EPA to citizens: Frack you

If Hollywood were to make a thriller about the gas fields out here, David Hogle would be a shoo-in for the oil and gas company guy with the big-time swagger. He is, however, the EPA's regional energy advisor. With leather cowboy boots and a thick mustache, Hogle, a structural geologist who worked for Pennzoil before coming to the EPA 19 years ago, ends every workday by checking the going price for methane gas.

"Time is money to industry," he says, as he describes the agency's role in the new "energy up-cycle." "They're going to do everything they can to maintain profit, and that includes environmental protection." He explains that if companies aren't proactive about caring for the land, it costs them more later due to lawsuits or regulatory fines. Three thick white notebooks that contain the 1,725-page Energy Policy Act of 2005 spill off the chair beside him. "I've read that thing all the way through twice. The first sitting took me two weeks."

Hogle explains that it really isn't the EPA's job to deal with the health concerns of citizens in places like Garfield County. "The EPA doesn't control oil and gas production; the states control that. If citizens have a complaint, they would go to the [state oil and gas commission]. They're the first line of defense. They get the first swing at the ball," Hogle says, leaning back in his chair. "We help them when they request it. We don't override state decisions for the most part."

So far the state hasn't asked the EPA to conduct any investigations, nor is the state likely to conduct any itself anytime soon, says Tricia Beaver, a Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) staff person. It's simply not set up to conduct epidemiological studies. "We don't have anybody here with a medical background," she says from her office in Denver. "We don't have any health assessment or risk assessment type employees."

Furthermore, the agency is overwhelmed by the increased pace of drilling. There are only 10 inspectors statewide to monitor nearly 30,000 permitted wells. Of these, 17,000 haven't been inspected in the past five years, according to COGCC statistics leaked to Salon. "We're doing the best we can with the people we have, but we have more volume than we have people to address it," Beaver says. "It's difficult."

Longtime citizen activists say the state agency's dual mandate -- to promote gas development and to regulate its impacts on public health and the environment -- creates a basic conflict of interest. By state law, five of the seven oil and gas commission members are allowed to work for the oil and gas industry, often as geological or engineering consultants, while serving on the board.

"It's the classic situation of the fox guarding hen house," says Gwen Lachelt, executive director the Oil and Gas Accountability Project, a network of 120 citizen organizations from the United States and Canada. "State oil and gas agencies are primarily charged with developing oil and gas resources. We need a federal agency that isn't tied to local revenue streams and has the ability to look at regional impacts. Without the EPA, who will protect us?"

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Nestled in a two-story office, located on a sleepy, three-block-long main street in Paonia, Colo., two hours of south of Silt, Theo Colborn, an environmental health expert, and her two-member staff, are conducting detective work. It requires no magnifying glasses or bloodhounds but a lot of searches though Internet databases and scientific studies. In order to show the EPA, policy makers, and physicians the potential health impacts of gas development, Colborn is attempting to accumulate all that is and isn't known about the chemicals used to extract natural gas.

"What we have been able to accomplish already shows that there's a tremendous need for monitoring drinking-water resources, and it must start prior to any development," says Colborn, a professor of zoology at the University of Florida and the author of "Our Stolen Future," which looks at the harmful impacts of synthetic chemicals on people and wildlife. "Anybody with any common sense could see that this is a very serious problem."

The most serious problems may stem from fracking. The chemicals pumped into the wells to aid the flow of gas to the surface include known carcinogens such as benzene, naphthalene, arsenic and lead. Several chemicals that may be injected can be lethal at levels as low as 0.1 part per million, according to the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. Up to 40 percent of the fracturing fluids remain in the formation, according to studies conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the oil and gas industry; that means that fluids such as diesel and benzene may seep into the surrounding soil, groundwater, and water wells. The wastewater that the industry recaptures after the well hole is drilled often sits in open evaporation pits for upward of a year.

Because so many of the chemicals used in the fluid are proprietary, the industry isn't required to disclose their contents or ratios of concentration. The products' material data safety sheets, OSHA-required forms available on the Web, warn that the volatile chemicals have serious skin, respiratory and nervous-system effects. So far, Colborn and her staff have identified 190 chemicals that could be used in fracking fluids in Colorado, but there could be far more. A study by the Canadian government found more than 900 chemicals used in the fracking process.

Of the chemicals Colborn has identified, many have never been subject to any long-term animal studies to determine their impact on fetuses, children and other vulnerable human subpopulations. Also troubling, the EPA doesn't require that companies study how different chemicals interact or change in composition when exposed to heat. The literature that does exist only indicates acute health reactions; it doesn't explain what could happen in the long-term when people are exposed to lower doses on an intermittent or constant level.

"It's quite real to me why the people in Garfield County are concerned," says Colborn, talking at a mad sprint. "[Industry is] putting chemicals in water that you don't even want to take a bath in, let alone drink."

In 2001, while EnCana Gas Co., a Canadian company that is among the largest gas producers in North America, was drilling four gas wells near Laura Amos' property, the cap on her water well blew off and fizzy gray water gushed from the well. After the company assured them that no gas or chemicals had polluted their well, Laura, her husband and their baby daughter continued to drink the water. Two years later, Amos, 43, contracted a tumor in her adrenal gland. She had to have both the tumor and gland removed; she's healthy now, but without her adrenal gland, she is at risk for future thyroid problems.

Such rare tumors are associated with a chemical found in fracturing fluid called 2BE, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. EnCana has subsequently admitted that it used 2BE while fracking in the same geological formation that Amos' water comes from, just 750 feet away from her water well. In March, the COGCC fined the company $99,400 for contaminating the Amos well. While it didn't specify whether fracking fluid seeped into Amos' water, local newspapers reported EnCana reached an out-of-court settlement with Amos; both parties are legally obliged not to disclose the amount.

"I can't believe that all that time I was drinking water that was probably poisoning us," Amos says. "The more I've learned, the angrier I've become." Amos points to the gas well just several hundred yards from her house, a wood cabin. A brassy brunette who runs an outfitter business with her husband, she worries intensely about how the well water may have affected her daughter. Amos and her family are moving over the mountains into the next valley, where gas development is less prevalent. EnCana, she says, "knowingly and willingly blew the top off that water well -- and there could be contaminants in the water -- but they decided to expose us anyway. We have no protection. I haven't felt like anyone cares about what we're being exposed to. There's too much money below us. Our health is being sacrificed. But to industry, that's just a small cost of doing business."

Next page: EPA staffer: "It's just about corporate power to get the gas out"