5,250 gallons of oil spills into South Platte River

[fizzgig]

MILLIKEN — Industry crews have placed absorbent booms in the South Platte River south of Milliken where at least 5,250 gallons of crude oil has spilled from two tank batteries into the flood-swollen river.

The spill from a damaged tank was reported to the Colorado Department of Natural Resources Wednesday afternoon by Anadarko Petroleum, as is required by state law.

State officials have responded to the spill site, which is south of Milliken near where the St. Vrain River flows into the South Platte.

Nearly 1,900 oil and gas wells in flooded areas of Colorado are shut, and 600 industry personnel are inspecting and repairing sites, according to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association. Crews are inspecting operations, conducting aerial and ground surveillance, identifying and determining locations of possible impairments, the association said Tuesday.

from the denver post

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In flood-struck Colorado, concerns about fracking spills

(Reuters) - Contaminated water spilling from flooded oil and gas drilling sites in Colorado is refocusing attention on the environmental risks surrounding America's fracking boom.

Floods that have devastated north-central Colorado, killing eight people and displacing thousands, have also dislodged storage tanks that hold drilling wastewater left over from the production process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

While the impact of leaks is yet to be assessed, environmental groups, which oppose fracking, are expressing concerns about the risk of adding drilling fluids to other toxins potentially loosed by the floods.

Fertilizer and pesticides running from vast tracts of farmland may pose a bigger threat. But fracking waste is one of the newest problems in a state where energy production is on the rise, and spills could pose the latest environmental challenge to the multibillion-dollar oil and gas industry.

the rest

madamesilverspurs has made several posts about fracking spills as well.

i am so sad for my state right now. we suffered nothing worse than soggy shoes and closed roads here, but our city is right in the middle of the destruction, which is only being heaped upon with the environmental damage. and the folks along the south platte are getting ready to be flooded out as the waters rage east.

i've lived here my whole life and have never seen anything like this.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Let me kick this before I try to get some sleep

[malaise]

2. Colorado is fracked

How sad. As if the floods aren't enough!

[blkmusclmachine]

3. .

.

[Divernan]

4. Some dislodged tanks held fracking wastewater - toxic brew of deadly poisons

Big Fracking has spent years in their "clean-up" attempts at spills in the US and Canada, which have been relatively contained, and not succeeded. The crude oil and toxic wastewater in Colorado flooding is absolutely uncontained. These poisons leach into the land and come back up in the grasses and crops of grazing lands and farm fields. Cattle have died or failed to reproduce after grazing on such land.

God help Colorado because the EPA has caved to Big Fracking in failing to enforce its own regulations! Which raises the question:
Just who is in control of the federal Environmental Protection Agency? Obama or his bff's in the fracking industry/Big Energy? This disaster has the makings of being as bad or worse than the BP oil spill.

In the last decade, fracking fluids often consisting of powerfully toxic chemicals have been included in this surface discharge. The exact mixture used by individual operators is treated as a trade secret.

But one recent analysis identified 632 chemicals now used in shale-gas production. More than 75 percent of them affect the respiratory and gastrointestinal systems; 40-50 percent impact the kidneys and the nervous, immune and cardiovascular systems; 37 percent act on the hormone system; and 25 percent are linked with cancer or mutations.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/wastewater-laced-with-toxic-chemicals-from-oil-and-gas-drilling-rigs-for-consumption-by-wildlife-and-livestock/5342756

Millions of gallons of water laced with toxic chemicals from oil and gas drilling rigs are pumped for consumption by wildlife and livestock with the formal approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to public comments filed yesterday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Contrary to its own regulations, EPA is issuing permits for surface application of drilling wastewater without even identifying the chemicals in fluids used for hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, let alone setting effluent limits for the contaminants contained within them.

The EPA has just posted proposed new water discharge permits for the nearly dozen oil fields on or abutting the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming as the EPA has Clean Water Act jurisdiction on tribal lands. Besides not even listing the array of toxic chemicals being discharged, the proposed permits have monitoring requirements so weak that water can be tested long after fracking events or maintenance flushing. In addition, the permits lack any provisions to protect the health of wildlife or livestock.

“Under the less than watchful eye of the EPA, fracking flowback is dumped into rivers, lakes and reservoirs,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, pointing out that in both the current and the new proposed permits the EPA ignores its own rules requiring that it list “the type and quantity of wastes, fluids or pollutants which are proposed to be or are being treated, stored, disposed of, injected, emitted or discharged.”

Surface disposal of water produced by oil and gas drilling is forbidden in the Eastern U.S. but allowed in the arid West for purposes of “agricultural or wildlife propagation,” in the words of the governing federal regulation. Thus, the “produced water,” as it is called, must be “of good enough quality to be used for wildlife or livestock watering or other agricultural uses.”
. . . . “The more than 30-year old ‘produced water’ exception was intended for naturally occurring fluids and muds from within the geologic formations, not this new generation of powerful chemicals introduced downhole.”

DYING CATTLE ARE THE CANARIES IN THE COAL MINE
http://www.thenation.com/article/171504/fracking-our-food-supply#axzz2fKbuB5b9

Farmers need clean water, clean air and clean soil to produce healthful food. But as the largest private landholders in shale areas across the nation, farmers are disproportionately being approached by energy companies eager to extract oil and gas from beneath their properties. Already, some are regretting it.

Earlier this year, Michelle Bamberger, an Ithaca veterinarian, and Robert Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, published the first (and, so far, only) peer-reviewed report to suggest a link between fracking and illness in food animals. The authors compiled case studies of twenty-four farmers in six shale-gas states whose livestock experienced neurological, reproductive and acute gastrointestinal problems. Exposed either accidentally or incidentally to fracking chemicals in the water or air, scores of animals have died. The death toll is insignificant when measured against the nation’s livestock population but environmental advocates believe these animals constitute an early warning.

Exposed animals “are making their way into the food system, and it’s very worrisome to us,” Bamberger says. “They live in areas that have tested positive for air, water and soil contamination. Some of these chemicals could appear in milk and meat products made from these animals.”

In Louisiana, seventeen cows died after an hour’s exposure to spilled fracking fluid. (Most likely cause of death: respiratory failure.) In north central Pennsylvania, 140 cattle were exposed to fracking wastewater when an impoundment was breached. Approximately seventy cows died; the remainder produced eleven calves, of which only three survived. In western Pennsylvania, an overflowing waste pit sent fracking chemicals into a pond and a pasture where pregnant cows grazed: half their calves were born dead. The following year’s animal births were sexually skewed, with ten females and two males, instead of the usual 50-50 or 60-40 split.

[peoli]

5. kick