From the Styx by Peggy Tibbetts

Happy Halloween!

It was tempting to go with “stay the course” this month. But that’s really the death of a talking point. And the Stephanie Miller Show and Countdown with Keith Olbermann offered up such magnificent eulogies last week that nothing more needs to be said – except AMEN.

However I will say that “stay the course” does get the October Newspeak Honorable Mention.

So without further delay the October Newspeak Award goes to the AARP for their Don’t Vote campaign.

I mean how right wing is that? Okay, sure, what they MEAN is don’t vote unless you know where the candidates stand on the issues. Meanwhile the candidates are out there flinging personal attacks, lawsuits and hatespeak at each other. What does the AARP mean by “issues”? Issues like who has more of potty mouth, or writes dirtier books, or breaks more campaign laws – or just plain everyday laws?

As I’ve mentioned once or twice before –

VOTING IS A RIGHT, NOT A PRIVILEGE.

So that means even if you’re rich, poor, ignorant, stupid, retarded, mentally ill, psychotic, blind, deaf, handicapped, old, drunk, stoned – WHATEVER – you get to vote as long as you are 18 years old and a citizen of the US. At least that’s how it worked when I was an election judge. I never asked a single voter if he or she was “informed” before I handed a ballot to him or her. Because I really didn’t care. It was my job to make sure that everyone in the polling place voted.

Judging from the Don’t Vote campaign, obviously mine is not a popular opinion these days. You know, that everyone has the right to vote even if they’re ignorant on the issues and the candidates. But that’s how I feel. And I’m also right.

Voting is not rocket science. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to walk into a voting booth and cast a ballot. It’s easy. Who hasn’t voted on a ballot issue or race without a single clue as to who stood where on what? When I lived in Minnesota I rarely read ballot initiatives ahead of time because the legislature had passed a law saying that ballot initiatives had to be worded in clear, concise language – read “no double negatives” – so as not to mislead the electorate. So the ballot initiatives were easy readers and the answers were clear and simple.

Living in Colorado the past 10 years, I’ve had to study the amendments, referendums, etc, ahead of time because each one is worded like a crossword puzzle and goes on for days. It’s ridiculous. So anyway, believe me, my first couple elections when I faced those double negative word fests on the ballot I made some keenly uneducated guesses. And I didn’t know the clerk of court from the treasurer. I just voted against whoever was in office.

Hey, even this time when I voted by mail, with the internets in front of me AND my Colorado bluebook I STILL got one of the amendments wrong! I forgot which one. I mean I’m about as issue informed as a voter gets and they still fooled me.

It’s too bad the AARP didn’t use its money and clout to back a campaign that says:

Don’t’ Be Intimidated!
VOTE!

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Things can get pretty messy.

Lots of cop action in Silt the past couple days. A State Trooper airplane, National Guard helicopter, SWAT teams, tracking dogs, roadblocks, and every cop in the state, including FBI agents swarmed on Silt. It has taken a few days to sort out everything.

Late Tuesday night (10/24), Colorado State Trooper Brian Koch was shot three times during a routine traffic stop on County Rd 346 in Silt. The shooter escaped. Trooper Koch’s bulletproof vest saved his life, but his left arm was shattered.

Two local residents happened upon the scene and stopped to help.

Rescuers ignored fear, helped trooper
By Dennis Webb

For Armando Bencomo and Cruz Figueroa Alvarez, stopping to aid a wounded Colorado State Patrol trooper Tuesday night was the right thing to do.

It also was the frightening thing to do.

When the two happened by the scene on the Rifle-Silt Road where trooper Brian Koch had been wounded by a bullet, they realized the shooter still might be nearby.

“When he said ‘I’ve been shot,’ the first thing we did is look around and look for somebody,” Bencomo said. “But it was completely dark, there was no way we could see somebody.

“We thought for a few seconds what we should do. We thought we can help, maybe we can help, but it was risky.”

“I think we were lucky to be there at the right moment to help a little,” Bencomo said.

Koch was lucky, too. Bencomo said he and Figueroa Alvarez applied a tourniquet to Koch’s wounded left arm, first using Figueroa Alvarez’s shoelace, and then Bencomo’s belt. Koch had been bleeding heavily when they arrived, but the tourniquet soon stanched the flow, Bencomo said.

“I can’t say we saved his life but we tried to do the right thing,” he said.

Capt. Rich Duran of the CSP’s Glenwood post, where Koch works, applauds what the two men did in coming to his fallen officer’s aid, considering the potential danger to them.

“I think it’s a very heroic action,” he said. 

During the night law enforcement descended on Silt. They established road blocks and conducted a reverse 911 call to rural residents south of town to alert them to the manhunt. Wednesday morning schools from New Castle to Parachute were placed on non-emergency lockdown. On Wednesday evening the suspect shot himself at the roadblock in Silt.

Man who shot trooper takes own life at roadblock
By Mike McKibbin

SILT — A man authorities suspected in the gunshot wounding of a Colorado State Patrol trooper Tuesday night took his own life Wednesday night, District Attorney Martin Beeson said.

Steven Joseph Appl, 33, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a roadblock at Garfield County Roads 346 and 341, Beeson said.

“While we don’t have official confirmation from the coroner yet, we took the photo of the suspect we distributed and matched it to the deceased,” he said. “We’re confident that’s who it was.”

Appl was suspected of shooting State Patrol Trooper Bruce Koch during an altercation at a traffic stop on County Road 346 Tuesday at approximately 11:20 p.m.

Beeson said Appl was in a vehicle driven by a female as it approached the roadblock “under the cover of darkness.”

“The officers at the roadblock heard a single shot and detained the female driver,” he said. “We’re sure the suspect is now deceased.”

Beeson said investigations are ongoing into Koch’s shooting, Appl’s death and the female driver’s role in his death. He would not identify the driver because of those investigations, he said.

So who was this guy? That’s what everybody wanted to know. The DA’s office and law enforcement offered up little in the way of information. So a local reporter did some digging on his own.

Meth use likely led to suspect’s actions in shooting of trooper
By Mike McKibbin

PARACHUTE — The man suspected of wounding a Colorado State Patrol trooper during an altercation Tuesday night in Garfield County and then taking his own life nearly 24 hours later was described by a former employer as “one of the best workers I’ve had, without a doubt,” until he got involved in methamphetamine.

Steven Joseph Appl, a 33-year-old Parachute-area resident, eluded an intense manhunt for him Wednesday after Colorado State Patrol Trooper Brian Koch was shot and wounded late Tuesday night in an altercation after a traffic stop on Garfield County Road 346, outside Rifle.

Appl allegedly shot himself while in the back seat of a pickup that had been stopped at a checkpoint south of Silt Wednesday night.

Joe Feeley owns Fire Trucks Northwest in Parachute, where Appl worked for 10 years.

“The last three years of his life wiped out the first 30,” Feeley said. “And it was all because of meth.”

The woman driving the pickup was arrested and talked to reporters after she was released on bail.

Driver charged, says she was ‘freaked out’
By Dennis Webb

A DeBeque woman who said she “freaked out” after discovering a suspected cop shooter hiding out in a Silt-area bedroom has been arrested after allegedly trying to aid in his escape.

Cori Elizabeth Graham, 27, was arrested shortly after 8 p.m. Wednesday and was freed from Garfield County Jail Thursday after posting bonds totaling $8,250. She is charged with felony counts of being an accessory to a crime and tampering with evidence, and a misdemeanor count of obstructing a peace officer.

Police say Graham had been driving a red pickup truck in which Steven Appl shot himself after it was stopped at a checkpoint Wednesday night. Appl had been the subject of a manhunt after being named as the suspect in the shooting Tuesday night of Colorado State Patrol trooper Brian Koch.

Graham voluntarily spoke of her role in the incident at the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office after being arrested Wednesday night, according to an arrest affidavit by sheriff’s deputy Robert Glassmire.

She said she had been contacted by investigation task force members about 3 p.m. Wednesday and asked about Appl’s whereabouts. She said she knew Appl was in trouble for allegedly shooting an officer, but didn’t know where he was.

Graham said she then contacted a longtime friend, identified in the affidavit as Nikki Brownel, at a DeBeque-area bar. Graham told Glassmire that Brownel asked for a ride home, and the two arrived at a residence on County Road 331 in the Silt area.

The road also is known as Dry Hollow Road. Police say Appl had abandoned a vehicle with Arizona license plates about three miles up the road after his encounter with Koch.

Graham said Brownel led her to a bedroom, where Appl was sitting on a bed.

“Cori advised that she started to ‘freak out.’ Cori then told me that Nikki told her that the cops would be coming any minute wanting to search the house,” Glassmire wrote.

When stuff like this happens it sets everyone on edge, especially law enforcement. To me it says that while the President and his cronies blather on about Islamo-fascists and terrorism, those of us on the ground in the reality-based community deal with the real dangers to society – nut cases who snap.

Like Dwayne Morrison who held 6 teen girls hostage at Platte Canyon High School (Bailey, CO) in September, before killing one of the girls and dying in a shootout with police.

Or Charles Carl Roberts IV who took over an Amish schoolhouse in Quarryvilled, PA, and murdered 5 little girls.

And for us this week, it’s Steven Appl. 

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Sometimes it’s hard to put into words how I feel about the upcoming election. I don’t want to feel this way. I’m not a negative person. I prefer not to be a doomsayer. But we really are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. As we cry, “Election fraud!”, we know that if the Democrats don’t regain control of the House or Senate, in view of what national polls are saying, we can assume election fraud is to blame – again. But likewise if the Democrats DO regain control of the House or Senate, the Republicans are going to blame election fraud.

Mark Crispin Miller describes our perfect storm in an interview with Andy Ostroy. Be sure to click through and read the whole article.

Another Stolen Election Headed Our Way?
By Andy Ostroy
The Ostroy Report

An interview with Mark Crispin Miller about what voters can do to prevent it.

Mark Crispin Miller is a very serious guy. We met recently over coffee at a quaint little cafe near New York University, where he teaches communications and media. Mark’s been sounding the alarm on election fraud for years, convinced that both Al Gore and John Kerry were robbed of the presidency in 2000 and 2004. And he’s afraid, very afraid, that the problem these days is worse, not better. Listening to him talk, watching his gestures, hearing his doomsday scenarios, it’s easy to get caught up in it. And it makes you angry to think he’s right. We vowed to riot in the streets should Democrats lose again in November. What I love about Mark is that you get the feeling he’d actually do it.

While I firmly believe that part of the Repugs’ strategy to win elections is to steal them, I don’t profess to be an expert on voting fraud. There’s plenty of very dedicated folks like Mark, Brad Friedman and Bobby Kennedy Jr. who’ve thankfully been carrying that torch, making the rest of us painfully aware that the problem exists and that if, unchecked, it can and will happen again. If you don’t believe that, all you need to do is monitor the blatantly corrupt actions of people like Kenneth Blackwell-Ohio’s Secretary of State, gubernatorial candidate and loyal Bushevik-to get a greater sense of the threat facing Democrats at the polls.

So what I asked Mark was not to simply rehash the infuriating tales of fraud from the Gore/Bush and Bush/Kerry elections, but to clearly define for us what Americans can do to prevent a repeat in 2006 and 2008 …

… So, let’s make this simple for voters:

1-Vote, vote, vote…and get everyone you know to vote as well

2-Write your congressmen and senators and demand uniformity and federal standards for the election process. Demand an end to electronic voting machines unless there’s a viable paper trail. Demand paper ballots instead. Ask that election day be declared a national holiday

3-Bombard the media with letters and calls that demand coverage of election fraud

4-Organize demonstrations

5-Go armed to the polls next month with 1-866-OUR-VOTE and call it immediately to report any fraudulent and/or suspicious activity

In parting, the most chilling thing Mark told me was his prediction of what the Republicans will do should Democrats win on Nov 7th, which he also expounded in American Spectator: “If the GOP should lose the House or Senate, its troops will mount a noisy propaganda drive accusing their opponents of election fraud. This is no mere speculation, according to a well-placed party operative who lately told talk radio host Thom Hartmann, off the record, that the game will be to shriek indignantly that those dark-hearted Democrats have fixed the race. We will hear endlessly of Democratic “voter fraud” through phantom ballots, rigged machines, intimidation tactics, and all the other tricks whereby the Bush regime has come to power. The regime will, in short, deploy the ultimate Swift Boat maneuver to turn around as many races as they need so as to nullify the will of the electorate.”

To quote Alanis Morissette, “Isn’t it ironic, don’t ya think?”

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Holy smokes! I voted by mail (absentee ballot) and it took over an hour! And I’m not even ignorant – most of the time.

If you live in Colorado, I STRONGLY recommend voting by mail or voting early. We have early voting and the polls are now open at designated early voting stations all over the state. Go to your county’s website, find the elections division – usually under Clerk of Court – and look up the early voting station in your area. You can still apply for an absentee ballot until October 31. If you prefer to vote in person, you might want to make up a dummy ballot ahead of time and take it with you. Seriously! Otherwise, pack a lunch. And tell someone where you’re going.

In Colorado this year we have 7 Amendments, 6 Referendums, plus 7 Judges. Add to that Garfield County’s 2 Judges, plus 4 Ballot Questions, and one more for the Town of Silt. Oh and don’t forget the CANDIDATES. I mean the ballot was HUGE. I definitely needed my blue voter handbook to get through it all, plus the internets.

The same advice goes for anyone living in the other states with a lot of Candidates, Amendments, Referendums, and Ballot Questions. Save yourself some time. Vote by mail, vote early (if you can), or make up a dummy ballot to take with you on Election Day. How do you make a dummy ballot. Again, go to your county’s website and look up the sample ballot. Although I noticed Garfield County has not posted sample ballots on their website. Local newspapers usually post sample ballots. And most states distribute voter handbooks. The information is out there, you just have to search for it. You can also google your county’s name and “sample ballot”.

Yes, I’ve been an Election Judge. Yes, you can use a dummy ballot to help you vote. Election Judges don’t care, so long as the lines keep moving.

Also, there were 13 – count em – 13 national election news stories posted at Daily Voting News yesterday. Add ABC and CBS to the list of MSM outlets covering voting machine issues. Voter disenfranchisement is still being swept under the rug.

Want to know what to expect on Election Day in your state? A comprehensive report on the state of election administration around the country finds cause for concern in a number of states. Download electionline’s report “Election Preview 2006: What’s Changed, What Hasn’t and Why”.

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Okay, mostly I’m a glass-half-empty person when it comes to the November 7 Election. After what happened in 2004 I was discouraged. And not just about Ohio. My own experience in the primary that year proved to me (and my family) that nationwide hundreds of thousands of voters were being disenfranchised by new rules and regulations, some of them piled on at the last minute. This year when I started my August voting series, I have to admit I was cautiously encouraged because I found lots more chatter on the internets about voting machines and voter disenfranchisement than was out there 2 years ago.

Now I’m starting to feel cautiously optimistic. Or let me put it this way: this time if the exit polls don’t match the election results, EVERYONE will know why – not just us crazy moonbat conspiracy monkeys. Which means I still think the 2006 Election will be tampered with – is being tampered with – and Democrats will not win majorities in either the House or Senate. But maybe this time people will finally wake up to election fraud. But when you look at what happened last summer when millions took to the streets in Mexico over election fraud – nothing – then probably nothing will change in the US either, especially if Republicans retain control.

Maybe there’s still hope for Election Day. I’m not sure. What’s different this year is the growing volume of noise about election fraud and election reform. More noise than ever before. It’s moved from the internets into more media outlets. Even CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Jack Cafferty are covering election fraud issues.

Check out these offerings:

Votes for Sale?
(click above for 6 minute preview on You Tube)
NOW on PBS – check your local listings
Friday, October 20
The weekly newsmagazine NOW will present a special hour-long episode into the fight to keep American elections free and fair across the country. Votes for Sale? will spotlight the Clean Elections movement that has taken hold in Maine and Arizona as well as talk about campaigns to win Clean Elections across the country.

Hacking Democracy
HBO Documentary
Starting Thursday, November 2
Electronic voting machines count 80% of the votes cast in America today. But are they reliable? Are they safe from tampering? From a current congressional hearing to persistent media reports that suggest misuse of data and even outright fraud, concerns over the integrity of electronic voting are growing by the day. And if the voting process is not secure, neither is America’s democracy.

Voice of the Voters! The Power and Responsibility of Democracy
Wednesday, October 25
8:00-9:00 PM EST
WMJC 1360AM – Listen live online
New weekly radio program about voting rights and democracy hosted by Mary Ann Gould, co-founder of Coalition for Voting Integrity (CVI)
Upcoming guests:
10/25 - Dr. Dan Lopresti from Lehigh University. Dr. Lopresti led the recent Lehigh poll of PA voters’ opinions about the need for voter-verified elections.
11/1 - Dr. Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins. Dr. Rubin is one of the top voting security experts and leading critic of electronic voting security in the country. He is the author of Brave New Ballot, which shows how easy it is to rig an election and describes the vulnerability of computerized systems to tampering, not only by insiders like poll workers but also by outsiders able to breach the system without detection.

Hey, there’s even a chain letter – if you’re into those kinds of things – and I’m not. Earnest citizen activist Kevin Larmee has composed the text for a chain letter you can copy and paste into a mass email to send to all your friends and family. He gets a participation ribbon at least.
 
Help Save American Democracy (before it’s too late)

The point is, people do GET what’s going on with election fraud. They GET that the machines can be pre-programmed and hacked. They GET that voter disenfranchisement is at an all time high. Whether voter awareness will change the outcome remains to be seen.

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What’s it really like living next to a gas well? Unless you have one in your back yard, it’s hard to imagine how it impacts people’s lives. This week a Letter to the Editor in The Paper from Mckenzie Richards in Silt described what her life is like:

The gas industry has ruined all that we came here for

 

Dear Editor,

 

I used to be able to count seven oil/gas derricks from my back deck - now they have erected one more. The pall of noxious chemical and diesel fumes hanging over our part of the county causes the gag reflex to work in hyperdrive.

 

One is concerned with sending the children out into the yard to play, for fear of impending benzene-induced leukemia and lung damage. There is fear of bathing in the water, and we can never ever drink our water anymore (good for the bottled water industry). Several homes and ranches have been abandoned and are for sale. People have given up or been forced to leave because of medical problems associated with the negative effect of the gas/oil industry. Those of us, who because of economic concerns are unable to leave, are slaves to the oil and gas industry, and are slowly dying from the respiratory effects of this industry. It is lucky for the industry that the deadly ramifications manifest themselves so slowly; they will be able to deny any responsibility no matter what the empirical evidence shows.

 

No one is able to sell their homes for anywhere close to the assessed valuation because no one with any good sense or sanity, between the noise, the smell, the contamination, the horrendous amount of huge truck traffic, the dust, the smoke from burning ponds, the venting of wells, would spend money to purchase these contaminated properties.

 

All of our reasons for living in the pristine quiet county disappeared in the wake of governmental policies, along with unbridled greed and avarice of the politicians.

 

For anyone, including politicians, who think the gas industry does not negatively impact their country, their county, their wilderness, the biota, the humans and the wildlife, come and sit on my back deck and admire the scenery, smell the fresh air and bring your respirator.

 

Mckenzie Richards
Silt

This week’s issue of High Country News featured Deb Thomas’ account of what happens when a gas pipeline blows.

When a gas pipeline blows, you get out fast
by Deb Thomas

My family and I live in Clark, Wyo., on the Montana-Wyoming border. I used to tell people that I lived on the edge of Yellowstone country. Nowadays, though, I admit that I live in an industrial zone — the kind of place where things can get dangerous and sometimes go very wrong.

 

Early in the evening of Aug. 11, a neighbor called to say that our area of some 35 households had been ordered to evacuate because of a “blowout” at the Crosby gas well just up the road. A drill rig had punctured a high-pressure chamber some 8,500 feet down the hole, and the well casing had failed under the strain. Short of an explosion or fire, a blowout is the most serious accident one of these wells can experience.

 

We later learned that the incident had occurred much earlier, at 2 p.m., when rig workers spotted drilling fluids and methane gas erupting up and down the county road, with some of the blowholes 150 feet away from the rig. We also learned that officials of Windsor of Wyoming LLC and its contract crews spent three hours trying to deal with the problem before calling in people from volunteer emergency services. Then they used up yet another hour trying to “evaluate” the situation. Meanwhile, none of us were told that anything was going on.

 

That afternoon, I’d had a scratchy throat, watery eyes and a runny nose. Unfortunately, that was nothing new; I assumed it was caused by the dust and diesel fumes that had become part of my life. But right after my neighbor called, I noticed that the air seemed thick enough to taste. We debated loading up our horses, but quickly decided to just get our dogs and people into the pickups and blast out of there — as fast as we could.

 

For the next three days, while we camped out with friends or in motels 40 miles away, 8 million cubic feet of methane and vaporized drilling fluids were released into the atmosphere as the company tried to “kill” the well.

 

My neighbors and my family were kept in the dark about what was happening at the well site. Nor could the company representatives, elected and appointed state officials, county disaster and emergency workers tell us what to expect in the aftermath of what was now called the Windsor blowout. They just kept repeating that a blowout of this magnitude was a “one in a million” occurrence.

 

What we found most infuriating is that for eight years — during which time Windsor was responsible for three toxic spills and fined for illegal dumping of drilling fluids — we had tried to get our small community to prepare for a disaster like this. Again and again, my neighbors and I asked how a 12-member volunteer first-response team could handle industrial accidents, how our neighborhood could be evacuated safely on a narrow, one-way gravel road, and how medical aid could get to us from 40 miles away.

 

We reached out to Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal and his appointees at the Department of Environmental Quality, the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and the State Lands Board. We talked to elected officials, from the conservation district to state legislators to Wyoming’s small congressional delegation. We worked with local first responders, and we attempted to open a dialogue with industry representatives.

 

Again and again, we were brushed off and insulted — called obstructionists and alarmists, unpatriotic and unrealistic, dismissed as annoying nuts. Well, call us crazy, but as the Windsor blowout demonstrated, accidents do happen — serious, dangerous accidents. We need to be prepared. We need to take a hard look at oil and gas operations throughout Wyoming and throughout the West, scrutinizing environmental and safety records of operators, keeping inventories of toxic chemicals, and demanding realistic evacuation plans.

 

We were lucky no one was hurt here in Clark, Wyo., but what have we learned? The week after the blowout, Windsor got an Oil and Gas Commission permit to conduct seismic exploration — using shallow blast charges to chart underground gas pockets — on the same property where the accident occurred. A week after that, the company got the go-ahead to resume drilling on the site of the blowout. Most of us are back in our homes now, but we don’t feel safe or comfortable. Some of us are suffering rashes, respiratory ailments, headaches, insomnia and other symptoms of stress. And many of us are ready to run.

 

Deb Thomas lives in Clark, Wyoming, and works as an organizer for the Powder River Basin Resource Council.

Thomas’ story chills me to the bone on this soggy afternoon. They’re putting in gas pipelines everywhere in Garfield County. Is this what we have to look forward to?

Things have gotten so bad we are now being asked to petition the Colorado Dept of Public Health & Environment to PLEASE put in place clean air safeguards on the oil and gas industry. Silly me. I thought that was their JOB!

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Dorothy Fadiman’s films have received an Emmy, the Gold Medal from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and an Academy Award nomination. Her new documentary is about the 2004 election, Stealing America: Vote by Vote.

Here’s the promo blurb:

Stealing America: Vote by Vote documents significant irregularities in the Presidential election of 2004. While raising crucial questions, interviewees underscore the fact that election fraud and election reform are not partisan issues. We follow the stories of people who face a spectrum of challenges: from grassroots organizing to groundbreaking legislation. The overriding question that the film presents is: How can we create an election system in which voters have confidence, and in which they trust that their votes will be counted fairly?

The film weaves together dramatic behind-the-scenes experiences of poll workers, computer security experts, journalists, politicians, activists and voters of all ages. We hear from those who feel their communities were targeted for intimidation during the election, side by side with  descriptions of irregular machine tallies, in which the number of votes tallied don’t equal the number of votes cast.

Questions the film raises include: what caused statistically significant discrepancies between exit polls and final official vote tallies? why was the mainstream media virtually silent about a spectrum of anomalies?  what caused technical glitches such as votes switching from one candidate to another on touch screen voting machines in at least thirteen states? We hear from students who waited more than 12 hours to vote in OHIO, as well as Native American and Hispanic voters in New Mexico who registered to vote for the first time, only to learn that their votes were not counted.

The Presidential election of 2004 ignited both personal, as well as political passions for millions of people. For many, their involvement did not end when the election was over.

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While I’ve been on my 2-month tangent about election fraud, some of my readers are probably wondering what’s been happening on the gas well front.

Glad you asked.

There was a little accident on Saturday at a gas well between Silt and Rifle as reported in The Paper.

Gas well accident releases gas, water
By Jeremy Heiman

Failure of a valve at a gas well near Rifle allowed the release of an unknown quantity of natural gas and water Friday night and Saturday.

The incident, which did not result in any injuries, happened at the Snyder A-1 well, located at the LaFarge gravel pit between Silt and Rifle on the north side of Interstate 70, at about 7:48 p.m. Friday, according to Antero Resources, the owner of the well. The leak was brought under control at 2 p.m. Saturday.

What the article fails to mention is that the well is a couple hundred yards from the banks of the Colorado River.

Terry Dobkins, vice president of production for Antero’s Piceance Corp., said the break released a quantity of water that had been used in fracturing the rock deep underground. In the fracturing process, water and various chemicals are injected under high pressure into the well, to release gas from surrounding layers of rock. This water remained under pressure underground, and flowed back up the well when the valve broke.

So it wasn’t just “water”. It was water with fracking chemicals.

The well was drilled about one month ago and crews had been preparing it for routine production of gas when the incident occurred. He said the well is in a commercial area with several gravel pits, and he estimated it is at least one-half mile from the nearest residence.

Dobkins said the water escaping from the well was controlled by earthen berms around the well pad.

“It’s part of the spill containment measures that we always take,” he said. The water was then allowed to flow from the bermed area into a pond owned by the surface owner of the property, Jim Snyder.

Earthen berms. Yeah. Earthen berms and a pond in gravel pit. Underneath the berms and the pond is river rock.

The incident was probably not the result of equipment failure, Dobkins said.

“Our guess is that it was human error, at this point,” he said.

He said it’s impossible to estimate the amount of natural gas that escaped, because the rate of flow is not known.

It’s not natural gas escaping that we’re worried about. It’s the fricking fracking chemicals seeping into the ground water and leaching into the Colorado River. 

“We really don’t have a way to measure it,” Dobkins said. He said the company has been in close contact with regulatory officials of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and Garfield County, and he doesn’t anticipate any repercussions, because it was a minor incident with few consequences.

“It was basically a nonevent,” Dobkins said.

Gas field service workers from Halliburton stopped the flow of gas and water by pumping a substance called “weighted fluid” into the well, and then installed a new valve.

Once again, The Paper is so biased toward the gas companies. Even the headline is misleading, making it sound like just gas and water were released, when in fact the “water” is a chemical soup.

IN OTHER NEWS, the supervisor of the White River National Forest told the BLM that oil shale development will pollute the air.

White River to BLM: Oil shale will pollute air
By Bobby Magill

Maribeth Gustafson thinks Piceance Basin oil shale research projects will hurt air quality where North America’s largest elk herd roams — the Flat Tops Wilderness.

She also thinks it was inappropriate for the Bureau of Land Management to say the projects will have no significant environmental impact.

Such was the thrust of a letter Gustafson, supervisor of the White River National Forest, sent to the BLM on Sept. 15. She said the agency’s environmental analysis for Shell’s oil shale research and development proposals included inadequate information about how the project would affect air quality in the Flat Tops.

It wasn’t the only letter. She sent another missive to the BLM in August, making similar complaints about its analysis of E.G.L. Resources’ oil shale proposal.

Shell, E.G.L. and Chevron propose to conduct research projects on in-situ oil shale extraction processes on five 160-acre parcels in the Piceance Basin in Rio Blanco County.

The BLM said, in its environmental analyses of those projects, they would have no significant environmental impact.

To preserve visibility and air quality, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency protects the Flat Tops Wilderness as a Class I area, where stringent air quality standards apply.

The BLM, Gustafson wrote, says Shell and E.G. L.’s oil shale projects could reduce visibility in the Flat Tops up to 20 days each year.

“We consider this a significant impact to this Class I area,” she wrote.

The BLM, she said, dismisses the importance of the reduced visibility in the Flat Tops because it would occur either in the winter months or during a storm.

“We ask that these statements be removed from the analysis,” Gustafson wrote.

The article goes on to say, yup experts agree, oil shale will pollute the air but it won’t really affect anyone.

Which begs the question: If oil shale development pollutes the wilderness air and no one breathes it except hundreds of thousands of critters, is the air really polluted?

What the hell, they’re just gonna get shot and eaten anyway. What do they need clean air for?

And I guess for all of us outdoor-sy types who like to go play in the wilderness, they must figure polluted wilderness air is still healthier than breathing the smog down in the cities – which will become even UN-healthier as the polluted wilderness air makes it way into the atmosphere and becomes acid rain.

If they’re not the least bit worried about the chemical soup leaching into the Colorado River and into all the water supplies from here to California – and they are not – they’re not going to care much about wilderness air quality.

And they don’t!

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Elizabeth Hanes and I had entirely too much fun this morning.

She got me into a whole bunch of trouble on her blog, Savannah Says. Savannah is Beth’s drunken slut of an alter ego. She writes a hi-larious advice column at Savannah Says website – and sometimes blogs.

Okay, so awhile back I wrote a thoroughly tongue-in-cheek letter to the comment section on Savannah’s blog and signed it Simmering in Silt. Playing the part of a snooty Aspen transplant celebrity socialite I whined about changing the name of Silt to Pleasantville. It was a joke in reference to the big flap last spring about changing the name of Silt. (Silt: It’s Better Than Dirt 4/26; Silt Speaks 5/9)

Believe it or not – and I STILL can’t – this week a one Karen Donelson from Silt (yup, she’s in the phone book) responded to my comment. Only she thought I was TOTALLY SERIOUS. And she set out to rip me a new one.

“YOU can leave or be stuck in the MUD like the rest of The LOCAL SAVAGES as you call them,” she screamed.

Whoa! Nelly!

Oh, I know it’s cruel to poke fun at my neighbor – especially since I have no clue who she is. But SHE STEPPED IN IT, for crap’s sake! How did she think for a minute that Savannah’s blog is anything but satire, much less my letter? I wrote that my husband Sven was a retired professional ski instructor and I was a celebrity socialite.

What the hell is a celebrity socialite?

I mean, it says right there at the top of the page: Advice No One Should Actually Take. Commentary More Difficult To Stomach Than An Aqua Velva Martini.

But KD swallowed the whole martini. Gulp.

Of course I came to the immediate conclusion that Beth and I are most certainly The World’s Best Satirists and our talents are sorely wasted on the blogosphere. Har-rumph-ft!

So hurry! Run along now – before it’s too late – read Savannah’s blog.

The Compleat Boob contains KD’s response to my letter. And the next entry, A Substrate Particle By Any Other Name … – oh dear! – contains my letter as Simmering.

With the last paragraph in her response to Simmering, Savannah added a whole nother bizarre di-mension to it – pretersensual paramour that she is.

Savannah wrote: “Alternatively, you could attempt to incorporate your own acreage, apart from the city.”

W-hell, as it just so happenstances, SINCE last spring Tod and I have heard a few people say they are “from Peach Valley.” Peach Valley is what they call the countryside below the Hogback between Silt and New Castle. The main road running through it is Peach Valley Road. Last year the school district built a shiny new high school along busy Hwy 6, less than a mile from Silt, parallel to Peach Valley Road. Everyone in Silt was mad because there was land right here in town for them to build on. But they said no-no that was way too expensive and building outside Silt city limits would be much, much cheaper. So when they wanted Silt utilities, the town board made sure it cost them big time. That there’s yer small town politics. Fair is fair. Instead of naming it Silt High School – which is what it is – they named it Coal Ridge High School, Home of the Titans. There is no paved walking trail along busy Hwy 6. Every single kid who goes to that school has to be bussed. This year the school district can’t find enough bus drivers. And gas here is still $2.52/gal (as of today). So it’s working out quite well for the district.

Anyway, back to Peach Valley-itis. Next thing you know The Paper starts using the dateline PEACH VALLEY in articles about the high school and in an article about bus service in Silt. What the hell?

PEACH VALLEY IS NOT A TOWN, IT’S A ROAD! 

Oh that damn Simmering and Sven and their ilk from UP VALLEY. They just trot in here right over the heads of the LOCAL SAVAGES and make up their own cute little town with its PEACHY little name.

P-TUI!

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Guerilla News Network’s Ian Iaba has a new film out titled, American Blackout. Click on the link to view the trailer, find out where it’s playing, or buy the DVD.

Here’s the promo blurb:

Whatever you think you know about our election systems or Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, this film will make you question further why the news media fails to accurately inform the public. Directed by GNN’s Ian Inaba, creator of Eminem’s ‘Mosh’” music video, American Blackout critically examines the contemporary tactics used to control our democratic process and silence voices of political dissent.

Many have heard of the alleged voting irregularities that occurred during the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. Until now, these incidents have gone under- reported and are commonly written-off as insignificant rumors or unintentional mishaps resulting from an overburdened election system.

American Blackout chronicles the recurring patterns of voter disenfranchisement from Florida 2000 to Ohio 2004 while following the story of Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Mckinney not only took an active role investigating these election debacles, but has found herself in the middle of her own after publicly questioning the Bush Administration about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Featuring: Congressional members John Conyers, John Lewis, Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, Bernie Sanders and jounalists Greg Palast and Bob Fitrakis.

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