Santa Fe County residents opposed to oil and gas drilling kept the pressure on county and state officials at the fourth public meeting on the topic Thursday.

About 800 people attending the hearing at Santa Fe High School, both the largest crowd and the largest venue to date.

The meeting — which was called to give county residents a chance to comment on new oil and gas regulations being crafted by the county — was better organized than others. The county is rewriting the ordinance in response to a Houston company's plans to explore for oil and gas in the Galisteo Basin.

Dozens of people at the entrance asked residents to sign petitions and handed out fliers, newspaper articles and fact sheets.

More public officials were at the meeting than had been at the three others. John Bemis of the State Land Office and Santa Fe Mayor David Coss made first-time appearances.

The audience members got more time to talk than before, three minutes as opposed to two. But the time limit was enforced more strictly, too. The microphone simply went dead when speakers reached their time limits.

County Attorney Steve Ross, who until now has been relatively silent, gave answers to 10 questions about the new regulations he said people ask most frequently including:

Why does the new ordinance allow drilling companies to get variances on the setbacks?

Answer: Because easing the setbacks in some situations might protect the county from being accused of denying mineral owners access to their legal property and being held financially liable for the lost assets.

Why are the bonds required by the county so low?

Answer: Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, surety bonds have been hard to get. The county will require $5,000 to $25,000 bonds on each well, but Ross said drilling companies will also be required to carry $10 million worth of insurance on each well.

What will you do if the aquifer is contaminated?

Answer: "We will do a lot of things," Ross said, including working with the Oil Conservation Division to get it cleaned up, suing the drilling company, invoking the insurance, pulling the bonds and "making them shut down their wells until the problem is resolved."

Comments from the crowd were passionate.

Alex Valenzuela, who said he used to live near oil fields in Lindrith, N.M., north of Cuba, spoke about watching his mother become ill when a well solvent leaked into her water. "My mom almost died," he said. "Her whole body was covered with sores, and her hair started falling out. I was really upset about that."

Valenzuela said one of his neighbors pulled a gun on the drillers. "They arrested him and drilled a well on his property," he said.

Valenzuela even linked the oil drilling to higher crime rates and said he personally knew many "roughnecks" who worked on the rigs and were strung out on crystal meth. "You'll have a bunch of speed-freak trailer trash moving into your place," he said.

Bill Gilbert, a father of three who has spent 29 years in the Galisteo Basin area, where the oil exploration company Tecton Energy has said it wants to drill, told the policymakers: "We want you to feel you are more concerned with our community than you are with being sued."

Tecton's announcement that it has leased 65,000 acres of mineral rights in Santa Fe County prompted the county to produce the new oil and gas drilling ordinance it is now considering.

The County Commission enacted a three-month moratorium on oil and gas drilling permits Nov. 27 so it would have time to finalize the new ordinance.

The county is accepting public comments on the new regulations through Dec. 21. Two public hearings will be held before the new ordinance is adopted. The next is tentatively scheduled to take place Jan. 7. Exact dates can be found on the county's Web site, www.santafecounty.org.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.