{"id":1717,"date":"2011-04-16T13:32:54","date_gmt":"2011-04-16T20:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/?p=1717"},"modified":"2011-04-16T13:32:54","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T20:32:54","slug":"fracking-corporations-poison-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/fracking-corporations-poison-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"Fracking Corporations Poison Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>The parallels between the BioMassacre industry and greedy corporations willing to lay waste to communities and the environment, such as Halliburton, are stunning. \u00a0The tip of this lethal iceberg can be viewed in the following article and video clips:<\/strong><\/em><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"640\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BtpSgqUZ3oA\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000; font-size: 19px; line-height: 27px;\">By Michael Rubinkam and Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Associated Press<\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/industries\/energy\/2011-04-12-gas-drilling-fracking-split.htm\">&#8216;Fracking&#8217; for natural gas also splits towns and families<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ron Hilliard came back from church one Sunday to find hundreds of plastic $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills hanging on his fence in Flower Mound, Texas \u2014 Ron Hilliard came back from church one Sunday to find hundreds of plastic $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills hanging on his fence in\u00a0<a title=\"More news, photos about Flower Mound, Texas\" href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/topics\/topic\/Flower+Mound\">Flower Mound, Texas<\/a> \u2014 another message from townsfolk angry at him for signing a lucrative natural gas drilling lease on his suburban Dallas property.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/i.usatoday.net\/money\/_photos\/2011\/04\/12\/gas-drilling-fracking-split-BD2S9NQ-x-large.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.usatoday.net\/money\/_photos\/2011\/04\/12\/gas-drilling-fracking-split-BD2S9NQ-x.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Protestors holds signs  accross the street from a working natural gas well in Flower Mound, Texas in November.\" width=\"245\" height=\"184\" \/><\/a>By LM Otero, APProtestors holds signs accross the street from a working natural gas well in Flower Mound, Texas in November.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Across the country, in\u00a0<a title=\"More news, photos about Damascus\" href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/topics\/topic\/Places,+Geography\/Towns,+Cities,+Counties\/Damascus\">Damascus<\/a>, Pa., drilling advocate Marian Schweighofer awoke one morning to the word \u201cLORAX\u201d \u2014 from the\u00a0<a title=\"More news, photos about Dr. Seuss\" href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/topics\/topic\/People\/Celebrities\/Authors\/Dr.+Seuss\">Dr. Seuss<\/a> book about environmental destruction \u2014 spray-painted on the road near her family\u2019s 712-acre farm.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"640\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dZe1AeH0Qz8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nHilliard and Schweighofer are both living with the rancor erupting in communities nationwide over the volatile issue of producing gas by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<h3>MORE:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/industries\/energy\/2011-04-16-gas-fracking-explainer.htm\">About fracking<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<h3>STORY:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/industries\/energy\/2011-04-13-pa-gas-drilling-permits.htm\">Pennsylvani&#8217;s lax regulation<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<h3>STORY:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/money\/industries\/energy\/2010-08-23-fracking-natural-gas_N.htm\">New York&#8217;s fracking moratorium<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This technique \u2014 used with horizontal drilling \u2014 allows rich stores of natural gas to be extracted from once out-of-reach, dense shale formations more than a mile underground. Intense drilling is under way in the Barnett Shale of\u00a0<a title=\"More news, photos about Texas\" href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/topics\/topic\/Places,+Geography\/States,+Territories,+Provinces,+Islands\/U.S.+States\/Texas\">Texas<\/a>, the Marcellus Shale of\u00a0<a title=\"More news, photos about Pennsylvania\" href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/topics\/topic\/Places,+Geography\/States,+Territories,+Provinces,+Islands\/U.S.+States\/Pennsylvania\">Pennsylvania<\/a>, and other shale regions around the country.<\/p>\n<p>As tens of thousands of Americans become energy magnates in their own backyards, tens of thousands more worry about environmental dangers. The industry insists the process is safe, for people and the environment.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/j2Nc-kxWfmc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nThis energy boom has turned neighbor against neighbor, split towns and families in bitter disputes, and touched off sharp debates over the sudden emergence of gas companies and their 14-story drilling rigs, some rising in the middle of neighborhoods.<\/p>\n<p>One side touts the jobs and prosperity drilling brings, allowing businesses to flourish and farmers to hang on to their land. Gas leases have made millionaires of some property owners. Regions long struggling economically are suddenly flush.<\/p>\n<p>On the other side are those who either won\u2019t gain anything or fervently believe the wealth isn\u2019t worth the risk. Alarmed by toxic spills, scattered drill site explosions and tainted drinking water, they fear a decline in their property values and quality of life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose who own their mineral rights are happier than a pig in mud,\u201d says Flower Mound resident\u00a0<a title=\"More news, photos about Chris Tomlinson\" href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/topics\/topic\/Chris+Tomlinson\">Chris Tomlinson<\/a>, who is making thousands of dollars a month from the gas wells on his land. \u201cThose who don\u2019t, want it to go away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fracking opponents complain the industry has taken environmental and safety shortcuts in their zeal to reap the vast stores of gas once locked tight within the shale.<\/p>\n<p>The acrimony is not likely to subside soon. Even with some 26,000 wells drilled in 16 states through the end of 2009 \u2014 more than half in Texas \u2014 the shale gas revolution is still relatively young .<\/p>\n<p>Most wells have been drilled in the past decade, particularly in Pennsylvania\u2019s white-hot Marcellus Shale region and in the Barnett Shale of Texas, where the new extraction techniques were perfected and the boom began in earnest in 2006. Hundreds of thousands more wells could be drilled in coming decades, according to drilling companies and energy officials.<\/p>\n<p>In Texas, a state so inextricably linked to drilling that an oil derrick adorns the license plate, the feuding in Flower Mound has been extraordinary.<\/p>\n<p>A rural community about 30 miles northwest of Dallas, it had just over 15,000 residents in 1990 but exploded into an affluent and politically influential suburb of 70,000 by 2009. Relative newcomers drawn by its quality of life filled large brick homes in manicured subdivisions and send their children to highly ranked schools. By and large, they don\u2019t own their mineral rights \u2014 and many were outraged when gas wells began popping up near their neighborhoods, sometimes just a few hundred feet from schools and day care centers. Today, more than 40 wells are extracting gas in town.<\/p>\n<p>On the other side are the longtime residents, farmers and ranchers who own their mineral rights and stand to make a lot of money on gas leases and royalties.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was pretty much neighbor against neighbor. People just turned on people \u2026 and it\u2019s left some pretty nasty divides here in town,\u201d says Tomlinson.<\/p>\n<p>Ron Hilliard\u2019s decision to have two wells drilled on his land, a half-mile from a\u00a0<a title=\"More news, photos about Starbucks\" href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/topics\/topic\/Organizations\/Companies\/Food+and+beverage,+Agriculture,+Chemical\/Starbucks+Corp\">Starbucks<\/a>, two schools and hundreds of homes, brought vandalism, anonymous phone calls and insulting blog posts and columns. He finally complained to police.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI owned my mineral rights,\u201d Hilliard says defiantly. \u201cSo I\u2019m not doing anything wrong.\u201d Hilliard, owner of a wholesale lumber business, would not disclose what he was paid for the lease or gas royalties.<\/p>\n<p>Truck traffic on largely suburban roads in the Flower Mound area has increased significantly and the community has endured at least three major spills of thousands of gallons of production liquids.<\/p>\n<p>The Environmental Protection Agency suspects fracking may have contributed to water well contamination in Denton County \u2014 where Flower Mound and another drilling town, Dish, are located\u2014 and other Barnett Shale drilling areas.<\/p>\n<p>The issues in Flower Mound simmered for months, then boiled over at a January 2010 city council hearing on a proposed plant to treat toxic fracking wastewater. About 600 people showed up, many against the plant, but the council set the plan in motion anyway.<\/p>\n<p>That galvanized anti-drilling forces. After a bitter campaign, the town\u2019s pro-drilling mayor, Jody Smith, was ousted and an anti-drilling slate swept into office.<\/p>\n<p>Less than 15 miles away is the town of Dish, population about 200, where Mayor Calvin Tillman raised a national ruckus about gas drilling. The Dish area now has about 60 drilling wells, gas production pads and rigs, 12 pipelines, a treating facility and a compressor station.<\/p>\n<p>Cancer-causing benzene, sometimes in levels considered dangerous to human health, were reported last year by Texas environmental regulators who took air tests in the Dish area. Residents believe at least one domestic water well was contaminated and that gas operations killed horses on a ranch not far from the compressor \u2014 a claim the gas companies dispute.<\/p>\n<p>Tillman, whose home is about a quarter-mile from the compressor, was afraid for his two sons\u2019 health. Bad drilling odors coincided with nightly spikes in air emissions from the compression station, Tillman said on his blog, and were so bad that both of his youngsters were often awakened in the middle of the night with severe nosebleeds.<\/p>\n<p>By February, Tillman decided to leave the community in which he had invested time, money and his heart. It was tough, he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut it would be a whole lot tougher if my kids came down with some strange illness in five years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Slowing the tide in\u00a0<a title=\"More news, photos about New York\" href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/topics\/topic\/Places,+Geography\/States,+Territories,+Provinces,+Islands\/U.S.+States\/New+York\">New York<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>New York, sitting atop the vast Marcellus Shale, has enacted a drilling moratorium that holds the wealth at bay while new regulations are drawn up. New Yorkers \u2014 some wary, some perhaps jealous \u2014 watch as landowners in Pennsylvania, Texas and other states get rich while regulators struggle with explosions, spills and tainted water.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople that don\u2019t own the land are saying, \u2018Let\u2019s slow down and learn from the mistakes of other places,\u2019\u201d said Matthew Ryan, mayor of Binghamton, N.Y., in shale country about 70 miles northwest of Damascus. \u201cThose that own land are anxious to \u2018drill, baby, drill.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Binghamton hosted the EPA last September for the last of four national hearings to get public input on the environmental and public health impacts of fracking as the agency prepares for a national study on drinking water impacts.<\/p>\n<p>EPA said 3,500 people crowded its hearings in Denver, Fort Worth, Texas, Canonsburg, Pa., and Binghamton. In New York, opponents carried signs saying \u201cKids can\u2019t drink gas,\u201d while supporters, including union workers eager for jobs, chanted \u201cPass gas now!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you get a gathering of people together, there\u2019s tension and raised voices,\u201d says Ryan, who favors a more cautious approach that he believes would ensure strong enough regulations to protect public health and the environment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Division in Pennsylvania<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In rural Pennsylvania, where nearly 3,000 gas wells have been drilled in the Marcellus Shale since 2005 and tens of thousands more are planned, the tension is leaving deep fissures in once tight-knit communities.<\/p>\n<p>Schweighofer, a 54-year-old mother of five, founded the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance, more than 1,300 landowners who negotiated a master lease with New York City-based Hess Corp. to drill for natural gas in Pennsylvania\u2019s scenic northeastern tip.<\/p>\n<p>She got several death threats from anti-drilling residents or activists \u2014 one woman declared she was \u201cgonna shoot you with my thirty-aught-six\u201d and a man advocated in an online post that \u201cone well-placed bullet\u201d be put in Schweighofer\u2019s head. Schweighofer began sleeping with a gun at her bedside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re farmers,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not used to standing out and having folks holler at me, and saying evil things. I\u2019m just not used to that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One member of her group, 70-year-old Mike Uretsky, says some neighbors don\u2019t talk to him since he signed the lease. Yet, the retired New York University professor says he understands where the other side is coming from.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEverybody\u2019s interested in safety, aesthetics, community, quality of life,\u201d he said. \u201cThe interpretations of those things, and where the boundaries are, differ from one person to another. The frustrating thing is people can\u2019t sit down and talk and say, \u2018Hey, how do we work together?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The northeastern Pennsylvania village of Dimock, population 1,400, is another prime example of the split over drilling.<\/p>\n<p>State regulators blame Houston-based Cabot Oil &amp; Gas for contaminating residential water wells with methane gas. Some Dimock residents were able to light their tap water on fire \u2014 just as Colorado homeowners did in a dramatic scene in the Academy Award-nominated\u00a0<a title=\"More news, photos about HBO\" href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/topics\/topic\/Organizations\/Companies\/Publishers,+Media,+Music\/HBO\">HBO<\/a> documentary \u201cGasland,\u201d about the effects of fracking.<\/p>\n<p>Some homeowners with fouled water have become high-profile anti-drilling activists, suing Cabot and taking their case to media outlets worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>Two years of negative publicity brought them a backlash.<\/p>\n<p>When Pennsylvania regulators ordered Cabot to spend $12 million to provide municipal water to the 19 affected homes, pro-drilling residents and businesses banded together as \u201cEnough Already\u201d and circulated a petition that 1,600 water line opponents signed. State regulators relented and settled with Cabot for $4.1 million, enough to pay the homeowners twice the value of their ruined homes.<\/p>\n<p>The homeowners feel sandbagged by the community.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou want to feel like a really lonely, lonely person?\u201d asked Scott Ely, one whose water well was ruined. \u201cMove to Carter Road,\u201d the gravel lane in the rural, forested area where most of the contamination was found. He said people he\u2019s known his whole life have turned against him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey think we are money-hungry \u2026 we\u2019re chasing the almighty buck,\u201d he said of the settlement money. He and the other homeowners had not asked for money and were content with the plan to have clean water piped to them after nearly two years of bathing, washing, cooking and cleaning with trucked-in supplies. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dimock attorney Bill Aileo, who helped lead the petition drive, believes the benefits of drilling have been lost in an isolated case of contamination.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody\u2019s abandoned them. I think they\u2019ve become somewhat detached from reality,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>About 60 miles away, across the New York state line, business at Grady Avant\u2019s Narrowsburg coffee shop plummeted after a false rumor circulated that he and his partner had signed a gas company lease. He opposes drilling.<\/p>\n<p>His regulars \u2014 largely opposed to drilling \u2014 stopped coming. People shot him dirty looks and some called to complain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt took weeks for us to undo most of it,\u201d he said, but eventually, business returned to normal.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, Avant, 39, has helped start FrackAlert, a group that seeks to shift the debate to the larger political arena \u201cto ease local tensions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople have to treat each other better,\u201d he said, \u201cor otherwise there will be no community when everything is done.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The parallels between the BioMassacre industry and greedy corporations willing to lay waste to communities and the environment, such as Halliburton, are stunning. \u00a0The tip of this lethal iceberg can be viewed in the following article and video clips: By &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/fracking-corporations-poison-americans\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1718,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions\/1718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}