The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission voted 6-3 Thursday to go ahead with a wide-ranging rewrite of its rules beginning next month. Gas companies wanted the commission to delay some of the rules, saying there's too little time to consider the large changes that they say will cost them millions of dollars.

Commissioners will have to plow through 10,000 pages of documents, according to the Colorado Petroleum Association.

"This is not a John Grisham read. This is hard, slogging stuff to get through," said Howard Boigon, an attorney for Bill Barrett Corp.

For the industry, the new rules amount to a "Bataan death march through the commission's rulebook," Boigon said.

If the commission rushes now, it will get bogged down in a lawsuit later, he said.

But environmentalists have been waiting for this moment for years and argued against a delay.

"This rulemaking is urgently needed and somewhat overdue," said Mike Chiropolos, an attorney for Western Resource Advocates. "The unprecedented drilling boom justifies the rulemaking."

La Plata County Attorney Jeff Robbins also opposed a delay.

Gov. Bill Ritter pushed for two bills shortly after he took office in 2007 to make the gas commission friendlier to people concerned about public health, wildlife and the environment. The new rules are based on those bills.

One of the bills reorganized the commission to make sure its nine members represent not just the industry, but wildlife, agriculture, health and local government experts.

Thursday's vote means the commission will start a 12-day hearing on the rules June 23.

That should be plenty of time, said David Neslin, acting director of the commission's staff, which drafted the new rules.

"I would note that the Founding Fathers developed the United States Constitution in four months," he said.

Local commissioners split on the vote Thursday. Kimberlee Gerhardt of Durango voted to go ahead with the rulemaking, while Tom Compton of Hesperus wanted to delay some of the rules. Compton said he struggled with how to vote, and he thinks the rulemaking will be a daunting task.

"I wish there was a better way," he said.

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