For the second time in two weeks a state judge in Colorado has overturned a city’s attempt to regulate hydraulic fracturing within its borders. In a Thursday decision in the District Court of Larimer County, Judge Gregory Lammons ruled that the city of Fort Collins’ five-year ban on the use of fracking and the storage of fracking waste was pre-empted by the state’s Oil and Gas Conservation Act. Lammons’ ruling comes in a case brought by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, following a vote last November in which voters called for the city to impose a five-year moratorium on fracking and disposal of fracking waste within the city’s boundaries. On July 24, District Judge D.D. Mallard of the Boulder County District Court overturned a fracking ban that the city of Longmont had instituted, ruling that it was pre-empted by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Act, which gives […]