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Karen Dike: Plenty of Good Reasons to Vote for Mike Foote

There are plenty of good reasons to vote for Mike Foote to be Boulder County’s next District Attorney. One of them is his proven record of fighting against fracking. As a state representative, Mike took the lead on this issue at the state capitol.
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This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

There are plenty of good reasons to vote for Mike Foote to be Boulder

County’s next District Attorney. One of them is his proven record of

fighting against fracking. As a state representative, Mike took the lead on

this issue at the state capitol. I know he’ll do the same as our District

Attorney as well.

Recently, he introduced a bill to make sure newly permitted wells and

production facilities have to be at least 1,000 feet away from any property

line (not just the school building).

He introduced another bill to require the frackers to give honest

information about every underground pipeline, and their plans for future

pipelines, to the state and to every local community that would be affected

by those pipelines.

This year, Mike stepped up his game. Following up on legislation he first

introduced in 2016, he co-sponsored a bill along with his friend and

supporter Sen. Matt Jones that would give local governments – cities and

counties – authority to regulate land use when it comes to oil and gas

facilities. That’s the same authority local governments now have over other

industrial facilities. It’s just common sense, Mike says, to make our laws

consistent and give local people the right to regulate the most dangerous

industrial facilities of all, the ones that do the fracking.

But no laws are any good if they aren’t rigorously enforced. That’s one big

reason Mike wants to be DA: to make sure that in Boulder County, at least,

all the laws on the books to protect us are rigorously enforced, so

frackers have to follow the letter of the law and can’t escape through any

loopholes. His record in the legislature makes it clear that he’ll follow

through on his promise.

Karen Dike

Longmont, CO

This is an opinion piece that was submitted to the Longmont Observer and does not necessarily represent the opinion of the Longmont Observer. If you have an opinion piece you'd like published, please visit our 'Submit an Opinion' page.