Pinedale provides cautionary tale for Colorado communities

By Gargi Chakrabarty, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 12, 2007 at 7 p.m.

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Photo by Matt McClain © The Rocky

Rancher Freddie Botur is an outspoken critic of the impact the energy boom has had on the region's way of life.

Photo by Graphic by Michael Hall

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This town's many makeovers - from a cattle center to a scenic retreat to an oil and gas boomtown - are becoming a familiar story in the Rocky Mountain West.

Once-quiet towns in Colorado - Rifle, Meeker, even Durango - are undergoing similar transformations as federal and state governments approve more and more gas exploration.

National publications have presented Pinedale as a warning: Boomtown riches go hand in hand with bigtime troubles. In a profile of the town by The New Yorker magazine, local rancher Freddie Botur described a community in an energy boom as being no different than a person in the throes of addiction.

"They've ripped the roots out of the very thing they say they care about: community values, family values, property rights," Botur said.

In an interview with the Rocky, the articulate Botur was equally despairing: "What they have in store for our future means this place will be gone."

Is there a lesson in Pinedale for Colorado's energy towns?

Pinedale's major energy operators - EnCana, BP, Questar and Shell - also drill in Colorado, and they apply similar technology to pry open gas buried in layers of rock as hard as cement. They also pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to state and county governments.

But this source of wealth also brings heavy traffic, housing shortages, inflation, noise and higher crime.

Pinedale officials lament that they didn't react quickly enough to the social and economic impacts when the boom took off six years ago, leaving the town mired in inequities.

"The technology came so quickly, we didn't have time to plan," said Pinedale Mayor Steve Smith. "We have been playing catch-up ever since."

Perched at over 7,000 feet with the Wind River Range as a backdrop, Pinedale - the hub of Sublette County - first drew trappers and traders in the 1800s. Later, it became ranching country.

More recently, the area attracted wealthy investors looking to build second homes, while tourists on their way to Yellowstone and Teton national parks stopped for the fly fishing and horseback riding. Hunters came for big game.

Change came again in a big way in the early 2000s, when oil and gas companies improved a technology called fracturing, or "fracing," to unlock gas deposits trapped in layers of rock beneath the Pinedale Anticline and Jonah Field, both south of town.

Those two areas now have more than 1,700 gas wells in operation, with more coming. Experts estimate there's enough gas in the Pinedale Anticline alone to heat 10 million homes for 30 years.

The federal Bureau of Land Management began leasing large tracts of public land for drilling as the nation coped with higher oil and gas prices from the impacts of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina.

"The BLM says, 'Don't worry, you'll have great jobs and lots of tax revenue from energy development,' " said Jeffrey Jacquet, an analyst hired by Sublette County to look at the boom's impact on the area. "Those things are true, but there are lots of costs to the local government that offset the tax revenue."

Wyoming earns hundreds of millions of dollars each year in royalties from gas production on public lands - money, BLM spokesman Steve Hall pointed out, that's meant to be used to ease impacts on the community. The state is expected to collect $7.5 billion in royalties from the Pinedale Anticline and $3.5 billion from the Jonah Field over their lifetimes.

But, Hall noted, "We have no control over how the state, county or municipality chooses to spend the royalty money."

Since the boom, Sublette County's population has increased more than 24 percent to 7,000, with another 3,000 gas field workers who are described as transient not included in that count. There is much greater demand for housing, emergency services, sewage treatment and water.

The county's median family income has jumped 47 percent over the six years of boom to $59,400 in 2006. The higher wages paid by oil and gas companies, however, have made it difficult for other local employers to retain staff, especially in government offices and service occupations.

Pinedale is being pinched by a shortage of non-industry workers. The decades- old Wrangler Cafe now stays open only five days a week for want of employees. Residents say it's usually a several-day wait to get a plumber or electrician and a monthlong wait to get construction help.

Pinedale's busy Main Street has no traffic light, its old cowboy bars stand next to spanking new hotels filled with rig workers, and a fast-food place does brisk business even as a souvenir shop aimed at tourists advertises a closing sale.

Single-family homes in Pinedale sold for an average of $264,200 last year, more than double the $116,972 average in 2000.

The town is debating a number of developments to resolve the lack of affordable housing, but those will require significant funding. At the same time, the town is struggling to pay the $6 million it will take to update its sewer and water systems. That's because Pinedale receives very little in direct mineral severance tax - $225,000 this year - even while the county collects millions.

Both traffic and accidents in the county have nearly quadrupled since 1995. Last year, roughly a quarter of all ambulance runs went to the gas fields. Two new emergency health care clinics are under construction to cope with higher demand.

The number of arrests also has almost tripled in the past five years. Drug-related arrests alone quadrupled in 2005 from a year earlier.

"I'd say a majority of the detainees arrested on drug charges work for oil and gas companies," said Sublette County Sheriff Wayne Bardin. "During interviews, they tell us that methamphetamine and cocaine help them work longer hours and make more money."

Bardin's windowless office beneath the county jail in Pinedale is strapped for cash. He is charged with keeping the peace in the county, along with the towns of Pinedale, Marbleton and Big Piney.

Four dozen sheriff's deputies have quit in the past couple of years, mostly because of the low salaries and high stress, Bardin said. He has about 70 remaining deputies and other staffers, and plans to hire and train about a dozen new employees this year. His budget is $6.5 million.

The sheriff said there are big inequities in how the gas boom taxes are distributed, with his department being one of those on the short end. Meanwhile, just two blocks from Bardin's office, Sublette County School District 1, which covers Pinedale schools, is rolling in dough.

Each teacher and student in the district has a computer. Classrooms have "smartboards," 60-inch plasma screens connected to laptops that cost about $30,000 apiece, instead of blackboards.

Such expensive amenities are possible because the district's budget this year is $100 million for its 941 students - that's right, more than $100,000 per student.

Count Bardin among those disturbed by the inequitable distribution of energy wealth.

"It is very distorted," he said.

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Comments

December 12, 2007

9:25 p.m.

Suggest removal

ebmfck writes:

Bet you Big Piney and Marbleton schools don't have that kind of stuff. Pinedale has always been the hog at the county trough and they don't care about their poor neighbors. This dates from long before the boom - it was that way when I was working up there 25 years ago.
October 16, 2008

4:11 a.m.

Suggest removal

roger44 writes:

Pinedale used to be a great area to hunt & fish, but then it was discovered, as one resident put it, and things went downhill. the wealthy moved in, the roughnecks, and the small friendly community was no more. The resident couldn't take it and moved out after many years of living there. we need energy, but at what cost?

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