Failure Of Colorado Anti-Fracking Initiatives Puts State's Water At Greater Peril

By now, most Coloradans would have become aware that two anti-fracking initiatives, designated Initiative 75 and Initiative 78,, failed to secure the requisite number of petition signatures to appear on state ballots November 8th. To refresh memories, 75 sought to give local governments the authority to limit or ban oil and gas development. 78 sought mandatory 2,500-foot setbacks between new oil and gas development and schools, playgrounds and hospitals, In each case, 98, 492 valid signatures were required. A total of 107, 232 were turned in for 75, but only 79, 634 were estimated verified. A total of 107, 232 were turned in for 78, but only 77, 109 were estimated verified.

The failure of both measures to make the ballot came after months of a costly and contentious grassroots campaign. Arrayed against the anti-frackers were well-funded, Koch brothers backed  industry groups which poured money into an opposing “decline to sign” effort. Also, anti-fracking activists say they faced harassment from opponents while trying to gather their petition signatures.

The  corporate-controlled Colorado Oil and Gas Commission said in a statement that “Coloradans have sent a clear message that they don’t want to resolve these complex issues at the ballot box." The truer take is that Coloradan voices were snuffed out, and the petition process scuttled by a determined propaganda and intimidation campaign sponsored by the Kochs and their state lackeys, allies. This is especially tragic given that the outcome means an ever greater assault on state water resources.

As noted in previous posts it's been confirmed for two years now that the gas and oil frackers are not only ruining our precious water supply here in the mountain West but depleting it as well.  According to a report published in the UK Guardian, "America's oil and gas rush is depleting water supplies in the driest and most drought-prone areas of the country, from Texas to California,".

This is extremely bad news given how our water resources are already depleted from drought as well as ever increasing demand from the half-dozen states that draw water from the Colorado River.  Of the nearly 50,000 oil and gas wells drilled since 2011 nearly two thirds have been in areas where water is scarce and 55% in drought-ravaged areas. But in addition to fracking depleting the water supply (one well requires from 3-5 million gallons of water) the process also entails injection of fracking chemicals,  two thirds of which are carcinogenic.

 Although some well paid PR hacks claim fracking effluent found in water is “safe” – most of us don’t buy it. According to Matt Lepore, head of the “Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission” (basically a PR cover for the oil industry):

"The whole point is that it is safe, that the harm to the environment has been minimized.”

 He was referring to the industry’s latest cleanup method of using mixing machinery and microbes on the affected soil.  But as a May, 2014, Denver Post study observes: “It is not proven”.

 In other words we have only the industry-front organization’s  words to go by. But given they are mainly devoted to the articulation and dissemination of PR,  can we trust them?  I think not.

 The Post expose found that 716,982 gallons of the petroleum chemicals spilled during the past decade have stayed in the ground after the initial cleanup. This has contaminated soil, sometimes spreading into groundwater- based on a Denver Post analysis of COGOC data. Incredibly, their maestro had the never to say the cleanup method was “safe” despite the Post finding the stuff is invading the soil, groundwater.  According to the Post (ibid.):

“There’s about one gallon of toxic liquid penetrating soil every eight minutes.”

In addition, the Post notes: “drillers churn up 135 to 500 tons of dirt with every new well, some of it soaked with hydrocarbons and laced with potentially toxic minerals and salts.”

 Lost on the fossil fuel energy obsessives is a very simple truth: While there are energy alternatives to oil and gas, there is no alternative to water. Water, for every human, fulfills a basic survival need and there's nothing that exists in its place to serve the same purposes including hydration to prevent kidney failure, and also taking in enough to ensure proper bodily function - without also becoming ill by consuming it.

Having said that, it must also be acknowledged that if we demand adequate, unsullied water we may well have to notch down our energy consumption dramatically. You can think of it as a zero sum resource game.  As a first guide one can cite The Physicist's Desk Reference (Table C, p. 187, Energy Generation by Type) for which the most energy-intensive uses (aggressive consumption or category I) for all forms of solar, geothermal and wind are projected to total only 7 exajoules by next year. This compares to 23 EJ for oil, 16 for coal, 9 for natural gas and 5 for nuclear. Thus, ALL the usual "green" alternatives" are projected to barely add up to what nuclear will deliver on its own.

Also factored in we have H.T. Odum's solar "eMergy" (eMbodied energy) which measures all of the energy (adjusted for quality) that goes into the production of a product. Odum's calculations show that the only forms of alternative energy that can survive the exhaustion (or total replacement)  of fossil fuels are : human muscle application, burning biomass (wood, animal dung, or peat), hydroelectric, geothermal in volcanic areas, and some wind electrical generation. Nuclear power could be viable if one could overcome the shortage of fuel. No other alternatives (e.g., solar voltaic) produce a large enough net sej to be sustainable.

This means that at least in one respect the frackers may be correct.  That is, citizens may well find it preferable to sacrifice their soil, air and water quality in order to ensure they get the energy to run their cars, a-c units, Ipads, HDTVs, lawn mowers, smart phones and refrigerators.  Some may believe in their heart of hearts they can have both clean water and sufficient energy for their toys, but they are deluded - detached from energy reality.

The failure of the Colorado ballot initiatives to limit fracking may well speed the day of reckoning, when - as I warned two years ago- (Nov. 29 , 2014 post)  we will have to use recycled toilet or waste water. Already some locales (e.g. Aurora) are using  partially -treated waste water through river banks.  If fracking contaminates or diminishes most of our main water sources in the next decade or so this could become the norm, and "toilet to tap" will become part of our parlance.

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-c-koehler/68971/the-future-cries-out-water-is-life

Looking For Community Economic Boosts? Be Careful What You Wish For!

In The Sunday Denver Post, the two page article, ‘In Gung-Ho Greeley, Anger Wells Up Over Drilling Near Homes’ (pp. 1-2 B) we have a modern morality tale and cautionary note for any communities thinking they will “cash in” on the fracking or shale oil drilling craze sweeping the nation. The reason is that the immediate economic gains are rarely if ever balanced by the later humongous costs exacted on the communities.


The Post article notes that “for the first time in decades” the residents of Greeley, COLO. are now “fighting to keep oil and gas wells away from their homes”. Well, they ought to have thought of that BEFORE they let the Oil-Gas men in, believing that once they’d drilled beyond the confines of the town they’d leave the immediate urban environment and neighborhood locations alone. Well, it doesn’t work like that! Once the oil men had their fill (drilling more than 20, 000 wells in the region beyond Greeley- as noted by the map on p. 2B) they began encroaching on the town and then drilling inside it.

This is what transpires when a community that hitherto had “proved most receptive to oil and gas drilling” suddenly learns that the payback can be negative as well as positive. And so, the residents of Greeley's Fox Run neighborhood are up in arms, trying to prevent wells being drilled within 350’ of their homes.


Residents, if they’d checked the data (i.e. from the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission) ought to have seen their number was coming up. State data on such geological maps (shown on p. 2B) would have clearly shown over 20,000 wells were drilled outside Greeley in Weld County, while the city’s actual 47 square mile limits remained relatively untapped. This brought to mind for me what one Louisiana Oil man once told me over 45 years ago – when I took a college hiatus to work at a New Orleans Petroleum Corp.: “Thar’ Ain’t NO such things as Virgin Oil fields! That's an Oxymoron!”

Indeed, so that once “virgin” Greeley then had to get drilled once the land exterior to it had been emptied. There are now 427 wells in Greeley proper with “with plans to drill several hundred more”. Long term, the gung-ho city manager expects at least 1, 665 wells inside the city’s growth area. When Mineral Resources, Inc. launched its Fox Run project, no surprise that residents felt “blind sided”. Who wouldn’t? According to Ross Johnson, quoted in the Post article:


“I never imagined I’d have to worry about mineral rights and the potential for drilling right next to my home. I mean we are right in the city”

Hazel Stephens, quoted in the same article, was even more blunt:

"This is just getting out of control! An industrial zone does not belong in a residential area!"

And yet, as the Post notes, drilling technology pushes limits and lets companies drill right under homes.

This is no joke. As first time home buyers in Colorado back in 2000, we were astonished to see from the title/ deed that while we owned the home and putatively the land – yard, we did not own the “mineral rights” underneath it. The wording made clear that for any minerals found or discovered beneath our property, the state would have first ‘dubs’ in getting to it, or excavating it say by drilling.  We had absolutely no legal say in the matter.

You live here in Colorado, this is what you get! But most of us - when we buy homes in this beautiful state - gamble that our particular number will never come up. It may happen to others, but never us.


Well, the Greeley-Fox Run homeowners also made such bets, and they lost. But they aren’t taking it lying down now. They have formed the association “Greeley Communities United” to fight back and demand the oilers-frackers  back off and not pollute their air, water with carcinogens like benzene. (In 1985 the then Greeley City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting drilling inside the town but it was overturned by the State Supreme Court in 1992. The reason? No town or community had the legal basis to usurp the state's mineral rights which trumped all else.)

Most heart breaking to Fox Run residents may be to learn that while a new state buffer zone rule requires 500 ft. setbacks between wells and occupied buildings by August 1st this year, the distances can be set closer (350') if  Oil companies secure written consent from any property owners before then.

Meanwhile, Mineral Resources, Inc. has provided a palliative, in terms of  assurances,  that they will do their best to prevent the worst. According to one spokesperson quoted in the Post piece, "95 percent of methane and other air pollution will be captured to minimize potential harm". Also they will do their level best not to contaminate water so residents end up with prostate, breast, liver, colon and other cancers. So, I guess all the Fox Run people - especially on the anti-drilling association- ought to be thankful.

The real nasty news is that when the oil, natural gas finally runs out, as it surely must (as a finite resource) the home owners of Greeley will be left with homes worth only half or less the urban pre-drilling value, if that. Their community may have benefited from a short term economic infusion (thousands of jobs and $3.3 million in "direct economic gain") but at an immense long term cost.

Be careful what you wish for!