Clean air advocate Jacquie Ostrom is being ordered to testify at a deposition and produce four months of emails or other communications sought in the Colorado Springs Utilities action against Leslie Weise.

Ostrom said the subpoena she was served Wednesday night illustrates the “witch hunt” by Utilities, which is seeking sanctions, fines and jail time for Weise, a Monument attorney battling Utilities over a report on air quality. Ostrom served more than a year on a customer advisory group to help Utilities craft its Electric Integrated Resource Plan, which was approved in November 2015. Since then, she has fought to hold Utilities accountable for emissions.

Two more people are expected to be subpoenaed in the case over the next week.

Weise has waged court battles for more than a year to obtain air-quality reports commissioned by Utilities from AECOM Technical Services Inc.

After she lost the fight in El Paso County District Court in May 2015, she took it to the Colorado Court of Appeals, whose clerk unwittingly sent her the confidential report she’d been seeking.

A judge ordered her to return it and make no copies, which Weise says she did.

Utilities is seeking sanctions, though, because Weise told The Gazette that the report shows violations of sulfur dioxide standards at the coal-fired Martin Drake Power Plant.

Utilities officials and board members deny that contention.

The court is to determine whether Weise violated the judge’s order “by publicly discussing the contents of privileged documents that she should not have received and that the Court expressly ordered her not to disseminate,” said Utilities spokeswoman Amy Trinidad.

“In civil litigation, the collection of information from parties and non-parties typically precedes evidentiary hearings. Consistent with this process, the City is collecting limited information and only from a few individuals who have communicated with Ms. Weise about the privileged documents. Ms. Weise’s attorney has the right to conduct these same types of procedures,” Trinidad said by email.

Rick Griffith, of the City Attorney’s Office, has said the AECOM report must be withheld because it contains “trade secrets, privileged information, and confidential commercial, financial, geological or geophysical data.”

First Amendment attorney Stephen Zansberg, who represents The Gazette in such cases, has said courts don’t care about the competitive standing of government, including the city-owned Utilities, a four-service monopoly.

“They have to prove to a judge that every word in every one of those documents would definitely cause harm if released … Not page by page, and certainly not document by document,” Zansberg said in September 2015.

Griffith more recently has emphasized an “attorney-client privilege” in withholding the report, saying AECOM was helping Utilities prepare for anticipated lawsuits from the Sierra Club and others.

The firm’s contract says it is to help with air-quality assessments, modeling and meteorological monitoring. Nothing in the contract or Utilities’ request for bids cites a provision for legal advice.

No SO2-related lawsuits have surfaced in the three years since AECOM was hired.

While Weise continues to press for release of the report, she has sparked a cause célebre among Colorado clean air advocates, who have launched a gofundme.com campaign and change.org petition drive in her support.

The separate legal action seeking sanctions against her is expected to be decided Feb. 13 in the state appeals court by Senior Judge Jose D.L. Marquez, who retired from the court.

Ostrom, meanwhile, has until Feb. 2 to produce all communications that mention AECOM, CSU, Drake Power Plant or Weise.

“I think this is an unreasonable request of anyone,” said Ostrom, a professional counselor and volunteer yoga teacher at El Paso County jail. “It’s fishing. It’s way too broad. I was in the (appeals) court Tuesday when Judge Marquez said: ‘I want this narrowly focused.’ This is not narrowly focused.”

But, she added, “I have nothing to hide.”