Sometimes I feel like I’m pushing a string uphill when I talk about protecting our local air, water, and soil. The oil and gas industry has the people of Happy Valley convinced that everything they do is safe. The also seem to have the Governor convinced. They are aided and abetted by the local media and even some national media.
Governor Hickenlooper has been catching heat from Colorado environmentalists about appearing in an ad paid for by the industry group that supports the oil and gas industry. In that ad, Hickenlooper leaves viewers believing that nothing bad ever happens as the result of oil and gas activities. So far 13 environmental groups have signed on to a letter informing the Governor of the spills and leaks that are posted at his own agency’s website.
There are thousands of spills reported at the COG CC website; they are searchable by various criteria including operator and lease. For your convenience, and to illustrate the point, I did a search of all, but limited the search to 10 reports. Look to see if groundwater was ever threatened, the results of my search are linked below.
Hickenlooper then went on the radio to double down on how safe fracking is. He claimed he drank some fracking fluid and lived to tell about it. He probably did. There are fracking fluids that are sourced from food products. The next time you think about how fluids sourced from food products couldn’t possibly be bad for Colorado’s water, think about drinking water that has had a cheeseburger floating in it for days.
The green fracking fluids have been mandated for use in off-shore wells for years. But they aren’t mandated for use in wells in Colorado. They are more expensive than the more traditional toxic chemicals that are being used on most Colorado wells. If it is voluntary, industry is going to maximize their profit by using the more toxic chemicals instead of the food sourced products.
Just to add insult to injury, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just released a report that indicates that our air is being polluted more than previously thought by oil and gas activity. They were monitoring air as a matter of routine along the Front Range, when they started detecting “plumes of air rich with chemical pollutants including the potent greenhouse gas methane.” There are eight testing programs across the U.S. and none of them were detecting anything close to the concentrations detected in Colorado.
An atmospheric scientist, Gabrielle Petron, said "So we set out to figure out where these chemicals were coming from, by going from the tower measurements 1,000 feet high up, down to the ground in a mobile laboratory. We found gas operations in the region leaked about twice as much methane into the atmosphere as previously estimated … And the oil and gas infrastructure was leaking other air pollutants, too, including benzene, which is regulated because of its toxicity."
During the testing period, there were 14, 000 wells operating in the area. To be fair, there were also automobiles and trucks operating in the vicinity. This study recorded benzene emissions from oil and gas operations at levels significantly higher than expected, “between 385 and 2,055 metric tons in 2008, compared with earlier estimates ranging from about 60 to 145 per year.”
I’m just like everyone else on this planet. I drive a car. I heat my home in winter and cool it in summer. But I’m not willing to stick my head in the sand about the damage it is causing our air and water. I’ve decided to install solar panels on my home in order to get more of the energy I use directly from the sun. And I will continue to push that string up a hill. If we want this planet to be livable for future generations, we need to do more to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink.
Homework
10 out of thousands of reported spills reported to COGCC
NOAA Story
Get the Published Study
Governor Hickenlooper has been catching heat from Colorado environmentalists about appearing in an ad paid for by the industry group that supports the oil and gas industry. In that ad, Hickenlooper leaves viewers believing that nothing bad ever happens as the result of oil and gas activities. So far 13 environmental groups have signed on to a letter informing the Governor of the spills and leaks that are posted at his own agency’s website.
There are thousands of spills reported at the COG CC website; they are searchable by various criteria including operator and lease. For your convenience, and to illustrate the point, I did a search of all, but limited the search to 10 reports. Look to see if groundwater was ever threatened, the results of my search are linked below.
Hickenlooper then went on the radio to double down on how safe fracking is. He claimed he drank some fracking fluid and lived to tell about it. He probably did. There are fracking fluids that are sourced from food products. The next time you think about how fluids sourced from food products couldn’t possibly be bad for Colorado’s water, think about drinking water that has had a cheeseburger floating in it for days.
The green fracking fluids have been mandated for use in off-shore wells for years. But they aren’t mandated for use in wells in Colorado. They are more expensive than the more traditional toxic chemicals that are being used on most Colorado wells. If it is voluntary, industry is going to maximize their profit by using the more toxic chemicals instead of the food sourced products.
Just to add insult to injury, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just released a report that indicates that our air is being polluted more than previously thought by oil and gas activity. They were monitoring air as a matter of routine along the Front Range, when they started detecting “plumes of air rich with chemical pollutants including the potent greenhouse gas methane.” There are eight testing programs across the U.S. and none of them were detecting anything close to the concentrations detected in Colorado.
An atmospheric scientist, Gabrielle Petron, said "So we set out to figure out where these chemicals were coming from, by going from the tower measurements 1,000 feet high up, down to the ground in a mobile laboratory. We found gas operations in the region leaked about twice as much methane into the atmosphere as previously estimated … And the oil and gas infrastructure was leaking other air pollutants, too, including benzene, which is regulated because of its toxicity."
During the testing period, there were 14, 000 wells operating in the area. To be fair, there were also automobiles and trucks operating in the vicinity. This study recorded benzene emissions from oil and gas operations at levels significantly higher than expected, “between 385 and 2,055 metric tons in 2008, compared with earlier estimates ranging from about 60 to 145 per year.”
I’m just like everyone else on this planet. I drive a car. I heat my home in winter and cool it in summer. But I’m not willing to stick my head in the sand about the damage it is causing our air and water. I’ve decided to install solar panels on my home in order to get more of the energy I use directly from the sun. And I will continue to push that string up a hill. If we want this planet to be livable for future generations, we need to do more to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink.
Homework
10 out of thousands of reported spills reported to COGCC
NOAA Story
Get the Published Study
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