In 1930, my greatgrandparents purchased a beautiful farm in Bradford County, PA, in a little hamlet called French Azilum. In the summer, we spent time there, resting, breathing in the fresh air, enjoying the wild flowers, the bright stars and planets on a clear moonlit night, and swimming in the Susquehanna River. If gas drilling is allowed to continue, Bradford County and all of Pennsylvania will be forever changed, ruined beyond repair.
A frozen "waterfall" of drilling fluids was visible near Parachute, Colorado, in February 2008. The state says 1.6 million gallons of fracturing fluids leaked from a pit, was transported by groundwater, and ended up seeping out of the cliff. (Colorado Department of Natural Resources)
According to state records, the spill migrated underground until it seeped from a cliff side and froze into a gray pillar of ice more than 200 feet tall. When it melted, the fluids dripped into the torrid currents of Parachute Creek and finally dumped into the Colorado River.
Leaks are common on well pads. Sludge pits are one of the most common locations of leaks. Gas drilling is a very messy business. There is a huge price to pay for getting shale gas out of the earth.
Click here to read a ProPublica article published in December 2008.
See the true cost of gas! Natural gas is just another dirty fossil fuel. A [Barnett Shale] drilling rig operating for 3 months has the same impact as a city of 4,000 people—water use, solid waste generation, air emissions and traffic. [David Burnett, Dir. Global Petroleum Research Institute, a collaborative research organization representing 12 major international oil producing companies]
Thanks to TXsharon and Bluedaze: Drilling Reform for Texas for this video. TXsharon is a tireless advocate for public health and safety and the irreplaceable environment we take for granted on this planet. She does her work as a volunteer inspite of repeated attempts to discredit her, intimidate her, and silence her.
People of the Marcellus Shale, this is what an industrial zone looks like. The rolling hills of Pennsylvania will soon resemble this landscape. Most of us didn't know the landmen were combing the country, getting landowners to sign gas leases. Now it is probably too late to stop it. All we have left is to regulate the industry as much as we can. However, the gas industry is the most unregulated industry in the nation. We are limited to a few things like road use and permits for water use. Don't give any gas company a free ride.
Here is a report from Journey of the Forsaken which describes what happened in this video (May 2009). Thanks to Lisa Bracken for capturing this event and writing about it.
Twenty-three days after EnCana completed hydraulic fracturing operations on the F11E (CO), the liner is removed, some of the sludge is pumped out and the remainder - perhaps 70 barrels or more - is dozed in.
The pad overlies a spring that often surfaces here. It is fed by a shallow groundwater aquifer that supplies water to West Divide Creek and a family's private water well located maybe 200 yards away. An irrigation ditch is located approximately 30 feet from the East end of the pit.
If one of the pumper trucks had overturned on the county road, spilling this stuff into the environment, a hazardous materials unit would have responded, sequestered the area, potentially evacuated citizens and employed measures to safeguard first responders, citizens and the environment. But because this is a hydraulic fracturing waste pit, out of sight of the public and on private land (owned, coincidently, by EnCana) it is simply covered up.
This same site - if it were at a gas station or a paper mill or a chemical manufacturing plant - would likely be a violation and require extensive clean-up and proper disposal at a licensed facility... as it should. But, again, here, in rural Garfield County, it is simply buried.
Industry would like us to believe that frac fluids are merely salt water, a little thickener, and food additives. But we know frac mixtures contain all kinds of hazardous substances, like biocides, benzene, hydrocarbons, solvents, descalers, surfactants, enzymes, acids, and patented synthetic chemicals. We also know the adverse health effects of some of these agents.
We know a nurse in Durango, CO nearly died of catastrophic organ failure after unprotected exposure to fracturing chemicals (we don't know what happened to the field worker she cared for). We know her physician had to guess how to treat her as she lay dying. And we know that industry lawyers blocked her testimony at a rules reform hearing where citizens and advocacy groups were lobbying for chemical disclosure. We also know that the oil and gas industry has totally refuted her claims in literature distributed to lawmakers in Washington, DC intended to influence legislators against voting to repeal hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Watching a bull dozer blade this toxic brew beneath twenty feet of uncontained soil is horrifying. Knowing that this industry is allowed to poison the land, the water and the people is even worse.
Eventually this pit was completely covered.
This site is less than a half mile from my home.... a place in the Rocky Mountains now exploited for its natural gas resource. A place once rich in other resources as well... water - air - land - wildlife - community.
EnCana calls where I live their "Field of Dreams". As they abuse the ecosystem and destroy its fragile sustainability, they reap a finite reward while leaving behind an industrial waste dump.
I apologize for the shaky video and loud background noise. The wind was blowing so hard it was shaking my hand and totally flooded the microphone.
Despite the awful nature of this situation, the meticulous work conducted by the dozer and excavator operators was something to see. I knew an operator who competed in heavy equipment rodeos, and watching him excavate was amazing.
All the folks on this site seemed capable, and I doubt that any of them gave a second thought to burying this pit. Field workers have told me this is common practice. They probably had no idea it was right over an aquifer and never considered the effects on a stream or private water well. They work around this stuff all the time, and many come to consider it routine, even unknowingly putting their own health at risk. But, EnCana leadership is well aware, and that is where accountability must begin.
As with most of these situations, it is the underlying structure of inappropriate federal exemptions, weak state rules and poor but accepted practices that lead to making this the terrible situation it is.
Only with full accountability can we develop workable and mutually beneficial solutions. Which are more than possible - they are at the leading edge of demand and on the precipice of necessity.
Ultimately, the fossil fuel industry must come out of the dark ages and embrace a more honest and cooperative manner of conducting their operations.
Part of that involves repealing exemptions that allow and encourage them to operate like a lawless regime, putting human health and safety as well as the environment at frequent and serious risk.
For over a year, at www.journeyoftheforsaken.com, I've been documenting EnCana's aggressive and irresponsible development of 60 natural gas wells around our home and the infamous area of the 2004 West Divide Creek natural gas blowout.
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY! Go to http://www.journeyoftheforsaken.com/ for more remarkable stories from Garfield County, CO. Credit goes to Lisa Bracken who maintains this website.
An environmental activist from Colorado came upon this scene, and this is part of what she wrote:
On May 14th I was conducting a wrap-up interview with a documentary film crew in an area overlooking EnCana’s F11E pad, when quite by happenstance, the crew began reclaiming the frac sludge pit. During removal of the liner (probably due to the large volume of sludge left standing in the pit) the waste overtopped the liner, contaminating the soil beneath. The liner was subsequently removed, some of the sludge pumped out and the remainder dozed underneath soil in the unlined pit. Sadly, this pad lies atop shallow ground water – an aquifer which EnCana intercepted at 200 feet. The aquifer feeds a spring that often exits at this location and also feeds Divide Creek - where we get our drinking water. It is also within about 200 yards of a neighbor’s private water well and only 30 feet or so from an irrigation ditch. It looks like this sludge is destined to leach into the aquifer. Not many people are aware of or understand the risks these chemicals pose, so I hope the footage and photos posted on this week’s update will be helpful, especially in the effort toward repealing exemptions from the Safe Drinking Water Act. I can’t discount the coincidence of seeing this pit cover up when it happened. Had we been a few hours later, we would have never even known. It begs the obvious question, “where else?” And industry is standing firm on how safe it is… but this incident shows a different side.
For a pictorial documentation of how the frac chemicals were bulldozed into the soil, go here.
Below is a video of this illegal disposal of toxic chemicals. Or perhaps it is not illegal since the gas industry is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act.
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
Thanks to Journey of the Forsaken and Lisa Bracken for reporting and documenting this incident. www.journeyoftheforsaken.com
Read this description of what the people of Texas have experienced.
Marcellus Shale is next.
In the last few years in North Texas we have seen the BOOM of the BARNETT SHALE GAS FIELDS. We have all seen the TV ads by Tommy Lee Jones and Chesapeake Oil & T. Boone Pickens, telling us how great the benefits of Natural Gas are for the Texas economy.
What they haven’t told you about is the devastation the Barnett Shale has done and is doing to the Texas environment!!
If you don’t have a gas well yet, then take a drive in Wise, Tarrant, Johnson or Hill Counties in the rural areas--not Ft. Worth, they have regulated the drilling somewhat, but in the country. You might have seen the drilling rigs up for 6 to 8 weeks, but look at the completed wells! You will recognize them by what looks like storage tanks in the fields surrounded by a fence. Listen to the NOISE the compressors make. Notice the PONDS of Drilling Sludge. Those big tanker trucks you see, that are speeding and destroying your streets and roads, Notice they have big HWP permit numbers! HWP, “HAZARDOUS WASTE PERMITS”. The TV ads tell us we are SAFE, NOT TO WORRY!
Why do these trucks have these PERMITS?
Notice the PIPELINES being laid. Notice where fences have been cut, trees torn down, and the pipe above ground, (that can be tampered with by anyone who chooses to do so) and ask a property owner if they were threatened with eminent domain? Ask them how their peace and quiet has been disturbed and if they would sign a lease now with what they have learned? Ask the towns people of Dish, Texas, what they think about the pipelines!
Ask the people of Grandview what happened to their water wells and their animals.
They tell us not to worry about what is called “NORM”(Normal Occurring Radioactive Material) being pumped out of these wells, that it won’t hurt us. Again notice the trucks hauling this waste with the HWP permits!
Go see a “LANDFARM or MUDFARM”, this is where they dump all the Toxic Sludge from the pits at the drilling sites. These farms require commercial permits; however, they can take 100 acres and divide it into 30 three-acre cells and get what is called a “MINOR PERMIT.” They say they don’t have to notify the adjacent landowners to issue a MINOR PERMIT! My home is 50 feet from a 100 acre landfarm across the road!
Ask a SURFACE OWNER who doesn’t have the mineral rights, what happened to their property and what were their rights?
Check on what has happened to Property Values around these sites. Would you want to live next to one of them?
As a property owner and mineral owner, I have found out that the “TEXAS RAILROAD COMMISSION” REGULATES the PROPERTY OWNERS and NOT THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY!
4/26/09 Dick Ross Itasca, Texas
Read the whole article here at BluedazeDrilling Reform for Texas www.txsharon.blogspot.com
A frozen "waterfall" of drilling fluids was visible near Parachute, Colorado, in February 2008. The state says 1.6 million gallons of fracturing fluids leaked from a pit, was transported by groundwater, and ended up seeping out of the cliff. (Colorado Department of Natural Resources) 
