Colorado Newsline: The Colorado officials entrusted with keeping residents safe from oil and gas production don’t think a recent safety law says what it says. And that’s only one troubling part of the larger story about how companies have avoided compliance with the law.

Enacted in 2022, the law requires oil and gas companies to reveal what toxic chemicals they’re putting into the ground. What they’ve disclosed so far only emphasizes the law’s importance — we now know they’re using fracking chemicals that are banned in the state.

Coloradans have good reason to suspect that what they’ve failed to disclose is also a catalogue of health hazards. State regulators have been slow to ensure compliance, and they’ve interpreted the law in a way that lets companies conceal some of the chemicals they use. Their role is to protect the health of Coloradans, but their performance does more to protect the profits of industry.

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