June 16, 2009 09:48 PM UTC

Twisted oil company shills: Mesa County Commissioners

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• by: JeffcoBlue

(So what if your drinking water is flammable? It’s good for you! – promoted by Colorado Pols)

I’m hurrying to post this insanity before somebody else does, today’s Grand Junction Sentinel.

County downplays need for fracking rules

Proposed federal legislation targeting hydraulic fracturing fluid, used by the energy industry to release trapped pockets of gas deep underground, drew the ire of the Mesa County Commission on Monday.

The commission unanimously passed a two-page resolution in opposition to further regulation. The resolution also claims if Congress passes the bill, it will drive up energy costs and add to Washington bureaucracy…

The bill strikes some of the Safe Drinking Water Act’s provisions and replaces it with language that calls for the disclosure of what is in fracking fluid, “but not the proprietary chemical formulas,” according to both versions of the bill.

In addition, there is a provision in the bill that calls for full disclosure of chemical formulas “of a trade-secret chemical” if there is a medical emergency.

“I guarantee you I can go into anybody’s household and find more dry chemicals than on any well pad,” said Commissioner Craig Meis, who authored the resolution. “99.5 percent of it is basically water and sand.”

Meis then handed out a list of common frac-fluid ingredients that showed many of the same ingredients can be found in dental cleaners, hair-care products, makeup and pool cleaners.

This should leave everyone who reads it shaking with rage. These are elected county commissioners, charged with protecting the public they represent, who are saying they don’t want to know what oil companies are injecting into the ground to stimulate production.

They are doing this to protect “proprietary” formulas used by the oil companies in fracture drilling operations. There is no public health interest in not having this information. There is really no economic interest, since fracture drilling is hardly an exclusive practice – they all already have the stuff. Even worse, they are defending their stated desire to not know what’s in fracture drilling fluid by asserting the chemical brew is “99.5% water and sand!” It boggles the mind. How sold out can you possibly be?

A little over a year ago a nurse at a Durango hospital became critically ill treating an oil industry worker who came into the ER soaked in fracture drilling fluid. In that incident some details about the chemicals were not provided by the industry, leaving the nurse’s doctors to “guess” what was wrong.

Commissioner Craig Meis ignorantly laughs about how chemicals used in fracture drilling can be found in “dental cleaners, hair-care products, makeup and pool cleaners.” But there’s no acceptable reason to deny the public’s right to know what those chemicals are when they’re going into the ground in massive quantities. Absolutely none. By passing this “we don’t want to know” resolution and mocking their own worried citizens, they have demonstrated contempt for their offices, and violated the public’s trust.