Dale Turnacliff was diagnosed with asthma in 2004 after he moved to Erie, Colorado. He had spent several years in Southern California’s Inland Empire, which these days is full of warehouses and logistics operations, before he decided to surround his family with a more natural landscape.
Erie is a rural town of about 30,000 residents about 45 minutes north of Denver. It offers wide-open views of the Rocky Mountains and is just small enough so that you can see the stars when the city lights dim at night. But the town also has a long history of fracking and oil extraction, something Turnacliff, 44, wasn’t aware of when his family resettled in the area.
