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Students Sue University Over Ties to Koch Brothers

By Brandi Buchman

Accusing the state school of violating public records law, a group of George Mason University students and alumni brought a lawsuit to shed light on the support it gets from billionaire energy tycoons Charles and David Koch.

Augustus Thomson, a current undergraduate, filed the complaint on May 26 with the student-led group Transparent GMU, saying they have been waiting nearly two months for a response to their request for records on the school's contribution and gift records from 2008 to 2012.

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Abandoned Air Force Base in Greenland. Ken Bower

U.S. Military Is World’s Biggest Polluter

By Whitney Webb

Last week, mainstream media outlets gave minimal attention to the news that the U.S. Naval station in Virginia Beach had spilled an estimated 94,000 gallons of jet fuel into a nearby waterway, less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean.

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John Bowler, RSPB Tiree

Monsanto PCBs May Leave Orca Pod 'Doomed to Extinction'

By Carey Wedler

The Guardian reported last Tuesday that Lulu, the full-grown whale who died, "was a member of the UK's last resident pod and a postmortem also showed she had never produced a calf. The pollutants, called PCBs, are known to cause infertility and these latest findings add to strong evidence that the pod is doomed to extinction."

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The True Legacy of David Rockefeller

No one person encapsulates the enduring legacy of the "robber barons" of the Industrial Age quite like David Rockefeller. Rockefeller, who died Monday at the age of 101, was the last surviving grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the oil tycoon who became America's first billionaire and the patriarch of what would become one of the most powerful and wealthiest families in American history. David Rockefeller, an undeniable product of American nobility, lived his entire life in the echelons of U.S. society, becoming symbolic of the elite who often direct public policy to a much greater extent than many realize, albeit often from the shadows.

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Photo credit: Greg Webb / International Atomic Energy Agency

Radiation Level at Fukushima Is So High It Killed Two Robots

By Whitney Webb

While media attention has largely drifted away from the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in the years since the disaster, a recent and disturbing development has once again made Fukushima difficult if not impossible to ignore.

On Feb. 2, Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO, quietly released a statement regarding the discovery of a hole measuring 2 meters in diameter within the metal grating at the bottom of the containment vessel in the plant's No. 2 reactor.

Though news of this hole is indeed concerning, even more shocking was the associated jump in radiation detected in the area. According to estimates taken at the time of the hole's discovery, radiation inside the reactor was found to have reached 530 sieverts per hour, a massive increase compared to the 73 sieverts per hour recorded after the disaster. To put these figures in perspective, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's maximum amount of radiation exposure permitted for astronauts over their entire lifetime is 1 sievert.

Human exposure to 5 sieverts would kill half of those exposed within a month, while 10 sieverts would prove fatal to nearly all exposed within a matter of weeks. An official with Japan's National Institute of Radiological Sciences told the Japan Times that medical professionals with the organization had never even considered working with such high levels of radiation.

A nearly 1-square-meter hole is seen in a walkway in the containment vessel of the No. 2 reactor at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. It is thought that the heat of the melted nuclear fuel caused the walkway to give way.TEPCO

TEPCO initially tried to counter public fears by stating that most of the reactor's nuclear fuel remained in the containment vessel despite the hole. However, on Feb. 3, TEPCO spokesman Yuichi Okamura was quoted as saying that "it's highly possible that melted fuel leaked through." At the time, TEPCO said that it would send a robot into the area to survey the full extent of the damage in order to definitively determine whether fuel had leaked outside of the reactor into the surrounding environment.

The first robot, deployed on Feb. 16, was unable to conduct any meaningful measurements, as the extreme conditions within the reactor forced operators to abandon it within the containment vessel. The "scorpion" robot, manufactured by Toshiba, was meant to record images of the reactor's interior and collect accurate—instead of estimated—data on the levels of radiation within. Within three hours of deployment, the device stopped responding to operators despite its stated ability to withstand high levels of radiation. TEPCO has not commented on its new plans to gauge the damage recently uncovered in the reactor in the wake of the robot's malfunction.

When a second robot was sent to investigate, it also failed.

One of the World's Worst Nuclear Disasters Grows Even worse

Despite a lack of widespread media coverage and TEPCO's reassurances that things are under control, there is concern that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima—already one of the worst nuclear disasters in human history—is quickly growing even worse.

PBS News reported last year that more than 80 percent of of the radioactivity from the three damaged reactors was released into the Pacific Ocean, as 300 tons of radioactive water have leaked from the reactors every day since an earthquake and subsequent tsunami crippled the plant in 2011.

The Pacific Ocean may have diluted much of the radiation, due to its massive volume, yet radiation and debris from the disaster has been detected along the western coast of Canada and the U.S. Traces of Fukushima radiation were first detected in early 2015, when trace amounts of cesium-134 and cesium-137 appeared in samples collected near Vancouver Island. Then, in December of last year, researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution detected seaborne cesium-134 along the Oregon coast.

Though no link between the presence of radiation has been officially established, fisheries along the entire western coast of North America have been collapsing. Last month, the U.S. secretary of commerce reported on the failure of nine salmon and crab fisheries in Alaska, California and Washington—all due to "unexpected" yet steep declines in fish populations.

While scientists and government authorities alike are "stumped" as to the cause, fish caught along the West Coast have showed high increases in the levels of cesium for years—as far back as 2014. Researchers have maintained that fish, however, are still "safe" to eat despite the fact that at least one group of doctors agrees that there is "no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources, period."

The Japanese government, TEPCO and mainstream media continue to insist that this massive release of radiation into the environment has had no effect on human or environmental health. However, thyroid cancer rates have soared in Japan, with 131 children developing thyroid cancer in the six years since the disaster. That total is equivalent to about 600 thyroid cancer cases per million children, while the child thyroid cancer rate elsewhere is about one or two children per million per year.

Despite the marked increase in cancer rates, TEPCO and the Japanese government insist that Fukushima radiation is "unlikely" to result in a greater incidence of cancer cases. However, exposure to Iodine-131, the main radionuclide released into the air and water during the meltdown, is known to increase human risk of thyroid cancer and is the most clearly defined environmental factor associated with thyroid tumors, suggesting that a correlation between radiation and exposure likely exists.

This latest breach in one of the plant's damaged reactors as well as TEPCO's inability to even properly gauge the extent of the damage suggests that we have yet to see the full devastating potential of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Reposted with permission from our media associate MintPress News.

Energy

20+ Proposed Pipelines Threatening Indigenous Communities

By Joe Catron

As completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline remains on standby after the Army Corps of Engineers announced on Dec. 5 that it would not authorize the development company to drill under the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, similar projects continue to encroach on indigenous communities across the U.S.

"There are probably 20 or so pipelines being protested in various ways at any given time, and they affect many more reservations and traditional homelands than that," Aaron Carapella, a Cherokee cartographer in Warner, Oklahoma, told MintPress News.

Carapella recently designed a map showing how pipelines under development in the U.S. cross dozens of indigenous territories, many of which are the sites of contemporary Native communities.

"There are tens of thousands of existing pipelines throughout the land, so I chose to focus on those projects that are not quite completed, that are being resisted or that are only in proposal stages," he said.

No Resistance Equals Always Losing

Carapella, whose maps illustrate the past and present indigenous presence in the Americas, combined them with new information from various sources.

"I used the government's own proposed pipelines lists and maps, as well as activist and tribal websites, and overlaid them onto my existing map," he said.

He added that a task of this nature is difficult to complete.

"I need to include more pipelines on my map, like Comanche Trail and Pecos, both of [which] are being protested," he said.

"There is one running through a remote part of the Navajo Nation at the Chuska Mountains that is being protested, as well as several across the Great Lakes."

But he hopes that his project will help to magnify the scale of a continental conflict between Native communities and pipeline projects that, when it breaks into the headlines, is usually framed as a singular issue at a particular location.

"We won some victories and lost some good causes, but no resistance equals always losing, so resistance is necessary," he said.

"Campaigns to get out the word are necessary."

Endangering the Water of Millions

In one little-remarked struggle, the Ramapough Lunaape Nation, a small community nestled among the Ramapo Mountains chain of the Appalachians in northern New Jersey and southern New York, face the looming threat of the Pilgrim Pipeline.

Members of the Ramapough Lunaap demonstrate during the Clean Energy March in Philadelphia on July 24.Mark Dixon / Flickr

"The Pilgrim Pipeline is another of the many needless pipelines running through the Lunaape homeland which is endangering the water of millions, while it appears to be criminally circumventing federal law," Ramapough Lunaape Chief Dwaine Perry told MintPress.

The Ramapough Lunaape have long been the targets of outside attention, ranging from innocent curiosity to racist invective, due to their traditional life—seemingly paradoxical to some—centered 25 miles from New York City amid the suburbs of New Jersey.

Despite the long record of Lunaape contact with European settlers, dating to Giovanni da Verrazzano's 1524 voyage into the Hudson River, the Ramapugh Lunaapes' relative isolation throughout much of colonial and U.S. history lent the group an air of mystery, with their very existence more likely to be mentioned as legend than fact until the 20th century.

A map of the controversial 178-mile-long parallel Pilgrim pipelines proposed for New York's Hudson Valley/Northern New Jersey. FracTracker Alliance

"Is this logical, you ask yourself, that here so close to Times Square, several thousand people like these live and have their being?" an irate local historian wrote in 1941.

"No it isn't logical at all, it's 150 years and across the world."

They Bribed, Threatened, Even Murdered

Over the ensuing decades, the harsh logic of a surging industrial economy would reach deep into the Ramapough Lunaapes' mountain enclaves.

Most destructively, Mafia-controlled haulers operating on behalf of the Ford Motor Company's nearby Mahwah Assembly plant dumped millions of gallons of toxic paint sludge before the facility closed in 1980.

"An analysis of public records and interviews with truckers who hauled Ford's waste shows mob-controlled contractors dumped anywhere they could get away with it," an investigative report by NorthJersey.com found in 2009.

"They bribed, threatened, even murdered to maintain control of Ford's trash."

Ford's lucrative contracts sparked clashes between rival mobsters that at times turned deadly.

In a notorious incident that spurred a rare federal investigation of the Mafia's stranglehold on industrial waste disposal, Genovese crime family figure Joseph "Joey Surprise" Feola "was lured to a garage in 1965 and strangled as a favor to the notorious godfather Carlo Gambino," NorthJersey.com reported.

"His offense? Stealing the Mahwah stop"—located in the heart of Ramapough Lunaape territory—"from a Gambino-controlled company."

Watch Hudson River at Risk 6: A Pipeline Runs Through It:

Government at all Levels

Despite this momentary attention, the regional news portal also found that "[g]overnment at all levels shares the blame" for Ford's colluding with the mob and poisoning the Ramapough Lunaape and other communities near the plant.

"For years, it allowed mobsters to turn New Jersey into a toxic dumping ground."

Toxic Legacy, an investigative series conducted by the Bergen Record in 2005, explored the deadly effects of Ford's deposits in the old Ringwood Mines landfill site on the surrounding Ramapough Lunaape.

The newspaper's soil tests found levels of lead, arsenic and xylenes at more than 100 times the recommended maximums, while nearby levels of both health disorders, ranging from nosebleeds to cancer, and learning disabilities had skyrocketed.

A lawsuit against Ford by hundreds of Ramapough Lunaape, chronicled in the HBO documentary Mann v. Ford, ended in 2010 with a disappointing settlement.

Their hands forced by the specter of a possible Ford bankruptcy, 633 individual plaintiffs accepted one-time payouts between $4,368 and $34,594 each.

"It's probably a vacation for a CEO for a week with his family," lead plaintiff Wayne Mann told NorthJersey.com.

"A healthy family."

The Very Same Watershed

Steeled by the legacy of Ford, today the Ramapough Lunaape confront the threat of Pilgrim.

A proposed 178-mile, double-barreled pipeline, project would run from Albany, New York, to Linden, New Jersey, transporting Bakken crude oil south and refined petroleum products north.

"We are adamantly opposed to any pipeline that has no internal market and endangers all of our water, including one of only seven sole source aquifers in the United States," Perry said.

In July, the Ramapough Lunaape mobilized to Philadelphia, where more than 100 helped to lead the March for a Clean Energy Revolution during the Democratic National Convention.

"Pilgrim is proposing to cut through the very same watershed lands where Ford dumped paint sludge into the shafts of the abandoned iron mines once worked by our ancestors," Perry wrote at the time.

"Learning from our long history of struggle against the toxic effects of environmental injustice, we are now organizing with the broader community to stop Pilgrim's dirty pipelines before they're built."

We Need Help Now

The word 'Hate' was scrawled, along with other hateful graffiti, on the sacred home of the Ramapough Lunaape.Chief Dwaine Perry

In recent months, the Ramapough Lunaape have joined their struggle with that of the Sioux water protectors at Standing Rock, even offering the Split Rock Sweetwater Camp as a smaller reflection of the massive gatherings blocking the Dakota Access Pipeline half a continent away.

Perry calls it a "site that we have been using for Native American ceremony for over a quarter of a century, and have invited all to enjoy the land and to share in our culture."

"Currently, the prayers of Split Rock have been directed toward Standing Rock."

But like Standing Rock, the camp is surrounded by threats.

"Recently the Split Rock Sweetwater Camp has come under a great deal of duress, both from the local Polo Club community, of whom we are the largest landowners, and the Mahwah municipality, in an apparent push to deny us the right to open air prayer and the right to assembly," Perry said.

He added that opposition has come not only from local police and other public bodies, but also racist vigilantes.

"We have had swastikas and the word 'hate' drawn on our sacred home, and an eleven-car police raid on two of the land guardians for charging their phone."

While the backlash against indigenous self-determination that has included attack dogs, concussion grenades, pepper spray and water cannons in North Dakota takes different forms in New Jersey, it nevertheless seems familiar.

Perry has appealed online for supporters to gather at the site on Friday, when he says it faces the threat of "eviction" by police, days after Mahwah officials warned in a letter that use of the indigenous land as a "place of public assembly" requires zoning approval from the local government.

"In effect Split Rock Sweetwater is now under the same kind of duress as Standing Rock," Perry told MintPress.

"We need help now, legal and tangible, to help us keep and occupy our own land through this threat."

Resist One Pipeline at a Time

As similar struggles develop across the U.S., the effects of the unprecedented Native mobilization at Standing Rock and its overwhelming public support remain to be seen.

By all accounts, Dakota Access garnered such massive opposition not because of the development's exceptionality, but rather its familiarity.

And with a historic, if provisional, victory under its belt, many expect a burgeoning indigenous movement to intensify its resistance to similar projects elsewhere.

"This is an ongoing problem, and we are probably going to have to resist one pipeline at a time for many decades to come, and maybe longer," Carapella, the cartographer, said.

"This is one victory in a very long battle, a battle that has gone on for 500 years," he added of the permit denial at Standing Rock.

"We are very aware of the next steps forward."

Cherokee cartographer Aaron Carapella's map of pipeline development of tribal lands:

Aaron Carapella

Reposted with permission from our media associate MintPress News.

Energy

Fate of Dakota Access Pipeline Rests in Hands of Federal Judge

By Matt Agorist, The Free Thought Project

Earlier this month, a few dozen Native Americans showed up to protest the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile-long pipeline that would cross right through their sacred land. As word spread, however, the few dozen turned into more than 4,000 native Americans. Because of the large turnout, a brief victory ensued for the people after the developers of the four-state oil pipeline agreed to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline until after a federal hearing.

Before the hearing started, however, North Dakota homeland security director Greg Wilz ordered the removal of state-owned trailers and water tanks from the protest encampment, despite the sweltering heat, because of alleged disorderly conduct.

In spite of the government clamping down on them, the protesters remained vigilant. And, on Friday, they saw another victory. The Army Corps of Engineers confirmed that Energy Transfer Partners, the company constructing the Dakota Access Pipeline, does not have a written easement from the agency to build on Corps property, just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

"That's true they don't have the easement that's required to install the segment that's across the Oahe project," said Larry Janis, Army Corps Of Engineers, according to KFYR.

Now, the project seems to be in limbo as there is no current timetable on when the easement will be granted. However, the Corps has stated that they have issued a permission that will allow for the easement to be written.

Meanwhile, there is an ongoing case, which began last week in DC, that is revealing a slew of corruption. As DeSmog reports:

A review of court documents for the case currently unfolding in the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC has revealed that the tribal liaison for Energy Transfer Partners tasked with abiding by Section 106 passed through the revolving door and formerly worked for the Army Corps. The finding also raises key ethical questions in the field of archaeology.

That liaison—Michelle Dippel—technically works for a Dakota Access LLC contractor named HDR, a company which helps pipeline companies and other oil and gas industry infrastructure companies secure permits for their projects. Dippel, the South Central Region Environmental Services Lead forHDR, began her career as a project manager for the Army Corps' Fort Worth District and also formerly worked for the natural gas pipeline company Spectra Energy.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II, explains below how this conflict of interests allowed for the fast-tracking of the pipeline, via the New York Times:

"The Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the National Advisory Council on Historic Preservation supported more protection of the tribe's cultural heritage, but the Corps of Engineers and Energy Transfer Partners turned a blind eye to our rights. The first draft of the company's assessment of the planned route through our treaty and ancestral lands did not even mention our tribe.

"The Dakota Access pipeline was fast-tracked from Day 1 using the Nationwide Permit No. 12 process, which grants exemption from environmental reviews required by the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by treating the pipeline as a series of small construction sites.

"Without closer scrutiny, the proposal breezed through the four state processes."

As news of insider deals and corruption spread, a number of protesters left the camp at Sacred Stone and descended on the law offices of Fredrikson and Byron—the firm representing the Dakota Access in court.

Protesters demanded to know why the attorneys are representing the pipeline.

"We're here to protect the water. We're here in prayer. The songs we're singing were prayer songs. So we really wanted them to answer to some of the people. Some of the Standing Rock members specifically. Why would you want to threaten their lives and their water?" said Joye Braun one of the protesters.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has every reason to be furious about the construction of this pipeline and their protest is undoubtedly just. The people of the Great Sioux Nation were betrayed by the U.S. government, who violated the nation-to-nation treaty by allowing permission of this pipeline before obtaining the tribe's free, prior and informed consent for its construction.

The Standing Rock protest represents far more than a single pipeline. It is a stand against oppression that shows the people's struggle for freedom.

As Winona LaDuke stated in her analysis of all that is at stake, What Would Sitting Bull Do?

I am not sure how badly North Dakota wants this pipeline. If there is to be a battle over the pipeline, it will be here. For a people with nothing else but a land and a river, I would not bet against them. The great Lakota leader Mathew King once said, "the only thing sadder than an Indian who is not free, is an Indian who does not remember what it is to be free."

The fate of the pipeline now rests in the hands of a federal judge who will rule on the legality of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Sept. 9. Will the people be victorious and protect their land and remain free? Or, will their history be rewritten once again, this time, with freedom defined as everything except Big Oil's right of way?

Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.

This article was reposted with permission from our media associate MintPress News.

Food

Monsanto Faces Rejection in U.S. Over GMO Soybean

Monsanto, the controversial biotech seed giant, keeps running into trouble on the lucrative GMO soybean market this year.

Although 94 percent of U.S. soybean crops come from genetically modified seeds, Monsanto's latest offering isn't meeting with the approval of grain traders in the U.S. Called “Roundup Ready 2 Xtend," the Wall Street Journal reported on May 2 that major grain corporations like Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Cargill Inc. are rejecting the soybean because it lacks important regulatory approval in the European Union and could disrupt international trade.

Activists raise public awareness about the consequences of using Monsanto herbicides in Argentina. Photo credit: Pedro Jesus Galvani / Eco- Network

“The grain companies' stance is a potential blow to a product that Monsanto has touted as a blockbuster for U.S. farm fields," wrote Jacob Bunge.

Trade groups for the grain companies attacked Monsanto for attempting to sell the seeds without obtaining EU approval first. “Monsanto's actions with respect to RR2X soybeans are an unacceptable and very troubling development and we urge that it not be repeated," the groups wrote in a letter quoted by the Journal.

According to the Journal:

“The letter comes after Bunge [Ltd., a food company], Archer Daniels Midland and Louis Dreyfus Co. recently notified farmers that their U.S. facilities wouldn't buy soybeans grown from seeds that contain Monsanto's new crop genes. The companies sent letters and posted signs at grain elevators."

Soybean planting began early this month and farmers could be out of luck if Monsanto is unable to obtain the necessary approvals before the fall harvest.

Trade groups are understandably nervous about unapproved genetic components since China began rejecting shipments of genetically-modified corn in 2013, causing grain traders to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

The setback in U.S. markets comes as Monsanto continues its years-long battle to collect royalties in Argentina, where farmers frequently plant seeds harvested from previous crops rather than pay for new seeds each year.

Although the former method represents an ancient agricultural tradition, Monsanto's lawyers argue that international law enables its representatives to collect payments from any farm where genetic testing found crops containing the company's patented genes from its Intacta brand soybean.

Bloomberg reported on Saturday that the corporation “was expecting to collect royalties for about 15 percent of this season's Argentine soybean crop, which is forecast by the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange to be 56 million metric tons."

But the Argentine government would have to first approve the Intacta patent, a process which they now claim could take months. Argentina's science and technology minister, Lino Baranao, told Bloomberg:

“The Monsanto issue is very distinctive as Argentina still hasn't granted the company a patent for Intacta … A final decision must emerge soon, but I am not sure this will happen for the 2015-16 crop. We have asked the Institute for Property Rights to speed up the process, but it may take months."

The government also declined to use Monsanto's genetic testing labs, insisting on instead using labs approved by the Agriculture Ministry.

It's the latest round of maneuvering between the government and the agribusiness giant since Argentina requested in April that Monsanto waive its royalty requirements.

“Monsanto rejected that waiver without comment, but agreed to cut the royalties from the equivalent of fifteen dollars per hectare to some nine dollars per hectare, for growers who use Monsanto technology but who do not purchase seeds directly from the corporation," Sputnik News reported.

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Energy

Massive Methane Leaks From Texas Fracking Sites Even More Significant Than Infamous Porter Ranch Gas Leak

By Claire Bernish, AntiMedia

After the mammoth methane gas leak that spewed uncontrollably from a damaged well in California's Aliso Canyon was finally capped last week, residents of nearby Porter Ranch began trepidatiously returning to their homes. Lingering doubts over whether Southern California Gas Company will continue using the underground storage field have left many wondering if concerns for their safety are being considered at all—particularly considering the company has, so far, only been charged with misdemeanor violations.

A massive leak from a Texas fracking operation dwarfs the infamous methane leak in California's Aliso Canyon. Photo credit: Scott Towery / Flickr

All told, the Aliso Canyon leak thrust an estimated 96,000 metric tons of potent methane—not to mention benzene, nitrogen oxides and other noxious substances—into the atmosphere over a period of months. So vast was the impact of the leak, it has been likened in impactful scope to BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

California, however, isn't the only state dealing with mammoth methane leakage.

Texas is dealing with a comparable disaster that has been overlooked by officials and the media, in part, because the state's methane emanates from a powerful industry's infrastructure. According to the Texas Observer's Naveena Sadasivam:

“Every hour, natural gas facilities in North Texas' Barnett Shale region emit thousands of tons of methane—a greenhouse gas at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide—and a slate of noxious pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and benzene.

“The Aliso Canyon leak was big. The Barnett leaks, combined, are even bigger."

At its peak, the SoCal Gas leak emitted 58,000 kilograms of methane per hour. By comparison, researchers with universities in Colorado and Michigan, partnering with the Environmental Defense Fund, estimate around 60,000 kilograms are spewed every hour by more than 25,000 natural gas wells in operation on the Barnett Shale—with the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex at the center. This amounts to around 544,000 tons of methane every year. But contrary to the magnitude of the Aliso Canyon event, emissions caused by oil and gas extraction from the Barnett Shale—and a second large formation, Eagle Ford Shale—won't cease as long as hydraulic fracturing remains the boon it has been to the fossil fuel industry.

An eight-month long study of Eagle Ford by the Center for Public Integrity, Weather Channel and InsideClimate News found “a system that does more to protect the industry than the public."

Due to a scarcity of air quality monitoring stations, with only five permanent monitors to cover Eagle Ford's nearly 20,000 square miles, state officials simply don't know the extent of pollutants in the air. Many facilities are permitted to police themselves and aren't required to submit those findings. Not that regulators would have an easy time enforcing a reporting mandate, as the “Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which regulates most air emissions, doesn't even know some of these facilities exist."

David Sterling, chair of the University of North Texas Health Science Center, told InsideClimate News, “As much as I would like to believe that industry can police itself, history has shown that that has not worked without sufficient oversight." With TCEQ's budget having fallen 34 percent between 2010 and 2014, it's virtually impossible to imagine such oversight increasing in the future.

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There is a dearth of accountability for lawbreakers in Texas' oil and gas industry. As the study discovered, in a period of nearly two years beginning in January 2010, 284 complaints against the industry—and “164 documented violations"—led to just two non-punitive fines, the larger of which was a mere $14,250.

Though alarming, that gap in accountability isn't a surprise.

“Texas officials tasked with overseeing the industry are often its strongest defenders," stated the study. “The Texas Railroad Commission, which issues drilling permits and regulates all other aspects of oil and gas production, is controlled by three elected commissioners who accepted more than $2 million in campaign contributions from the industry during the 2012 election cycle, according to data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics."

Texas lawmakers are often personally tied to the industry, as “nearly one in four state legislators or his or her spouse, has a financial interest in at least one energy company active in the Eagle Ford," according to an analysis of personal financial forms by CPI cited by the study.

Residents located in the two Texas shale production regions experience many similar symptoms to those in Porter Ranch near Aliso Canyon, such as nosebleeds, dizziness, nausea and various respiratory ailments. Those symptoms could be due to any number of pollutants and toxins. As the study described:

“Chemicals released during oil and gas extraction include hydrogen sulfide, a deadly gas found in abundance in Eagle Ford wells; volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like benzene, a known carcinogen; sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, which irritate the lungs; and other harmful substances such as carbon monoxide and carbon disulfide. VOCs also mix with nitrogen oxides emitted from field equipment to create ozone, a major respiratory hazard.

“Studies show that, depending on the concentration and length of exposure, these chemicals can cause a range of ailments, from minor headaches to neurological damage and cancer. People in the Eagle Ford face an added risk: hydrogen sulfide, also known as H2S or sour gas, a naturally occurring component of crude oil and natural gas that lurks underground."

Texas' shale facilities are responsible for 8 percent of the nation's methane emissions, already; but the combination of faulty equipment and lack of monitoring sites mean occasional large methane releases from wells—called “super-emitters"—won't necessarily be noticed immediately.

“If one well was a super-emitter the day we measured them, it could change the next day," explained Daniel Zavala-Araiza, lead researcher of a 2015 Barnett Shale methane study by the Environmental Defense Fund, in the Observer. “It's not just about finding a handful of sites. You need to be looking continuously to keep finding the ones that are malfunctioning … If you don't have frequent monitoring, there's no way you're going to know when one of these super-emitters begins spewing."

In fact, a recent study by Harvard University points the finger at the U.S. as the cause of an enormous spike in global methane emissions over the past decade, accounting for 30 to 60 percent of all “human-caused atmospheric emissions."

“I believe the U.S. probably is responsible for this much of an increase in global methane emissions," said Roger Howarth, a methane researcher at Cornell University, who is unaffiliated with the Harvard study, the Guardian reported. “And, the increase almost certainly must be coming from the fracking and from the increase in use of natural gas."

Texas residents unfortunate enough to find their homes positioned near oil or gas facilities aren't left with much recourse to combat the state's infamous industry. Shale gas production more than doubled between 2009 and 2014, though it has slowed slightly with the recent glut. As InsideClimate News reported, state Representative Harvey Hilderbran tellingly asserted to a media panel in 2014:

“I believe if you're anti-oil and gas, you're anti-Texas."

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