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Big energy is fond of saying there’s no proof that the chemicals they’re using in fracking operations are causing the rash of horrific suffering in those who live nearby. Why? Because despite the fact that each fracking well leaves millions of gallons of wastewater in its wake, the companies drilling them don’t have to disclose the chemicals they’re pumping into local water systems.
Halliburton and other big energy companies have been successful in keeping the chemicals they are using “proprietary.” Likewise, the way in which they dispose of fracking waste water is a mystery, thanks to loopholes afforded by millions of dollars in lobbying and donations to elected officials.
Unsurprisingly, horizontal fracking has almost always been accompanied by serious health and environmental crises in nearby communities, and without disclosure of the chemicals being used, scientists are unable to link ground, water and air contamination to their secret cash cow.
Can you sign our petition to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to force full disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking operations?
Click here to sign: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/fracking-disclosure
Almost across the board, where fracking operations begin, locals get sick. Some that live near fracking operations report contaminated tap water that can actually be lit on fire.
That’s not all that surprising considering the obscene amounts of waste water produced during horizontal fracking, which many water treatment facilities are not built to deal with. This mixture of toxic chemicals, heavy salts and radioactive material is often left to fester in open pits or is dumped into major rivers and tributaries.
Drilling companies are digging in, offering gigantic paydays to farmers and cash-strapped landowners for the rights to frack on their land. They’ve already bought off elected officials to assure the unfettered expansion of this lucrative industry.
There’s no good argument for keeping these chemicals a secret from the people who are left to deal with the aftermath of fracking on their own property and in their local water systems. The Department of Interior has the ability to force these companies to reveal the chemicals they’re leaving behind in massive quantities in communities across America. Please sign our petition to Secretary Ken Salazar today.
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Hey Halliburton and your boy Ken Salazar: “Proprietary” this.
Salazar is just more proof, as if we needed it, that the Obama administration is the face of the corporatocracy. He should not have been given his position in the first place and he wasn’t fired after the BP debacle. He’s a slave to Big Energy and no friend of Mother Earth.
Isn’t EPA the agency to which this demand is most effectively directed?
It’s not just farmers and cash-strapped landowners, from todays paper: counties, cities, and school districts in the region will receive some $730.6 million in additional fiscal revenues due to the Barnett Shale and related activity.
The State of Texas will likely receive another $911.8 million, for a total gain in local and State taxes of an estimated $1.6 billion.
great they can use all that money to help subsidize the enormous medical bills their residents will start accruing from radiation and chemical poisoning.
Arguments that fracking fluid is a corporate secret “proprietary.” does not mean the government does not get to know whats in the stuff WTF is the EPA doing tap water is catching on fire you can’t tell me that water is safe to drink!
Where is the harm in letting the world know the secret who else but American Gas companies are fracking at this level? Who else has the tech?
Trash is open to search by law enforcement because its put on public land. Fracking fluid is leaking into the public water table can we get Kirk Murphy or Jim White to get a sample from a public water fountain that catches on fire? Once we get a sample from public water we can embarrass the government and go public.
I want to see Ken and the Gas company CEO’s drink tap water that catches on fire with a lighter. Once we get a sample we can find out how dangerous this stuff is.
Drought ridden Texas is already recycling pee to drink if Fracking contaminates the water they have left there won’t be enough water for the people in the state.
T-Boone Pickens bought a bunch of Texas water I bet no fracking is happening next to his water. T-Boone has been talking about water being the new oil. If fracking is half as bad as we think T-Boone should make a killing.
Unless after the revolution we nationalize water.
Some Texas nutcase rich guy wants to open a private nuclear waste storage place right over some Texas groundwater between Radiation and Fracking and the drought we may lose Texas.
Signed.
Save Austin. Lose the rest.
It’s also a boon to the cancer treatment division of the “health care” industry. Creating more cases of cancer for your benefit, not to mention the benefit to their continued cash flow.
Excellent idea! That sort of scientific proof could get coverage.
Signed and donated a pittance, wish it were 100X the amount.
thanks, boo!
thanks royaloak – your support is very much appreciated.
i’m going to sell the air above my head and i’m going to all the dirt in my yard, too, then i’m going to sell my children and a couple of my limbs and maybe an organ or two
and then i’ll be rich!
and i’ll lay on the bed thinking how rich i am for the rest of my miserable fucking life
Links?
I’m pretty sure T. Boone is aligned to profit from both sides of the fracking/water supply issue. He HAS bought up lots of water rights; and he is a great promoter of a natural gas-bridge to get us from fossil fuels to clean energy. And of course he is leading the charge, I believe, to increase natural gas usage with just this claim. I saw him talking somewhere (is that all rich people do–talk and exploit), claiming that fracking has never been shown to cause harm. Hmmmm? Wonder why? Perhaps because no one has ‘conducted a study’ to prove the claim? It’s hard to prove a negative–especially when no one is seeking such proof.
Yep, then Susan G. Komen pooh-poohs environmental causes for breast cancer and siphons off all the money to put toward FDA drug testing, which is really just a give away to the pharmaceutical companies so they don’t have to absorb the cost.
It’s a growth business (quite literally).
And how much of the donations and contributions that accumulate from all the Pink Ribbon campaigns actually do any good? How much goes to administrative costs–you know the directors, CEO, etc–and how much goes to fund-raising (always a sore point with me–dollars garnered from fund-raising going to more fund-raising rather than purported mission), advertising (to benefit BigPharma and insurance cos), and yet another Pink Ribbon event, complete with PR, paid event planners, etc. ad nauseum!
Not a surprise – Nancy Brinker (founded Komen after her sister died of breast cancer) was first nominated to some board or other by Ronald Reagan and then to something else by GHW Bush and then to something else (including an ambassadorhsip) by George W Bush.
Signed and donated. Glad you’re on this issue Jane. I am literally stupified at the spectacular wastefulness and toxicity of this evil, insane technology.
Oh and let’s not forget the earthquakes.
The government has known since 1967 that injecting liquid into the earth ala fracking causes earthquakes when a lot of damage was done in Colorado-
“The most economically damaging earthquake in Colorado’s history occurred on August 9, 1967 in the northeast Denver metropolitan area. This magnitude 5.3 earthquake, which was centered near Commerce City, caused more than a million dollars damage in Denver and the northern suburbs. This earthquake is believed to have been triggered by the deep injection of liquid waste into a borehole at Rocky Mountain Arsenal. It was followed by an earthquake of magnitude 5.2 three months later in November 1967. Although these events cannot be classified as major earthquakes, they should not be discounted as insignificant.”
From http://geosurvey.state.co.us/hazards/Earthquakes/Pages/Earthquakes.aspx
And another read that talks about experimenting with causing earthquakes by injecting liquid into the earth – http://www.saveballona.org/gasoilfields/RangleySeismicGC.pdf
Isn’t that the foundation that was exposed for spending part of their donations to disenfranchise other anti-cancer groups that used slogans similar to theirs?
I agree with so much written here: Why the gov’t has no problem with harming citizens with radiation and chemical poisoning is way beyond comprehenson. Need to get base line stats on health and disease now–down load it from state and local health depts, save it to compare to later stats. Get the stats on the populations now, don’t wait. They may begin to change the formulas to help private gas/oil or the gov’t.
Which is why I don’t support the 3-day walk, the yoghurt caps, the scarves jeans and other distractions from the CAUSE, and it’s easy to see who, or which industries support a cure . . .
The next time I kill somebody, I’ll do it using a new weapon. That way, my attorney can declare that the (alleged!) weapon is proprietary and shouldn’t be used as evidence.
I suppose I’ll also have to legally incorporate first, though, so I’ll be a legal person and not merely a flesh-and-blood one.
(Note for the record: I have not actually killed anybody, nor do I plan to.)
I know something of cracking. Very vile chemicals. Some are so toxic, word is that if you spilled a drop on your skin you would not survive by wiping it off. Maybe just talk though, since they don’t publish Material Data Handling Sheets. Bad stuff, though.
Sorry I’m late, computer problems.
Fort Worth Star Telegram.
I read it in the dead tree paper. I think this is the same article.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/09/27/3400620/report-barnett-shale-supports.html