This is a big, developing story, which will all but kill forevermore the gas industry's dishonest claim that "hydro-fracking has never polluted a single water supply."
A deal to sell a controversial central Wyoming natural gas field has fallen apart amidst allegations that drilling there has caused water pollution.
Texas-based Legacy Resources backed out of a $45 million deal to buy the field near Pavillion, Wyom., from EnCana last week, soon after the Environmental Protection Agency said it had detected cancer-causing benzene at 50 times the level safe for humans and other carcinogenic pollutants during its latest round of sampling.
Did you get that? Not only is the EPA on the case, but the stench that something has gone wrong in Wyoming is SO strong, that another gas company now will not risk buying this gas field and all the liability it now represents.
Just a week ago:
Encana Corp. is selling the Pavillion gas field to Midland, Texas-based Legacy Reserves. The two companies are still on schedule to close the $45 million deal on Dec. 1, Hock said.
Oh damn- I guess not!
But this is an (unfortunately) old story in Pavillion. Listen to Louis Meeks, a rancher and Vietnam veteran, he's been putting up with a contaminated water supply since 2005.
Some transcribed excerpts:
all they're doing is coming in here, raping the land and poisoning the water just to get the gas... pretty soon there's not going to be any water. We can live without gas- we can't live without water...
We aint' got no water now. There's no value on this house. Me and my wife worked for 30 years for nothing, because this house has no value at all.
I went and fought for my country in Vietnam. I'm 100% disabled. I wish the damned hell I wouldn't even have fought for my country, 'cause they're not doing a damned thing for me...
..this administration (Wyoming governor) all they think about is oil and gas, but they're going to wake up one of these days, and there ain't going to be no water...