[Editor's note: This article was updated Aug. 1.]
A team of University of Colorado Boulder researchers began a seismic investigation after a May 31 earthquake. The researchers' information led the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to request a 20-day halt to NGL Water Solutions' fracking wastewater injection operations.
NGL, formerly known as High Sierra Water Services, was given permission to resume its activities at a 10,800-foot-deep well a few weeks later. Anne Sheehan and her team found that the well is linked to more than 200 earthquakes, the geophysics professor in the CU Department of Geological Sciences told Boulder County Business Report. NGL made modifications to the well, cementing the bottom 400 feet of the well, and it is has come back into production at a lower rate of pressure and injection. CU continues to monitor the earthquake activity and has found it has decreased. The information from the study will help the researchers find out why some wells have earthquakes and some do not, and how to fix the wells that do have earthquakes, if possible.
Sheehan said the group found "quite a few" earthquakes with epicenters within two miles of the well.
Two earthquakes—with magnitudes of 3.4 and 2.6—took place within mere miles of the well. Shemin Ge and Matthew Weingarten, also of CU, also found that activity within fracking wastewater injection wells likely caused earthquakes in central Oklahoma.
NGL operates 11 of the 29 fracking wastewater injection wells in Weld County, CO. When the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission allowed NGL to resume activities, it began injecting 7,500 barrels per day at maximum pressure.
"We’ll continue to closely monitor and accumulate all available information at this location,” Colorado Department of Natural Resources spokesman Todd Hartman told the Report, “and work with partners to continue understanding how best to limit and prevent potential seismic impacts related to deep injection generally.”
One thing is for sure—you can't accuse Boulder County District Court Judge D.D. Mallard of being dishonest.
Her decision Thursday regarding Longmont, CO's fracking ban includes no ambiguity. Instead it clearly states that concerns about health risks to residents don't quite stack up against Colorado's stake in the oil and gas industries.
"While the court appreciates the Longmont citizens' sincerely held beliefs about risks to their health and safety, the court does not find this is sufficient to completely devalue the state's interest," Mallard wrote in the decision, uploaded to Scribd by the Denver Post.
Voters approved the ban in 2012, but the Colorado Oil and Gas Association never stopped fighting to overturn it. Earthworks, the Sierra Club, Our Health, Our Future, Our Longmont and the other environmental groups listed as defendants plan on appealing the decision. The judge ruled that the ban can remain in place while an appeal is considered.
“While we respectfully disagree with the court’s final decision, [Mallard] was correct that we were asking this Court, in part, to place protection from the health, safety and environmental risks from fracking over the development of mineral resources,” Kaye Fissinger, president of Our Health, Our Future, Our Longmont, said in a statement on Earthworks' website.
“It’s tragic that the judge views the current law in Colorado is one in which fracking is more important than public health; reversing that backwards priority is a long-term battle that we’re determined to continue.”
According to the Post, the City of Longmont had spent $116,324 defending the ban as of June 30. Though the groups argued that the language the industry relied on to get its desired result was written far before modern practices like fracking, Mallard said the issue should be taken up with a higher court or state legislators.
“This decision means two things: The judge has invited us to seek the change we need either through the higher courts or the legislature," said Bruce Baizel, Earthworks Energy Program director. “We fully intend to pursue the former on appeal, while the latter underscores the need for the citizens of Colorado to get out and support the Environmental Bill of Rights ballot measure this Fall.”
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In addition to the area residents, cleanup crew members and consumers of regional seafood, monkeys have also suffered health issues likely attributable to the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011.
In the case of the Japanese macaques, the radioactive material spewed by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has led to abnormally low white and red blood cell levels and low haemoglobin. The findings, published Thursday in the Scientific Reports journal, show that the low counts make the monkeys more susceptible to various diseases.
“This first data from non-human primates—the closest taxonomic relatives of humans—should make a notable contribution to future research on the health effects of radiation exposure in humans,” Professor Shin-ichi Hayama, of the Nippon Veterinary and Life Science University in Tokyo, told The Guardian.
One of the study's 11 authors, Hayama said that the monkeys were likely exposed to radiation from feeding on tree buds and bark that accumulated radioactive caesium from the power plant explosions. The researchers examined wild monkeys who were 43 miles away from the plant reactors in the forest area of Fukushima City. Their counts of white and red blood cells, as well as hemoglobin, and hematocrit, were much lower than those of monkeys about 250 miles away in the Shimokita Peninsula in the Aomori Prefecture.
Hamaya would not make a definitive claim that caesium caused the low blood counts, despite the suggestive findings and the inability to find any other cause.
“The low haematological values in the Fukushima monkeys could have therefore been due to the effect of any radioactive materials,” he said. “We did not conclude the low-blood cell counts are caused by caesium but so far we cannot find other reasons except radiation.”
Professor Geraldine Thomas of Imperial College in London didn't believe the study at all.
“Unfortunately this is yet another paper with insufficient power to distinguish real effects and relevance to human health,” she said. “We know that one of the most damaging health effects comes from fear of radiation, not radiation itself.”
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The shuffling of lobby dollars that keeps fossil fuel-friendly policies on the books for the benefit of huge corporations and their legislative pals isn't specific to the U.S.
A new report from Friends of the Earth Europe aims to expose Shell, Total and ExxonMobil, along with groups like BusinessEurope and OGP, to reveal what it calls a "thick web of lobbying activity." The report says public relations and law firms, paid-for scientific reports, and even members of Parliament have all been used to advance fracking for shale gas around the continent.
"The legislative process has been taken hostage by private interests," Antoine Simon, a shale gas campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, said in a statement. "They have created a climate of industry-funded misinformation that sells shale gas as a responsible resource—this could not be further from reality. The European Commission needs to put the interest of people and planet before the profits of big oil companies, by re-opening the debate on shale gas regulation.”
The report hopes to reignite the discussion of stronger shale gas industry regulation within the European Commission and increased lobbying transparency. At the very least, FOE Europe hopes for a moratorium on fracking, similar to those passed in the U.S. by the New York Assembly and in cities like Los Angeles.
In the meantime, the organization seeks to explain who is making contributions to keep a practice with proven health risks alive. Here is a visualization of the tangled web of gas companies and lobbyists in Europe. Each line shows membership, affiliation or financial contributions from energy companies to lobby groups in Brussels who represent their interests. Europia, European Union of the Natural Gas Industry and European Federation of Energy Traders are among the names included.
“An underground offensive by the oil industry has managed to silence well-founded concerns about the dangers of fracking," Simon said. "It has side-stepped the growing body of evidence on the environmental, economic and health risks of shale gas development, and undermines Europe-wide opposition from citizens to the unconventional fossil fuel.”
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Environmental groups believe the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency got it right by denying the emergency use request Texas filed in order to use hazardous herbicide propazine to kill superweeds infesting the state's cotton.
Environmental groups, public health advocates and organic farmers all pleaded with the EPA to recognize the health and water risks that would arise from permitting propazine to be used on 3 million acres of cotton fields across the humongous state.
"Based on an assessment consistent with EPA's legal responsibilities, drinking water estimates suggest that risks from drinking water alone may lead to unacceptable risks in some cases," Jack Housenger, EPA director of the office of pesticide programs, wrote in the agency's response to the request, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Though the EPA found that the request met urgent and non-routine emergency criteria, groups like Beyond Pesticides were pleased with the final decision.
"While we disagree with the EPA that this meets any of the criteria for emergency exemption, we applaud the EPA for putting the health of people and the environment first and upholding the health and environmental standards under the law," Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, said in a statement.
Beyond Pesticides filed comments opposing emergency status for the use of propazine.
"This is not an emergency because the weed resistance is predictable since it has been known for many years that GMO cotton sprayed with glyphosate would create resistant superweeds," Feldman said. "It is an abuse of the law to prop up failed GMO cropping systems with toxic chemicals when viable alternatives, like organic growing methods, exist."
Texas Department of Agriculture officials lamented the news.
"Once again, members of the current administration have turned their back on the hard-working farmers of Texas," said Bryan Black, a department spokesman.
Propazine is a possible human carcinogen and a “restricted use pesticide”—the EPA’s category for particularly hazardous agricultural chemicals. The EPA has found that propazine, like atrazine, is an endocrine disruptor (disrupts the hormonal system) and that when fed to pregnant rats, it causes birth defects in their young. Propazine is persistent, requiring years to break down, and is detected in both ground and surface waters. The European Union has banned propazine due to its toxicity.
The City of San Diego claimed a week ago that its permanent mandatory water use restrictions were good enough as a response to California's continuous drought. The city believed it didn't need any additional or different actions.
That line of thinking didn't sit well with environmental groups. As a result, San Diego Coastkeeper and the Save the Colorado River Campaign banded together to call out the nation's eighth-largest city for what they view as a laissez–faire approach to the drought.
"Governor Jerry Brown has asked for statewide water conservation of 20 percent, and the City of San Diego contributed to an eight percent increase in water use—how is it acceptable to not take action?" Matt O'Malley, waterkeeper for San Diego Coastkeeper, asked in a joint statement.
"We don't want the City to be a bad actor. At a bare minimum, it must follow the State Water Board's regulations and enact its level two drought response conditions to ensure this region does its part to reduce water use."
California is in the midst of its driest year on record in 115 years. San Diego imports more than half of its water from the Colorado River, which no longer capable of reaching the Gulf of California because cities, farms and industry drain 5 trillion gallons of water from the river per year. The Colorado also feeds Lake Mead, the nation's largest reservoir, which fell to its lowest level in history a week ago.
"As Lake Mead drops and other states in the Southwest U.S. face water shortages, San Diego needs to know that a dwindling supply of water is the new normal," said Gary Wockner with the Save the Colorado River Campaign. "We think San Diego, the nation's 8th largest city, should be a national leader and acknowledge with action that its California way of life can still flourish on less water."
The organizations hope the city implements its predetermined and approved level-two drought response conditions that are stated in its water shortage contingency plan. O'Malley pointed to the fact that the State Water Board said emergency regulations set a "minimum standard requiring only modest lifestyle changes across the state."
"Many irrigated landscapes would not suffer greatly from receiving a decreased amount of water," according to the board.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced details Wednesday of a proposal to make crude oil transportation safer, in a bid to prevent more derailments and the threats that accompany them.
The proposal would phase out older DOT 111 tank cars that ship packing group I flammable liquids, a category that includes most Bakken crude oil. Retrofitting the tank cars to comply with new standards is the only way that wouldn't be phased out.
Other elements of the proposal include braking controls, lower speed laws and a testing program for mined gases and liquids.
“Safety is our top priority, which is why I’ve worked aggressively to improve the safe transport of crude oil and other hazardous materials since my first week in office,” DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx said. “While we have made unprecedented progress through voluntary agreements and emergency orders, today’s proposal represents our most significant progress yet in developing and enforcing new rules to ensure that all flammable liquids, including Bakken crude and ethanol, are transported safely.”
The proposal is subject to 60 days of public comment. The proposal is based on an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in September that received more than 150,000 comments. Here are some highlights of Wednesday's proposal:
- Carriers would be required to perform a routing analysis for high-hazard flammable trains (HHFTs) that would consider 27 safety and security factors and select a route based on findings of the route's analysis.
- HHFTs that contain any tank cars that don't meet enhanced tank car standards would be required to choose one of three speed restrictions: A 40-miles-per-hour maximum speed restriction in all areas; a 40-mph speed restriction in "high-threat urban areas"; or a 40-mph speed restriction in areas with populations of 100,000 or more.
- All HHFTs would be equipped with alternative brake signal propagation systems. Depending on the outcome of the tank car standard proposal and implementation timing, all HHFTs would be operated with either electronic controlled pneumatic brakes, a two-way end of train device or distributed power.
More crude oil was spilled from rail cars in 2013 than in the previous four decades combined. The trend continued this year with derailments like one that spilled thousands of crude oil gallons into the James River in Virginia.
The DOT in February issued an emergency order requiring all shippers to test product from the Bakken region to ensure the proper classification of crude oil before it was transported by rail.