September 15, 2009 06:58 PM UTC

Kathy Hall rails against 'fear tactics'

•  
• by: ClubTwitty

( – promoted by ClubTwitty)

Never one to be bothered by irony, Colorado Oil and Gas Association lobbyist Kathy Halliburton Hall blasted U.S. EPA whistle blowers, scientists, and citizens who have had their wells poisoned as using “fear tactics” the Post-Independent is reporting:

Kathy Hall, a lobbyist for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association office in Grand Junction, mentioned “fear tactics” employed by those supporting the DeGette legislation, and read off a list of supporting organizations and governments backing the industry’s claims.

COGA, one might easily recall, published ads, packed hearings, and otherwise raised the specter of economic collapse should the state institute new drilling regulations, which the industry front group is now suing the state over even as their spokespeople claim that those regulations make federal oversight of hydraulic fracturing unnecessary.

There is a story told about Cal Black, onetime county commissioner in San Juan County (Utah)–and the inspiration behind Ed Abbey’s Bishop Love–about the commissioner eating a piece of cartonite to show that uranium is safe.  (Black later died of cancer at the age of 59…)

Like Cal, COGA and other industry mouthpieces regularly claim that pumping millions of gallons of chemicals into the ground is completely safe.

Citizens in the gaspatch disagree, and the Garfield County Commission is debating what position to take on federal legislation regulating this practice under the Safe Drinking Water Act.  

GLENWOOD SPRINGS – After an energy company located a drilling fluid pit near Rick Roles’ home south of Rifle several years ago, he became “deathly ill,” he says.

He has yet to fully recover and still is unable to physically exert himself, Roles told Garfield County commissioners Monday. And his livestock have suffered from reproductive problems, he said.

“My horses are all sterile, which makes it real hard to make a living,” Roles said.

But at a time of national debate over the chemicals used in oil and gas development, the industry tells a different story regarding health concerns related to those chemicals. Despite anecdotal cases such as Roles’ that are cited by supporters of a congressional bill to subject well fracturing chemicals to disclosure, fracturing is safe, industry representatives say. They say there has been no proof of drinking water contamination resulting from the practice.

“We’ve been trying to keep this based on facts rather than emotions, and we hope you keep it to that point,” Kathy Hall, a Western Slope representative of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association industry group, told commissioners Monday.

The oil and gas industry is the only industry exempt from ground discharge requirements under the SDWA, thanks to the Republican Congress in 2005.  If fracking chemicals are as safe as industry claims (though they resist any attempts to actually disclose what those chemicals are) I suggest a demonstration.  Kathy Hall, like Cal Black, should simply drink a pitcher of frack fluid to dispel our ‘unreasonable’ fears.  It is, afterall, as safe as Coca-Cola.