BIZ Report for Sept. 28

Sept. 28--ON THE MOVE

Brad O'Neill has joined Flood and Peterson to head up the employee benefits division.

With more than 20 years in the health and welfare industry, O'Neill helped establish Colorado's first health insurance cooperative and launched the nation's first community health plan.

In 2011, O'Neill was named the Top Employee Benefits Consultant in the U.S. by Risk & Insurance Magazine. He created the Roaring Fork Valley Community Health Plan, where he helped save a rural community more than $16 million. Recently, he assisted with the creation of Colorado's first Health Insurance Cooperative, the Colorado HealthOp, as a nonprofit health insurance brokerage offering preventative, low-cost insurance. Prior to joining Flood and Peterson, O'Neill served as CEO of Golden Bee Advisors, a boutique insurance consulting firm.

O'Neill will direct the strategy of the employee benefits department, as well as, mentor and grow the strong team within Flood and Peterson. He also will continue to strengthen the relationships with Flood and Peterson's insurance carrier partners.

WaterWatch website up and running

Colorado residents now have access to live monitoring of well water near oil and gas drilling.

A team from Colorado State University last week unveiled Colorado Water Watch, a project in which they collected groundwater samples from oil and gas sites, and reports information every hour to a CSU-run website.

"This is a tool to provide the public and others with information about water quality at oil and natural gas sites in Coloradoans so they can make informed decisions about the impacts of fracking and development of energy resources," said Ken Carlson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, in a news release

Carlson has led the project in the last 18 months to get the project underway and operating.

Though the state of Colorado requires water sampling before and after the drilling process, this project monitors water live, as it changes, and act as an early warning system, the release stated.

The goal of the project is chiefly transparency, allowing and increasingly scrutinizing public access to real time data on water quality near drilling sites.

The project will involve five to 10 test wells, which will be drilled alongside existing wells at Noble Energy sites throughout the Wattenberg Field. The wells will be fitted with a sensor that monitors the water 24/7, which will immediately transmit data back to CSU electronically. CSU teams will monitor the data in Fort Collins. If there are changes in the water, they'll send a team out to test the water, and send it in for more rigorous testing that will help determine a cause of the changes.

The site is billed as being user friendly, and provides a host of information to help guide viewers through the site. Go to waterwatch.colostate.edu.

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