Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

Q: Officials in energy-friendly Weld County say the law gives the county complete control over the location of new wells in unincorporated areas. That could challenge the state’s attempts to tighten regulations. Just across the county line in Longmont, environmental activists are trying to use the same statute to revive the city’s ban on hydraulic fracturing, which the courts threw out under the previous laws. Because fracking is standard practice in the area, the ban would essentially prohibit all drilling. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed the bill into law on April 16. In addition to switching the state’s top priority to public health and the environment, it gives cities and counties new powers to regulate the drilling locations. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is in the early stages of rewriting its rules to comply with the law — referred to as Senate Bill 181 — and several counties are looking at drafting their own regulations. It’s too early to measure the impacts, but the industry is clearly concerned. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association invited Polis to speak Wednesday at a session titled “Can You Still Drill for Oil in a Blue State?” Polis told the audience that was a silly question. He said international markets and overseas instability have more impact on the industry than state regulations. “Energy is not inherently political, it’s inherently economic,” he said. Dan Haley, president of the Oil and Gas Association, asked Polis several times to respond to industry concerns about its standing in the state. The governor eventually replied he values industry jobs but added that they’re part of a diverse state economy. Colorado ranks fifth in the nation for crude oil production and sixth in natural gas, and much of that is concentrated in Weld County northeast of Denver. Weld County Commissioner Barbara Kirkmeyer, a fierce defender of the industry, argued hard against the new bill and led a short-lived campaign to overturn it after it became law. Now she maintains the bill, coupled with older statutes on local government powers, gives counties like hers the final word on land-use decisions that affect the industry in areas outside cities. “Basically what S.B. 181 said is the state no longer has land use authority,” she said in an interview. Weld County established an oil and gas department and adopted its own rules, but Kirkmeyer said energy companies won’t have free rein to drill wherever they want. The county rules are similar to ones the state had before the new law was passed, she said. The goal is to ensure a common-sense approach to regulating oil and gas companies, Kirkmeyer said. “We are willing to work with them for responsible energy development in our county,” she said. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Stephen Fenberg, a sponsor of Senate Bill 181, disputed Kirkmeyer’s interpretation of the law. The intent was to give both the state and local governments a say in regulating the surface impacts of oil and gas, and to allow cities and counties to enact stricter rules than the state’s, but not more lenient ones, he said. “I would argue that the Weld County commissioners know this,” he said, accusing them of “political theater.” Polis said Wednesday that state officials are working on a written agreement with Weld County officials but offered no details. Environmental groups Colorado Rising and Our Longmont say the new law clears the way for Longmont and other local governments to ban oil and gas drilling. Longmont voters approved a fracking ban in 2012, but the Colorado Supreme Court overturned it in 2016, saying only the state could regulate the industry under the laws in force at the time. Senate Bill 181 “flips the script” on state and local control, said Democratic state Rep. Jonathan Singer of Longmont, who supports the ban. “The state does not take precedence over what local governments want to do when it comes to protecting our health and safety,” he said. The two environmental groups asked the courts to restore the ban earlier this month. The case is pending. Fenberg said the law doesn’t specifically allow or prohibit local drilling bans. But he said they could open a city or a county to damage claims from mineral rights owners who can’t access their underground oil and gas reserves. If the goal is to protect public health and safety, strong local regulations are a better option than a ban, he said. ___ Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP .

A: Oil and gas defenders, critics test Colorado’s new law.
****
Q: Sooner or later, the Grim Reaper comes for us all, but sometimes his mode of operation almost defies explanation. Take the 2004 demise of 24-year-old Phillip Quinn of Kent, Washington, who was done in by his lava lamp. An icon of the 1960s and 1970s that experienced a resurgence in popularity in the mid-1990s, lava lamps are generally considered benign items of the sort one might happily stare at for hours while in a marijuana-infused haze. They consist of blobs of wax suspended in a liquid enclosed by a glass or plastic container, the blobs rising and falling when the container is heated by a bulb at the base of the unit. The motion of the blobs is slow and rhythmic, almost hypnotic. It is therefore hard to conceive that one of these slow, soothing light shows could kill a man. Yet one did. Phillip Quinn was found dead in his trailer home with shards of glass from a lava lamp embedded in his chest, including a shard that pierced his heart. According to the medical examiner’s reconstruction of the events that caused the young man’s death, Quinn had been heating the lamp on the kitchen stove and likely had been standing in front of it when it exploded, then stumbled into his bedroom and died. “Why on earth he was heating a lava lamp on the stove, we don’t know,” said Kent Police spokesman Paul Petersen. Quinn’s death was ruled an accident.

A: A man was killed by an exploding lava lamp.
****
Q: Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expect this year’s bloom to rank among the top five since it began measuring their severity in 2002, according to their annual algae forecast for the lake. What’s not known is how toxic it might be or whether it will pose a threat for cities in Ohio and Michigan that draw their drinking water from the lake. Algae blooms that produce toxins and can sicken swimmers and harm fish are becoming an increasing concern nationwide, causing water warnings this year from Vermont to the Gulf Coast. Environmental officials in New Jersey have been telling people to stay out of the state’s largest lake since late June and beaches in Mississippi have been closed in recent weeks by a bloom fueled by polluted Midwest floodwaters pouring from the Mississippi River. Lake Erie, the shallowest and warmest of the Great Lakes, has been hit particularly hard over the past decade. It was five years ago when a toxic bloom caused a two-day shutdown of drinking water in Toledo. Researchers, using a scale for rating the severity of the bloom, expect it to be a 7.5 this year — short of the most severe outbreaks this past decade but still a significant one. Studies have shown that much of the phosphorus that fuels the algae comes from fertilizer runoff from farm fields along with sewage treatment plants and other sources. Unusually heavy rains this spring washed large amounts of nutrients into the lake, but the rain also prevented many farmers from planting corn and applying phosphorus-rich fertilizers on their fields. That may be why the amount of phosphorus found in the lake’s largest tributary, the Maumee River, was much lower than what would be expected, said Laura Johnson, director of the National Center for Water Quality Research at Heidelberg University. The forecasters say one thing they’re unsure about is how the record-setting water levels on the lake this year will impact the algae. “Each bloom is different in how they behave,” said Rick Stumpf, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Where the bloom will go on the lake’s western end along Ohio and Michigan will vary based on wind direction, but researchers point out that most of the lake will be fine for boaters and swimmers. Other factors that will determine the size and location of this year’s bloom in the coming weeks include rain amounts and the lake’s water temperature. Although some areas along the Ohio shoreline already have algae starting to form and drift into the lake, researchers don’t expect to see a large outbreak until the end of July.

A:
Expect another huge blob of algae on Lake Erie this summer.
****