Western ranchers and landowners from Montana to New Mexico have watched their water wells dry up or become poisoned, seen their range land and natural grasses killed off, their wildlife decimated, and their formerly pristine air now subject to regular ozone alerts. http://www.1000voicesarchive.org/video/149/George-Smith-1000_Voices-Sheridan-WY
But, now the lonesome cowboys on the range have some companions in their misery. Natural gas has been discovered in large deposits in New York and Pennsylvania.
On Feb. 22, 2010, a group of activists recently disrupted the CEO of Chesapeake Energy as he delivered a lecture at Harvard entitled "Natural Gas: Fueling America's Clean Energy Future." Despite the Ivy League surroundings, the executive, Aubrey McClendon, left the event earlier than scheduled following a series of pointed questions and jeers from the audience over the impact of gas wells and "hydraulic fracturing" atop the clean drinking water supply for New York and Pennsylvania. Most significantly, this event and the surrounding growth of local grass-roots opposition indicate how a bitter conflict from the sparsely populated West has now moved into the more densely populated East.
The oil industry is staking a lot of money on natural gas. Exxon Mobile recently announced intentions to a buy natural gas company, XTO for $29 billion. Exxon wants XTO's extensive leases on the natural gas deposits under the Marcellus Shale in up-state New York and Pennsylvania. Since natural gas burns cleaner than coal or conventional gas Exxon may see this as an opportunity to earn both money and "green" credentials without having to change its core business. Enabling such a view, environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund, along with Democrats like Colorado's former US Senator, Tim Wirth, back natural gas as a "bridge fuel" - an alternative to coal.
But this "bridge" could lead to brand new environmental hazards that cannot be derided as minor NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) aggravations.
Here's why:
Traditionally, natural gas comes up a well from a pool below the
surface. However, the gas reserves
now pursued by Exxon and others are trapped in shale rock, coal deposits, and
other tricky geological structures making extraction more difficult.
How to get gas out of shale? Blast it with an ocean of chemically laced water. This method called "hydraulic fracturing" has been developed to get this gas out of shale and "tight sands." This method carries enormous hazard, and proceeds with little or no oversight. The drillers say they carefully cap the well so the chemicals don't come back up. But, the trouble is, according to the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Wyoming (www.powderriverbasin.org), the chemically laced water blasted down the well doesn't stop moving once the gas comes up. The chemical cocktail keeps migrating.
Some of the "lab rats" in this petroleum experiment can be found in the sparsely populated state of Wyoming, near Clark and Pavillion, site of "hydraulic fracturing" or "fracking" during the last six years. Pavillion is now a potential super-fund site, and both places have seen massive ground water pollution, along with respiratory illness, cancer, and neurological disorders among the nearby residents. Oil companies would point out that it is yet unproven that chemicals from "fracking" caused this sudden spike in serious health issues. But, the coincidence of blown out "fracking" wells and increased health problems in the pristine reaches of rural Wyoming on the eastern boundary of Yellowstone National Park, might give one pause for thought.
Wyoming ranchers look at the Exxon acquisition, the T. Boone Pickens Tour, and the weird marriage between some environmental groups and the forces of anti-regulation and see both a massive potential threat for ground water pollution and property encroachment not seen since the Indians lost their lands to the cavalry. From their point of view, one powerful polluting industry is being favored at their enormous personal, environmental and economic expense. They insist that rosy presentation of "cleaner burning" natural gas ignores and excludes accounting for enormous negative impacts of its extraction.
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