May 12, 2011 07:13 PM UTC

New Study Links Drilling, Water Contamination --GOP Supports Polluters

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• by: ClubTwitty

(Representin’ – promoted by Colorado Pols)

On the heels of a new study from Duke University that connects a high level of methane contamination in areas with heavy drilling and fracking, drill-boosters are mounting a defense and observers are a-twitter.

In Weld County, the BOCC–whose scientific credentials are unknown–is going on tour  

to give residents the facts about oil and gas well drilling in their backyards.

The mythbusting tour is scheduled in the wake of more than a year of what commissioners call disinformation

Over in Gasfield Garfield, now that Tresi Houpt is gone, the BOCC quickly cancelled a detailed Health Impact Study by the Colorado School of Public Health, after spending $250,000 but sympathizing with the drillers, who didn’t like what the research was finding.  

Last week, commissioners decided to end work on a Colorado School of Public Health study of potential impacts of proposed drilling by Antero Resources in the Battlement Mesa community. A draft of that study’s conclusions said residents would likely be affected by air pollution from well development.

The oil and gas industry cares–they would be bothered by increasing incidences of strange diseases and poisoned wells–if only credible studies showed a link.  Of course, we had better not do such studies, and if one comes out we had better do all we can to demolish it.  

Bah!  Scientists from a university somewhere.  Better to listen to what a county commissioner has to say:

“There’s been, quite frankly, more disinformation put out on this,” said Commissioner Sean Conway. “I think there is an element out there that’s anti-drilling, and it comes from the extremist environmental community. … What I’ve seen is long on theory and short on facts.”

Or put another way, better listen to what the drillers have to say, as reported by Dennis Webb at the Daily Sentinel (subscription required).

…[Garfield County] Commissioner Tom Jankovsky said he supports the idea of getting better data about how emissions from well pads disperse and might affect air quality at Battlement Mesa. He said his only concern about the new study is whether the School of Public Health, which would be a partner in it, could participate in an unbiased way. The health impact study drew industry criticism over some of its conclusions and recommendations.

Meanwhile, Congressman Scott Tipton is getting tubeplay pushing to allow oil and gas development inside National Forest roadless areas in his district.  

No surprise that Tipton is wrong.  No Surface Occupancy stipulations are a step in the right direction–but they have to be binding and applicable.

Many are modifiable and waivable under certain circumstance. Most are very specifically applied (not to a roadless area as a whole, but to, say, steep slopes within that area).  Without specific stipulations to protect roadless and backcountry values, the ability to protect those things is very limited.  Tipton’s notion that ‘not a spoonful of dirt’ could be disturbed is a farce.  Rep. Tipton may not know this, although I suspect those who wrote his talking points did.  

Consider the Clear Fork/Thompson Divide area centered on the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre, Gunnison National Forest, reaching onto the White River–a complex of a half dozen or so roadless areas, mostly covered in gas leases.  

Clear Fork/Thompson divides three major watersheds–Muddy Creek, headwaters to the North Fork; the Crystal River, headwaters to the Roaring Fork; and Divide Creek, which flows directly into the Colorado River.  The area is superb wildlife habitat, a huge (over 100,000 acres) area of natural habitats running from Battlement Mesa nearly to McClure Pass.  

Problems with inventories, a National Forest that has been unable to update its management plan for over 20 years (and an oil and gas EIS that is pushing 20), a newly completed pipeline from the Muddy Country to Silt, and lots of private capital (held by, among others, an estranged Koch brother) put tens of thousands of acres of these roadless lands at risk.  Drilling these areas under the current circumstances would certainly include pads, roads, pipelines and all the sundry impact that industrialization of this landscape would bring.

At the state level the GOP is busy trying to restack the deck in favor of the industry, by turning the state regulatory agency back into a rubberstamp panel for drillers.  That agency already is unable to process known violations in a timely manner–just now imposing fines on several companies for a series of spills from 2008.  

So Grand Junction legislators are working to weaken the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission even further (and remove the state public health representative) as Rep. Tipton urges more drilling in sensitive roadless watersheds.  Meanwhile evidence mounts of looming problems for Colorado residents and our future.

But the Weld County Commissioners are going on the road to make the case that everything is OK.  While the Garfield County commissioners are doing all they can to make sure you still believe that.  Evidence be damned.