February 27, 2011 10:25 PM UTC

More (Not Less) Regulation Needed in Gaspatch

• 18 Comments
• by: ClubTwitty

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

“We have to reinvigorate the energy industry here in Western Colorado. One of the big obstacles we’re going to have to overcome is over regulation at the federal end,” says Congressman Tipton.

My congressman, Scott Tipton, wants to gut regulations for oil and gas drillers.  He recently said so at a closed-to-the-public confab of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, in town for the Grand Junction Energy Expo. And he said so at a meeting of the Western Slope tea partiers.

For someone who ran on a platform of accessible government, Mr. Tipton does most of his talking to friendly crowds who are unlikely to challenge his ‘let corporations run things’ view of the world, even as incidents pile up in the gaspatch threatening the health and well-being of his constituents. This undoubtedly pleases the boys from Houston, Calgary and Tulsa, but it leaves many gaspatch denizens wondering who’s got their backs?

Colorado sits on large energy mineral deposits–coal, oil and natural gas–along with unconventional sources like oil shale, and uranium. All these have impacts associated with their production and use.  Trade-offs that must be weighed honestly, if we are to have a reasonable talk about energy solutions.  

Fox News is not reporting (but the New York Times is), as an example:

“We’re burning the furniture to heat the house,” said John H. Quigley, who left last month as secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we’re trying for cleaner air, but we’re producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste.”

Of course ‘Natural’ gas is not clean–getting it out of the ground and to market is a dirty and dangerous business, and it always has been. Drilling carries many risks and brings impacts–to air quality, to public safety and health, and to our most precious resource: clean water.

The Times article is a good thorough read looking at produced water disposal, and how many of drilling’s toxic byproducts may be ending up in the drinking supplies for tens of millions of Americans.  

Disposal of the toxic mess that is the byproduct of oil and gas drilling (‘waste water’ or ‘produced water’) is a major issue in the gaspatch. Illegal dumping is not unknown, and even those that abide by the rules work to find creative ways around the expense of disposal.  

The water used by Uintah County earlier this month to de-ice a roadside culvert contained 21 times the permissible level of grease and oil, according to testing conducted by a Salt Lake City laboratory.

American West Analytical Laboratories, which conducted the tests for the state of Utah, found that the water contained 210 parts per million of oil and grease. The permitted discharge level is 10 ppm, said Darrin Brown, director of environmental health for the TriCounty Health Department.

“There’s a lot of petroleum product in (that water),” Brown said.

The water sample – taken from a facility where evaporation and other processes are used to separate contaminants from water produced during oil and natural gas extraction – also showed a higher than permitted level for biochemical oxygen demand. BOD, as it’s known, refers to the quantity of oxygen needed to support the decomposition of organic compounds by microorganisms.

But listening to our congressman, gaspatch residents might wonder where the ‘adult conversations’ are about energy? Rather than just more ‘drill-Colorado-first’ industry boosterism.  

All energy has trade offs, which many of us who are experiencing these wish our elected officials would at least acknowledge.  Many of these problems can be addressed as we pursue real solutions.  Colorado has a lot of energy resources–old and new–and we will do our part.  But many of us won’t stomach politicians willing to turn our part of the world into an energy colony or sacrifice zone. Standing up for people, rather than polluters, would be a start.

Of course that takes some maturity, and guts.  Binary talking points that blame all energy woes on watermelon enviro-meddlers play well to the uneducated while giving industries lee-way to divide and conquer in their insatiable drive for profit.  

Incidents of contamination–which industry challenges at every turn, publicly, while often settling ‘out of court’ (i.e. privately) to silence aggrieved parties and hide the truth–are increasing from Pennsylvania, to New York, to Texas, to Utah and Colorado.  Indeed, such incidences go hand-in-hand with this industry, and they always have.

Even with better technologies, without the rules in place to require that such be deployed, or without the funding and the staff to enforce them, companies have shown–time and again–that they will opt for the cheapest, fastest, most ‘cost effective’ route. Toxicity may be measured in ppms, but the calculus companies use is purely ROI.  The impacts from this activity–as it spreads across the shale plays back east, new oil finds in Colorado, or the gas-rich Piceance–grows, as the Times article notes:

The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.

Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.

The Times also found never-reported studies by the E.P.A. and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.

The Times piece notes that, in addition to instances of water contamination from drilling activities across the nation, air quality is also often impacted:

Air pollution caused by natural-gas drilling is a growing threat, too. Wyoming, for example, failed in 2009 to meet federal standards for air quality for the first time in its history partly because of the fumes containing benzene and toluene from roughly 27,000 wells, the vast majority drilled in the past five years.

In a sparsely populated Sublette County in Wyoming, which has some of the highest concentrations of wells, vapors reacting to sunlight have contributed to levels of ozone higher than those recorded in Houston and Los Angeles.

In Colorado, for the first time ever Rangley was put under an ‘ozone action day’ while over the state line, Vernal is seeing similar spikes:

The EPA is carefully monitoring concentrations of wintertime ozone in the Basin after exceedingly high levels were measured in the region between January and March 2010 – levels mirrored again earlier this month.

‘We’re gonna party like its 1899’

Meanwhile, at the Energy Expo, held earlier this month in Grand Junction, rampant boosterism and calls to gut regulation were in fine form.  

Setting aside the many obvious questions yet unanswered about a commercial oil shale industry  for example (like where we would get the water and energy loads and what those needs are), an oft-repeated theme is summed up by an Expo speaker, oil shale hopeful and investor:

Utah welcomes oil shale development, Dammer said.

“When a Red Leaf person goes to Vernal, Utah, unlike some places we get rose petals thrown in front of us,” he said.

People in Utah recognize the jobs and tax stream such a project will bring, he said.

“I don’t understand why the federal government hasn’t figured that one out – employment, revenues,” Dammer said.

Plans by companies to develop oil shale reserves in Colorado “will produce a lot of oil for the United States, and why they come under such criticism is beyond me,” Dammer said.

Which really begs the question–Do we want any of our public officials to capitulate to this or any  potentially destructive industry by turning a blind eye to protecting air quality and clean water?  

And will our elected leaders–like Congressman Scott Tipton–also meet with a roomful of drilling skeptics?  With those sickened mysteriously? Or with flammable faucets and exploding trailers?  

Or can ones such as these only talk bravely about greasing the regulatory skids when they stand in front of a roomful of eager industry advocates?  

The oil and gas industry is clearly adept at pushing their interests and gaining profit–should they really be allowed to set the rules for what constitutes ‘clean’ air or what is an appropriate level of toxicity in our water?  

Oil and gas companies will always seek to cut corners. If they can get it out of the ground for less they have every incentive to do so.  It is the role of government to set regulations that safeguard the public interest and not simply ask industry how to better implement it’s To-Do list.

Repeating as task items their wish list back to a crowd of industry captains is hardly a brave call for real energy solutions. It’s pandering and it’s become par for course in the Republican ‘all of the above’ dirty energy plan.

And while the oil barons may long for the day when a prostrate citizenry greets their plans for our future happily, on bended knees; elected officials who really represent their constituents would do well to note, happy voters cannot drink rose petals or breath industry spin.