During the craziness of political seasons it is not unusual for politicians to attack regulatory agencies. It is part of the mantra of small-government Republicans, especially when regulations get in the way of big business. We’ve seen Wall Street lobbyists grousing at the Dodd Frank bill that was designed to rein in the excesses of the financial industry. We’ve seen the oil and gas industry lobbyists trying to play nice and be more transparent about fracking chemicals, while screaming for the death of the EPA, which has been studying the impacts of fracking on water.

But I’ve never heard a politician saying that the Center for Disease Control should be dismantled.  I think we can expect some arrows flying in that direction when the powerful oil and gas industry gets wind of what Christopher Portier, director of the National Center of Environmental Health at the CDC had to say recently.

“We do not have enough information to say with certainty whether shale gas drilling poses a threat to public health … More research is needed for us to understand public health impacts from natural gas drilling and new gas drilling technologies.”

Portier went on to say that there should be testing of water wells both before and after fracking, as well as studies to determine if it is safe to eat animals or fish that drink or swim in impacted surface water. He expressed concern that there are no scientific studies or medical standards to define symptoms caused by oil and gas activities.

Bringing it even closer to home, Dr. Portier’s agency consulted on the health studies conducted in Garfield County relative to breathing air close to oil and gas fields.

The involvement of the CDC in looking at fracking has not been widely reported, but the attacks on them surely won’t wait until the public knows about their concerns.

Homework

Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

Story about CDC Concerns About Fracking

Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry

ATSDR Consulted on Garfield County Health Survey

Friday was a pretty big news day. Two big stories were reported.

Fracking Rule

The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission will continue its hearing about the Fracking Rule on Tuesday, December 13.  This continuation is primarily because of new information that was disclosed by the EPA about ground water pollution in Pavilion, Wyoming. Attorneys representing the environmental committee petitioned the Commission to consider the new information before finalizing any rule.

At the hearing on December 5, an employee of Halliburton testified that there had never been any proven instance of hydraulic fracturing polluting any water.  Commissioner Rich Allward questioned that testimony by suggesting that there had never been a study using the scientific method to test a hypothesis. The EPA report on pollution in Pavilion is not a perfect scientific study, but it does come closer.

The EPA drilled two wells to monitor the plume of pollution radiating from a gas well. The results of testing demonstrated the presence of chemicals that are frequently used in fracking, and that are not naturally occurring in nature. Industry is still claiming that the results prove nothing. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is charged with two things: ensuring that there is development of Colorado’s natural resources and protecting the health and safety of citizens, including oil field workers and landowners where drilling is taking place.

The continuation will be webcast on Tuesday, starting at 8:00 a.m. There is a link to the site where the webcast will be posted below.

Colorado’s School Finance is Unconstitutional

A district court judge ruled on Friday that the way that Colorado finances education is unconstitutional because it does not provide the same education to all students in Colorado. Estimates of the funding shortage range from $2-billion to $4-billion. Governor Hickenlooper warned that forcing the state to put more money into education will mean that there will be cuts to transportation and health care. What he should have said is that we cut education funding during the last legislative session, and are facing more cuts in the upcoming legislative session.

This case will be appealed to the Supreme Court. There are two Constitutional amendments in conflict on this case. TABOR does not allow any increase in taxes without a vote of the people. In the elections just last month the people rejected a citizen’s initiative that would have “De-Bruced” education with a temporary increase in sales and income taxes. The Constitution also requires Colorado to provide quality education to all of its kids. The court order, which is 183 pages long, details how current funding has no relationship with what is required to deliver quality education to those kids.

If the order stands, the legislature is directed to consider how to make educational funding more equitable across Colorado. The only possible response from the legislature is to cut other programs, which have already been cut to the bone over several years of recession driven cutting.

In April the University of Denver issued phase 2 of its study on the sustainability of Colorado’s government. The report‘s first paragraph is chilling:

“Twelve years from now, Colorado will generate only enough sales, income and other general-purpose tax revenue to pay for the three largest programs in the General Fund – public schools, health care and prisons. There will be no tax revenue for public colleges and universities, no money for the state court system, nothing for child-protection services, nothing for youth corrections, nothing for state crime labs and nothing for other core services of state government.”

The judge’s ruling on Friday hastens the complete failure of the State of Colorado.

Homework

EPA Report on Pavilion, Wyoming

Q & A About Fracking Study at EPA

Notice of Continued Deliberation on Colorado Fracking Rule

Link to Audio of Rulemaking Deliberations To Be Live on Tuesday

Judge Rules Colorado School Financing Unconstitutional

Actual 183 Page Court Decision

University Study on Sustainability of Colorado Government

I spent all of yesterday in a hearing in Denver. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission held an all day hearing on proposed changes to fracking rules. The day was structured so that public comments were accepted first, then the staff of the Commission submitted their report, based on comments made on-line prior to the hearing date and their research, then the parties with "status" submitted their testimony. The first party with "status" was the oil and gas industry, followed by environmentalists and representatives of local government. I confess, I missed the presentations by local governments, because the hearing was still going strong when I left, at about 5:00 p.m.

The oil and gas industry primarily testified about two things. First up was a discussion of the design of the FracFocus website, which is a place where industry is posting some details about chemicals used at wellsites. They were concerned with the proposed rule because it requires that the website be searchable by chemical, in addition to the other criteria which can already been searched. Their second concern was with the "trade secrets loophole". A representative from Halliburton testified that they had propriatory recipes for chemicals that were being used in the fracking process that had increased production in some fields by as much as 25%. He alleged that if Colorado required Halliburton to disclose all chemicals in the recipe, they would lose a competitive advantage because it would be possible to reverse engineer the formula.

Earlier in the day, during the public comment period, one woman pointed out that just because someone gave her the ingredients for creme brule' didn't mean that she would be able to make it. I've seen the recipe for creme brule' and I don't think I could make it even with complete instructions! Another person testifying pointed out that the food industry already is required to list all ingredients, and their ingredients aren't nearly as dangerous as the chemicals used by the oil and gas industry. And taking the food discussion full circle, Halliburton said that in their new "green" technology much of the chemicals they are using are being sourced from the food industry.

The first group up after the testimony presented by industry was Western Colorado Congress. We were one of four groups that were granted "party status" in the hearing. Each of the four groups were given 1.5 hours to present their case. Western Colorado Congress wants full disclosure of all fracking chemicals, pre-notification of chemicals to be used so that landowners can obtain baseline data of how their land and water looks pre-drilling and fracking. We brought in three witnesses: an activist from Battlement Mesa, a former Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commissioner and Garfield County Commissioner, and an activist from Clark, Wyoming. Tresi Houpt, the former Commissioner, testified about people reporting illnesses after fracking activity on or near their property, bringing in the public health concerns. The woman from Wyoming, has been at ground zero where the EPA has confirmed that water wells in Pavilion, Wyoming have been pollutted by industry activities. Halliburton had testified that there had never been any demonstrated pollution of water from industry practices--a position that was challenged by Rich Allward, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commissioner who lives in Grand Junction.

Members of the front range environmental commission delivered all of their testimony through their attorney, Mike Freeman. At one point I was amused when Freeman quoted a bit of case law that sent an oil and gas attorney to his law book. Freeman was a bit softer on the issue than was Western Colorado Congress. He was willing to accept some trade secrets, so long as regulators had access to the detail of chemicals contained in the formulas.

The COGCC will vote on this rule in a meeting in Greeley on Monday.  

Today I'm taking the train to Denver, along with Benita Phillips. We are going to Denver to be at the fracking rule hearing tomorrow. I submitted a comment in writing. Benita, as a Registered Nurse will comment as a health care professional. We are pretty sure that we won't get what we want--full disclosure of all chemicals used in fracking and other oil and gas industry procedures, together with well-specific tracer elements, so that it is easy to place blame where it belongs if something goes wrong. But we will keep making our voices heard, because it is the right thing to do.

Evidently my blog about cyanide running down a creek in the town where I grew up struck a nerve. An oil and gas company officer wrote me a note telling me that I'm stupid, only he used more words to convey that idea. A nicer note came from a woman who also lived in Lead at about the same time that I did, and she shared a story about her mother and grandmother telling her to stay away from the black water in the creek running past a museum in Deadwood. The point I was trying to make is that industry has thought things were safe in the past, but later learned that they were doing serious damage to the environment. That is still true.

We know that fracking fluids contain toxic elements from the lists that have already been provided. We know that water wells in Pavilion, Wyoming have been polluted by fracking in the area. What we don't know is what are in the formulas that industry is saying contain "trade secrets." Maybe every person on the planet doesn't need to know what is in those formulas, but landowners, industry workers, and public health professionals all need to know so that they can make informed decisions when accidents happen. And accidents do happen.

Lately I’ve been learning everything I can about fracking fluids. Before getting to that, I’d like to tell you a story.

I grew up in Lead, South Dakota. The town exists because a very rich deposit of gold was discovered there in 1876. When people think of the Wild West, Deadwood comes to mind. Deadwood, down the road three miles from Lead, was famous for its gun battles, whisky, prostitutes, and Chinese immigrants. Lead is hardly mentioned in the telling of Wild West stories, but it was Lead and the lure of gold that drew people to that part of the Black Hills.

Lead is home to the Homestake Mine, which was once the largest gold mine in the world. Gold is no longer mined there; instead the mine is being converted into an underground laboratory where atomic particles, like neutrinos can be studied. But I digress.

In the late 1890’s the Homestake Mine discovered that using cyanide in the processing of gold ore made it possible to recover 100% of the valuable metal, instead of only 90%. As you can imagine, in the largest mine in the world, a lot of cyanide was used. Cyanide is a poison that causes respiratory systems to stop functioning. A teaspoon full of a 2% solution of cyanide can kill an adult within a matter of minutes.

When I was a kid, we were not allowed to play near the creek that ran out of Lead and toward Deadwood. This creek ran black from the cyanide washing out of a retaining pit and into the stream. At the time, the belief was that simply diluting cyanide with enough water would make it less toxic to humans and animals. We used to pump raw sewage down creeks, too, until we learned better. Cyanide can kill off fish populations in concentrations as low as five parts per billion in rivers.

In May of 1998, as much as seven tons of mill tailings containing large concentrations of cyanide spilled into a creek in South Dakota. The result was a lot of dead fish floating downstream, and a $40-million bill to the taxpayers for clean-up. And all of this happened after the mining company developed a strain of bacteria to eat cyanide in an effort to clean up polluted water.

Fast forward to 2011 and Western Slope communities along the Colorado River: The Oil and Gas industry and our Governor are telling us that fracking is safe. However, unlike the Homestake Mine, which always told the community that they were washing toxic cyanide down the stream, the oil and gas industry is refusing to tell anyone what is in fracking fluids. Industry cites Trade Secrets as the reason for not disclosing the recipe, but there may be another, unspoken, motivation to keep us all in the dark—fear of liability.

A story printed by High Country News, told of an emergency room nurse in Durango passing out from fumes coming from chemicals on an oil and gas worker who had been injured on the job. Much of that story seems to have been hushed up. The nurse can’t be found by anyone who wants to interview her, although she once wanted to testify to the COGCC. The worker claims he didn’t have fracking fluid on his shoes. The Durango fire department confirms that the emergency room at the local hospital was treated as a contaminated site at the time of the incident.

The COGCC has proposed a new fracking rule that deals with the disclosure of chemicals in fracking fluids. The proposed rule does not require the industry to disclose chemicals that are Trade Secrets. What is known is that some chemicals in fracking fluids are known carcinogens and poisons. First responders and emergency room personnel need to know what those chemicals are if they are to effectively treat anyone accidentally exposed to them. If the chemicals are as toxic as cyanide, these health care professionals only have a few minutes to get it right.

There will be a public hearing about the bill in Denver on December 5. If you can’t attend the hearing, send your comments to Peter.Gowen@state.co.us .

On October 25, 2011, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) held an open meeting to decide if public hearings should be held about fracking rules. The result of the meeting was to instruct staff to “initiate a rule making for purposes of adopting rules governing the public disclosure of hydraulic fracturing chemicals, including notification of hydraulic fracturing operations.”

The proposed rules were made public on November 10. Commissioner W. Perry Peace was designated as the hearing officer, and interested parties were given until 5:00 p.m. on November 17 to file for “party status.” The status request required any interested parties to provide contact information and “a brief summary of any policy, factual, or legal issues the applicant has with the proposed regulations.”

Any member of the community can participate in this public hearing process. There are two ways to do so: by submitting comments in writing prior to the public hearing, or by speaking during the public comment period during the hearing –which will be limited by the Commission. Groups are asked to appoint one spokesperson.

If an organization has “party status” they are required to submit their comments, limited to 15 pages, prior to the hearing date. An alternate proposal may be submitted by any organization with “party status.” An alternate proposal must contain text of a proposed rule and a proposed statement of basis and purpose.

There will be a prehearing conference on November 29, in Denver. Anybody with “party status” who fails to appear at this conference will lose their status.  At this prehearing conference the mechanics of the hearing will be decided: allocation of hearing time, identification of contested matters, identification of witnesses and exhibits.

The actual hearing will be held on December 5. If an organization has “party status” their comments and exhibits will be subject to cross examination. Any cross examination time will reduce the time allotted to the organization to make their presentation.

The COGCC has posted a list of groups with “party status” at their website. They are primarily members of the oil and gas industry: Anadarko Petroleum, Nobel Energy, Inc., Bill Barrett Corporation, Petroleum Development Corporation, Exxon Mobile XTO Energy, Black Hills Exploration, Williams Production RMT Company, Colorado Oil and Gas Association, Colorado Petroleum Association. There are also environmental groups and local governments that have been granted “party status”, including Western Colorado Congress. Notably absent is Mesa County, although Weld County and Gunnison County applied for status.

I’m planning to be in Denver on November 29 and December 5.

Homework

An Inside Look at Fracking a Well

Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission

Yesterday was Father’s Day, but I didn’t celebrate and just couldn’t motivate myself to write a column about it. Last Father’s Day my father was suffering after a stroke in a nursing home. This Father’s Day his ashes are in a grave in metro Denver. I know there are other fathers, and they should be celebrated if they are good fathers, but I just couldn’t do it.

3,000 Protest Against Fracking

A story that caught my eye was one about Canadians protesting fracking. 3,000 of them marched through the streets of downtown Montreal chanting anti-drilling slogans. Quebec has ordered a study of fracking, but the protestors said it wasn’t enough—there should be a moratorium on drilling until the study is complete. They were also concerned that of the 11 member panel appointed to study the issue, eight had ties to the industry. Even Canadians have regulatory capture!

Politico: America is Going to Hell

Politico reported on a survey conducted by Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate in partnership with KRC Research. Considering that I blogged about my theory that anonymity fosters rudeness the other day, it was interesting to read that I’m not the only one concerned about the way that we talk to and treat each other.

Try a little kindness today.

Miami Herald Reports that Weiner's Regisnation is Bad for the Environment

Go to the link. Weiner was a strong voice for the environment in Congress. Yes, Kevin, hell is freezing over. I even agreed with something said by American Partiot and Voter2010 about our County Commissioners at the Sentinel’s website.

Colorado has been talking about fracking and fracking fluids for a long time. How these chemicals are treated was part of the infamous “Ritter Regulations.” We’ve seen water wells polluted in our county, and people have had to deal with horribly debilitating illnesses as a result of drinking polluted water.

Recently there has been a seismic shift in the thinking about fracking fluids, caused by the huge increase in activity in the Marcellus Shale gas deposits in the watershed of New York City. It is no longer a rural Colorado problem, it is a national problem.

There are regional differences in how the water produced in drilling operations is disposed. In Colorado, we have pits, where pit liners have their own controversy, and water evaporates, leaving solids that are mysteriously made to disappear. But in Pennsylvania and other states in the vicinity of Marcellus Shale the industry is disposing of this water by taking it to water treatment facilities. The sheer volume of polluted water plus the chemical make-up of that water is overwhelming the local water treatment plants. To get an idea of the problem, imagine that all the water trucks currently bound for evaporative pits in Utah were suddenly lined up at the Clifton water treatment facility. I think there might be a flood in the valley!

The water in Pennsylvania is reported to have dangerous levels of benzene (causes cancer), plus radioactive chemicals strontium and barium. If the water is radioactive in Pennsylvania, there is a reasonable chance that it is radioactive in Colorado where we live among naturally occurring uranium deposits.

The battle in congress doesn’t seem to be about protecting our limited supply of clean water, but rather about differing ideologies. The Republicans want to defund the EPA because they believe that states can do a better job of oversight than can the federal government. The may have a point in states like Wyoming, where the chemical mix in fracking fluids must be disclosed. In Colorado the mix is only disclosed to emergency responders, when there is a spill or other event where water is threatened. The Democrats think protecting clean water for every American is more important than kissing the collective butt of oil and gas executives. So, the House, which is controlled by Republicans, talks about doing away with the EPA, while the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, talks about increasing EPA regulation on fracking fluids. Neither of them is talking about industry best practices, like requiring green fracking fluids and cementing wells from top to bottom.

To me there is a simple message here. Democrats need to take back the House. Tipton, you are toast. You ran as a centrist, but have proven yourself to be a flaming right wing nut that lies to constituents about everything from the importance of the EPA to your support for Medicare.

Homework

Fracking Hearing in the Senate

Sentinel Opinion Piece about Tipton (Subscription Required)

Fracking hasn’t been discussed here for quite a while, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t in the news. Given a nuclear meltdown in Japan, and a government meltdown in Washington, D.C. little makes the front page or top story on a news channel other than those two stories.

But there is a big fracking story in the news today. Pennsylvania ordered Catalyst Energy, Inc. to stop drilling and fracking wells on leases that they own. In the process of drilling 22 wells, Catalyst allegedly polluted the water wells of two nearby homes. The company was ordered to stop all activity, investigate which gas wells contributed to the pollution of the two homes, and provide water to the homes, including a permanent clean water supply by July 1.

Why is this big news and why is it relevant to people interested in happenings in Western Colorado? The agency in Colorado that has responsibility for making sure that there is a balance between the needs of the oil and gas industry and the needs of other users of land around oil and gas leases and development activity is under attack. Without an effective regulator, we could continue to see water wells polluted. It has already happened to many Western Slope families, who continue to suffer the health consequences of drinking and bathing in polluted water.

Ray Scott introduced House Bill 11-1223, and it is now making its way through the legislature. Originally he wanted to take the commission back to the structure it had before the legislature changed it last year. Before the changes, the commission was in the throes of regulatory capture, and lost sight of its responsibility to anyone other than the oil and gas industry. Last year the legislature added environmentalists and farmers to the mix of people on the commission. Balance on the commission is a good thing—both sides get to talk about issues before a regulation is proposed.

This year Scott, who is a small player in the oil and gas industry, is working to stack the deck again. Only this time the big boys in the industry have indicated that they have a good working relationship with the existing commission, and are not filling the halls of congress with high paid lobbyists. This bill is all about Scott and his Western Slope buddies—who are small players in the big picture of oil and gas. They don’t like regulations of any kind because it cuts into their profits. They don’t see any need to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and grow food in clean dirt with clean water irrigation.

If you haven’t already called someone about this evil attempt to roll back protections on our health and food security, please do it today.

Homework

Big Fracking Story in Bloomberg

Catalyst Energy Inc

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know Re HB 11-1223 via Google Search

Every time that oil shale production comes up in Colorado, the question is asked if there is enough water in Colorado to go around. The industry says, no problem, we have all the water we need or will ever need. The environmentalists warn that the industry is quietly buying up water rights and the net effect will be that there won’t be enough water to support recreation, agriculture, suburban lawns, and the oil and gas industry if the approved usage changes. And that’s before they start warning about fracking fluids polluting the water supply.

Now all these warnings are playing themselves out in real time in North Dakota. The Baakan Formation has been in the middle of a boom, to the extent that North Dakota is about the only state in the nation not facing huge budget problems this year. All that may be about to change.

The industry has requested permission to tap the water of the Missouri River in order to get about 2,000 natural gas wells into production this year.  They need the water because they can’t frack wells without lots and lots of water. Today the industry has access to 7-million gallons of fresh water daily.  The industry wants 28-million gallons a day and they want to tap into a lake on the Missouri River to get it.

The Army Corps of Engineers wants the industry to pay for using that water. This is a new trick for the Corps—and the idea of charging for the water is in the middle of a public review process.

The irony of the whole situation is that the industry needs water, wants fresh water, and yet produced 180 million barrels of water last year, some of it contaminated with fracking fluids, some of it salty from the ancient days of being sea water. While the industry says they could desalinate and/or purify the produced water, they say it would cost too much to do so. So, instead, they are creating one new well each week for the express purpose of injecting waste water back into the earth. What they are injecting is water that can’t be used for any purpose because it is so polluted. It starts out fresh, gets polluted and then gets injected into the earth. Am I the only person on this planet that thinks this is insanity?

Homework

Story About Water in ND