BREAKING: Quebec BAPE Shale Gas Study Verdict Is In: Drill Baby Drill, But No Fracking For Now

March 8 2011
After keeping Québec’s much anticipated Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement (BAPE)released the BAPE’s findings to the public. Regrettably, shale gas in the province is receiving a green light or in French “un feu vert” (a green fire translated literally). Ironically, this is exactly what the BAPE’s recommendation will lead to as shale gas expansion means that many of the province’s environmental goals will go up in smoke. For now, the controversial drilling method of hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. fracking) will be halted until a strategic  environmental impact assessment can be conducted.

All in all, the BAPE’s recommendation to proceed is a major blow to environmental and health advocates calling on the Québec Liberal government to heed the many public safety and environmental risks which surround shale gas drilling and fracking....continued.... shale gas development study under wraps for more than a week, Pierre Arcand, Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks just

Collective Bargaining as a Constitutional Right?--Op Ed

By Thomas Linzey And Mari Margil
March 7, 2011
In the ongoing face-off between Gov. Scott Walker and public unions in Wisconsin over collective bargaining, one point seems to have been missed. It has to do with what is and is not a right under our system of law.

Put simply, collective bargaining isn't a right in Wisconsin. Rather, it's a privilege that's been statutorily granted by the state Legislature, which the Legislature may, as it is now considering, take away. Contrast that with constitutional rights, which no legislature can nullify.

It's discouraging, but most of the progress that's been made over the past 50 years by labor, as well as by environmental groups, hasn't been about expanding rights of workers or the environment but has instead focused on convincing legislators to regulate working conditions and terms and to regulate how quickly the natural environment will be developed.

Regulating working conditions doesn't change who's really in control of the workplace. Regulations operate within our current system of law in which private employers can legally strip constitutional rights from workers, replace striking workers and force workers to attend non-work related "captive audience" meetings where failure to attend can result in firing.

While the system affords constitutional rights to those who own the workplace, it relegates workers to a lesser status, grudgingly allowing some regulation of working conditions. That strikingly differential treatment is reflected in how our system of law treats corporations and unions.

Creating a corporation requires only completing a form and paying a fee. Unionizing a workplace, on the other hand, requires jumping through a series of byzantine hoops while the employer retains the power to threaten employees and close the workplace....continued.....

Mountain Lake Park, Maryland, Adopts Community Rights Ordinance That Bans Drilling for Natural Gas

EXCERPT:
“The people have rights. Corporations can’t be licensed to take them away” – Mayor Leo Martin

COMMENT:
Another courageous council and mayor to adopt a prohibitive community rights ordinance that protects the citizens rights to clean water, air, land.......
March 3rd 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 Mountain Lake Park in Garrett County, Maryland, has joined Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in adopting a Community Bill of Rights that also “removes legal powers from gas extraction corporations within the Town.”

Ordinance No. 2011-01 was introduced to Council by Mayor Leo Martin for a First Reading of the bill, titled Mountain Lake Park’s Community Protection from Natural Gas Extraction Ordinance, on January 6th of this year, and a public hearing on the measure was held February 3rd.

At the heart of the Ordinance is this statement of law: “It shall be unlawful for any corporation to engage in the extraction of natural gas within the Town of Mountain Lake Park, with the exception of gas wells installed and operating at the time of enactment of this Ordinance.”

The bill also recognizes the right of the people to “a form of governance where they live which recognizes that all power is inherent in the people, that all free governments are founded on the people’s authority and consent, and that corporate entities and their directors and managers shall not enjoy special privileges or powers under the law which make community majorities subordinate to them.”

Following adoption of the ordinance, Mayor Martin commented: "Our town government is responsible for the health, safety, and rights our citizens. When the county, state, and federal governments fail in their duties it is our duty to take action.”

Also included in the ordinance is a local Bill of Rights that asserts legal protections for the right to water; the rights of natural communities and eco-systems; the right to local self-government, and the right of the people to enforce and protect these rights by banning corporate activities that would violate them, through the police powers of their municipal government.

The bill was modeled after the Ordinance adopted on November 16th of last year by the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and drafted by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. “If Pittsburgh can do it, we can do it,” said the Mayor, as he introduced the Ordinance in January, and he indicated that other Maryland municipalities should take a similar stand.

The gas extraction technique known as “fracking” has been cited as a threat to surface and ground water throughout the region, and has been blamed for fatal explosions, the contamination of drinking water, local streams, the air and soil. Collateral damage includes lost property value, ingestion of toxins by livestock, drying up of mortgage loans for prospective home buyers, and threatened loss of organic certification for farmers in the affected communities.

Ben Price, Projects Director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, applauded the Mayor for taking a stand on behalf of community rights. “The State says Maryland residents don’t have the right to decide whether or not they get fracked and that only the corporate-lobbied members of the legislature have the wisdom to decide how much harm should be legalized through state-issued permits. We don’t have a gas drilling problem. We have a democracy problem. Its symptoms are the State’s refusal to recognize the right to local, community self-government, and the issuance of permits to drilling corporations against the consent of the governed.”

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, headquartered in Chambersburg, has been working with people in Pennsylvania since 1995 to assert their fundamental rights to democratic local self-governance, and to enact laws which end destructive and rights-denying corporate action aided and abetted by state and federal governments.

www.celdf.org
CONTACT: Ben Price, (717) 254-3233
benprice@celdf.org
~

Pressure Limits Efforts to Police Drilling for Gas--The New York Times

EXCERPT:
"It was like the science didn’t matter,” Carla Greathouse, the author of the [EPA] study, said in a recent interview. “The industry was going to get what it wanted, and we were not supposed to stand in the way.”

E.P.A. officials told her, she said, that her findings were altered because of pressure from the Office of Legal Counsel of the White House under Ronald Reagan.

By IAN URBINA
March 3, 2011

When Congress considered whether to regulate more closely the handling of wastes from oil and gas drilling in the 1980s, it turned to the Environmental Protection Agency to research the matter. E.P.A. researchers concluded that some of the drillers’ waste was hazardous and should be tightly controlled.

But that is not what Congress heard. Some of the recommendations concerning oil and gas waste were eliminated in the final report handed to lawmakers in 1987.

“It was like the science didn’t matter,” Carla Greathouse, the author of the study, said in a recent interview. “The industry was going to get what it wanted, and we were not supposed to stand in the way.”

E.P.A. officials told her, she said, that her findings were altered because of pressure from the Office of Legal Counsel of the White House under Ronald Reagan. A spokesman for the E.P.A. declined to comment.....continued......

Group Meets to Investigate Pavillion's Bad Water--Casper Star Tribune

By JEREMY FUGLEBERG 

March 1, 2011

 PAVILLION, Wyo. — Government officials, the state rural drinking water association and a natural gas firm have banded together to seek the answer to an important question: What is contaminating the drinking water in wells around Pavillion?

 On Tuesday, the representatives hammered out what information they needed to gather and study the issue.

 The main goal of the working group must be to determine where the contamination comes from, said Tom Doll, superintendent of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

 “Otherwise we’ll be here two or three years from now, and I don’t think that’s anyone’s intent,” he said.

 The group is made up of representatives from the federal and Wyoming governments, area water quality groups and Encana, the firm operating wells in the natural gas field around Pavillion.

 The group was assembled after the Environmental Protection Agency determined last year that some residents in the area shouldn’t drink their well water because of contamination, although the EPA didn’t assign blame for the contamination and recommended further investigation.....continued....

NM State Legislature 2011: HB297: Blanket Plugging Financial Assurance Increase

March 2011 
HB297 Sponsored by:  Representative Tomas  Garcia, Ocate, Mora County, New Mexico
The House Energy and Natural Resources Committee substitute for HB 297 would dismantle existing safeguards on inactive oil and gas wells, directing the Oil Conservation Division to promulgate rules according to woefully inadequate guidelines. CVNM had negotiated a compromise on the previous version of HB 297, but the new substitute bill bears no resemblance whatsoever to the carefully crafted compromise. Inactive wells pose significant dangers to our drinking water--and contamination from inactive wells has occurred recently, even under existing safeguards. Any efforts to weaken those protections would only further jeopardize the groundwater on which most New Mexicans depend.

KSFR Radio: Interview on Hydraulic Fracturing with Drilling Mora County

INTERVIEW INCLUDES:
•  Hydraulic Fracturing and the impacts on drinking water.
•  Mora County baseline water well testing for Mora County.
•  Community Rights Odinance--Water protection and local self governance

Top Dem Seeks EPA Studies on Possible Toxic Shale Wastewater--Pittsburgh Gazette

February 28, 2011
By Daniel Malloy

WASHINGTON -- The top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee is asking the Environmental Protection Agency for a slew of documents related to natural gas hydraulic fracturing.

Responding to an investigative piece published over the weekend in the New York Times, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson asking for responses to various reports in the Times story regarding toxic wastewater from fracking.

"I do not believe that the price for energy extracted from deep beneath the earth's surface should include a risk to the health of those who live above it," he wrote in a letter dated Saturday. "I am outraged that state and federal regulators were evidently well aware of the risks that the wastewater might pose, but instead chose to adopt a 'see no evil, hear no evil approach' to regulation by ignoring them."

Mr. Markey asked Ms. Jackson to provide any new steps the agency is taking to test sources of drinking water that are downstream from treatment plants that take in drilling waste and, if no regulatory changes are planned, to justify that decision in light of the Times report.

He also asks for internal agency documents regarding studies of wastewater treatment plants and their ability to remove radium and other toxic substances from drilling waste, and other possible harmful outcomes related to processing the byproducts of fracking.

Hydraulic fracturing, a newly booming industry in Pennsylvania because of the Marcellus Shale natural gas deposits, involves pumping a mix of water, sand and chemicals deep underground to break up rock formations to release the gas.

Mr. Markey has long been a leading Democratic voice on environmental issues. He was a co-author of the 2009 cap-and-trade climate legislation that passed the House but failed to go anywhere in the Senate.

Gas Drilling's Environmental Threat Hydrofracked? One Man’s Mystery Leads to a Backlash Against Natural Gas Drilling

EXCERPT:
"Louis Meeks’ well water contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead and copper, according to the EPA’s test results. When he drilled a new water well, it also showed contaminants. The drilling company EnCana is supplying Meeks with drinking water.

Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica
Feb. 25, 2011, 6 a.m.

There are few things a family needs to survive more than fresh drinking water. And Louis Meeks, a burly, jowled Vietnam War hero who had long ago planted his roots on these sparse eastern Wyoming grasslands, was drilling a new well in search of it.

Drilling Regulatory Staffing in Your State

The drill bit spun, whining against the alluvial mud and rock that folds beneath the Wind River Range foothills. It ploughed to 160 feet, but the water that spurted to the surface smelled foul, like a parking lot puddle drenched in motor oil. It was no better — yet — than the water Meeks needed to replace.

Meeks used to have abundant water on his small alfalfa ranch, a 40-acre plot speckled with apple and plum trees northeast of the Wind River Mountains and about five miles outside the town of Pavillion. For 35 years he drew it clear and sweet from a well just steps from the front door of the plain, eight-room ranch house that he owns with his wife, Donna. Neighbors would stop off the rural dirt road on their way to or from work in the gas fields to fill plastic jugs; the water was better than at their own homes.

But in the spring of 2005, Meeks’ water had turned fetid. His tap ran cloudy, and the water shimmered with rainbow swirls across a filmy top. The scent was sharp, like gasoline. And after 20 minutes — scarcely longer than you’d need to fill a bathtub — the pipes shuttered and popped and ran dry.

Meeks suspected that environmental factors were to blame. He focused on the fact that Pavillion, home of a single four-way stop sign and 174 people, lies smack in the middle of Wyoming’s gas patch. Since the mid 1990’s, more than 1,000 gas wells had been drilled in the region — some 200 of them right around Pavillion — thousands of feet through layers of drinking water and into rock that yields tiny rivulets of trapped gas. The drilling has left abandoned toxic waste pits scattered across the landscape.It has also disturbed the earth itself. One step in the drilling cracks and explodes the earth in a physical assault that breaks up the crust and shakes the gas loose. In that process, called hydraulic fracturing, a brew of chemicals is injected deep into the earth to lubricate the fracturing and work its way into the rock. How far it goes and where it ends up, no one really knows. Meeks wondered if that wasn’t what ruined his well....continued......

Resident tells Bradford County commissioners not to forget gas drilling problems

BY JAMES LOEWENSTEIN
February 25, 2011

TOWANDA - At the Bradford County commissioners' meeting on Thursday, Standing Stone Township resident Diane Ward held up a poster board on which were displayed the photographs of seven homes in Wilmot and Terry townships that have water buffaloes on the properties, which she said were provided by gas drilling companies.

She said the value of the homes has probably dropped 85 percent. "In other words, these homes are worthless without water," she said.

"You can't say gas drilling is going very well and forget about people" whose water wells have been affected by it, she said.

She said that a public comment period is under way on proposed regulations on natural gas drilling that the Delaware River Basin Commission may adopt and she encouraged the Bradford County commissioners to read the regulations and provide comment on them.....continued.....

Natural Gas and Polluted Air

This 7-min video covers the air pathway causing human health problems from the citizen's view point in Garfield County. Garfield County is at the heart of Colorado's natural gas gold rush. Residents there complain of air quality problems as a result of natural gas development.

Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers--The New York Times

EXCERPT:

"While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood."

Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
 February 26, 2011

   American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands of new wells and drilling rigs, as the country scrambles to tap into this century’s gold rush — for natural gas.

The gas has always been there, of course, trapped deep underground in countless tiny bubbles, like frozen spills of seltzer water between thin layers of shale rock. But drilling companies have only in recent years developed techniques to unlock the enormous reserves, thought to be enough to supply the country with gas for heating buildings, generating electricity and powering vehicles for up to a hundred years.

So energy companies are clamoring to drill. And they are getting rare support from their usual sparring partners. Environmentalists say using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns more cleanly than coal and oil. Lawmakers hail the gas as a source of jobs. They also see it as a way to wean the United States from its dependency on other countries for oil.

But the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas...continued....

Taking the Pulse of the Mountain States-Bipartisan Poll

Results of January, 2011 Bi-Partisan Poll of Western
States’ Voter Attitudes on Conservation, the Environment  And Renewable Energy in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming

The Colorado College “State of the Rockies Project” is pleased to make available the results of the January, 2011 “Conservation in the West Survey,” conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates. Polling in five western states (Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) explores bi-partisan opinions in each state and for the five-state region concerning conservation, environment, energy, the role of government, trade-offs with economies, and citizen priorities. The research was funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Content released on Wednesday February 23rd, 2011at 12:00 p.m. MST

Majority of Western Voters Believe EnvironmentalProtections, Strong Economy Can Co-Exist
First-ever “Conservation in the West Survey” measures voters’ environmental attitudes....continued......

Mayor Calvin Tillman Leaves Dish, Texas Fearing 'Fracking' Effects On Family's Health

Fearing for his children's health, Mayor Calvin Tillman is leaving behind his government position and getting out of Dodge... or rather, Dish.

Dish, Texas is a town consisting of 200 residents and 60 gas wells. When Tillman's sons repeatedly woke up in the middle of the night with mysterious nosebleeds, he knew it was time to move -- even if it meant leaving his community behind. In an exclusive interview with The Huffington Post, Mayor Tillman reveals that when it came down to family or politics, the choice wasn't a tough one to make.

Tillman, first elected mayor of Dish, Texas in 2007, has spent his time in office fighting to regulate natural gas companies that are drilling into the Barnett shale, which holds up to 735 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

According to the Associated Press, residents of Dish have complained of nosebleeds, pain, and poor circulation since the first compressor station was built in their town in 2005, though there is no hard proof linking the health problems to the natural gas drilling. The air over the Barnett Shale near Dish was found to contain high levels of the toxic chemical benzene, shown to cause cancer. The town's mayor is leaving it all behind.

Chevron Runs from Judgment in Ecuador

by Greg Palast - Exclusive for Truthout
Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Chevron petroleum Corporation is attempting to slither out of an $8 billion judgment rendered yesterday by a trial court in Ecuador for cancer deaths, illnesses and destruction caused by its Texaco unit.I've been there, in Ecuador.

I met the victims.  They didn't lose their shrimp boats; they lost their kids.  Emergildo Criollo, Chief of the Cofan Natives of the Amazon, told me about his three-year-old.  "He went swimming, then began vomiting blood." Then he died.

When I showed Texaco lawyer Rodrigo Perez the epidemiological studies tracing childhood cancers to their oil,  he sneered and said , "And it's the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States, in Europe, in Quito? If there is somebody with cancer there, [the Cofan parents] must prove [the deaths were] caused by crude or by the petroleum industry. And, second, they have to prove that it is OUR crude — which is absolutely impossible."

The Texaco man stated, "Scientifically, nobody has proved that crude causes cancer."...continued.......

RFK, Jr.: Oil Industry Trying to Silence “Gasland” Director

February 12th, 2011

The new documentary film Gasland has been nominated for an Academy Award, and the oil and gas industries are working around the clock to prevent the film from winning an award. They want to keep the film out of the public eye because it exposes their dirtiest and most deceitful traits to the American public. But all of their lobbying and all of their money won’t keep filmmaker Josh Fox silent, and he joined Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently to discuss his Oscar-nominated film.

Go to this website and watch the interviews with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Josh Fox, director of "GasLand":

How Small, Mostly Conservative Towns Have Found the Trick to Defeating Corporations

As the Right pushes privatization as a solution to the economic collapse, one organization is teaching communities how to defeat corporations.
February 4, 2011  |

California's treasurer just announced that the state may need to begin issuing IOUs if the governor and legislature can't close the budget gap. And California's not the only place that's hurting. The Great Recession, hit not only businesses and individuals, but governments as well. The National Conference of State Legislatures estimated that 31 states are facing a combined shortfall for fiscal year 2011 of nearly $60 billion.

So, what's being done? "Cities and states across the nation are selling and leasing everything from airports to zoos -- a fire sale that could help plug budget holes now but worsen their financial woes over the long run," the Wall Street Journal reports. "California is looking to shed state office buildings. Milwaukee has proposed selling its water supply; in Chicago and New Haven, Conn., its parking meters. In Louisiana and Georgia, airports are up for grabs."

If this seems shocking, it shouldn't. For the past 30 years, there has been a deliberate effort to deregulate industry and to choke off federal support for public services and public spaces, paving the way for greater corporate control. The push to privatize is nothing new, it's just that our economic crisis is the latest opportunity. This fire sale is ignited during times of crisis -- what Naomi Klein referred to in The Shock Doctrine as "disaster capitalism," courtesy of Milton Friedman and his Chicago school disciples. "For more than three decades, Friedman and his powerful followers had been perfecting this very strategy," she wrote, "waiting for a major crisis, then selling off pieces of the state to private players while citizens were still reeling from the shock, then quickly making the 'reforms' permanent."....continued.........

EPA pleases enviros, irks industry with plans to study 'life cycle' of fracking

02/09/2011)
Mike Soraghan, E&E reporter

U.S. EPA plans to take a "life cycle" approach to its study of hydraulic fracturing in oil and gas drilling, an approach promoted by environmentalists but opposed by industry.

"The scope of the proposed research includes the full lifespan of water in hydraulic fracturing, from acquisition of the water, through the mixing of chemicals and actual fracturing, to the post-fracturing stage," EPA officials announced in their draft.

EPA officials sent the plan to the agency's Science Advisory Board, a group of independent scientists, which is scheduled to review the draft plan March 7-8. After the board's review, EPA will make any revisions and "promptly begin the study," according to an EPA release yesterday.

The study itself is not expected to be completed until 2012, with a follow-up in 2014. EPA announced the study last March after a request from congressional Democrats worried that the high-pressure underground injections of chemical-laced water could be contaminating drinking water.
They want EPA to regulate fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act. But The industry and congressional Republicans reject the idea of more federal regulation of fracturing, saying it is perfectly safe and well-regulated by states.

Oil and gas industry officials have criticized the life-cycle approach in the past. In a September call with reporters, Stephanie Meadows, a senior policy adviser at the American Petroleum Institute, said the study should be narrow (Greenwire, Sept. 10, 2010).

"We would like it to stay narrow to the question posed by Congress," Meadows said. "We wouldn't want it to be an expansive view of everything to do with oil and gas drilling."
API reacted cautiously to EPA's move yesterday.

"API recognizes there has been substantial public concern over the use of hydraulic fracturing, however we are confident that a comprehensive review of the sound application of this technology following well recognized risk-based decision making principles will show that when properly planned and executed, hydraulic fracturing poses no significant risk to human health, drinking water resources, or the environment," the group said in a statement.

But a House committee chairman took a swipe at industry critics as he promised "close scrutiny" of the study and implied that he might hold hearings on the topic.

"I look forward to close review and oversight of the EPA's forthcoming study on hydraulic fracturing practices," said House Science, Space and Technology Chairman Ralph Hall (R-Texas). "Natural gas is a vital resource, and hydraulic fracturing is a well-established process that is enabling greatly increased production of clean, affordable energy. This production is critical to America's economic growth but unfortunately has been the subject of a growing number of uninformed allegations and misleading attacks."

EPA is also planning to do case studies of places where critics reported problems with fracturing during "scoping hearings" last summer. The case studies could involve field sampling, modeling and parallel laboratory investigations to determine the potential relationship between complaints and fracturing.

In a 2004 fracturing study, EPA officials relied on a survey of state officials to determine what problems had occurred during fracturing operations. EPA did not do its own testing of drinking water.
That study determined that fracturing posed "little or no threat" because the water is sucked back up out of the ground and the hazardous chemicals would likely be diluted or biodegrade on their own.
Critics said the results of that study were skewed by data collected selectively from sources with a vested interest in the oil and gas industry.....continued......