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ECMC publishes notice guidance; staff urge meaningful outreach under cumulative impacts rule
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Summary
ECMC’s hearings manager announced published guidance on notice requirements and a scheduled High Priority Habitat map rulemaking hearing, while the ECMC environmental justice liaison laid out community engagement expectations under the 2024 cumulative impacts rulemaking and urged operators to view outreach as a tailored, actionable process rather than a checkbox.
Elias Thomas, ECMC hearings manager, said the hearings unit published guidance on the publication-of-notice requirement (referred to in the presentation as rule 504). The guidance package includes (1) an explanation of what must be done under the rule and statute, (2) a template proof-of-publication affidavit, and (3) a county-by-county newspaper list; Thomas said the newspaper list will be maintained as a living document and that party-status registration is open for a High Priority Habitat (HPH) map rulemaking hearing scheduled for April 8, 2026.
"The guidance is 3 parts...We hope that this improves the publication process for our applicants," Thomas said, and he encouraged people to register for party status via the ECMC front page and rulemaking page.
Iseka Chavez, ECMC’s environmental justice community liaison for the Front Range, provided detailed expectations for community engagement under the 2024 cumulative impacts rulemaking. Chavez summarized outreach activity in 2025 (24 LEHI pre-application meetings, 20 on the Front Range, 4 on the Western Slope, plus three post-completeness meetings) and said ECMC staff are using that input in the cumulative impacts annual report.
Chavez emphasized that exposure or proximity to oil and gas does not equal informed community consent and said environmental justice requires active information sharing. "Existing exposure and proximity to existing oil and gas does not always equal informed understanding or consent," Chavez said, urging operators to provide transparent, accessible, project-specific information and to treat community engagement as an ecosystem rather than a checkbox.
She outlined practical expectations: operators should tailor outreach for preproduction and production phases, include mitigation measures for sensitive receptors in community outreach plans, provide meeting summaries (who attended, questions asked, concerns and how they were addressed) as attachments to 2A applications, and submit post-completeness meeting summaries within the recommended 10-day window. Chavez also recommended practical accommodations—childcare, translation, appropriate timing and venue—and clarified that CDPHE’s disproportionately impacted communities tool measures language isolation (not languages spoken at home), so outreach should include Census-based language breakdowns when relevant.
Why it matters: ECMC will evaluate outreach details as part of permit review and hold operators accountable to community outreach plan components. The HPH map rulemaking and updated notice guidance could affect how operators publicize projects and who is eligible to participate formally in rulemaking.
