Back to boomtown: energy companies once again pumping Western Slope economy.

• Author: Buchsbaum, Lee

Old U.S. 6 in Rifle, now a paved access road, hugs the railroad tracks heading west out of town. Post-war motels once hungry for business are flush with neon "no vacancy" signs.

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Restaurants, construction companies, snowmobile dealerships, 24-hour fuel stops, truck rental centers, and a sprawling EnCana Energy gas-collection station populate the outskirts of the valley community. And land has been earmarked for a new extended-stay motel.

Just before it ducks under Interstate 70, a dirt road pokes off old U.S. 6 to the north, tying into a network of other heavily traveled dirt roads that take you past the first of many large multidirectional drill rigs.

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"Uphill traffic has priority," the signs warn on the steep, curving roads that lead into the Roan Plateau. That means folks going to work have the right of way to those coming off.

This is a lean industry, and it can't afford to slow down.

Responding to relaxed drilling rules upon federal lands, the Bush administration and favorable market forces, energy companies are transforming Western Slope communities from Glenwood Springs to Grand Junction, Durango to Meeker, into boomtowns, bringing thousands of jobs, tremendous development, and steady commerce.

New schools, libraries, hotels, streets, shopping centers, houses, airport expansion, park development, 3.5 percent or less unemployment--it's hard to complain.

But the bonanza is causing some growing pains. And as vast new pipeline infrastructure is being built to carry even greater volumes of natural gas to eastern and western markets, new bills have been introduced by Colorado's Democrat-controlled Legislature intended to restrain industry practices, make their accounting and royalty generation methods more transparent, and change the commission charged with their oversight.

More regulation may hem in the freewheeling boom, but it's expanding nevertheless.

"We're not even at the halfway mark of what's to come," says Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison. "We need controlled growth to position ourselves well, protect our citizens and do this right."

In Rifle, the roads seem perpetually busy. Interstate 70 to the south, and the three exits--one to the east of town, one to downtown, and one to the west--funnel traffic into and out of the area. In mostly big pickups or heavy trucks, workers drive along the periphery of downtown into the natural gas fields that surround Rifle, but most are heading toward the Roan Plateau.

The Roan rises sharply to the north and west of Rifle, thousands of feet into the air, becoming the craggy northern horizon to the valley of the Colorado River. Native Americans and early white explorers discovered that much of it was comprised of the rock that burns: oil shale.

Years later, natural gas in large amounts was discovered along the Piceance Creek that runs through it and the region. Commercial sales began in 1953 and haven't stopped since.

Much of the Roan Plateau's scrub pines and sage-covered hills and ridges--115 square miles--is federal land administered since the mid-1990s by the Bureau of Land Management. A few ranches and homes are located within another 126,000 acres (197 square miles) of public and private lands also included in the BLM's planning area for the Roan.

Many years ago, much of the plateau was designated as a Naval Oil Shale Reserve, and limited exploration, refraction and production projects were started and abandoned, started and abandoned, and started again. In the '70s, though, Exxon's move to spend billions on an oil-shale extraction project seemed to guarantee that happy days were here to stay. That boom's sudden bust in 1982 devastated much of the Western Slope's economy for more than a decade, and the painful memories linger.

Afterward, the Roan once again became a mostly quiet wilderness populated almost exclusively by elk, mountain lions and mule deer, attracting hikers, hunters and outdoorsmen. Throughout the '90s many easterners and westerners, in love with the scenery and the affordable land prices, bought into the area, constructed their dream homes and ranches, and settled into an idyllic Western life.

But the Roan is also a wilderness of untold buried wealth. Beneath its beauty, locked thousands of feet in its hard soil and rocks are an estimated 8.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, alone more than 4 percent of the...