How oil and gas has professionalized Weld County’s rural fire departments

May 26-- May 26--In 1996, when James Dilka started with Briggsdale Fire, the rural department 31 miles northeast of Greeley had three trucks to cover a 400-square mile district.

The department's volunteer firefighters wore hand-me-down turnout coats and pants, their boots were second-hand and their air tanks were used. The volunteer roster was capped at 15.

Now in his 23rd year with the district, including his seventh year as chief, Dilka said the Briggsdale Fire Protection District has come a long way since those lean years of the 1990s and 2000s. Today the district boasts 14 pieces of firefighting apparatus, a roster of 25 volunteer firefighters, and a cache of new equipment and supplies.

Two years ago, the district built a second station at Colo. 392 and Weld County Road 71 about halfway between Briggsdale and Barnesville.

"Oil and gas paid for all of it," Dilka said, adding his district is debt-free despite a string of significant capital investments in the department. "Yes, oil and gas can be a pain -- they chew up the roads and we have to respond to a few more calls -- but they paid for all of our equipment."

There are 24 fire protection districts responding to calls in at least a portion of Weld County, not including the Greeley Fire Department. Of those 24 districts, all but Poudre Valley receive some tax revenue from the oil and gas industry.

How much obviously depends on the amount of activity taking place in any given district. Nunn has historically been on the low end. In 2018, it received just 8.8% of its annual budget from oil and gas, according to Weld County Assessor records.

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Percentage of property tax revenue generated by the oil and gas industry by fire district in Weld County.

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But Nunn also is the low exception. Every other district in Weld County received in 2018 at least one-third of its annual operating budget from property taxes generated by oil and gas exploration and development.

Briggsdale Fire is near the top end of the spectrum. Last year, 88.9% of its $700,000 budget, or $622,300, came from tax revenues generated by the oil and gas industry.

Briggsdale Fire runs on 4 mills, Dilka said. If the industry pulled out of Weld County, the district would need to up its mills to 34 to maintain its current level of service. To make up the difference, residential property taxes in the district would have to be 8.5 times higher than they are today.

Galeton Fire Chief Russ Kane is in a similar boat, as his district receives the second highest percentage of oil and gas property tax revenue in the county. In 2018, Galeton's operating budget was $2.8 million. Of that, $2.57 million came from oil and gas.

"I can tell you there wouldn't be anyone here to answer this phone," Kane said when called back in April to comment about the importance of oil and gas industry to his rural fire department. "If the industry left, it would be just as bad as if water skipped town."

Galeton, like a lot of other rural fire departments, has seen a significant influx of property tax revenue during the past 10-15 years thanks to oil and gas. In 2016, Galeton Fire moved into its new fire station about a mile west of town. In 2018 and 2019, it is spending $1.4 million to upgrade or replace its aging fleet.

Galeton also has gone from an all-volunteer department to one that employs two full-time administrative employees and 20 part-time firefighters. It also has 10 volunteers. At least two part-time firefighters man the station 24 hours a day.

"In the past, you'd be waiting 20 minutes just to get the engine out the door, plus another 20 minutes of average drive time to a scene," Kane said. "Now, we're out the door in two minutes."

Those capital and staffing upgrades have paid off. During a recent National Fire Protection Association audit of Galeton's ISO Fire Suppression Rating Schedule, the department jumped almost two full spots to a rating of 8B from 10. In the ISO rating schedule, 10 is the highest and therefore the worst score a district can receive, while 1 is the best.

Jumping two spots might not sound very significant. Even Kane admitted he was a little disappointed in the results until the auditor explained just how impressed he was with the changes he saw at Galeton Fire.

"He said, 'You guys used to be a shed and a few dudes and now you're trending in the direction of becoming a legitimate fire department,'" Kane said.

That lower ISO rating isn't just good for Galeton Fire, but also for residents of the district, as insurance companies look at a department's rating when setting property insurance premiums. The latest audit equates to several million dollars in insurance premium savings for about 85% of residents in the 155-sqaure mile district. And Kane hopes to give his residents several more millions of dollars in savings in a couple of years.

The district is in the design phase for a second firehouse, which will be constructed in Barnesville. Once complete in about two years, the station will house a reserve engine and additional firefighters. Kane is hopeful those improvements will catapult the district up two more spots to an ISO rating of 6.

Like Briggsdale, all of Galeton's improvements have been paid for in cash, as will be the case on its $2 million reserve station. The district carries no debt and its capital expenditures plan is based off of the 2011 budget, which was Galeton's worst revenue generating year this decade.

"We're creating an oasis, not an empire," Kane said. "We're trying to spend our money wisely knowing this is a cyclical industry. If we didn't get a penny from oil and gas beginning tomorrow, we have enough money in reserves to maintain the same level of service for the next decade."

But for both Chief Kane and Chief Dilka, having oil and gas in Weld County goes beyond the money. The industry has made their districts safer.

Firefighters are required to carry specialized certifications in order to respond to an oil and gas site in the event of an emergency, and operators regularly conduct onsite and "classroom" training with local firefighters.

During a follow-up interview and tour of the Galeton Fire Department on Friday, Kane stopped to point out several overhead diagrams of a variety of different types of oil and gas sites provided by employees of Anadarko Petroleum Company during a recent training with firefighters.

"Anadarko isn't even the biggest player in our district; Noble Energy is," Kane said. "That just goes to show you what a good partner the industry is to our fire districts."

Not only is Anadarko not the biggest taxpayer in the Galeton Fire Protection District, the company doesn't crack the district's top 25, according to 2018 Weld County Assessor data.

And it's those partnerships that motivated fire chiefs in Weld County to oppose Colorado Senate Bill 19-181, a measure written by Boulder County Democrats in the wake of a deadly gas explosion in 2017 in Firestone. The measure aimed to set even tougher regulations on the industry.

Last year, the Briggsdale Fire Department ran 113 calls. It responded to 121 calls in 2017. Only one of those 234 emergencies was at an oil and gas site -- a fire at a separator early in 2018, which was knocked down in minutes after the well was shut in, Dilka said.

"We respond to more traffic accidents than we used to because of the increased truck traffic associated with oil and gas, but in terms of fires, grass fires at Pawnee are still our biggest customer," Dilka said. "Calls to oil and gas sites are barely a drop in the bucket."

Galeton Fire responded to 221 calls in 2018 and 230 calls in 2017. The department, which has 3,000 active wells in its district, did not respond to a single emergency at an oil and gas site in 2018. Because he is new to the department, Kane didn't immediately know how many calls, if any, were to oil and gas sites in 2017.

"I will tell you about 25% of our calls are for fires and the vast majority of those are agriculture fires, such as hay fires and burning ditches," Kane said. "I'm comfortable saying the total number of calls we receive versus calls to oil and gas sites is several hundred to one."

-- Joe Moylan covers crime and public safety for The Greeley Tribune. Reach him at jmoylan@greeleytribune.com, (970) 392-4467 or on Twitter @JoeMoylan.

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