Hearing on Fracking Wastewater Well in Sioux County, NE 4:17 Min by BoldNebraska, March 25, 2015
WATCH: Nebraska farmer silences oil and gas committee with invitation to drink water tainted by fracking by Raw Story, March 28, 2015
Appearing before a Nebraska Oil & Gas Conservation committee hearing, a local farmer received nothing but silence from the pro-fracking members of the board after he invited them to drink glasses of water tainted by fracking.
In the video, uploaded to YouTube by BoldNebraska, Nebraskan James Osborne used his 3 minutes before the committee to visually explain what fracking waste can do to the water table, dramatically pouring out water containing his own “private mixture” of fracking additives.
The committee is holding public hearings on a proposal by an oil company to ship out-of-state fracking wastewater into Nebraska where it will be dumped into a “disposal well” in Sioux County. According to a report, the Terex Energy Corp wants to truck as much as 10,000 barrels a day of the chemical-laden fracking wastewater to a ranch north of Mitchell, Nebraska for disposal.
Explaining that he has ties to the oil industry and that he is still on the fence about fracking, Osbourne explained fluid dynamics to the board while pouring out three cups of the sludgy water that could result from spills or from seeping into the water table.
Referring to earlier testimony, Osbourne said, “So you told me this morning that you would drink this water,” as he indicated the cups.
“So would you drink it? Yes or no?” he asked, only to be met by silence by the stone-faced group before a member explained they wouldn’t be answering any questions.
“Oh, you can’t answer any questions? Well my answer would be ‘no.’ I don’t want this in the water that will travel entirely across this state in three days,” Osborne said. “There is no doubt there will be contamination. There will be spills.”
Osborne left the glasses on the table before thanking the committee and leaving to applause.
WATCH: Nebraska Man Asks Oil Commission Just One Question: ‘Would You Drink It?’ by Huffingtonpost.com, March 28, 2015
James Osborn has just one question: “Would you drink it?”
“It” being a mysterious brown sludge — allegedly fracking fluid — that Osborn brought in a foam cup to a public hearing in Sidney, Nebraska, in front of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission on Tuesday.
And no, it wasn’t a hypothetical question.
Osborn, the first of more than 50 people to speak out Tuesday on a proposed fracking wastewater storage well in the western part of the state, chatted amiably to the commissioners as he produced three plastic cups and poured a little bottled water into each. He then topped off each of the cups with a healthy portion of the mystery fluid, and offered them to the commissioners to drink.
“You told me this morning when I was in here… that you would drink this water,” Osborn can be heard saying in a video posted to YouTube. He then gestures to the cups and calmly asks, “So, would you drink it?”
A pregnant silence follows, broken only when one of the commissioners cautions, “Sir, we [can’t] comment on this.”
Osborn spoke for several more minutes, then thanked the commissioners and the audience for their time and left the room.
According to the Omaha World-Herald, the three cups sat “untouched” for the remainder of the two-and-a-half-hour meeting. [Emphasis added]
Petition: DON’T FRACK OUR WATER
Dallas doctor, Alfonso Rodriguez, gets no answers on fracking fluid ingredients by Brendon Gibbons, March 28, 2015, citizensvoice
After his failed attempts to fight the state’s oil and gas law in court, Alfonso Rodriguez, M.D., is ready to sign a nondisclosure form to view a full list of ingredients in hydraulic fracturing fluid. If only someone could tell him where to find it.
Since 2010, the kidney specialist has been trying to obtain information on the chemical mix used to frack a specific Chesapeake Energy Corp. well in Bradford County.
He said he believes it could be the source of serious problems affecting one of his patients, a Luzerne County man who was coated in flowback fluid during a well blowout about five years ago. … In the years since the blowout, the patient has lost renal function and experienced an immune system collapse, Rodriguez said. Other industry workers have come to him since then. Many of them share similar symptoms, he said.
He described them as generally healthy, vigorous people who experienced a rapid decline in health over a short time. “These are hardworking folks that are proud to be working,” he said.
Early on, Rodriguez tried to identify the frack fluid chemicals through hospital officials — he would not say which hospital — who he said told him the gas companies would not provide this information.
Rodriguez and his wife Mary, a registered nurse, are members of Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, a Luzerne County group outspoken on what they see as risks the industry poses to local communities.
Believing he had an ethical obligation to find and share frack fluid ingredients, Rodriguez sued the state in 2012. A federal judge dismissed the suit in June, arguing Rodriguez lacked legal standing. Last week, an appellate court upheld the decision. Still, a provision in the state’s Act 13 of 2012 should allow Rodriguez access to the full list of chemicals used in a specific well, including those deemed “trade secrets,” as long as he signs a form saying he will not disclose them.
… Last week, they called state health and environmental agencies, including the Department of Health, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of State, the State Board of Medicine and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. No one knew anything about a nondisclosure form, they said.
They even visited Chesapeake Energy’s Bradford County office last Friday. The company directed them to speak to one of its environmental managers who was away in Oklahoma, Chesapeake’s home state, for 11 days, Mrs. Rodriguez said. They also sent a written request, hoping the company will disclose it. Chesapeake declined to comment for this story.
Contacted this week about the nondisclosure form and whether the agency receives inquiries from doctors about it, a Department of Health spokesperson referred all questions on the subject to the DEP.
The DEP does not issue nondisclosure forms for this purpose, according a Friday statement from the DEP’s central office in Harrisburg. The DEP restated the requirements in Act 13 and invited doctors, gas companies and chemical manufacturers to inform the DEP if a party doesn’t follow the process.
Act 13 also mandated disclosure on a well-by-well basis to FracFocus.org, though it does not do Rodriguez’s patient much good. His exposure happened years before Act 13. The well in question does not show up on FracFocus. [Same as Encana’s hundreds of frac wells in the fresh water zones at Rosebud before 2013]
… The Rodriguezes find the lack of answers has been frustrating and ultimately harmful to their patients. Other health care workers’ efforts to unlock the frack fluid cookbook have also been unsuccessful.
Amelia Paré, M.D., a plastic and reconstructive surgeon in McMurray, said she tried unsuccessfully to use the nondisclosure system after she began seeing patients living near gas sites who developed inflamed sores on their faces.
“I think this has been confounding for many of us,” she said.
Endless Mountains Health Systems, Commonwealth Health, and Geisinger Health System — whose emergency rooms might see patients in Northeast Pennsylvania for acute chemical injuries — did not know anything about a nondisclosure form. Geisinger would treat a patient with a heavy exposure to an unknown mix of chemicals based on the symptoms they present, emergency manager Stephanie Gryboski said in an email.
She pointed to a U.S. Department of Health & Human Services tool doctors can use to work backward from a patient’s symptoms to identify a likely cause. The tool recommends equipment and procedures first responders should use. [Would working backwards on your case if you were poisoned reassure you of adequate health care?]
…
One problem is that companies operating the wells often do not know all the ingredients used in their frack fluid, he said. [Is that true? Or convenient lie to keep the deadly toxics secret?]
“Although Chesapeake or Statoil or Anadarko may be using these chemicals, they don’t manufacture them,” he said. “They’re dependent upon vendors.”
Under federal laws, manufacturers can avoid disclosing proprietary chemicals, hazardous components of less than 1 percent in a mixture and carcinogens of less than 0.1 percent in a mixture, he said.
“The user of the chemical could provide the (safety data sheet) to the doctor, but that would not necessarily be the whole truth or nothing but the truth,” he said. [Emphasis added]
Fracking wastewater in California full of harmful, cancerous chemicals by RT, March 12, 2015
“more than a dozen hazardous chemicals and metals as well as radiation were detected in the wastewater, some at average levels that are hundreds or thousands of times higher than the state’s drinking water standards or public health goals.” …
“Petroleum chemicals, heavy metals and radioactive elements, plus high levels of dissolved solids, are among the pollutants found in fracking wastewater samples tested under the new disclosure program,” …
“They include benzene, chromium-6, lead and arsenic – all listed under California’s Proposition 65 as causes of cancer or reproductive harm. Nearly every one of the 293 samples tested contained benzene at levels ranging from twice to more than 7,000 times the state drinking water standard. The wastewater also carried, on average, thousands of times more radioactive radium than the state’s public health goals consider safe, as well as elevated levels of potentially harmful ions such as nitrate and chloride.”
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Would Harper and his big oil CSIS and the RCMP consider this post promoting terrorism by way of harm to the economic security of Canada, aka private corporate profit, under Bill C-51?