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UNBOSSED
"My daughter, who was two years old at the time of the hydraulic fracturing would vomit every night when she would get out of the bath tub upon going to bed..."
- Thomas McKenzie, Repton, Alabama
So, you think that natural gas is a `clean fuel'? Well, think again. In fact, it may be killing you right now.
Yesterday I described the different points of air, soil and water contamination that occur during drilling and production. I also discussed some of the toxins associated with the natural gas industry and the effects they have on the human body. Today, in Part II, we will look at the actual, on the ground impacts many families are encountering at the hands of this unregulated industry.
As natural gas drilling explodes around the western United States, very few people seem to be asking: what are the potential public health issues associated with this new form of industrialization? Will this industry result in a host of multi-generational diseases and health afflictions unparallel in American history?
An awesome and dangerous experiment is being enacted on the American people without a hint of discussion, forewarning or consideration. A toxic stew is being deliberately injected into our air, drinking water and blood streams without our knowledge or consent. We are all at risk.
The first thing Laura Amos noticed was the drop in her faucet's water pressure. Then there was the gyser shooting from her well. Laura lives in Garfield County, Colorado, one of the hotbeds of coalbed methane development (CBM). Laura and her husband are outfitters in the Flat Tops Wilderness. Amos told me that she has faced years of frustration over the problem, which began during fracturing operations at the nearby gas well. Those operations create fractures within the sand formations holding the gas, in order to free up more of it to flow up the well. On the day of the fracturing, her well exploded. Then, the water turned gray and fizzed. Amos didn't know what was going on at first. They took to drinking bottled water but soon, her whole family, including her 18 month old daughter was horribly sick. Then, Amos was diagnosed with a rare adrenal gland tumor. Research suggesting that a chemical sometimes used in fracturing causes such tumors in rats. But nobody really knows. EnCana, one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world and the main operator in western Colorado, has refused to reveal all the chemicals it uses in fracturing - because that is "proprietary" information. The Amos family is poisoned and they don't know why. They don't know with what. It goes on. EnCana was cited for nine violations for mistakes made frac'cing the day Amos' well blew. The company wasn't fined, but could have been penalized as much as $1,000 per day going back to 2001. They weren't.
The Glenwood Springs, CO Post Independent reported:
Earlier this year, EnCana was fined $371,200, the largest in COGCC history for a single incident, in connection with gas from one of its wells that was found in surface water in the West Divide Creek area south of Silt.
....and.....
Lloyd Moore, a neighbor of the Amoses who owns the property where EnCana recently suspended drilling of its well, said EnCana had told him it would keep him informed about issues related to its drilling. Yet he only became aware of the problem with the Amoses' drinking water this week [years after the incident], he said.
"It's just like they're hiding something," he said. "The neighbors had to tell us what's going on."
Laura Amos told me that her biggest worry is that, as her daughter reaches puberty (she is 4 now) hormonal changes brought on by her consumption of the fracturing chemicals may cause all sorts of problems: tumors, learning disabilities, etc. She doesn't know. Nobody knows.
Twenty-six year old Thomas McKenzie of Repton, Alabama is also permentenly disabled from his experience with CBM drilling.
"As I look back now, I can see problems starting with my health that were going unnoticed at that time. The first thing that I can remember was fatigue and losing my breath at night. By the end of 2001, I had gained 70 pounds....I kept having....dizzy spells off and on through 2002."
The doctors Thomas visited told him he had stress, diabetes, and heart palpitations. But the usual medicines for these conditions didn't help. Then, in Oct. 2003, he sister, who lived nearby, began having the same symptoms.
"...only they were much worse with vomiting and dehydration."
Her doctors told her she had anxiety and depression. She was sent to a phyciatric clinic where they told her that she was not depressed. She was sick.
"Finally, a neurologist asked if she lived near a chemical plant."
But she didn't live near a chemical plant.
"As she traveled down the dirt road to my home one evening she got behind a truck with a tank on it that made a turn onto a small road leading back into a field of planted pines which was close to my home. When she got to my house she mentioned the truck and what the neurologist had said and we began putting the symptoms together. We also discussed her next door neighbor who was a 13 year old girl who had liver failure around the same time we got sick....and then there were all the miscarriges in the neighborhood...."
Oil field waste was being LEGALLY buried in a field near Thomas' home. There were CBM operations all around them. They had never given it a thought. When the state tested their water the first time, they claimed there was nothing in it. When they tested it the second time they found Barium and Radium 226 - which they claimed was naturally occurring. When Thomas' daughter started vomiting uncontrollably after every evening bath, they had a private firm test the water. The test turned up hydrocarbons, a common biproduct of oil and gas production.
They stopped drinking and using the water from the well. But the problems only lessend somewhat. Then, they were told their air, which had always smelled rotton, was polluted.
When his wife began passing out while doing dishes in the evening, they had had enough. They moved. Since, they have found that their community has one of the highest cancer rates in the nation.
"They hide the wells behind the trees. So you never see them. You would never give thought to the fact that this is going on."
When I met Thomas two weeks ago, I could swear he was over forty years old.
Dr. Kaye Kilburn has found that in the town of Lovington, New Mexico - an old oil and gas town on the eastern plains near Texas - the population tends towards balance impairment, brain dysfunction, color discrimiation errors and reaction time slowing. Why? Because they are continually exposed to Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) from the oil fields. That is the gas that smells like rotten eggs. Dr. Kilburn said that the people of Lovington no longer smell the gas. It immediately deadens your senses. So, you get a wiff of it once then you think it is gone. But its not. Its there, slowly destroying your brain.
Last week, I toured the natural gas and CBM fields of northwestern New Mexico. I had seen them before, in fact, I had in part helped in their construction. See, through most of the 1990s, I worked as a contract archaeologist for the oil and gas industry. After seven years of seeing hundreds of Native American burials and villages illegally and immorally bulldozed in the face of pipelines, well pads and transfer stations, I had had enough. I quit. It had been several years since I have been to Farmington and I was shocked at the expansion of the natural gas and CBM industry. Perhaps most shocking were the social inequities the drilling brought to the people of the area. In one wealthy neighborhood, I visited a well pad that was neat, tidy and well-maintained. There was a sound proof box over the pump jack and a filter on the compressor. It was silent, well maintained, fenced and safe. In the poorer neighborhoods, the trailer parks, children played in soccer in oil that was spilling on the ground. They kicked around in multi-colored toxic sludge. The well pads were unfenced. A 12 year old girl had climbed on one of the pump jacks a few months before and had been crushed to death. The noise was defening. A plume of toxic, foul-smelling pollution blew right over the homes of hundreds of people. This wasn't one place. This was many. This isn't an image of some ancient industrial nightmare. This was last week. Farmington, New Mexico.
There are hundreds of these stories. Thousands of Americans who are sick and they don't know that, in fact, they are poisoned. While the oil and gas companies make millions the health of this nation is being severely compromised and Congress and the White House are only making it easier on the industry. Think about it. Oil and gas drilling is coming to most of the communities in the western US. Its popping up around major metropolitin areas like Denver. If its coming to you, it may be coming to kill you - slowly.
If you're sick and you don't know why and you happen to live around oil and gas development - you may be poisoned.
What we see happening now is a massive and dangerous experiment on the health of the American people - largely without their knowledge and without regulatory oversight. A public health catastrophe is being hoisted on the American people. Some effects are instantaneous but others will not become apparent for a decade or more. By then, this industry will be long gone and the crippling and expensive health effects of oil and gas development will be left for the rest of us to deal with.
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