This summer, the state agency charged with keeping an eye on Colorado’s booming oil and gas industry will do a major overhaul of its rules, possibly adding strict new protections for wildlife and public health.

The changes come at the direction of the state Legislature, and they’ve already split opinion under the familiar banners of environment versus economy. Environmental advocates and green-minded counties like San Miguel largely support the proposed changes, while fuel producers have decried them.

One of the most controversial rules seeks to protect elk, mule deer and sage grouse by shutting down drilling for three months of the year. It’s a dilution of original proposals to protect animal habitat during critical breeding and calving times, but industry groups are still up in arms.

“Essentially we’d have to demobilize rigs,” said Doug Hock, a spokesman for the EnCana Corporation, which runs oil and gas rigs across the state, including the bulk of those on San Miguel’s west end. “I don’t know of any business that can really operate if they’re shut down for three months of every year.”

Hock said that about 523,000 acres of EnCana wells in southwest Colorado would be affected by the 90-day closures. The drilling moratoriums would likely come during spring grouse breeding times.

Some Western Slope counties that rely on the $23 billion oil and gas industry to fuel their economies are already worrying that increased regulations could strangle a source of jobs and taxes. With the economy faltering, consumer debt rising and gas prices at $4 per gallon, the last thing they want to do is antagonize a major employer.

“The rules, on their face, not knowing how they are going to be interpreted or implemented, are quite onerous,” Garfield County Commissioner Larry McCown told the Glenwood Springs Post Independent. “If they are interpreted and implemented to the letter of the law, I think a good (amount) of them are unenforceable.”

But environmental advocates have scoffed at the industry’s objections to the new rules.

“They’ve been so used to having it their own way, coming in and doing things unfettered, unregulated, that they don’t believe they should have to play by the same rules that every other Coloradan does,” said Matt Sura, the oil and gas organizer for the Western Colorado Congress.

Sura and other environmental policy groups say that, if anything, the proposed changes don’t go far enough to protect wildlife, water supplies, natural habitats or public health. They say the new rules won’t force companies to properly restore land once they’ve finished drilling; that wells can still be drilled 150 feet from a home; that protections for water sources are too weak. “The industry is going to leave this state scarred, and we could have prevented it,” Sura said.

Here in San Miguel, the county has signed up to be one of about 80 “parties” to the rule-making process, meaning that county officials get to testify before the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and weigh in on the changes.

County commissioner Joan May and the county’s Environmental Health director, Dave Schneck, plan to testify in Denver on June 23. They each said they’re concerned not only with tangible things like water quality, setbacks and sage grouse, but also wanted to ensure that statewide changes don’t usurp the county’s own rules.

“We saw that drilling was kicking up in the county, so we tried to adopt our own set of regulations,” Schneck said. “We want to make sure that our ability to have those regulations won’t be compromised by any changes in the rules.”

Overall though, May said the ship was turning in the right direction.

“We’re really grateful that this whole process is finally taking place,” she said. “The rules really do need overhauling. It’s not perfect, it’s not what I would write, but it very well addresses all the concerns of the major players.”