Von Bortz knew something was wrong when the sulfuric, rotten egg smell started and he was getting dizzy, with severe headaches and nausea.
Bortz lives in Larimer County, Colorado. He knew there was oil and gas drilling nearby. But he didn’t think it would make him sick. Larimer is home to cities like Fort Collins and Loveland, with 370,000 people and 105 active drilling wells. A mismanaged oil and gas operation can hurt a lot of people. And it did. Bortz learned that he was getting sick from toxic hydrogen sulfide he was constantly being exposed to — by pollution from a company called Prospect Energy.
Bortz filed complaints, but local and state governments couldn’t do anything without a pattern of proof. Tired of feeling sick and defeated, Bortz shared his experiences with the Earthworks team, and we got to work. Over the next 36+ months, Earthworks launched a sustained, intensive investigation into Prospect Energy’s pollution — and started to document the evidence.
Earthworks began surveying and photographing Prospect Energy sites alongside local residents in January, 2021. Since then, we’ve made 64 separate surveys of local Prospect Energy sites.
Using our Optical Gas Imaging (OGI) camera, we recorded the harmful emissions spewing from Prospect Energy’s facilities. With community directed evidence in hand, proof was now on video to show a pattern of harmful pollution, and that Prospect Energy was a “bad actor” in the community.
We also filed 14 separate complaints to the state of Colorado, documenting chronic pollution at these sites — most recently in May 2024. Evidence was starting to add up.
Over time, we continued working with the community to make the case that Prospect Energy needed to be held accountable for the harm they caused by their negligence and disregard for public health. Our OGI evidence helped investigative reporters produce stories in December, 2021 and February, 2022, that ran in regional news outlets like the Fort Collins Coloradoan.
That year, we continued to work with the community to produce a constant drumbeat of evidence and demands to hold Prospect Energy accountable for their negligence and disregard that made it impossible for neighbors to breathe clean air.
Finally, this past July, after years of persistence from both Earthworks and our community partners, Larimer County and Prospect Energy came to an agreement — for Prospect Energy to shut down, leave the state, and commit to cleaning up its abandoned and polluted facilities.
It’s a lasting win. And it reinforces the model we’ve been building for the past 10+ years: Gather and pair OGI evidence, influence state and local legislative and regulatory processes with evidence and a solution, and organize alongside local activists.
