PARACHUTE — De Beque residents wondering what growth driven by energy development might mean for their town need not wait for a possible answer.

All they need to do is drive east on Interstate 70, get off at Parachute and take a look around. They just might not want to do it at 5:30 p.m. on a weekday. Not unless they want to see one of Parachute’s worst consequences of the natural gas drilling frenzy that has transformed the town over the last decade and is headed De Beque’s way.

The traffic backups at Parachute’s only I-70 interchange are the talk of the town, even as town officials struggle to move beyond talk and bring about action to address the problem. A combination of drilling-related vehicles and commuters returning home from jobs in the Roaring Fork Valley can result in waits at the interchange that Mayor Roy McClung said can last 45 minutes.

Parachute resident Cindy Rush, pausing during her job as a clerk at the Shell gas station just off I-70, said she has learned to simply stay in town during rush hour.

“You might as well forget about going anywhere unless you want to wait,” she said.

The town is working with the Colorado Department of Transportation to get signals installed at the intersection, while also working with CDOT in hopes of being placed on a planning fast track that could result in a second interchange being built to the west of the first one, starting as soon as 2010. In addition, Parachute hopes to eventually build a bypass around the west side of town, connecting to County Road 215 and the energy development corridor up Parachute Creek.

Parachute’s traffic troubles aren’t going unnoticed in De Beque. It also has a single interchange access to town, and getting downtown from I-70 currently requires taking a detour because a bridge is being rebuilt.

Don Cramer, who was the town’s mayor until recently stepping down to care for his sick wife, said the town already is working toward getting another interchange built.

“We don’t want to end up like Parachute, waiting in a line to get on and off, because we’re headed that way,” he said. “One little road won’t handle it all.”

PARALLEL PATHS

Parachute and De Beque’s traffic challenges are just one parallel to be seen between two towns both dealing with energy booms. These parallels may prove instructive to De Beque because Parachute is much further along in coping with the impacts of energy-driven growth.

De Beque believes much of its future growth could occur across I-70, through annexations. The Parachute area experienced similar growth with Exxon’s construction of the Battlement Mesa residential community across I-70 during the oil shale boom that ended in the early 1980s.

In Parachute’s case, though, that growth mostly occurred outside town limits. But McClung said the town still deals with the impacts of growth in population and natural gas development activity in the surrounding area. It is expanding its town hall to accommodate a staff size that now totals around 26, reflecting increasing numbers of employees in police, public works and other departments that are trying to keep up with service demands.

The town last year passed a lodging tax, so the many workers living in its hotels will help pay to deal with its growth needs. Commercial development also has been helping boost the tax base. A state Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) grant is covering some the cost of the $2.3 million town hall project. And entities from energy companies to Battlement Mesa’s developer have stepped forward with offers to help out with problems such as the interchange. But McClung said the town also faces nonfinancial hurdles in terms of needing to get approvals to move forward on interchange projects.

The city of Rifle, heading farther east on I-70 from Parachute, sits in the center of western Garfield County’s energy boom, and its experiences may be instrumental to De Beque leaders as well. Rifle Mayor Keith Lambert said the city has thousands of new housing units either approved or being considered for approval. He said the city believes growth is coming to the surrounding area whether Rifle wants it or not. So its approach has been to annex proposed developments and mold them to be a good fit for the city.

“What we try and accomplish, of course, is that the development pays its own way when it comes to the needs especially surrounding that development,” he said.

Even so, growth has brought monumental financial challenges to the city, despite the record sales tax revenues Rifle is receiving. Lambert said it has $67 million worth of infrastructure needs that must be addressed in the next five years, from roads to parks to water and sewer work. One major project, a $23 million wastewater treatment plant, “is really being borne on the backs of the taxpayers of the city of Rifle,” Lambert said. The city more than doubled sewer rates to finance the project.

The city also faces traffic challenges in the area of its main I-70 interchange. Voters approved a bond issue for street improvements including roundabouts in that area, but rising costs for building them left the city scrambling in recent years for the rest of the funding, and the roundabouts are only now about to be built.

Lambert said the federal government’s spending priorities haven’t included helping cities such as Rifle meet infrastructure needs, and the state’s ability to help is limited. Also, he said, Rifle’s experience has been that energy companies have been less than willing to help meet the city’s infrastructure needs.

“They’re not seemingly on board with that. When they are in a position to donate money they want to look to projects that get great public relations bang for the buck,” he said.

One example of that might be when energy companies contributed millions of dollars for a new Colorado Mountain College campus in Rifle, and the college agreed to name portions of the facility after them.

Lambert said the industry also has contended that it already pays severance taxes and federal mineral leasing revenues that are intended in part to help meet local impacts of energy development. Some of those funds are distributed through DOLA.

“But once again, it’s never sufficient and the Department of Local Affairs is always looking for matching funds, so you have to have seed money in order to make this work,” Lambert said.

IT COULD BE WORSE

Despite such challenges of energy-driven growth, Lambert and McClung say it beats the alternative. Lambert said he prefers it to the economic stagnation Rifle experienced after the pullout of the oil shale industry.

“The challenges are great and the ability to meet those challenges are daunting sometimes, but it’s a much better position to be in,” he said.

McClung, 36, lived through the oil shale bust.

“I would much rather have the problems associated with the growth that we’re seeing now than the problems of not having any type of income and no prospect of getting any income to deal with our maintenance issues,” he said.

McClung also is glad to see that Parachute residents who used to have to commute to jobs as far away as Aspen and Vail now can work in the Parachute area, and spend their wages locally, which boosts tax revenues. McClung used to be one of those commuters, driving to Carbondale to work in a paint store and also working in jobs from ranching to house-moving after losing his oil shale job. Now he works as an energy industry contractor on land and water issues.

Rush, the gas station clerk, is less thrilled with Parachute’s growth. She moved there 12 years ago.

“It was a quiet little town,” she said.

Now, she said, besides the bustling traffic, housing costs a lot more and prices in stores are higher.

Cramer said he doesn’t like what drilling is doing to the rural landscapes in western Colorado. But he said it’s providing a good living for people, as well. The question is what kind of change energy-related development will bring to De Beque.

“I know people don’t like that, are used to a little, tiny, sleepy downtown, but there ain’t many of them left in this world,” he said.

With companies already ramping up their drilling in the area, De Beque also is looking at prospective developments that include a 1,200-home subdivision, and plans by the Schlumberger energy services company to build a regional operations hub.

Cramer noted that De Beque has been through something similar before, as recently as the oil shale boom.

Revenues from that boom helped put streets and sidewalks in the town, he said. The bust that followed also hurt the town, he added. But many observers believe the region’s natural gas boom will be much more long-lived than the oil shale boom was. A lot of gas remains to be extracted and companies are making profits selling to a market in which demand is expected to continue to be strong.

With growth on its way, Cramer believes the trick is for the town to stay ahead of the demands of that growth, something he said the town is doing in areas such as water and sewer service.

“Don’t let the infrastructure get behind, because catch-up is hard work,” he said.

McClung thinks a key for a town is to have a master plan in place that guides growth and helps assure it happens in a positive way.

De Beque has come into some criticism because it lacks a written master plan. But Cramer said the town has worked hard to survey residents and come up with a vision for De Beque’s future that retains its character.

“Our master plan is in the minds of 15 or 20 active people,” he said. “We’re not doing anything haphazard,” he said.

Cramer said energy companies — at least the major ones — understand they will have to pay their way in helping the De Beque area deal with the road and other impacts of their presence.

KEEPING THE CORE IN MIND

Cramer also defended De Beque’s plans to expand across I-70, saying there are few other directions in which the town can grow.

Andrew Gulliford, a Fort Lewis College professor and part-time Silt resident, wrote about the region’s last energy boom and bust in his book, “Boomtown Blues: Colorado Oil Shale.” He believes it’s important that growth build upon existing communities, and the infrastructure they already have in place, rather than stretching government services to other areas. He thinks De Beque should insist that some of the coming growth occur in the town itself, rather than through annexations. This is a way to help its commercial core and preserve its

historic character, he said.

“You want your downtown core to be vibrant and alive, and that hasn’t happened in De Beque in 80 years. Here’s the chance,” he said.

Gulliford said tax incentives are one way to encourage that. De Beque’s new town manager, Bruce Smith, already is talking along those lines, saying the town may pursue low-interest, government-backed loans for infill development.

McClung thinks De Beque is better prepared to handle growth now because the town saw what happened during the shale boom, and knows what not to do.

Although Parachute got things such as a town hall, library and new schools as a result of the oil shale boom, McClung and Lambert both pointed to hurried, shoddy developments that were allowed to occur around the region at the time.

McClung said it’s important that any development in De Beque meets the town’s standards and occurs at the developers’ expense.

Said McClung, “I think it’s a great opportunity for De Beque to make some improvements to their town. I don’t know whether they will welcome some of their improvements

or not.

“I feel if growth is going to happen, it’s better to embrace it and get something out of it, rather than fight it and have the growth happen anyway.”

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E-mail Dennis Webb at dwebb@gjds.com.