company has already downgraded their plan to fewer drilling pads.
Residents hope to capitalize on state agency’s updated mission
In 2019, state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 19-181, which gave communities more say on where drilling takes place.
The law also required state regulators to protect the environment and public health when approving new drilling. Another state law requires regulators to consider the range of consequences – known as the “cumulative impacts” – of oil and gas developments.
Some residents hoped regulators would reject the plan based on these new regulations.
“This is something that the ECMC has to abide by,” said Ann Hussain, a registered nurse who opposes the proposal. “We have legal ground to stand on.”
Ishan Thakore/CPR NewsDr. Sakhawat Hussain urges state officials to consider the health impacts of a proposed fracking site near the Aurora reservoir during a September 11, 2025, public hearing.
Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment reviewed the State Sunlight/Long plan this year. In a letter on August 25, the agency said it supports Civitas taking steps to minimize the impacts of its drilling, like using electric rigs or limiting truck traffic when ozone pollution spikes in the area.
But many residents said the plan is risky. They pointed to the massive oil spill in Galeton, Colorado, in April, to highlight the dangers of drilling near homes. The spill misted homes and fields and caused evacuations.
“Galeton is a small, sparsely populated rural community,” said one speaker. “The neighborhoods by the reservoir obviously are not.”
Other speakers pointed to a May peer-reviewed study from associate professor Lisa McKenzie at CU-Anschutz, which found that children living near oil and gas operations may be at an increased risk of developing a form of leukemia.
The Colorado Oil and Gas Association, an industry advocacy group, has strongly objected to that study, as well as previous ones linking oil and gas operations to health issues.
Still, a 10-year-old from an Aurora elementary school read a poem to express her unease with the wells.
“Leukemia rates climb and that’s part of the deal for kids near these wells,” she said. “The threat isn’t small — our health is at stake. Do you hear our call?”