The Colorado Air Quality Control Commission unanimously voted on Friday to implement new rules regarding the state’s midstream segment of the oil and gas industry, but some say those rules disregard nearby communities.

The new rules seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation and storage — the midstream — segment of the oil and gas industry by requiring such facilities to achieve a 20.5% reduction in GHG emissions by 2030, according to a news release from the the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

The 20.5% reduction is compared to a 2015 baseline and levels equivalent to removing 240,571 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles from the road annually.

These reductions will likely be achieved through electrification and/or adjustments to operations, and midstream facilities must begin taking steps to reduce GHG emissions from combustion fuel equipment by Feb. 14, 2025, according to the release.

“Every Coloradan deserves to breathe clean air, no matter where they live,” Jill Hunsaker Ryan, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said in the release. “This new rule will not only cut air pollutants that contribute to ground-level ozone, but also reduce climate-harming greenhouse gas emissions.”

The Colorado Communities for Climate Action said that while the new rules seek to meet the carbon pollution reduction goals mandated by the Environmental Justice Act — HB21-1266 — passed in 2021, they fail to guarantee help for disproportionally impacted communities.

“Colorado communities across the state are rolling up their sleeves to reduce climate pollution and we’re glad to have the Air Quality Control Commission require oil and gas operators to do the same,” Jacob Smith, executive director of Colorado Communities for Climate Action, said in a press release. “However, the oil and gas industry managed to push the process toward maintaining the industry’s substantial profits instead of protecting people’s lives. As a result, this rule deprioritized strong protections for Colorado’s most vulnerable communities and neglected the immediate emissions reductions needed to address the climate crisis.”

The Environmental Justice Act mandates that new rules for reduction “must include protections for disproportionately impacted communities and prioritize emission reductions that will reduce emissions of co-pollutants that adversely affect disproportionately impacted communities.”

The act defines a disproportionally impacted community as a community that has a majority of low-income housing, a large amount of minorities, a housing cost burdens are over 40% or has a history of “environmental racism.”

The rules passed on Friday state that companies should prioritize disproportionally impacted communities across nine Front Range counties in its reduction efforts, but does not provide requirements for the reduction of harmful pollutants like benzene, volatile organic compounds and co-pollutants, according to the Colorado Communities for Climate Action.

“It’s good that the new rules will help reduce ozone pollution along the Front Range, but they ignore all the other harmful air pollutants from these sources, like air toxics, which are known human carcinogens and responsible for a suite of adverse non-cancer health effects, such as respiratory conditions,” said Boulder County’s Air and Climate Policy Advisor Cindy Copeland.

The new rules piggyback off of the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission’s (ECMC) new rules voted upon in October that require oil and gas operators to meet strict new standards regarding cumulative impacts of past, present and future development to be permitted to develop new mineral resources, beginning Dec. 15, 2024.

Under those new rules, operators will be required to make a cumulative impacts analysis with each new permit application and submit it to the state, where it will be reviewed by state agencies including the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the ECMC.