Step back and evaluate the risks

Editor's note: This letter was either edited for length in the print edition, or was not printed due to space restrictions.

Dear Editor:

Delta County Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) should complete a risk management process for every complicated county issue that must be addressed as part of their duties. Unfortunately based on recent BoCC discussions and resulting decisions, as reported in the DCI, it would appear that the county has no official risk management process. It also appears that the current board members have little knowledge of risk evaluation, risk mitigation, and risk management. Without a complete understanding and evaluation of the risks, approval or disapproval is based simply on a guess as to what might be right for the county.

My introduction and experience in risk management results from working with the Department of Defense for almost 40 years. Here it was discovered that the best risk management plan was useless if the focus was limited to a narrow evaluation of the issue at hand. Effective risk management only occurred when applied using a systems approach.  The best way to get an understanding of a systems approach is to site directly relevant examples. One example is the federal land exchange deal that will occur locally in Gunnison County, Colorado and beyond. The off- the-top evaluation of “it isn’t in our county so we have no say” is a definite violation of the systems approach because the population center that would use the land in question is in Delta County and therefore, should be a major concern for the BoCC. Another example would be a river project. To evaluate the risk of a river project, one must evaluate the impact of project well beyond the immediate stretch of river where the project is being worked. If our risk assessment stops when the river reaches the Delta County line, then we would not realize that our project could cause serious problems up or downstream of the county line. I think that you get the idea – just because the issue/project is within or outside Delta County doesn’t mean that the BoCC risk assessment evaluation or the BoCC responsibilities to act end at the county line. We no longer live in a simple world that is mostly disconnected from outside influences. Life is complicated and we must use complete and effective processes to manage our individual operations and the county’s operations.

I believe it would be interesting to see the outcome of a risk management process on issues like the approval of the industrial egg production plants in the county, and on the oil drilling and gas drilling combined with the fracking opportunities proposed by the BLM within the county.

The application of a risk management process to any issue requires the evaluation of the risks associated with both approval and disapproval. The first challenging step in the risk management plan is identifying the risks associated with the approval or disapproval of any issue.

From data that is available for the drilling and fracking from various federal, state, and local sources, you can illustrate the development of some risks. We know that to date throughout the USA there is a large number of successful non-polluting gas producing operations. The geologic formations vary greatly across these sites. The energy production from the gas wells has generally been very good. At the same time, there have been a limited number of specific sites that have resulted in pollution of the water system in the area. Efforts to mitigate the water pollution have been ineffective or found to be cost prohibitive. From this limited information we can define a positive consequence that the development of gas sources can lead to positive economic development. We can also define a negative consequence that the development of gas sources can lead to water pollution that could be impossible to fix.

This simple example illustrates the process for risk identification for a specific issue. Once the initial set of risks is identified, the following steps are required to fully qualify and understand these risks. It should be noted that risk identification is an ongoing process that doesn’t stop until the project is completed and a significant history is established.

The key components in risk evaluation are evaluating the probability of the potential risk actually happening and defining the consequences that result if the risk occurs. First let’s focus on is the probability of occurrence. From the data above, there is a high probability that gas will be found and there is a lower probability that the area’s water supply will be contaminated. One positive consequence resulting from drilling and finding gas is an economic benefit to Delta County. One negative consequence resulting from drilling, independent of finding gas or not is the pollution of the area’s water supply which would result in a human and economic disaster to Delta County.

The risk evaluation step is far from a simple task, but it is the simplest task in the overall risk management process. Once you have defined the probability and the consequences of the specific risk, the next step is to define the options available to mitigate the negative consequences. These options include both ways to further reduce the probability of occurrence and to reduce the impact of the consequences. The complete development of the mitigation options includes the cost and time to implement the mitigation plan, and the probability of success of the mitigation effort. As you can see, truly addressing the risk management process for the issues faced by the BoCC is a daunting but necessary task.

The best decision for Delta County on gas drilling and fracking can only be reached though the application of the available data from the other parts of the country to a system approach risk management system.

Additional local data must be added into the data discussed above, such as fact that the life blood of the county and the North Fork Valley is our water supply. With this one fact added, I find it difficult believe that a complete risk analysis could lead to the conclusion that potential economical benefits from the gas developed would out-weigh the potential impact of pollution of the water supply in the North Fork Valley. Such pollution would impact the health and safety of the people in the valley and all those downstream of the valley. Polluted water would directly impact the potable water supply to all the residents and business in the valley. Polluted water would wipe out all valley agricultural-driven economic activities, including organic and non-organic farming, ranching, vineyards and wineries, and all the related commercial activities supporting these agricultural activities. Simply put, it would wipe out the North Fork valley and much of the downstream areas.

It is time for the Delta County BoCC to recognize and embrace the complexities of the 21st century, to use the technologies and analysis processes available, and to make the well informed and fact-based decisions to enable Delta County to succeed in the future.

Mike Drake
Paonia