Colorado Requires Fracking Ingredients List

[ness]

I was adding to my post as you were typing...

Yeah, I'm not doubting he played a part. But blame should go where blame belongs, and there's plenty to go around. Cheney didn't get to vote (unless there was a tie), much less sign anything into law as VP and/or president of the Senate. Then there's the House. I don't know what caused the exemption either. Was it legislation signed by Bush, or some other process or legal interpretation?

Regardless of the details, it's something that clearly needs to get figgered out sooner rather than later. I'll write my Congressman and maybe they can get a new law on the books before Christmas break.

[ness]

OK -- researched it a little. Here's a link to an article about the legislation. Just reading this article gets me riled because it shows how a basically decent idea (incent domestic energy production) can get so muddied up that it ends up a bad law.

Energy Policy Act of 2005

[ollie]

See what I'm saying? Look, I may have some facts wrong about the story, but yes, that is the meat of the article.

[ness]

See what I'm saying? Look, I may have some facts wrong about the story, but yes, that is the meat of the article.

Yep -- I see what you're saying. I hope it doesn't take a major disaster to get this thing moved up the list. But unfortunately, that's the way it works a lot of the time.

I had to chuckle when I saw they squeezed a modification to daylight savings time rules in the legislation. Thank gawd we got that issue fixed

[ollie]

I'm kinda torn on this issue. On one hand it is a step to becoming less eneregy dependent on other countries and on the other hand at what price are we willing to pay for it?

[Al Agnew]

That's the thing about any environmental/energy decision. There are always hidden costs, which are not reflected in the price of the finished product because they are being paid by the people, land, water, and wildlife in the affected area. It's pretty easy for those of us living somewhere else to like that natural gas or gasoline and not want to pay more for it, but the people who have to live with the alterations and sometimes downright messes in the land and waters around them are paying a price.

While the people who are all for fracking have been wont to point out, up until now, that there had been no proven cases of ground water contamination from fracking, and quick to accuse the fracking documentary of lies and distortions, drinking water samples from 68 wells in Pennsylvania and New York in fracking zones were found to be contaminated with excess methane. The only reason fracking wasn't "proven" to be the culprit was that there weren't enough pre-fracking water samples from the same wells, so the fracking companies said that it couldn't be proven that those wells weren't just as contaminated before fracking began. But the closer the wells were to drilling sites, the higher the methane concentrations were. Another concern...leaked reports from the EPA this year indicate that fracking wastewater is too radioactive to be handled safely by water treatment plants. Air emissions at drilling sites are also a problem, and the EPA wants tougher rules for on-site emissions.

It is probably possible to do things a whole lot better and safer with fracking. Fracking has been a classic boom industry almost like a gold rush, with seemingly the only concern being to get it out as quickly as possible, which has led to shortcuts and lax attention to safety at many sites. But even if it's done responsibly, it still changes the character of a region from usually a quiet, rural farming and ranching community to an industrial site with a huge influx of more or less migrant workers (not many local people have the necessary experience with drilling that would allow them to get the jobs) and a lot of new pressures on roads and other infrastructure. Reality is that we need the natural gas, and the unconventional oil from oil shales, but it will come at those hidden costs, which can be lessened but not eliminated.