March 02, 2012 08:32 PM UTC

Hickenlooper To Enviros: Mea Culpa, Sort Of

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• by: Colorado Pols

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FOX 31’s Eli Stokols:

Gov. John Hickenlooper Thursday looked to explain his decision to celebrate fracking in a radio ad on behalf of the oil and gas industry, and to apologize to environmental groups who were upset by it…

Hickenlooper explained that the ad was meant to celebrate the new rule, agreed to last year by both the oil and gas industry and environmental groups, that forces companies to disclose more of the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, a process in which a water-sand-chemical mix is shot deep beneath the ground to loosen mineral reserves for extraction.

“The oil and gas industry asked if we’d do some sort of an ad celebrating this compromise,” Hickenlooper said. “It wasn’t about celebrating oil and gas, it was celebrating this compromise. And we said sure.

What we should have done is reached out to the environmental community and asked if they were okay with the language. A few tweaks here and there and I think they would have been fine. Certainly, they would have appreciated being asked in advance.

“So I take that. That’s my fault.”

The problem raised by environmental advocacy groups in their letter to Gov. John Hickenlooper was with the specific verbiage in the ad, as voiced by the governor, saying Colorado has “not had one instance of groundwater contamination associated with drilling and hydraulic fracturing” since new rules were passed several years ago. Environmental groups contended that this language attempted to semantically paper over a large number of spills and other accidents affecting groundwater by the industry during this same time period.

“But there are no examples of fracking, frack fluids getting into groundwater in Colorado, from the actual fracking – when you’re drilling the well and doing the immediate frack.” [Pols emphasis]

Hickenlooper is probably correct that the groups who called him on this ad could have corrected the language he used in a way that wouldn’t have ruined the ad’s value, even to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. That is, unless a false sense of security about “fracking” was the point? The longer explanation Hickenlooper gave Eli Stokols above does make sense.

But you could make the case that it underscores the problems with the original wording.

Which is still on the air, isn’t it?