Madhvi Chittoor has had a hectic summer. For months, the 13-year-old has attended hearings, reviewed environmental assessments and emailed government officials. She wants to stop Civitas, a Denver-based company, from drilling up to 166 oil and gas wells in nearby Aurora, Colorado. “My rights as a child for clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean food and great health are at jeopardy,” she said.
Madhvi became interested in environmental issues at an early age. When she was 5, she watched a documentary about a Pacific island overrun with trash. Birds and nearby aquatic life fed on the plastic waste, dying by the score.
“I told my mom, ‘This is so sad. I want to do something,’” Madhvi recalled. With her mother Lalitha’s support, she has since organized multiple river cleanups and helped pass legislation in Colorado banning single-use plastic bags and Styrofoam containers. In 2022, she became the United Nations’ youngest child advisor, helping to define children’s legal right to a clean, healthy environment. Once she realized that fossil fuels were among the world’s top sources of plastics, her focus shifted.
“That realization is actually what sparked this whole thing,” Lalitha Chittoor interjected. Mother and daughter often interrupted each other, fleshing out each other’s stories, clarifying a statistic or rattling off a piece of legislation they’d supported. Sometimes, Lalitha cut in just to say “good point” or to high-five her daughter. Though Mathvi is the one who’s gotten all the media attention, watching them together dispels the myth of the “lone hero” and “youthful savior” exemplified by figures like Greta Thunberg.
In August, the three of us met in a park near their house in Arvada, a Denver suburb about 30 miles west of Civitas’ proposed Lowry Ranch development in Aurora. While the wells would not be located in the Chitoors’ neighborhood, they would feel their effects: The air quality along the Front Range is among the nation’s worst, deemed a “serious violation” of Environmental Protection Agency standards. Colorado’s oil and gas industry — the fourth-largest in the country — is a major contributor to that pollution. The Chittoors also believe that decisions on Lowry Ranch foreshadow how Colorado’s soon-to-be-finalized protections for communities affected by oil and gas are likely to play out.
In 2019, facing growing pushback from environmental groups and activists like the Chittoors, the state mandated that regulators consider the public health and environmental impacts of oil and gas development. In 2021, the state’s Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) responded by announcing new “mission change rules” that require companies to analyze the “cumulative impacts” of their operations on air pollution, noise, water, wildlife and nearby residents. But the Chittoors and other critics contended those rules failed to account for how new oil and gas development would align with state efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ozone pollution. In January, the ECMC began a new rulemaking process to strengthen how cumulative impacts from oil and gas operations in Colorado are measured and analyzed.
Chris Winter, executive director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment in Boulder, said the new rules could offer “one of the better examples for a state-based program.” Well-permitting processes usually consider the impact of individual wells, but not dozens or even hundreds in a small geographic area. In such cases, the sum impact on neighboring communities and even the region as a whole may be greater than the individual parts. But assessing cumulative impacts is highly technical; as Winter noted, already under-resourced communities may struggle to hire the scientific expertise needed to parse dense industry proposals.
About 22% of Arapahoe County’s population is low-income, a percentage that rises as high as 65% in parts of Aurora. Nearly half of Aurora’s 400,000 residents are people of color, including recent immigrants from Latin America that Trump has targeted in false claims of “gang takeovers.”
With the community fighting other battles — including the struggle for daily survival — the odds are often skewed in favor of big oil from the start.
IN MAY, THE ECMC HELD an in-person public hearing in Aurora to talk about Lowry Ranch. Since the commission typically meets virtually, community members and environmental groups hoped this meant their concerns would be taken seriously.
Madhvi testified, asking the commission to prioritize “our basic life elements: air, water, and soil” over oil and gas revenue. Her words moved Kevin Chan, founder of an Aurora-based group that opposes the development. His group — Save the Aurora Reservoir, or STAR — counts about 1,000 members of diverse backgrounds. “I’ve met people who barely even spoke English,” he said, including “Chinese people with whom I’ve had to use my broken Cantonese.” Still, he wished more kids like Madhvi were involved.
As Greta Thunberg’s story shows, the face of a child can help personalize a movement and spur action on behalf of future generations. But older generations play an underappreciated role in this, too: Research shows that parents, especially mothers, shape their children’s activism in numerous ways.
“My rights as a child for clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean food and great health are at jeopardy.”
That May evening, for example, Lalitha spent three hours in heavy traffic driving Madhvi to the hearing and back. At 54, she’d rarely thought about environmental justice before her daughter took up the cause. Indeed, research suggests that educating middle school children about climate change can inspire their parents to care more about the issue as well.
Lalitha has since left her career in tech to support her daughter’s activism; her husband, who still works in tech, is now the family’s main breadwinner. She now believes that humans must urgently slow their consumption. “If we do that, we can co-exist with nature,” Lalitha said. Every week, she helps Madhvi craft emails, update her website and social media, make appointments with government officials, and pore through industry and government reports.
“Our interests have matched,” Lalitha said, smiling to reveal a gap between her front teeth that made her look awfully young.
Credit: Joanna Kulesza
IN LATE JULY, the consultation process for the proposed oil and gas development culminated in two days of virtual hearings before the ECMC. After months of fundraising, STAR had cobbled together enough money to hire an environmental lawyer. The group had also recruited knowledgeable volunteers, including an acoustics engineer, a fire chief and a geoscientist who specialized in hydrology. These experts warned of possible contamination of the reservoir, a source of drinking water for Aurora residents and a popular summertime swimming hole. They also expressed concern over fracking’s impacts on air quality and noise, especially on residents living within 3,000 feet of a well site, and its effects on threatened wildlife, including the burrowing owl and swift fox. And they noted the potential disturbances to a nearby 480-acre Superfund site. A few months earlier, the EPA had signaled a similar worry, saying that “hydraulic fracturing surrounding and underneath the site could lead to a significant unintended release of hazardous substances.”
Civitas largely brushed off their misgivings. When a toxicologist hired by the company suggested that poor air quality was not a health concern, even for people living within 100 feet of a well pad — a statement contradicted by recent studies — Madhvi emailed the commissioners in a fury: “Even as a child, I find Ms. McMullin’s testimony ridiculous.” When one commissioner objected to Civitas’ “vague and noncommittal efforts” to minimize cumulative impacts, Madhvi wrote to thank him: “Your statements give hope to me and children like me.”
On Aug. 7, the commission allowed the Lowry Ranch project to proceed, with the proviso that Civitas electrify operations to minimize air pollution and noise. The American Petroleum Institute released a statement celebrating the decision as a sign that Colorado remained “open for business.”
Chan and STAR were crushed. “I’m just drained,” Chan said.
The Chittoors, while disappointed, refused to give up. “The oil and gas industry is rooting on people’s hopelessness,” Madhvi said.
Though the project as a whole was approved, Civitas will still need to get a sign-off on each individual well pad from both the ECMC and from Arapahoe County, which updated its oil and gas regulations last year, making them more restrictive than the state’s. “I will keep fighting against every single well,” said Madhvi.
The Chittoors have also seized every opportunity to shape ECMC’s cumulative impact rules, which are supposed to be finalized this month. Each well pad at Lowry Ranch will likely be subject to the new regulations. Though the public comment session took place on a school day in September, Madhvi was determined to testify. Lalitha brought her laptop to Madhvi’s school, which gave them a private room. She kept watch against interruptions while her daughter urged theECMC to consider the effects of oil and gas operations on soil quality, surface temperature and small water bodies, and also to expand the impact monitoring area from one mile of a drill site to three. “Why should we monitor only what is required in the statute?” Madhvi asked the commission. “Pollution knows no borders.”
Sometimes, it seems inevitable that Madhvi will build a career in climate activism; she’s already garnered so much recognition and success. But she’s aware she’s only 13, still evolving as a person. She’s interested in medicine, too, and is an accomplished violin player. What if one of those interests eventually calls to her more?
Her mother said that she’d carry on the fight. “I don’t think she’ll lose interest,” Lalitha said, “but I would continue.”
