Recently in The Paper, Judy Jordan, former oil & gas liaison for Garfield County, asked the BOCC for the release of the Mamm Creek Groundwater Study. Jordan designed and conducted the study.
A few days later, Dr. Roxana Witter publicly asked the BOCC to take action on the Battlement Mesa/HIA study recommendations. Dr. Witter authored that study.
The silence from the BOCC is deafening.
For years, industry and government claimed that the environmental impacts were “minimal” and the public health impacts were “anecdotal”. They insisted there were no studies to prove fracking contaminates groundwater. They said any adverse health effects were “isolated incidents”. No research had been done to compile those isolated reports of adverse health effects into a public health impacts study. I remember when industry reps insisted our air pollution was from diesel trucks idling in the Walmart parking lot. After lo these many years, we finally have the localized studies we need to show the adverse impacts on public health and the environment – and the BOCC is sitting on them.
But the genie is already out of the bottle. Study after study reveals the dangers to public health and the environment from not only fracking, but almost all aspects of natural gas drilling operations. As the studies stack up, the BOCC’s silence looks like a cover up in favor of the gas & oil industry.
The studies –
Judy Jordan pointed out the East Mamm Creek Project Drilling and Cementing Study of June 20, 2011, showing gas wells have leaked into the aquifer. (This is a 90-page study and loads very slowly, so be patient.)
The EPA Pavillion Wyoming Study found fracking chemicals in drinking water wells.
The Texas Oil & Gas Accountability Project investigated case studies of communities and families in the Barnett Shale region titled: Natural Gas Flowback – How the Texas Natural Gas Boom Affects Health and Safety. Their investigation determined that the state of Texas is currently not doing enough to adequately protect its citizens and its resources.
Human Health Impacts Associated with Chemicals and Pathways of Exposure from the Development of Shale Gas Plays was presented by Dr. Wilma Subra at the conference on Epidemiologic & Public Considerations of Shale Gas Production, presented by Physicians Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy and the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children’s Health & the Environment, on January 9, 2012, at the Waterview Conference Center in Arlington, VA.
Who is Dr. Wilma Subra?
Subra is an environmental scientist from Louisiana who has taken industry to task. CNN dubbed her “another Erin Brockovich” and The Guardian called her BP’s “worst nightmare”.
Read an interview with Dr. Wilma Subra.
From the “Isn’t it Ironic” file –
No energy industry backing for the word “fracking”
I have a better title: PSYOPs boomerangs and bites oil & gas industry in the ass
They invented the word and now they say environmentalists co-opted it to make it “look offensive”. Oh hahahahaha. It is offensive.
Get Frank Luntz on the phone! The oil & gas industry needs a new talking point.
January 27, 2012
Garfield County, gas well drilling