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Big Data, Big Oil: Unveiling the 'Dark Forces' Behind Trump’s 2020 Reelection Campaign With Josh Fox

Insights + Opinion
Josh Fox, award winning filmmaker and director, speaking on stage at Collision 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana on May 2, 2017. CC BY 2.0

By Reynard Loki

Josh Fox, the Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind Gasland, the documentary that started the global anti-fracking movement, is bringing a new message to audiences across the country with The Truth Has Changed, a live theater-based project that sounds the alarm on the right-wing disinformation campaign working to secure President Trump's reelection.

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EcoWatch Daily Newsletter

Documentary Remembers Standing Rock in Beauty and Catastrophe

Energy

By Kelly Hayes

In October of 2016, I wrote a piece called How to Talk About #NoDAPL: A Native Perspective. I had visited the Standing Rock camps twice at that point, at the request of local youth who coordinated skill shares for Water Protectors, and I had written extensively about the movement. About a year later, I was asked to share my thoughts on the documentary, Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock.

But how does one critique a dream? A dream isn't bound by timelines or historical nuance. It's as much feeling as fact, and the lines between the two often blur.

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wellness

What’s So Great About Chamomile Tea? Everything.

Health + Wellness
Westend61 / Getty Images

For many people, the holidays are rich with time-honored traditions like decorating the Christmas tree, lighting the menorah, caroling, cookie baking, and sipping from the unity cup. But there's another unofficial, official holiday tradition that spans all ages and beliefs and gives people across the world hope for a better tomorrow: the New Year's resolution.

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10 Best Environmental Records in the Senate

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Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) recently emerged as one of the upper chamber's biggest environmental stalwarts after grilling both Rick Perry and Ryan Zinke over their climate denial during hearings.

But Franken—who is dipping into his comedic roots in a hilarious new web series about climate change—isn't the only U.S. senator who consistently champions environmental safeguards.

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Fracking Study Links Pollution, Earthquakes to Drilling in Texas Shale

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A Pennsylvania family shows their contaminated water supply. Les Stone / Greenpeace

A new analysis of Texas' oil and gas development underscores how there really are two sides to the energy debate. We know that drilling has brought the state billions in wealth, but its vast impacts on the environment cannot be ignored.

The Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST)—the state's top scientific community—has released a comprehensive, peer-reviewed report today analyzing the wide-ranging environmental, economic and social impacts of shale oil and gas production in the Lone Star State.

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The Queen of Punk Tells Archbishop of Canterbury to Ban Fracking

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Matt Crossick

By Yosola Olorunshola

Whether it's through fashion or protest, Vivienne Westwood is not a woman afraid of making a statement.

On May 23, she rocked up to the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury in London with a special guest—the Grim Reaper—to issue a strong statement on the Church of England's position on fracking.

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House Passes Bill to Ban Fracking in Maryland

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The Maryland House of Delegates passed a milestone fracking ban bill Friday with unprecedented bipartisan support. House Bill 1325, which passed by a vote of 97 to 40, would ban hydraulic fracturing statewide.

Public opposition to the practice has grown over the past year, as more than a dozen counties and cities across the state have already passed local resolutions and ordinances to ban fracking and more than 1,000 Marylanders marched through the state capitol last week to demand a fracking ban.

"We cannot afford to put our health, our ecology or the growing economy of Western Maryland at risk for fracking. That is why a total ban is necessary and supported by the people of Maryland," said Kumar Barve, chairman of the House Environment & Transportation Committee that put forth the bill.

"As a longtime proponent of legislative initiatives to protect Maryland from the dangers of fracking, I commend the Maryland House of Delegates for voting in support of a fracking ban," said Delegate David Fraser-Hidalgo who introduced the bill. "Across the country, fracking is polluting the air and water of countless communities and making people sick. The passing of this bill is a huge step forward in securing Maryland as a national leader in combating climate change and protecting our citizens."

Residents from across the state have sent more than 35,000 petitions and letters in support of a ban to the General Assembly. More than 200 businesses, the majority from Western Maryland, and more than 200 Maryland health professionals sent letters to the General Assembly in support of the bill.

"The passing of the fracking ban bill through the House by a 57 vote margin is truly a watershed moment for Maryland," said Mitch Jones, senior policy advocate at Food & Water Watch. "The current overwhelming support from Maryland delegates shows an understanding that without a ban, public health and local businesses cannot be protected. We applaud this critical step towards preserving the resources and economy of Maryland and call on the Senate to follow the lead of the House."

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Bernie Sanders Deserves Better

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I was shocked to learn that last week the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) gave Sen. Bernie Sanders a score of 6 percent in their 2016 National Environmental Scorecard. LCV claims that Sen. Sanders received such a low score because he missed votes while he was running his historic presidential campaign. But there may be more to the story than we're being told.

Those of you who have seen Gasland I and II know that fracking is very personal for me. One of the reasons I was a proud surrogate of Bernie's is because he was the only candidate to call for a national ban on fracking. So when I see him being treated this way by an organization, whose board of directors is known to support and promote fracking, it's also personal.

The bottom line is LCV's scorecard system is flawed and fails to evaluate lawmakers on their full body of work. That's why, according to their scorecard, pro-fracking senators like Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Corey Gardner (R-CO) actually score higher than Bernie. That's just plain ridiculous.

It's no secret that LCV, who endorsed Sec. Clinton during last year's primary, have contempt for Bernie. I experienced this firsthand while serving on the Democrat's platform committee fighting for a national ban on fracking to be included as part of the party platform. The pushback I received from LCV Chairwoman Carol Browner, and many others from the Clinton camp, was astonishing. Not to mention the fact that LCV even endorsed candidates known to support the fracking industry and take their money—and 2016 was not the first time. This is antithetical to the organization's mission statement, which includes a commitment to "electing pro-environmental candidates who will champion priority issues." There is nothing pro-environment about fracking, and to say otherwise is nothing short of pronouncing alternative facts.

Bernie had the most ambitious climate platform in presidential history and he has continued his leadership since the campaign—standing up for Native American rights and against the Dakota Access Pipeline, standing up for environmental justice and standing up against President Trump's agenda, which includes rolling back as many environmental regulations as possible and letting fracking run rampant throughout our communities.

At a time when we all have to come together, we should be standing with proven climate and environmental champions, not throwing them under the bus to score cheap points with the political establishment.

Please join me in telling the LCV to start acting like true environmental leaders and adjust Bernie's score to account for his historic presidential campaign that consistently elevated climate change and environmental justice as national issues. LCV should also make a commitment to the people and its members that they will no longer support pro-fracking candidates and reflect accurate scores for lawmakers who promote or otherwise support this climate-altering practice.

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Fracking Caused 6,648 Spills in Four States Alone, Duke Study Finds

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Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has long been tied to environmental risks such as spills. The frequency of spills, however, has long been murky since states do not release standardized data.

Estimates from the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) vary wildly.

"The number of spills nationally could range from approximately 100 to 3,700 spills annually, assuming 25,000 to 30,000 new wells are fractured per year," the agency said in a June 2015 report. Also, the EPA reported only 457 spills related to fracking in 11 states between 2006 and 2012.

But now, a new study suggests that fracking-related spills occur at a much higher rate.

The analysis, published Feb. 21 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, revealed 6,648 spills in four states alone—Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Pennsylvania—in 10 years.

The researchers determined that up to 16 percent of fracked oil and gas wells spill hydrocarbons, chemically laden water, fracking fluids and other substances.

For the study, the researchers examined state-level spill data to characterize spills associated with unconventional oil and gas development at 31,481 fracked wells in the four states between 2005 and 2014.

"On average, that's equivalent to 55 spills per 1,000 wells in any given year," lead author Lauren Patterson, a policy associate at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, told ResearchGate.

North Dakota reported the highest spill rate, with 4,453 incidents. Pennsylvania reported 1,293, Colorado reported 476 and New Mexico reported 426. The researchers created an interactive map of spill sites in the four states.

Although North Dakota is rich in oil, the state's higher spill rate can be explained by varying state reporting requirements. North Dakota is required to report any spill larger than 42 gallons whereas requirement in Colorado and New Mexico is 210 gallons.

Patterson points out that the different reporting requirements are a problem.

"Our study concludes that making state spill data more uniform and accessible could provide stakeholders with important information on where to target efforts for locating and preventing future spills," she told ResearchGate. "States would benefit from setting reporting requirements that generate actionable information—that is, information regulators and industry can use to identify and respond to risk 'hot spots.' It would also be beneficial to standardize how spills are reported. This would improve accuracy and make the data usable to understand spill risks."

The reason why the researchers' numbers vastly exceeded the 457 spills estimated by the EPA is because the agency only accounted for spills during the hydraulic fracturing stage itself, rather than the entire process of unconventional oil and gas production.

"Understanding spills at all stages of well development is important because preparing for hydraulic fracturing requires the transport of more materials to and from well sites and storage of these materials on site," Patterson explained. "Investigating all stages helps to shed further light on the spills that can occur at all types of wells—not just unconventional ones."

For instance, the researchers found that 50 percent of spills were related to storage and moving fluids via pipelines.

"The causes are quite varied," Patterson told BBC. "Equipment failure was the greatest factor, the loading and unloading of trucks with material had a lot more human error than other places."

For the four states studied, most spills occurred in the the first three years of a well's life, when drilling and hydraulic fracturing occurred and production volumes were highest.

Additionally, a significant portion of spills (26 percent in Colorado, 53 percent in North Dakota) occurred at wells with more than one spill, suggesting that wells where spills have already occurred merit closer attention.

"Analyses like this one are so important, to define and mitigate risk to water supplies and human health," said Kate Konschnik, director of the Harvard Law School's Environmental Policy Initiative in a statement. "Writing state reporting rules with these factors in mind is critical, to ensure that the right data are available—and in an accessible format—for industry, states and the research community."

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Fracking Caused Pennsylvania Earthquakes, New Report Confirms

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Photo credit: Mark Schmerling / FracTracker Alliance

Earthquakes in Pennsylvania are usually rare but fracking operations triggered a series of small temblors in Lawrence County last year, officials at the state's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced in a Feb. 17 report.

Hilcorp Energy Co., a Texas-based oil and gas company, was fracking a pair of wells in the Utica Shale when seismic monitors detected five earthquakes measuring between 1.8 and 2.3 on the Richter scale between April 25-26, 2016.

"Our analysis after doing the review... is that these events are correlated with the activity of the operator," DEP Acting Secretary Patrick McDonnell told Penn Live.

While the tremors were too small to be felt by humans or cause any damage, they are the first quakes in the state to be blamed on fracking. Pennsylvania happens to be the second largest natural gas-producing state in the country.

"At least within Pennsylvania, this is the first time that we have seen that sort of spatial and temporal correlation with [oil and gas] operator activity," Seth Pelepko, chief of well-plugging and subsurface activities for DEP's oil and gas management program, told Allegheny Front, a western Pennsylvania public radio program.

"No faults identified along portions of the well bore where these seismic events were detected," Pelepko continued.

Hilcorp spokesman Justin Furnace said operations were immediately suspended after learning about the tremors. Fracking and stimulation operations have since been discontinued at the well pad indefinitely.

The DEP said that Hilcorp was using a technique known as "zipper fracturing" at the time, which involves the concurrent fracking of two horizontal wellbores that are parallel and adjacent to each other.

So how did the earthquakes happen? As Penn Live explains:

Four wells were drilled to depth of about 7,900 feet in that location.

Evidence indicates that induced earthquakes occur when the separation between Utica Shale and basement rocks is lessened during drilling operations. That means, when someone drills too close to basement rocks, there can be earthquakes.

Pelepko said that seems to have been the case in Lawrence County, where the basement rock is shallow compared to other areas in the state.

The distance between Utica Shale and basement rocks were between 2,500 to 3,000 feet at the fracking site.

The DEP has since given a number of recommendations to Hilcorp, including the discontinuation of zipper fracturing near gas wells in North Beaver, Union and Mahoning Townships where the earthquakes occurred. Additionally, the company must shut down operations and notify the DEP should any earthquake larger than 2.0 or three successive quakes between 1.5 and 1.9 in magnitude occur within a three-mile distance of a wellbore path.

Earthquakes caused by fracking a well are uncommon. However, the notorious spate of earthquakes in Oklahoma, which were caused by the disposal of large quantities of fracking wastewater into underground wells, are rampant. The disposal of wastewater produced from fracking, has led to the alarming increase of earthquakes with magnitude-3 or larger by nearly 300 times, or 30,000 percent in north-central Oklahoma alone. In 2014, more than 5,000 earthquakes were reported.

But a 4.8-magnitude frack-quake that struck Alberta, Canada in Jan. 2016 set a world record for the largest earthquake triggered by the controversial drilling process.

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Fracking Rule Text Disappears From Interior Department Website

Popular

By Alleen Brown

In Donald Trump's first week as president, text describing two rules regulating the oil and gas industry was removed from an Interior Department website. The rules, limiting hydraulic fracturing and natural gas flaring on public lands, are in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.

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Huge Victory: Winona County, Minnesota Bans Frac Sand Mining

Energy

By Jim Gurley

Winona County, Minnesota has placed a total ban on the strip-mining of frac sand, a necessary component of fracking. This is thought to be the first such countywide ban in the nation.

The Winona County Board of Commissioners on Nov. 22 voted 3-2 to ban the mining, processing or trans-loading of frac sand in the county, which is located in the environmentally delicate and beautiful Mississippi River bluff lands of southeast Minnesota.

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Fracking California Threatens Water Supplies

Energy

A major new report released Tuesday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) highlights hydraulic fracturing's threat to California's water supplies. All six factors identified in the EPA report as increasing the risk of fracking-related water pollution apply in California.

"This report shows that Californians are right to be deeply concerned about fracking pollution's threats to our water," said Hollin Kretzmann of the Center for Biological Diversity. "The EPA identified six risk factors that increase the risk of water contamination and every single one applies in our state. The best way to protect our water from fracking chemicals is to ban this toxic technique."

Oil companies in California frack at shallow depths, very close to groundwater. They also employ fracking fluid with unusually high concentrations of chemicals. The oil industry in the state has been allowed to dispose of vast quantities of oil wastewater into unlined pits that threaten groundwater.

"Percolation pits, in particular, were commonly reported to have been used to manage produced water from stimulated wells in Kern County, California, between 2011 and 2014," the EPA report states. The document also highlights the risks of spills of oil industry wastewater, noting that over a recent five-year period "18 percent of the spills impacted waterways."

The EPA found scientific evidence that hydraulic fracturing activities can impact drinking water resources under some circumstances. The report identifies certain conditions under which impacts from hydraulic fracturing activities can be more frequent or severe.

EPA's six identified factors for increased risk of water pollution, listed below, all occur in California, making fracking in the state particularly dangerous:

Risk factor 1: Water withdrawals for hydraulic fracturing in times or areas of low water availability, particularly in areas with limited or declining groundwater resources.

California is experiencing a historic drought. A 2014 report by Ceres noted that 98 percent of fracking occurs in areas of the state experiencing high or extreme water stress.

Risk factor 2: Spills during the handling of hydraulic fracturing fluids and chemicals or produced water that result in large volumes or high concentrations of chemicals reaching groundwater resources.

Oil companies in California use well-stimulation fluid with a higher concentration of chemicals, according to 2015 report from the California Council on Science and Technology.

Risk factor 3: Injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids into wells with inadequate mechanical integrity, allowing gases or liquids to move to groundwater resources.

California's long history of oil production makes it more prone to fluid migration through older wells. The state also has many wells in close proximity to one another (high density) and unmapped wells, which increase this risk even further.

Risk factor 4: Injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids directly into groundwater resources.

Groundwater tables and injection zones in California are close together, according to the California Council on Science and Technology, increasing the likelihood that fracking fluid may directly reach a source of groundwater.

Risk factor 5: Discharge of inadequately treated hydraulic fracturing wastewater to surface water.

The Cawelo Water District in California's Kern County has been processing water from oil fields in which fracking has occurred and using it for irrigation. Records show that statewide, millions of gallons of wastewater are later discharged to irrigation canals for agricultural use. Wastewater is also sometimes discharged into surface water.

Risk factor 6: Disposal or storage of hydraulic fracturing wastewater in unlined pits resulting in contamination of groundwater resources.

California continues to allow the oil industry to use unlined pits for oil wastewater storage and disposal. A survey by the State Water Resources Control Board and regional water boards found hundreds of active unlined pits in the state. While oil officials recently implemented a regulation against discharging flowback fluid from fracked wells into such pits, the state does a poor job of tracking wastewater and existing pits likely have vast quantities of fracking flowback fluid.

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