"EPA theorizes fracking-pollution link" by Mead Gruver, Associated Press / December 8, 2011
CHEYENNE, Wyo.—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday for the first time that fracking -- a controversial method of improving the productivity of oil and gas wells -- may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution.
Or something worse: Obama Drilling For Martial Law Excuse
The draft finding could have significant implications while states try to determine how to regulate the process. Environmentalists characterized the report as a significant development though it met immediate criticism from the oil and gas industry and a U.S. senator.
The practice is called hydraulic fracturing and involves pumping pressurized water, sand and chemicals underground to open fissures and improve the flow of oil or gas to the surface.
The EPA found that compounds likely associated with fracking chemicals had been detected in the groundwater beneath Pavillion, a small community in central Wyoming where residents say their well water reeks of chemicals. Health officials last year advised them not to drink their water after the EPA found low levels hydrocarbons in their wells.
The EPA announcement could add to the controversy over fracking, which has played a large role in opening up many gas reserves, including the Marcellus Shale in the eastern U.S. in recent years.
The issue has been highly contentious in New York, where some upstate residents and politicians argue that the gas industry will bring desperately needed jobs while others demand a ban on fracking to protect water supplies....
Just don't drink the water.
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Good thing state governments are looking out for your health rather than business and industry:
"Pa. allows driller to stop water delivery" October 20, 2011|By Michael Rubinkam, Associated Press
ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Pennsylvania environmental regulators said yesterday that they have given permission to a natural-gas driller to stop delivering replacement water to residents whose drinking water wells were tainted with methane.
Residents expressed outrage and threatened to take the matter to court.
Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. has been delivering water to homes in the northeast village of Dimock since January of 2009. The Houston-based energy company asked the Department of Environmental Protection for approval to stop the water deliveries by the end of November, saying Dimock’s water is safe to drink.
Then YOU CHUG-a-LUG a TALL GLASS!!
The environmental agency granted Cabot’s request late Tuesday, notifying the company in a letter released yesterday morning. Scott Perry, the agency’s acting deputy secretary for oil and gas management, wrote that since Cabot has satisfied the terms of a December settlement agreement requiring the company to remove methane from the residents’ water, the environmental agency “therefore grants Cabot’s request to discontinue providing temporary potable water.’’
Residents who are suing Cabot in federal court say their water is still tainted with unsafe levels of methane and possibly other contaminants from the drilling process. They say Cabot should not be allowed to stop paying for replacement water.
Bill Ely, 60, said the water coming out of his well looks like milk.
“You put your hand down a couple of inches and you can’t see your hand, that’s how much gas there is in it. And they’re telling me it was that way all my life,’’ said Ely, who has lived in the family homestead for nearly 50 years and said his well water was crystal clear until Cabot’s arrival three years ago.
Which leaves you with TWO CHOICES: Either YOU are CRAZY or THEY are LIARS!
I know where most people come down on that one.
If Cabot stops refilling his 550-gallon plastic “water buffalo’’ that supplies water for bathing and washing clothes, Ely said it will cost him $250 per week to maintain it and another $20,000 to $30,000 to install a permanent system to pipe water from an untainted spring on his land.
Ely and another resident, Victoria Switzer, said their lawyers had promised to seek an injunction in the event that Cabot got permission to halt deliveries. The lawyers did not return an e-mail and phone call seeking comment.
Regulators previously found that Cabot drilled faulty gas wells that allowed methane to escape into Dimock’s aquifer. The company denied responsibility but has been banned from drilling in a 9-square-mile area of Dimock since April of 2010.
Along with its request to stop paying for deliveries of water, Cabot has asked the department for permission to resume drilling in Dimock, a rural community about 20 miles south of the New York state line where 18 residential water wells were found to be polluted with methane. The environmental protection agency has yet to rule on that request.
Talk about PISSING in PENNSYLVANIA'S WATER!!!
Philip Stalnaker, a Cabot vice president, asserted in a letter that tests show the residents’ water to be safe to drink and use for cooking, bathing, washing dishes, and doing laundry.
He said any methane in the water is naturally occurring but that Cabot is willing to install mitigation systems at residents’ request.
This just goes so beyond outrage.
Months’ worth of sampling data show that methane has spiked repeatedly this year in the water wells of several homes, reaching potentially explosive levels in five, The Times-Tribune of Scranton reported yesterday.
I guess it will take a well blowing up to get them to admit responsibility.
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Better conserve the water in that canteen:
"Driller halting water to families in Pa." December 01, 2011|Associated Press
ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Families in a northeastern Pennsylvania village with tainted water wells will have to procure their own water for the first time in nearly three years as a natural-gas driller blamed for polluting the aquifer moves ahead with its plan to stop paying for daily deliveries.
Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. ended delivery of bulk and bottled water to 11 families in Dimock yesterday. Cabot asserts Dimock’s water is safe to drink and won permission from state environmental regulators last month to stop paying for water for the residents.
A judge yesterday declined to issue an emergency order compelling Cabot to continue the deliveries. The judge, who sits on the state’s Environmental Hearing Board, set a Dec. 7 deadline for arguments on a second, related petition filed by lawyers for the families.
The decision left residents who do not think their water is safe scrambling to find alternate sources....
State regulators previously determined that Cabot drilled faulty gas wells that allowed methane to escape into Dimock’s aquifer. The company denied responsibility, but has been banned from drilling in a 9-square-mile area of Dimock since April 2010.
A Cabot spokesman said yesterday that the company has worked diligently to resolve the problems in Dimock.
You f***ers are all the same.
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And look who has been BOUGHT OFF!
"Lawmaker shares in gas industry wealth" December 04, 2011|By Eric Lipton, New York Times
CALUMET, Okla. - The natural gas industry is transforming vast stretches of Oklahoma. Here, 40 miles west of the state capital, crews work through the night drilling new wells, and a small army of laborers rips through just-planted fields of winter wheat to install miles of gas pipeline.
Across the state in tiny Atoka, a Cadillac and a Jaguar park next to pickups outside the local store that sells cowboy boots and overalls; in nearby Coalgate, the gas industry has created six overnight millionaires.
Related:
"Statistically, the recession ended in June 2009, but it’s been a tough slog since for nearly everybody. One exception: The number of people earning $1 million a year or more increased in 2010 by nearly 20 percent, the government reported last week."
Just found six of 'em.
The spreading wealth from gas fields has also benefited US Representative Dan Boren, a Democrat who has deep family ties to the industry - and has acted as one of its best friends on Capitol Hill.
You mean one of the good guys has been corrupted by gas?
Boren’s stepfather is an independent oil and natural gas producer in East Texas, just over the border. His father, David Boren, a former senator and Oklahoma governor, received $350,000 last year in total compensation for serving on the board of Continental Resources, whose stock has surged while it helps lead the exploration of gas reserves nationwide.
The congressman’s income has jumped in the last six years, thanks to two family businesses he partly owns that have signed more than 300 mineral leases, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many of those deals are with Chesapeake Energy, a top donor to his reelection campaigns.
It's incestuous.
Boren is a champion in Washington of an industry that is experiencing a historic boom but also increasing scrutiny. He argues that the drilling can help solve the nation’s energy problems and dismisses concerns about the potential environmental and health perils posed by the process with which shale gas is extracted, known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Yeah, because elite s***s like him can afford water that isn't poisoned.
Serving as cochairman of the House Natural Gas Caucus, Boren has worked to block any move by federal regulators to restrain the drilling and efforts by the Obama administration to curtail tax benefits for the gas and oil industries. He has also pushed for federal incentives to increase demand for natural gas. And he sees no problem with entangling his professional advocacy and his self-interest.
“There’s zero conflict,’’ Boren said in an interview. “It’s like if you are living in a timber community and your parents are working for the local mill. You should go and advocate for your local mill, even if you derive some benefit from it.’’
The arrogance is astonishing.
House ethics rules do not prohibit lawmakers from taking steps to aid industries in which they have a financial stake.
It's called insider trading and it would be illegal for you and me.
Related: Debt Committee Failure Capstone of Kerry's Career
Also see: Ban on insider trades gains traction
But some ethics experts say such actions are still inadvisable. “Even if it is legal, if every member of Congress pushed for industries that they have financial ties to, there would be an outcry from the public,’’ said Robert M. Stern, a California lawyer who has helped draft state ethics and campaign finance laws.
Yeah, there HAS BEEN! Maybe you missed it, but it is called the OCCUPY MOVEMENT!
Boren often works in close coordination with the lobbying and promotional groups in Washington financed by the natural gas industry in an attempt to wield influence in a city where energy debates have long been dominated by oil and coal interests.
Boren, 38, a conservative four-term Democrat, has announced that he will not seek re-election next year.
Related: Frank is Finished
Obama Has Found His Reelection Footing
What I said about Democrats is true; when the heat is on and the going gets tough, they bail.
Instead, he plans to return home and work in the private sector - he would not say with what industry - and consider a run for governor. Whatever happens, he said, he will continue to promote Oklahoma’s natural gas industry....
Boren was among the 41 House Democrats who joined Republicans in 2005 to pass legislation that largely prohibited the federal government from regulating fracking under the Safe Water Drinking Act, and he has repeatedly pushed the Obama administration since then to keep the prohibition in place.
I thought Democrats were the clean and green party.
But some Oklahoma residents - and environmentalists elsewhere - say the rush to tap the gas has at times caused real harm. A study published in May by the National Academy of Sciences reported potentially dangerous levels of natural gas in drinking water near drilling sites in New York and Pennsylvania.
I covered Pennsylvania above, and the problem is beyond polluted water.
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Related(?):
"6th quake in 4 days recorded in Okla." November 28, 2011|By Associated Press
SPARKS, Okla. - The sixth earthquake in four days was recorded in Oklahoma yesterday, but there were no immediate reports of damage....
Although Oklahoma had deep-seat seismic faults, it does not rest on tectonic plates that rub against each other. But quakes have become more frequent and more intense in the state in recent years....
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Also see: Earthquake in Oklahoma?
Now we know why.
Hey, don't sweat it, Oklahoma:
"Okla. authorities charge man in deaths of 2 girls" by Kelly P. Kissel Associated Press / December 10, 2011
OKEMAH, Okla.—A three-year-long hunt for a suspect in the fatal shootings of two young girls in eastern Oklahoma ended Friday when authorities announced murder charges against a man who claimed he fired at two monsters on a rural road.
Kevin Sweat, 25, who was already in custody in connection with another killing, was charged in the June 2008 deaths of Taylor Placker, 13, and Skyla Whitaker, 11....
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Oh, frak.
