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Almost everywhere Lisa Bracken looks, she sees signs that something is not quite right. Sitting
south of where the Colorado River flows through Silt, Colo., her
property is 60 acres of wild, isolated habitat in a canyon with a creek
running through it, flanked on both sides by inaccessible, rugged
country. An assortment of animals, including elk, deer, bear, cougar,
lynx, turkeys, vultures, golden eagles, bald eagles and red-tailed
hawks, has long called its meadows, oak forests, grasslands and
riparian areas home, while four species of native fish, chub and trout
have swum through the creek.
But now, many of those animals can no longer be found on Bracken's
property. She estimates that it hosts less than one-tenth of the
animals it once did.
Walking along West Divide Creek last month, Bracken stops at the site of a beaver dam.
"A
couple of weeks ago, I was down here filming an adult and two juveniles
feeding and working on the dam, but I haven't seen them now in over a
week," Bracken said. "I saw a muskrat, and a lot of times muskrat will
move into an abandoned beaver house, but I haven't seen the muskrat
even, so it looks like this area's all been abandoned."
Other areas are completely void of vegetation.
"That
happens with a methane blowout, because what happens is it doesn't just
exit into the creek, it exits wherever there's a fault pathway, a
network of faults that it can follow from the bottom of the well or
their production zone through the geology to the surface," Bracken
explained.
At the creek, there is more evidence that leads
Bracken to believe natural gas from drilling is leaking to the surface.
She pointed out a corrosive-looking substance that could be an acid,
precipitate or bacteria of some kind, a vent-hole in the mud where some
gas has potentially been coming up, a bluish-black film floating on the
creek and a strange foam in the water.
"There's like a big
chunk of what looks like old, dried-out styrofoam," Bracken said. "You
can tell it's gassy and it's kind of hard and it's discolored."
It's
a scene that's all too familiar to Bracken. They are indicators that
also appeared in 2004, when gas from an EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) well
seeped into the creek.
The seep resulted in a $371,200 fine
by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission -- the biggest fine
the state had ever handed to an energy company -- and a temporary
moratorium on drilling. But the company has started drilling again and
is now about halfway through a plan to drill 41 wells in the vicinity
of the seep and Bracken's property.
Concerned that there
might be another gas seep in the creek, Bracken recently appealed to
the county commissioners to have additional testing done on her
property.
But the air, water and soil testing for possible
effects of drilling did not turn out as planned. The state oil and gas
regulator sent to Bracken's home to do the testing became
confrontational with her, and she asked him to leave before much
testing had been done, Bracken said.
Bracken says Bob
Chesson, an environmental protection specialist with the Colorado Oil
and Gas Conservation Commission, seemed irritated about having to do
the tests, dismissed her concerns and insulted her at one point with
foul language.
Doug Hock, a spokesman for EnCana, stressed
that the company can't do anything more unless there's scientific
evidence that something really is wrong in the creek.
"Everything
that we do has to be based on science," Hock said. "There have been
numerous tests done, both by EnCana and the Oil and Gas Commission, and
she's asked the county for further testing, and we encourage that. If
there is a problem, we certainly want to know about it, but we have to
respond to the facts, and the science to this point shows that there is
no indication of any kind of problems or issues related to our
operations."
'They can do whatever they want'
One of Bracken's main
concerns is the effect that the area's energy development is having on
her health and the health of her mother. Besides the concerns about
whether gas or other chemicals from drilling have contaminated their
water well, Bracken is also worried about the air pollution caused by
drilling activities.
The health issues experienced by people
living next to oil and gas drilling activities include not being able
to breathe in as deeply as before, difficulty smelling or tasting
things, headaches, dizziness, respiratory problems, asthma, acute pain
in the tendons and joints, falling unconscious, and illnesses including
cancers and neurological problems. In Bracken's case, her mother's
sinus passages swell shut and her eyes weep overnight.
"She won't be able to open her eyes in the morning, she'll have to
feel her way to the bathroom and flush her eyes with warm water until
they open, and that's just outrageous to me," Bracken said. "They burn
tens of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel 150 feet from someone's
home and there's no emissions standards, there's nothing. They're
exempted from anything. They can do whatever they want."
Tara
Meixsell, a landowner who lives north of Silt, said the symptoms
described by people in Garfield County who live near the energy
development are similar to those described by people in other parts of
the country and the world who are also in the midst of oil and gas
development.
"When you talk to your neighbor and you find out
that they're having the same problem that you've been suffering from,
and then you find another neighbor, and then you find other people
coming down to testify on legislation, and they're all having similar
problems, that's when I didn't have a heck of a lot of doubt in my mind
that these things were frighteningly real," Meixsell said.
But
many of the landowners who have experienced health problems they
believe are related to oil and gas drilling have not been able to
conclusively show that their symptoms were a result of the energy
activities.
"You have to have a link. There has to be a link between how you were exposed and what you feel," Meixsell said.
One
reason it's hard to prove that residents' ailments are connected to the
gas drilling activities is that industry is not required to report the
chemicals used in the drilling and hydraulic fracturing processes. That
may change under new oil and gas regulations proposed by the Colorado
Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, although industry has argued
against making the chemicals public to protect its proprietary
interests.
In cases where drilling has been linked to health
ailments, the road to get there has often been long and tortured. One
couple in Garfield County had their water well explode after fracturing
activities began on the neighboring property, and they could light
their water on fire because of the levels of methane, but the initial
tests showed the methane was naturally occurring. It wasn't until the
woman developed a rare adrenal gland tumor and pursued her case with
the help of prominent scientist Theo Colburn that more tests were
completed showing that methane and other chemicals had in fact gotten
into their water because of the drilling activities.
Health problems
Other residents have had almost
instantaneous health reactions related to the drilling activities. When
Dee Hoffmeister and her husband returned from a vacation in Minnesota
in 2005, there was already a rig at work on their property. They knew
the rig was coming, but what they didn't expect were the odors and
fumes emanating from the well pad. Within 15 minutes of returning to
their house, Dee Hoffmeister became unconscious.
"I got
headaches and started feeling kind of nauseous and my lungs were
bothering me, and then after that, I just passed out," she said.
After
that incident, Hoffmeister moved in with her daughter in Glenwood
Springs and sought medical treatment. It took eight months before
Hoffmeister felt well enough to return to her home.
"I was so
weak and dizzy, I had to hang on to somebody or furniture to be able to
walk," Hoffmeister said. "I couldn't function mentally. It was hard for
me to think, let alone do anything."
Since her return,
Hoffmeister continues to have medical problems she believes are
associated with the ongoing energy development near her home, burning
and itching in her feet, pains, dizziness and memory problems. In 2007,
a condensate tank on the well pad near Hoffmeister's house caught fire,
causing her to become ill again and sending her to the hospital.
Other residents' ailments have been less immediate, if not less
dramatic. About two years after drilling began on his property south of
Silt, Rick Roles found that his body simply shut down.
"My
body seized completely up in the fall of 2004. I couldn't reach my face
to eat. I couldn't walk. I could get places, but it wasn't what you'd
call walking -- sliding your feet around a little at a time to get
where you have to go," Roles said.
Roles quit his job and
started seeing an acupuncturist and a masseuse to help get him back on
his feet in the again. In the meantime, he also had blood tests
performed that showed high levels of volatile organic compounds and
benzene in his blood.
Because of his ongoing medical issues, Roles hasn't held a job since 2005.
"Now,
I just find it hard to go to a prospective employer and tell them,
'Here's the deal -- I'm a little disabled more or less from the
chemical poisoning and I have a lot of nerve damage, but I really need
the work, but if I exert myself too hard, my body's going to shut down.
It could take anywhere from a week to six months to get it healed up
enough that I can come back,'" Roles said. "Nobody's going to hire you.
There's no way, because the first couple days or something you could
exert yourself too much and not be able to make it back."
For
now, he survives financially by doing odd jobs and some sharecropping
to pay for the feed for his livestock. Even so, he says he can't work
more than two to three hours at a time.
"I've dealt with it
for four or five years now, and I've learned to get along, because if I
don't get around, I just don't get around, I don't get nowhere, and if
I don't get anywhere, I'm stuck here breathing this gas, so I've gotta
get the hell off this mountain," Roles said. "That's the thing that
pushes me every day, is that I've got to get down for a little while
because I've got to take care of the place, but if I can't keep myself
healthy, I can't take care of the place, so I do what I can a couple
hours a day and stay gone as long as possible where I don't get myself
too far behind on what I need to get done."
Quality of life
The energy boom has taken a toll on
Garfield County in other ways, as well, as many longtime residents have
fled the area and oil and gas workers have taken their place.
"I
know of people who have left the valley or moved elsewhere, have lost
their places because of methane gas poisoning their springs and their
wells," said Paula Fothergill, an angler and longtime Western Slope
resident. "In fact, I know a couple who lost their dream property
because they were so inundated with methane on their property that oil
and gas basically evacuated them out because they were afraid that
their house was going to blow up because it was so bad."
Fothergill
said the energy boom has also changed the quality of life in
communities throughout the Western Slope. She noted that drug abuse
problems, particularly with methamphetamine, have become a larger
issue. The workers also crowd out tourists who normally would have
visited during the fall hunting season because many of them live in
motels.
"When you're walking by with your granddaughter or
daughter and these guys are hanging out in their pickup trucks calling
out all sorts of names, or having drug abuse as a new issue in an area
that really hasn't had to deal with it, it's a little staggering,
especially something like meth," Fothergill said.
Hoffmeister
said the traffic and noise associated with the development have also
changed the quality of life in the area. "Wherever you drive, it used
to be beautiful and just wonderful, and now you have big cutout areas
where there's well pads and condensate tanks. It's just destroyed our
whole countryside here. It's not the same at all."
To help to
address some of these issues, Garfield County has created an energy
advisory board that includes energy representatives and local residents
to allow them to air their concerns.
"If some of the
neighbors are unhappy about the traffic or the noise or the dust or
whatever, they bring it to the board, we talk about it and try to deal
with it. That's been a huge help here, I think," said Williams
spokeswoman Donna Gray.
Some residents note positive impacts to economy
Michael
Meskin, the owner of a local ranch and the Base Camp Cafe in Rifle,
Colo., said the energy companies can be difficult to deal with
sometimes, but he has generally had good experiences. "There's a lot of
gas up there and they're going to drill no matter what. ... It's not
that unpleasant, but it's somebody else on your ranch that you're
usually not used to. They are respectful, and if we have disagreements,
they have been very good about ironing them out," he said.
Like
many area businesses, Meskin's cafe has benefited from the gas boom.
"Down here at the restaurant, they've been wonderful. They've increased
our business quite a bit. They're here at 6:15 in the morning. The
workers are polite, energetic. There's a lot of chemistry that goes
down, so it's sort of exciting."
Gary Miller, the owner of
Miller's Dry Goods in Rifle, agreed that the workers have brought new
energy and business to the community. "A year and a half and two years
ago, it seemed like the gas well worker that we were attracting, pardon
me, but it was rough, it was a very rough group, and a lot of topics of
conversation seemed to center around violence, and it wasn't real
pleasant," Miller said. "Now, the people that we're attracting are much
more professional, they're establishing roots, they're bringing
families from here and there, but they still for the most part have
families back home, but it has changed. They are much more professional
in the clientele that they're hiring, so it doesn't seem like the
industry is as desperate as it was two years ago, and I like that. I
like it a lot better."
Miller said his business has picked up
since the boom began, but it's still not up to the level it was during
oil shale's heyday. "It's getting closer to the business that we did
during the oil shale boom," Miller said. "It still isn't there, but
it's getting closer all the time. So, it has improved, but we weathered
a long storm to get here -- a long storm. It was just not real healthy,
businesswise, in Rifle for a long time."
One of the things
local officials are concerned about is ensuring that Garfield County's
economy stays robust even after the energy boom has gone bust. County
commissioner Tresi Houpt said that it's important to ensure that the
region's other economic drivers -- agriculture, tourism and hunting --
are not damaged or driven out by the drilling boom.
"There
are many different economic interests that we need to continue to
nurture, enhance and support as we see energy development continue to
grow," Houpt said. "And that's why it's so important to have
appropriate regulations in place to make sure that the other economic
interests in Garfield County can survive once the oil and gas industry
packs up and leaves."
Bill Dvorak, an outfitter based in
Nathrop, Colo., said the energy boom has also hurt many small,
service-based businesses that can't compete with the high wages paid by
the energy industry.
"It's very hard for individual
businesses to survive because they can't find help that they can afford
to pay. Basically, a lot of businesses, if they can't keep going just
with the entrepreneur, the owner doing it, they've had to quit because
they can't afford to pay the help the kind of wages that the oil and
gas industry is paying," Dvorak said.
But Jeanice Freeman,
owner of the Ranch House Mercantile in Rifle, said she hasn't had a
problem competing with the energy companies' wages and she gets a lot
of business from energy workers because she carries flame-retardant
clothes. Freeman and her husband moved to the area four years ago when
he got a job in the gas fields.
"It's been really good to Rifle's economy," she said.
Gable is an independent energy and environmental writer in Woodland Park, Colo.
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