(Eh, what’s a little poison among friends, right? – promoted by Colorado Pols)
NOTE: We will be discussing this story on the AM760 morning show on Thursday. Tune in from 7-10am on your radio dial or on the web at www.am760.net.
As natural gas exploration expands throughout our energy starved nation – from the West and now into the South and Northeast – many folks living in drilling country are rightfully expressing concern that their groundwater may be susceptible to pollution from the fracking fluids that are central to drilling operations. These are very legitimate fears, as HBO’s critically acclaimed documentary “Gasland” so graphically shows. And yet, to date, the Republican Party has expressed a rather callous “drill first, never ask questions later” attitude – callous, even for the GOP.
During the Bush years, Republicans managed to legislate an exemption for fracking fluid into the Clean Water Act. Then, Republicans in Congress blocked the proposed FRAC Act, which wouldn’t even ban fracking fluid – it would simply require drilling companies to disclose what’s in the fluids they are pumping into the earth near critical groundwater supplies. And now, in perhaps the most extreme step yet, Republicans here in Colorado (a state with one of the biggest natural gas reserves in the world) are demanding the Environmental Protection Agency never regulate fracking, regardless of whether or not the agency discovers that fracking is poisoning people.
As the Colorado Independent reports, you just can’t make this up:
Eighteen Republican members of the Colorado State Legislature Monday sent a letter (pdf) to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) demanding the federal agency refrain from regulating the natural gas drilling practice of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” no matter what a two-year EPA study of the process reveals.
In a coincidence that highlights just how extreme the GOP position is, notice that the GOP letter was sent two days after this disturbing dispatch from the Grand Junction Sentinel:
Energy giant agrees to pay record fine
By Dennis Webb
Friday, July 23, 2010Williams has agreed to pay a record $423,300 fine to resolve a state investigation into a spring-contamination case in which a De Beque man drank benzene-tainted water…
The fine would be the highest ever imposed by the commission for a single incident. The current record is a $390,000 fine handed down by the commission in April against Oxy USA for another case of spring contamination, also northwest of Parachute.
State regulators should be applauded for this catch, but with state budgets so strapped across the country, they clearly should not be the only regulators on the job. Do we really need more Civil Action-like tragedies to teach us that?
According to Republicans who know about the issue (which, incredibly, does not include one proudly ignorant leading Senate candidate), we do. And that cavalier attitude is both immoral and politically dangerous for the GOP. Though the national media has tended to portray debates over drilling as “liberal environmentalists” versus “pro-business conservatives,” the fact is that these issues can cut in very unpredictable ways. As I reported back in 2008 for the New York Times magazine, someone living in drilling company may like the energy industry and be a cultural conservative – but that person probably doesn’t like the thought of being able to light their tap water on fire, and might not want to vote for politicians who do.
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First thing I notice is a big ol’ AM760 logo. Is that really kosher? Looks like free advertising to me.
If they could tell that David’s post here attracted a few more listeners, then maybe they should try advertising!
I have never understood why organizations and businesses who profess to be progressive don’t put their advertising dollars, for the most part, into progressive establishments like this one. They want to claim to be Progressive … but not very loudly?
is that David’s kind of burned his bridges here. I don’t think 760 would get a good return on their ad dollars here. I could be wrong…
This was a pretty reasonable post, however.
…to refer to Sirota as “poison”.
The 1st 2 comments are just snide comments that have nothing to do with the content of the post.
Pathetic!
Not snark!!!
off topic snark on Pols. What are we ever to do ?
Anybody want a peanut?
… but my comment has everything to do with Pols, and last I checked, there weren’t any restrictions about that. And I take exception to mine being described as “snide.”
But as far as off topic comments go, yours makes three. (And the responses make four, five and six.) Funny how that happens.
This is why down ticket races are important. Can the earth afford more mistreatment at the hands of these miscreants? A Democratic majority of one or both of the state houses should be a top priority for state Democrats. Ritter was Da Man to toughen up the state regulations to prevent another Love Canal. In the wake of the Deep Horizon disaster, Democrats should be defending these sensible regulations to the max and promoting an economic model of regulated capitalism that works for everybody.
Sirota is at his best when he is discussing the issues. He wastes my time when he sinks into attacking Democratic politicians for not being good enough. I liked this post.
Ritter was a real hero on these rules. He was also a hero in trying to push the severance tax. He’s not perfect – but he was at his best when he fought hard for stuff like that, and he deserves credit (which, incidentally, I repeatedly gave him on air and in my column).
This is one of those crazy issues where it should be obvious that our economic and environmental concerns should fuse together to produce workable rules that don’t degrade our future for an MCF of profit.
Notice he doesn’t stick around for a conversation.