MONTANA: www.preservethebeartoothfront.com
Part 3. Reasons for resistance: If citizens don’t do it, it won’t get done.
Original Article by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor and Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV
Bear Tooth Front is a remarkably beautiful, pristine, low population density area in Montana, which has become among the first targets in that state. Like so many other states Montana is gloriously independent, with officials ignorant of what is going on all over the nation, and soddenly unwilling to do the research to find out. Like so many before, they simply listen to the nice fellow from the industry talking about all the money they will be making when the fracking fluid goes under ground.
Their newsletter of June 9, this year, describes the situation citizens find themselves in:
· A Board of Oil and Gas Conservation that does the bidding of the industry because its voting members have a financial stake in its growth,
· A tax structure that gives tax breaks to the industry and puts the burden of increased costs on local landowners,
· A legal code that places mineral rights above surface rights, and allows property to be devalued without any input from landowners,
· A willingness to allow precious water resources to be put in jeopardy without legal protections for those who use the water.
If not identical to other states these certainly have a resonance.
North Carolina is a state falling into the same frack pit right now. The title of a recent article published by Think Progress is “North Carolina To Lift Fracking Ban and Criminalize The Disclosure Of Fracking Chemicals.” The article goes on “They don’t address air pollution from fracking operations, and they allow the fracking wastewater to be stored in pits…” and “By rushing to drill here, North Carolina leaders are putting our drinking water at risk and they’re putting our rivers at risk of pollution. What’s even worse, is that they’re doing so without guarantee that we’ll have rules in place that could even mitigate some of these risks.”
The magazine Mother Jones carries an article “North Carolina GOP Pushes Unprecedented Bill to Jail Anyone Who Discloses Fracking Chemicals.” This is another case of high pressure salesmen-lobbyists meet glad-hand state politicians. The narrative of shale drilling is passed from party of the first part to party of the second without question or literature research — after all, Pennsylvania and parts of West Virginia had this going on years ago. Its not a foreign country, Tar Heels, and we don’t speak a foreign language.
Maryland is a shining example. They alone of any state I know about, actually went to other states and studied shale drilling before writing laws.
At one time there was a question of why the industry was willing to have multiple rules, one for each state, concerning fracking, rather than one national rule. (There are now 21 states with fracking.) The reason now obvious beyond question: states lack resources to research what will happen, formulate rules to the best interest of all, and to enforce them. The companies may have to put out more payola, grease, sweetener, gravy, bait, what ever you want to call it, for state rule, but it was a good investment, considering what they have acquired.
Second, more people are affected yearly.
There are currently 14,497 permitted unconventional gas wells in Pennsylvania located on 4,274 well-pads. Some 12,823 are horizontal wells, 8,231 are reported as active, and 5,080 have reported production values, according to MarcellusGas.org, as of the 23rd of May this year.
For the whole nation “15 million Americans now live within a mile of the hundreds of thousands that have been drilled since 2000.” A lot of people!
Many people are indirectly affected. Pipelines are being laid through areas that have no fracking. Sand comes from Wisconsin and surrounding states. The result of this is continuous damage for miles as well as silica pollution in the air. Waste storage wells are often outside the drilled area. River transportation of the huge amount of waste is controversial. And they put a huge number of trucks on the road. One well was drilled in Pennsylvania requiring 2,340 tanker loads of water, add to this all the other supplies, constant traffic of personal pickups, waste being hauled away, and support in the form of drill pad, road and pipeline to take the gas away, and much pipe for the well, all requiring heavy equipment and more trucks. Everything for this well was hauled in with diesel and operated with diesel. This illustrates the demand for resources to frack.
A paper delivered at the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association’s 2013 AAEA & CAES Joint Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, August 4, concerned the relations between land owners and the companies which drilled 680 wells on 481 landowners property in West Virginia. Amy Mall’s article on the report found these point most noteworthy:
More than half of the respondents–57.4%–reported problems. Some 73% of respondents with horizontal wells reported problems compared to 46.5% of respondents with only conventional or vertically fractured wells. The biggest overall complaint was damage to the land.
The average number of problems reported by respondents reporting at least one problem was 6! Common problems reported were declines in property values, truck traffic, lack of cooperation by the oil and gas company, inadequate compensation, and road damages. Some 60% of split estate surface owners are dissatisfied. And, 28% of surface/mineral owners are dissatisfied. The report is here and Mall’s article about it is here.
Finally, sensational accidents. These start with workers putting in excessive hours, far more than 12, sometimes as much as 20 or more. Sometimes they are driving trucks, going to sleep and driving off the road. Sometimes they go to sleep driving home after work. Then think about accidents on the drilling pad – mangled, broken, burned by chemicals and sometimes killed by fire. Sometimes burned so badly there is nothing recognizable left. Safety is left up to the companies, you know. No OSHA or MSHA analogue to inspect the work place. Only critical effects are recognized. The men move around a lot, so chronic problems are being ignored like silicosis, effects on workers of air pollutants or chemicals that can be absorbed through the skin. If it doesn’t “knock down” workers it will be ignored. If symptoms develop, the worker has no choice but to change to another job or go on the dole.
Then there are public accidents such as spills of chemicals that get into streams. A sensational train wreck occurred in Canada due to the volatile nature of shale drilled oil. There are wells that shoot back the drilling compounds “because they hit a pocket of gas.” Deep disposal wells cause earthquakes, and occasionally transmission pipelines break (or leak) and blow apart houses or start tremendous fires.
So the ante is going up yearly — more shale drilling, and more opposition. More money being invested, but more damage being done. And, finally, some research is being done, too. The investment community finally is becoming aware there is too much money going into the deep holes, given the huge costs of drilling, environmental damages, the spreading public health impacts, as well as continued over-production that can spoil the game.
The energy that the shale drilling industry provides is great at present, but the costs are greatly discounted, they will rapidly mount as the sweet spots are drained, and resistance is bound to grow.
To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Henry the Fourth, part 2 act 3, scene 1: “Uneasy lies the head that manages shale drilling.” (King Henry says, in part in the original, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”)
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