DENVER - Expressing frustration with a lack of action at the Legislature, activists launched a campaign this week to ask voters to give landowners more say about how the energy boom in parts of Colorado affects them.

A group called Colorado Land Owners for Fairness, organized by Glenwood Springs real estate agent John Gorman, has started collecting signatures for a proposed constitutional amendment dealing with the so-called split estate - when one party owns the land and another owns the minerals underneath it.

A bill aimed at giving more protections to landowners on split estates died in the Legislature this year after a major rift developed between industry groups and a coalition that included small landowners and home builders.

"This is needed because there are people who are being damaged and not getting anything like the compensation due them," Gorman said.

Greg Schnacke, executive vice president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association trade group, said the amendment is so broad that it would lead to "a litigation lottery."

"The initiative as drafted is so vague and confusing that the voters wouldn't have any idea what they're voting on," Schnacke said.

Companies that own or lease minerals have the legal right to "reasonable use" of the surface to extract the minerals. State and federal officials urge companies to negotiate agreements with the surface owners, but companies can post a bond and drill if that fails.

Landowners complain that being able to post bond and drill without an agreement gives companies all the leverage. They say the bonds are too low to do any good.

The amendment proposed for the November ballot would require a mineral extractor to pay the fair value of damages created by mineral development, including oil and natural gas.

The group has four weeks to collect nearly some 68,000 signatures of registered voters. Gorman said core members of the group are from western Colorado, where gas drilling is increasing rapidly, but residents in gas fields in eastern Colorado are interested.

The Colorado Association of Home Builders joined environmental and community groups to lobby for the split-estate bill by Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, but isn't supporting the ballot proposal. Schnacke said the home builders are instead working with his group, the Colorado Farm Bureau and the Colorado Cattlemen's Association on legislation for the upcoming session.

Schnacke said the groups recently met with Gov. Bill Owens to try to find a compromise. The home builders agreed not to support the proposed amendment.

In turn, the oil and gas group agreed to withdraw a ballot proposal that would have required home sellers to guarantee that a property had an adequate water supply.

"The initiative was an attempt to try to have meaningful dialogue with the parties on this issue," Schnacke said.

He blamed environmental groups for rejecting a compromise on the bill.

"From our perspective, what he refers to as a compromise would be more correctly characterized as a hijacking," said Duke Cox, president of the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance.

Cox, a home builder in Garfield County, said industry groups rewrote the bill to the point that it would have further tipped the scales in energy companies' favor.