Please Don't Frack Up Nevada

The BLM has announced that they are considering leasing almost 400,000 acres for drilling and fracking of oil.

As if the SNWA watergrab isn't bad enough...

Now they want to frack Nevada, including Steptoe Valley.

(Fracking in Wyoming)

Do you know how much water that's going to cost?

A 2009 report on fracking by the Groundwater Protection Council stated that “the amount of water needed to drill and fracture a horizontal shale gas well generally ranges from about 2 million to 4 million gallons...”

...That's just one well.

And what's in that fracking fluid? They don't have to tell us. Surreptitiously, they have finagled the legal right to put whatever they want to in fracking fluid without anyone ever finding out. Frackers could be putting their toxic waste in it, and we can't know. (Maybe that's why a U.S.G.S. survey found millions of barrels of fracking wastewater with radioactivity levels over 3,000 times the Federal limit for drinking water.)

Frackers have a history of polluting local groundwater, and then suing anyone who speaks up about their polluted groundwater.

...And in what is an insult to our "democracy" and a disgrace to America; billions of dollars of our tax monies are being squandered on subsidies for fossil fuel companies' exploitative and unsustainable projects – so that their monopolistic companies can be even more profitable. We're paying them to poison us! 


(Great speech. It points out that America's Congress has done everything within their power to give the fossil fuel industries billions of dollars of unfair advantages in the market - and continues to do so. Meanwhile, President Obama has also helped the fossil fuel industry - but talks tough on issues he can't personally change.)

What's worse; it's this way all over the world:

“Worldwide subsidies for fossil fuels remain six times higher than economic incentives for renewables”

Not only are the fossil fuel monopolies utilizing an unfair advantage to displace renewable energy in the market, fracking will displace traditional renewable industries (such as farming and ranching) in Nevada. There is only so much water. And what's left will probably be poisoned. A Cornell study has found numerous symptoms in cattle near fracking wells: “Reduced milk production. Gastrointestinal, neurological, and urological issues. Even sudden death.”

And the EPA recently stated, in report about water contanimnation in Pavillion Wyoming; “had most likely seeped up from gas wells and contained at least ten compounds known to be used in frack fluids.” No doubt; fracking pollutes groundwater.

Drilling for oil is a very dirty job. Oil spills on land in the U.S. last year were cumulatively greater than the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska back in 1989. That's right, the more than 6,000 spills that occurred in 2012 amounted to 15.6 million gallons of oil, fracking fluid, wastewater, and other liquids reported spilled at production sites last year. The Exxon Valdez only spilled 11 million gallons. The fracking companies may try to clean things up, but they won't ever be able to return things to their natural state and the spilled fluids have to go somewhere. Which means Nevada will end up with at least one toxic waste dump. No thanks.

And to top it all off; fracking causes earthquakes. The U.S.G.S. has reported that “the annual number of earthquakes recorded at magnitude 3.0 or higher in the Central and Eastern United States has increased almost tenfold in the past decade.” So, who's going to pay for the earthquake damage? I guarantee you not the fracking companies. They'll blame (an act of) God.

It's foolish to abandon sustainable ways for locals to make money (such as ranching, farming, and tourism) for a quick buck – for some far away oil company.

It's a foolish act to waste water in the desert. And poisoning water is wasting it.

The world has already reached peak water. The Earth Policy Institute has claimed that “18 countries (including the U.S.) together containing half of the World's people, are now overpumping their underground water to the point... where they are not replenishing and where harvests are getting smaller each year.”

...So don't be surprised if the same people who've invested in the companies that plan to pollute our water with fracking fluid intend to use their profits to buy up what remaining clean water rights that will exist and then sell our own water back to us (for a very big profit, of course).

This isn't Free Market Capitalism. This is Crony Capitalism. This is Monopoly Capitalism. And it's destined to fail. By now we can see it. An unstable system is inherently short-lived. And if a system can't correct itself, really bad things end up happening. Everything starts to fall apart. 

Eventually, Nevada's oil will run out. And when that happens, all we will be left with is polluted water (and not much of it), rampant illness, and an atmosphere we won't recognize.

Vast methane plumes have been spotted in the Arctic. The Earth's subterranean methane is now melting – and we cannot stop it. Methane is 20 times the greenhouse gas Carbon Dioxide is. The horror of our world being dangerously chemically out of balance may already be upon us. We may have already past a tipping point in Global warming that could have far more devastating results than our scientists have predicted. But even if we haven't, the fossil fuel industry is in high gear to make Carbon Dioxide emissions even worse.

This video is a couple of years old. But it points out the lies – that are even more blatant today.

 

It has become obvious that the greedy will risk the future of humanity, even the future of life on Earth... for billions of quick and dirty bucks. In this way; they are no better than organized thieves. In fact, I would claim this is what organized crime looks like in the 21st century. 

It may even be likely that this is what the beginning of the collapse of our civilization looks like. We can't seem to fix things. Consequently, our system is starting to fall apart. 

We cannot allow this.

I fear the BLM may only be a rubber stamp organization – that writes great reports. But we still need to participate in their comments by the end of July.

This is the link to the BLM preliminary Environmental Assessment.

Send your comments to the BLM.