It sounds like a crazy conspiracy -- too extreme to be true. Flaming tap water, dead animals, secret chemical formulas, mysterious illnesses afflicting whole communities, and people afraid to speak up.
The November 11th episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation brought viewers to a small town taken over by -- industrial gas drilling. The storyline in "Fracked" follows the investigators as they attempt to uncover the truth behind two murders, but end up discovering a much bigger crime: an industry destroying people's lives with no accountability.
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| Laurence Fishburne examines contaminated water on CSI. |
Although the story told on CSI is fictional, the parallels to real life are stark. In Colorado, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and several other states, the method of gas drilling called hydraulic fracturing has wreaked havoc on people's lives. Across the country hydraulic fracturing has been linked to many cases of water so polluted with gas that you can actually light it on fire.
Hydraulic fracturing (or “hydro-fracking”) involves pumping millions of gallons of toxic chemicals deep underground to break up rock formations and release pockets of gas. The process can lead to contamination of underground drinking water sources, as well as severe land and air pollution above ground.
Like in the CSI episode, many people who have been impacted by hydraulic fracturing have been forced to keep silent, signing nondisclosure agreements in order to receive small settlements—or even just deliveries of drinkable water. But the stories that have come to light don’t paint a rosy picture of the gas industry.
Last year in Louisiana, sixteen cows dropped dead within hours of drinking from puddles tainted with a mysterious green fluid in a pasture next to a fracking well site. Chesapeake Energy, the company that owned the rig, refused to identify the chemicals in the fluid.
In 2008, a woman who briefly came into contact with fracturing fluids nearly died from acute liver, heart, and respiratory failure. Cathy Behr, an emergency room nurse in Durago, Colorado, treated a worker from a gas well site who was caught in a chemical spill. Behr spent just 10 minutes with the patient upon his initial entry to the hospital—putting his chemical-laced clothing into a bag and helping him to clean off. Despite her limited exposure, she immediately lost her sense of smell and rapidly became gravely ill. As doctors fought to save Behr’s life, the company that manufactured the chemicals refused to reveal the composition of the fluid—calling the formula a trade secret.
And just a few days ago in Colorado, a woman who spent years in close proximity to numerous gas wells died after a prolonged battle with a rare form of cancer. Drilling rigs were located as close as 300 feet from Chris Mobaldi’s home in Rifle, Colorado between 1997 and 2004. Mobaldi was diagnosed with her first pituitary tumor four years after gas drilling began in the area, and experienced other rare ailments that indicated severe brain damage. Mobaldi’s doctors say that exposure to contaminants from the nearby drilling activities is to blame, but there have been no studies on the long-term health consequences of exposure to fracking chemicals. Now Mobaldi’s husband is seeking to donate her body for medical research and struggling to find anyone who can help.
As in the CSI episode, there are few resources to help the real life people who are fighting this nightmare in their backyards, and the industry is often completely unregulated and unaccountable for the devastation they cause.
Gas companies don't have to tell residents, state agencies—or even hospitals—what chemicals they use at drilling sites because hydraulic fracturing is specifically exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act through a provision nicknamed “the Halliburton Loophole.” Due to the Halliburton Loophole, and a host of other loopholes for the gas industry, the EPA has absolutely no power to regulate hydraulic fracturing.
In response to the situation, some states and towns are taking matters into their own hands and saying “No” to hydraulic fracturing. The City of Pittsburgh recently banned hydraulic fracturing within city limits by invoking its citizens’ rights to clean air and water.
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But despite small victories, most politicians in our state capitols and Congress are ignoring the devastating warning signs: the sick people, the poisoned water wells. They want us to believe—and they believe themselves—that natural gas is a clean miracle fuel.
The FRAC Act—which would close the notorious Halliburton Loophole and force hydraulic fracturing to be regulated by the EPA—has gained little support in Congress. Instead, lawmakers in both parties are finding common ground championing legislation that would give $5 billion in subsidies to the natural gas industry. Outrageously, these politicians want to sell us on natural gas as the solution to climate change, the magic bullet for getting America off foreign oil, and as the “clean” alternative to offshore oil drilling. It is none of those things.
It’s time for politicians across the U.S. to wake up and realize that natural gas is not a miracle substance or a “clean transition fuel,” it’s a bridge to nowhere.
I got involved in this fight because hydraulic fracturing came to my home in rural upstate New York. But this is an issue that affects millions—and not just people in isolated farming communities. Gas companies want to put 30,000 gas wells in the area where 15 million people get their drinking water: that’s New York City, Philadelphia, half of New Jersey, and 80 percent of Delaware.
It sounds too crazy to be true, but it might happen if we don’t get organized to stop it now. The only way we’re going to defeat the gas industry and protect our water is if people become informed about these practices on a massive scale. Please encourage your friends to see the documentary Gasland. And click here to take action and urge leaders in Congress to dump the subsidies for dirty gas, and make the gas industry obey the basic laws that protect our water and our future.
Follow Mark Ruffalo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mruff221
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That said, hydrofracking is a tool, like a hammer or screwdriver. The current focus on hydrofracking completely misses the bigger issues, and is sort of like attempting to regulate ax manufacturers while forgetting that an ax murder is at large.
The focus on hydrofracking is a diversion from larger and more important issues. Besides, the article gets a lot of facts wrong, and is just plain silly to anybody who knows anything about it.
http://a4gda.blogspot.com/2010/11/earthquakes-continue-to-rock-central.html
There's a video on this site about how a drain pit from one of the gas wells has flooded on several occasions and ran off into Greenwood Lake which is the town's water supply. It was shocking to see because I grew up in this town and my family still lives there. They receive notices from the water department on a regular basis that water was contaminated in the two months prior to the notice. Everyone from there refers to the public water supply as the cancer water.
We don't hear much about it in the media here but, then again, the gas company owns the largest newspaper around.
http://a4gda.blogspot.com/
And so it is for the present attack on hydrofracking.
Much of the information in the article is disputed. The bit about flaming water, for example, has been discredited by the Colorado DEP. Like many other things in the article...It didn't happen, or it didn't happen the way it is presented.
The current attack on hydrofracking is misdirected and eventually will serve to discredit and hinder the goal of sustainable and environmentally benign resource use.
For the record, I am a chemical/environmental engineer, and earn my livelihood cleaning messes like those described. I have never worked for any energy company.
So far on this blog, I have been mischaracterized as a shill for the oil industry, a Haliburton lackey, and a murder...Simply because I have an informed opinion about the issue, and have voiced an opinion contrary to that of the author.
Do you think this has anything to do with the landowner/government/gas company relationship in relation to landowner compensation?
That is wrong on every level.
Evidently, the folks owned the right to the top foot of land. Everything else is the government's to do with as they please.
When I saw a picture of a completed well, I though that the footprint was very small. I guess it isn't small enough.
We can't use petroleum or natural gas because of the hazards of fracking.
We can't use coal, because of the hazards of strip mining.
We can't use nuclear energy, because of the potential for a meltdown and difficulty finding a place to store the waste.
We can't use wind power because it will ruin the view of prominent families' with summer cottages in Martha's vineyard.
We can't cut down trees, because...
We can't drive smaller cars, because we don't feel safe in them.
Public transportation is for other people.
The bicycle's seat makes my bum sore.
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I would also like to curtail the ability of mineral/energy companies to invade private property in order to seek minerals. I've hears stories of families in Colorado returning home to find drill rigs in their back yard--And there's not a darned thing they can do about it.
Why on God's green earth would we EVER trust what these people have to say? They have ALWAYS tried to mislead and to distort the truth.
How about the Hamptons?
I heard there were GIANT gas deposits there!
K1LL THE LOOPHOLE NOW!
More hazardous than most chemicals in 5 out of 5 ranking systems.
Ranked as one of the most hazardous compounds (worst 10%) to ecosystems and human health.
http://www.scorecard.org/chemical-profiles/hazard-indicators.tcl?edf_substance_id=107%2d19%2d7
The chemical most commonly pumped down in the completion phase of a well is hydracholric acid. It is pumped down in enormous volume and under tremendous pressure. The current governmental regulations require us to protect the ground water by casing only 25 feet below where their experts tell us the ground water ends.
I have seen, not been a part of, incidents you speak of. My wife's family farm's livestock water was ruined, their cattle died. Most troubling because this incident occurred 30 years ago. Still their water is contaminated and "authorities" say there is nothing that can be done.
Her family couldn't even sue the company that caused the damage. It was so layered with false corporations and shell companies, that once the real company was discovered, it had long since filed bankruptcy.
The real reason, however, is to dissolve Calcium Carbonate. Like the gunk which clogs water pipes, Calcium Carbonate clogs the pores through which hydrocarbons flow into the well. The acid dissolves it.
You can see this effect for yourself. Just drop one drop on cement to watch the process firsthand.
http://www.energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Gasland-Fact-Sheet-FINAL-062110.pdf